After having had a second bike stolen in Houston—from inside my building of residence no less—I have decided to acquire a foldable commuter bike for my transportation needs, something I can carry up the stairs with relative ease and tuck away in one of the corners of my abode.
It's an adequately minimalist thing; single speed and breaks by pedaling backwards. No wires, no fuss. Considerably lightweight at 26 lbs (11.8 kg) and surprisingly comfy to ride. This is the Judd folding bike from Retrospec. I'm thinking of maybe replacing the straight handlebar with Dutch-style one for added riding comfort, knowing that it would no longer fold as well with the handlebar attached. But I think I may be able to live with that.
#journal
Still raining profusely. This throws a dent in my morning walk routine which doubles as my daily grocery run, and thus I am without food this morning.
Will have to resort to having stuff delivered, something I've been successful at avoiding for a time now. It's okay to make exceptions every now and again though.
Rain is my kryptonite. In fact, all weather conditions aside from temperate blue skies are my kryptonite. What can I say; I'm a spoiled child of the Mediterranean.
#journal
Comp copy of THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK arrived, and what a sight to behold it is. Obligatory glamor shots of the thing below, along with a look at the impressive table of contents and the opening page of my story, CRISPR Than You.
I quite like how they're categorized by theme, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jared's sub-intro for each section. A truly masterfully put-together collection that—at over 1100 pages—will take me quite a while to get through and most likely fuel years of inspiration in the process. Very humbling to be a part of.
#work #reads
It's been raining nonstop since sunrise.
Sunrise in this case being a misnomer because there has been no sight of sun at all, which depresses me to no end and catapults me to the deep ends of low-energy fatigue.
Will have to cook something nice and curl up with a book later.
#journal
Wrapped up thumbs on THE SOLAR GRID, Ch. 8 (#9) and started on pencils. Feels good. The 198th newsletter was sent out a few days ago, considering taking a different direction with the thing come #200. Perhaps something more column-like.
#journal #work
Bicycle thieves are the scum of the Earth.
#journal
“There’s no question that cyberpunk had a shockingly brief existence as a cohesive entity. Born out of science fiction’s new wave, literary postmodernism, and a perfect storm of external factors (Reaganism, cheap transistors, networked computing, and MTV), the genre cohered as a tangible, fungible thing in the early 1980s, most famously exemplified by the aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and the themes of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). The term cyberpunk itself, as coined by Bruce Bethke, came into being in 1983. The neologism captured the zeitgeist: the potential of, and simultaneous disillusionment with, techno-capitalism on steroids.”
From Jared Shurin's excellent introduction to THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK in which I have a story called CRISPR Than You.
“Cyberpunk was born of the punk ethos. A genre that, in many ways, existed against a mainstream cultural and literary tradition, rather than for anything definable or substantive in its own right. This is, at least, an argument posited by those who believe the genre peaked—and died—with Bruce Sterling’s superb anthology Mirrorshades (1986). Accepted as the definitive presentation of cyberpunk, Sterling had pressed a Heisenbergian self-destruct button. Once it was a defined quality, cyberpunk could no longer continue in that form.
“Although this is a romantic theory (and cyberpunk is a romantic pursuit, despite—or perhaps because of—the leather and chrome), it is not one to which I personally subscribe. While collecting for this volume, I found that the engine of the genre was still spinning away, producing inventive and disruptive interpretations of the core cyberpunk themes through to the start of the next decade.”
I love Jared's intro a great deal. Read more at CrimeReads.
#reads
“When the cat shit gets bigger than the cat, get rid of the cat.”
— Some douchey studio executive
#quote
Choppiest sleep I've had in a long time, after weeks of less-than-ideal sleep. My smartwatch has given me a score of 53 with the notice “needs attention.”
Historically, I've always been a pretty sound sleeper, so I'm quite positive that this lack of sleep is coming from my biological alert system, the internal chemicals that tell you to stay on your feet and maintain caution. Our bodies are after all hardwired to be ready for danger. Experience passed down from one generation to the next over hundreds of thousands of years. That kind of experience does not lie.
#journal
“Write the good bit. Seriously. Just write it. That bit that you want to write, that you’re saving up? Write it. It’s the most important moment in the book, isn’t it? So write it, and bend the rest of the book towards it, rather than retrofitting it to what you come up with along the way that’s less important.” — Nick Harkaway
#quote #writing