Neil Cake > Recent Status Updates

I love it when Americans tell us what we do. According to Diane Ackerman, the British still sometimes use the Saxon word, "swyve" for fucking.

I think someone was having her on.

In an entirely imagined picnic with an alien:

"The English cousin asks for a small platter of potted ox tongues..."

I guarantee you, there's no fucking way that's what an English person request above everything else. You mad fucking fantasist.

I could have missed something, but it seems our American friend is too embarrassed to request anything, and presumably finds everything tasteless for lack of bbq sauce.

'Virginia Woolf reminds us in her essay "On Being Ill": "English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet... has no words for the shiver and the headache..."

That's just not true is it?

Honestly, this is word salad. So much of it is just her making stuff up.

"Why we love to bask isn't hard to fathom. Evolution, that haute couturier of ingenious patterns, probably designed the sensation so that animals would search for climates conducive to good health."

I don't think you're a scientist.

"Science fiction stories often involve an astronaut whose body temperature has been lowered, sleeping in suspended animation like a..."

Wait for it...

"naked bear in a glass den."

This reads like a list of non sequiturs.

"If we ever get a say-so in evolution, one of the things I'd vote for is whiskerlike feelers to keep us from bumping into furniture, friends, or raccoons in the dark."

Yes, raccoons.

Fuckin nutjob.

"When we touch something on purpose - our lover, the fender of a new car, the tongue of a penguin..."

I get that it was tough, but complaining that the NHS won't give you a souped up electric wheelchair when you're sending your son to private school and end up being able to get one anyway... is a bit rich.

Well here's a lady that takes a lot of pleasure in sensing things. It is pretty amazing, but calm down; you're making it weird.

Hm. Struggling to understand who or what she's talking about from one moment to the next.

Might not be the best choice for reading while the kids watch telly...

This is fucking grim.

Lol, a paragraph later it's all a fantasy. I am such a fool.

"Sham made bread."

Oh, ok. Wait; no. My wife makes bread. It isn't so simple that you can just do it when you find yourself stranded on an island. Especially when there has been zero mention of any previous experience of bread making.

Sorry, that bit really jarred with me.

I don't know, man. How can there be a sea of rails? It doesn't really make sense.

This is alright, but I know it was never finished. So now it's like it's point has already long been made and there's 200 more pages to go.

Bit annoying how the characters talk like Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.

I kinda hate this book. It's so grubby and unpleasant. Only thing that keeps me going is that it's so easy to read at the same time.

Yawn.

what? you're going to send the actual Baby Nicole to Gilead, where someone will know who she is, for the promise of some documents that will fix everything? That's a terrible idea. That's a truly terrible idea.

So boring

Confusing, but good.

How come we're not being kept up to date with developments in this plot to assassinate the Pope? I get the feeling that once Zaitsev reveals what he knows, the CIA are going to go, "aw, who gives a shit about that!?"

"Jack Ryan rolled out of bed, got his paper, and switched on the TV. CNN also carried the fire story from Boston..."

Wait. We didn't get CNN in the UK in the early 80s... don't get it now...

Clancy's Americans effortlessly predicting what he's told us the Russians are going to do and how he's told us they're going to do it.

A whole lot of talking, not a lot of... anything else. Except wondering. There's lots of parts where it's just people wondering about what's going on, what to do, wondering what other people a wondering... Kinda boring but kinda gentle.

Like, he hires a retired computer expert. Like a retired computer guy is going to be completely up to date with all the developments in software and computing technology.

What's with Forsyth's obsession with retired people?

"The Cobra absorbed the information, but did not think it merited the expenditure of much further effort... [he] placed a request that on the man's next visit he be discreetly tailed."

Not much further effort then. I'll just get some people in a foreign city to surveil an unimportant target for me.

"I must insist that none of you speak about this to anyone. Not your wives, not your private secretaries, not your political advisers. In that way, we can ensure against leaks."

That's careful. Smart.

Smart.