Well that was FUN
Apr. 8th, 2006 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrEveryone was sick at work today.
There are six floor staff in on weekends. The puppeteer stayed home. The person running parties had a tummy bug. The demonstrator (me) lost their voice. They're having so much trouble covering shifts that a conversation that started with me suggesting the Duty Manager find someone to cover my Tuesday shift ended with him persuading me to do another one on Wednesday (with the proviso that if I'm still sick his screwedness is on his own head) I do not envy that guy :)
Still, it ended up ok. The three generic floor staff (all healthy) had enough experience in the three jobs that we got by (with me and the party person doing half-hearted floor), though I had to do one of the shows at the very end which happily went ok even though the audience was tired and full of sugar.
Currently reading "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner, part of my Hugo trawl. It's quite good, suprisingly modern (like much of the really good older sf) The narrative splits into three interleaved parts: Continuity, about the two main characters, Tracking With Closeups, each chapter of which follows a small part of the life of some person whose story reflects what's going on in the plot or the world at large, and The Happening World, which is snippets of things like tv, ads, real and imagined quotes etc (you can tell the real ones since they're all from 1967 :)) It's a moderately prescient extension of the 60's into a less conservative (though oddly just as sexist), more commercial future where the populace is more concerned about keeping up with Mr and Mrs Everywhere and circumventing the eugenics legislation than paying much attention to what's really going on.
The style of the narrative means that there's basically no plot until halfway through the book, just lots of texture, but this texture is sufficiently engrossing that I didn't notice the lack of plot until it was rectified :)
Oh! And we just saw "Enron: The smartest guys in the room". Very interesting. Stuff like that makes me want to throw in the towel and join the rest of my family in thinking all capitalism is evil. Causing blackouts to make money off the increased price of electricity! Guh! And just..grr!
Well! I'm feeling all awake and verbose aren't I? Stupid body making me feel crap all day then waking up when it doesn't do me any good.
There are six floor staff in on weekends. The puppeteer stayed home. The person running parties had a tummy bug. The demonstrator (me) lost their voice. They're having so much trouble covering shifts that a conversation that started with me suggesting the Duty Manager find someone to cover my Tuesday shift ended with him persuading me to do another one on Wednesday (with the proviso that if I'm still sick his screwedness is on his own head) I do not envy that guy :)
Still, it ended up ok. The three generic floor staff (all healthy) had enough experience in the three jobs that we got by (with me and the party person doing half-hearted floor), though I had to do one of the shows at the very end which happily went ok even though the audience was tired and full of sugar.
Currently reading "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner, part of my Hugo trawl. It's quite good, suprisingly modern (like much of the really good older sf) The narrative splits into three interleaved parts: Continuity, about the two main characters, Tracking With Closeups, each chapter of which follows a small part of the life of some person whose story reflects what's going on in the plot or the world at large, and The Happening World, which is snippets of things like tv, ads, real and imagined quotes etc (you can tell the real ones since they're all from 1967 :)) It's a moderately prescient extension of the 60's into a less conservative (though oddly just as sexist), more commercial future where the populace is more concerned about keeping up with Mr and Mrs Everywhere and circumventing the eugenics legislation than paying much attention to what's really going on.
The style of the narrative means that there's basically no plot until halfway through the book, just lots of texture, but this texture is sufficiently engrossing that I didn't notice the lack of plot until it was rectified :)
Oh! And we just saw "Enron: The smartest guys in the room". Very interesting. Stuff like that makes me want to throw in the towel and join the rest of my family in thinking all capitalism is evil. Causing blackouts to make money off the increased price of electricity! Guh! And just..grr!
Well! I'm feeling all awake and verbose aren't I? Stupid body making me feel crap all day then waking up when it doesn't do me any good.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 02:30 pm (UTC)One interesting thing about it is that the protagonist is an Australian. And he's Australian for a specific plot-related reason, which is that the bad guys mess up by assuming that because he's from the land of the White Australia Policy, he'll be broad-minded enough to come to their country but racist enough to automatically side with the pale-skinned people against the dark-skinned people. When I first read the book, while I was still at uni, I counted this as a completely-wrong; but these days I'm not so sure...
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 02:42 am (UTC)