Valiant Attempts

The Google Alert I have keeping an eye out for me usually just spots things listing the Pocket Essentials Cyberpunk, but today it found a review of The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction.

On the whole it is liked, but obviously the only sentence that interests me is:

The writing style overall was pleasantly approachable, with only a few essays that bogged down in their academic language (Helen Merrick's disappointing essay on gender and Andrew M. Butler's valiant attempt at explaining postmodernism are the two failures that stand out in memory).

With one hand they give...

I guess I was doomed to failure.

It's the Way She Tells Them

The Pub, Sunday, 10.30pm


J: I gorra ya know whatsit for ya, ya know, a one of them jokes

Dr A: What?

J: I made it up, yeah, one of them good ones.

Dr A: Sorry?

J: I tole G it and I phoned up yanno, my friend Dave, yanno, Dave, and -

Dr A [Wearily]: Yeah?

J: I phoned, yanno, I phone yanno my friend Dave up, yeah, and I arsked, my friend Dave, ya, yanno, I arsked him like who sung "It's raining men"?

Dr A: Oh.

J: I arsked im, yanno and, yeah, what, he didn't know.

Dr A: Didn't he?

J: No, he didn't, and yeah, he like said whatchamacallit Gerri, whotsername, ah, no, Gerri Halliwell, and them, whatever, like, whosits, Weathergirls.

Dr A: Oh.

J: No, I arsked him which four men sang "It's raining men"?

Dr A: Okay.

J: I arsked him, d'yanno?

Dr A: What?

J: What four men sang, whotsit, "It's raining men"?

Dr A: I don't know, J-, who sang "It's raining men"?

J: Oh... yeah... I said it's Elton John, George Michael, that like Holly Johnston and yeah him out of Queen.

Dr A: Freddie Mercury?

J: Yeah, him whatisname. Elton John, George Michael, Holly, Holly Johnston and Freddie...

Dr A: ... Mercury.

J: Yeah im that's dead. It's a good one, innit?

Dr A: Er...

J: Cos they're all cream duffs.

Dr A: Oh.

J: It's a good one, innit? George Michael, Holly Johnson, Elton John and ... Freddie...

Dr A: [Pause.] Then there's Tom Robinson.

J: Oh?

Dr A: Tom Robinson. But he's bi these days.

J: Oh, I never knew that, ere, G- did you know that? Yanno, Tom Robinson. "2-4-6-8 Motorway". I wonder if Dave knows that?

Dr A: David Bowie?

J: He kept that quiet, Tom Robinson.