Though I have no personal experience as to how sweet he smells…
Gah, dumb list. Raven from Snow Crash? Ugh. That aspect of the story is why I find Mel Gibson movies generally unwatchable. The sheer sadism is stomach-turning, and not at all fascinating.
And then to omit Diamond Age, which has some of the most wonderful subtle pieces of character development (Judge Fang) and wit, e.g. this marvelous description inserted as pure word-play, from when Hackworth meets with Colonel what’s-his-name from the Imperial spy agencies in a restaraunt:
“…a tall bottle with a paper label printed in an ancient crabbed typeface. ‘McWhorter’s Original Condiment’ was written large, and everything else was too small to read. The neck of the bottle was also festooned with black-and-white reproductions of ancient medals awarded by pre-Enlightenment European monarchs at exhibitions in places like Riga. Just a bit of violent shaking and thwacking ejected a few spurts of the ochre slurry from the pore-size orifice at the top of the bottle, which was guarded by a quarter-inch encrustation….If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this:
FYI, it’s Neal.
No Diamond Age?
Lame, lame!
FYI, it’s Neal.
A rose by any other name.
Though I have no personal experience as to how sweet he smells…
Gah, dumb list. Raven from Snow Crash? Ugh. That aspect of the story is why I find Mel Gibson movies generally unwatchable. The sheer sadism is stomach-turning, and not at all fascinating.
And then to omit Diamond Age, which has some of the most wonderful subtle pieces of character development (Judge Fang) and wit, e.g. this marvelous description inserted as pure word-play, from when Hackworth meets with Colonel what’s-his-name from the Imperial spy agencies in a restaraunt:
“…a tall bottle with a paper label printed in an ancient crabbed typeface. ‘McWhorter’s Original Condiment’ was written large, and everything else was too small to read. The neck of the bottle was also festooned with black-and-white reproductions of ancient medals awarded by pre-Enlightenment European monarchs at exhibitions in places like Riga. Just a bit of violent shaking and thwacking ejected a few spurts of the ochre slurry from the pore-size orifice at the top of the bottle, which was guarded by a quarter-inch encrustation….If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this:
Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer’s ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.”
I want to know who does Stephenson’s hair.