It caught bass, catfish, and panfish like nobody's business. It was a wonder cure for fishing drought. I even tried it in the ocean when I moved to California and was old enough to know better. Fish would strike it, but the hook was too small for those mackerel and jacksmelt. It's an odd and surprisingly irresistible bait, in the same way that springerle cookies can be.
Do you know what is a beetle spin for me now? I read a science fiction book by this fellow named Peter F. Hamilton. I found myself enthralled by the battle between the alien force and the out-gunned earth forces. I found myself turning page after page after page until....
You guessed it. "THE END". Also, a note to "watch for the sequel".
Let me go on record that most things should not have sequels. Above all, there should not be hundreds of things called "Thieves' World". There are exceptions, of course, like Barsoom and the Lord of the Rings (although really LOTR is one novel with three artificial line breaks, much like most of my poetry).
Yet tonight I trooped into the Borders bookstore and bought the sequel--in hardcover. Bless you Peter F. Hamilton, because I am short of curses. Bless you and your alien-page-turning ways.
Fortunately, I also picked up Todd Rundgren's greatest hits CD while at Borders, and sang along to "I Saw the Light" and "Hello, It's Me". Todd Rundgren's music is one of those sublime 1970s things that makes me very happy indeed. I wish I still remembered how to play "Can We Still Be Friends" on the piano. I liked a time when pop lyrics were complex and difficult and about relationships and barely ever "meta" at all.