Bonnie > Recent Status Updates

a human tongue hiding in the trench like an asp viper, and wow, tongues are long when detached from their heads, Bagger wonders if the lummox might keep it, it’s got to be superior to one infected with trench mouth, but Popkin flings it and takes a moment to collect himself, looking like he’s going to puke, or cry, or shoot himself in the face, all of which Bagger has seen before and none of which would surprise him

"then the crater goes silent, except, of course for the shriek that continues to unfurl in an infinite ribbon"

Ah, now understand the bit at the beginnning --> nothing will end: not this shriek, or the carnage, or the war, or this sentence...

I can't help but feebly wave my own hands and feet when i read this

"Distorted beyond recognition by genetic modification, they looked
for all the word like pale, overgrown worms. Tiny, feeble feet and
hands modified for digging were all that betrayed their noble
heritage."

How about explaining it to the readers?

“I saw something,” I said. “Before ConSensus went out.”
“Yeah.”
“Was that—”
She paused at the hatch. “Yeah.”

"Centuries of navel-gazing. Millennia of masturbation. Plato to Descartes to Dawkins to Rhanda. Souls and zombie agents and qualia. Kolmogorov complexity. Consciousness as Divine Spark. Consciousness as electromagnetic field. Consciousness as functional cluster.

I explored it all."

“These scramblers—they know the answers, Siri. They’re intelligent, we know they are. But it’s almost as though they don’t know they know, unless you hurt them. As if they’ve got blindsight spread over every sense.”

I tried to imagine it: life without sensation, without any active awareness of one’s environment. I tried to imagine existing like that without going mad. “Do you think that’s possible?”

Do they not teach writers "As you know, Bob," anymore?
I would still be reading along if it weren't for this jerking me out.

“Splinter skills,” she repeated dully.
“Savantism. Hyperperformance at one kind of calculation doesn’t necessarily connote high intelligence.”
“I know what splinter skills are, Robert. I just think you’re wrong.”

"In other circumstances, he would have killed for a story like that... There was something bleak about the story of the disappeared girl, it’s true, and maybe that’s why they didn’t follow it up. Those things happen in journalism. The public’s imagination falls in love with certain horrors and is indifferent to others."

Not end it - she wants to lead it.

"I wanted a child now more than ever. My son would not be handed over or abused. And he would be the first child of a medium. I would have a family with Juan, and when the time came to lead the Order, or when the correct interpretation of how to keep consciousness alive was found, it wouldn’t be...who gave the orders. Or at least they would have to negotiate with me."

"Even so, it excited me a lot to see them kiss unabashedly, with that discomfort of men’s kisses that at first makes them seem like a fight, and then spills over into an emotion I didn’t understand, a lost and recovered fraternity."

These two are ALSO in the Order of Darkness. Why would they be so trustworthy? Trust for what?

"“the worst people in this country, or anywhere. They’re the worst, period. They aren’t your family, even if you have their blood.”
“And what are you two?” Tali and Esteban looked at each other, Gaspar saw them smile, he didn’t understand why. Tali: We’re friends. And Esteban added: Friends you’ll hopefully never need."

Were Juan and Rosario not on the same page? But then why did they love each other so much?

"Tali had known Rosario was destined to be the leader of the Order. What if she had been killed because of that? Juan couldn’t and didn’t want to understand the politics of the Order, or the extent of Rosario’s ambitions."

It sounds like this would have been a great sitch in which to NOT have children. Did the couple discuss?

"I need you to protect him... to hide his abilities...They’ll still want you to use his body... I have time and the ability to deceive them. The hardest part will be staying alive. I need time to raise Gaspar and figure out how to get him away from the Order. I am the open door.. but i have to protect Gaspar."

All right. Enough dreams now. Time to just tell the story.

"I had been dreaming of Alexis, of us playing honeymoon after a day of climbing trees behind Aurora... But we were not little girls in the dream. We were our current ages, and in the dream she was sad, her hazel eyes moist with worry. She lay beside me when we were done playing, and stroked my hair, saying, “You’re right here, beside me, but I miss you.” "

"His crimes were known, but what he had felt before he committed them would never be known. He would have gladly admitted his guilt if he had thought that in doing so he could have also given in the same breath a sense of the deep, choking hate that had been his life, a hate that he had not wanted to have, but could not help having."

Not sure i understand Jan's motivation here; will have to go with it for now.

" “I was in jail grieving for Mary and then I thought of all the black men who’ve been killed, the black men who had to grieve when their people were snatched from them in slavery and since slavery. I thought that if they could stand it, then I ought to.” "

"It was no longer a matter of dumb wonder as to what would happen to him and his black skin; he knew now. The hidden meaning of his life—a meaning which others did not see and which he had always tried to hide—had spilled out. No; it was no accident, and he would never say that it was. There was in him a terrified pride in feeling and thinking that some day he would be able to say publicly that he had done it."

3-External Evidence. Three paragraphs, then "Thus we can see the New Testament passes third and final test for the reliability of historical documents."

Footnotes? Just this:
https://coldcasechristianity.com/writ...

[Insert that animated Gif of former Prez Obama looking around, wth.]

Chapter 4- Is the New Testament Reliable?

I told my dad this book is better written than others (Lee Strobel) he's given me. Not this chapter though. "Tests:"
1-Bibliographic. Do not understand the "Number of Biblical Manuscripts" chart. And to compare those to other classical works like The Iliad?
2-Internal Evidence. TWO PAGES?

"You fixed the camera to the outside wall and focussed it on the death bed of the pond.

Day zero."

We are on track for five stars! (Despite one character in second person.)

Really good!

… I could see his staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch chain. He vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians.”

Aliens sucking out people’s blood and feeding on it. Reading that without conditioning, decades of TV and movies, horror and SF? i bet that was scary, dude!

i bet this would really have freaked people out in 1897-1898?
“And suddenly I heard a yell, and saw a long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little cage that hunched upon its back...
He was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed; three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of considerable consequence…

Sounds so British
"At the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the invaders without all this inconvenience."

Ha!
"I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy’s rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.
So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. 'We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.' "

"There was no use fighting it. I had fallen into hope, as you might fall into the ocean; and though I knew I would drown eventually, for the moment it seemed as though the deep, deep sea would keep me up."

Refreshing. Admin says as bad or worse almost daily. When was this written? Ah, 2009.

"Remember that senator who was forced to resign after he said China could afford to lose as many people as there are in the entire United States and still have over a billion left?"

"But even as the fear racks my body, it soothes me, comforts me. Soldiers who get washed away in a rush of adrenaline don’t survive. In war, fear is the woman your mother warned you about. You knew she was no good for you, but you couldn’t shake her. You had to find a way to get along, because she wasn’t going anywhere."

Reminds me of a story i read in GRR Martin's collection Nightflyers & Othet Stories last year. "Weekend in a War Zone" (1977)
Although maybe just bc i don't read a lot of the body armor mech military stuff