Tag: humour

The Android's Dream

The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi
My Rating: 5 out of 5.

This book is a delightfully wacky tale of one man’s fight to keep a very special sheep alive. In the process, our hero will have to fight off various aliens and a few treacherous villainous humans. Scattered throughout The Android’s Dream are numerous one liners. Each one of these taken by itself and outside the context of the story are funny, but put together and in context they’re hysterical. LOL is a common abbreviation used online that stands for “Laugh Out Loud”. These days it is mostly used to indicate somebody found something else amusing and does not actually mean any truly laughed outside of their own head. I bring this up as I repeatedly found myself laughing out loud while reading The Android’s Dream. Below are a few of my favorite lines from the book:

  • Jesus, forgive me, he thought. I really shouldn’t have eaten that panda.
  • “No more shoes in advance for anyone,” he said.
  • “Today people have tried to kill me, the police are looking for me, and I’ve just discovered every Easter of my childhood, I ate one of my relatives with mint jelly. I’m just fine.”
  • “I don’t know … You’d have to ask the sheep.”
  • It drives physicists mad and every few years on e will snap and begin raving that sentient beings should nae fuck with that which they ken nae unnderstan’

    • If my little review here fails to entirely convince you to rush out and find a copy of this book to read, then try Bookgasm’s review

    A friend recently posted on her LJ where she thinks she’ll be in the next 15, 20, 25 yeas. Since I rarely if ever think about I’ll be in the next 5 years much less farther out; I decided to take a moment to ponder the same question. Here is what I came up with:

    2021

    • Age: 46
    • Employment: Still working and probably shoved into some sort of managerial position. Reading the techie news sites so I can follow the conversations being held by the people I’ve got reporting to me. Wondering if we’re ever going to get those flying cars that they’ve been talking about since I was a child.
    • Vanity: Rather enjoying how my beard & hair are intermixed with grey.
    • Health: Still working to get rid of my cookie gut1 and probably starting to take a variety of medications for arthritis.
    • Hobbies: Still reading plenty of sci-fi, fantasy and mystery novels. Actually, I’m probably reading more of the mystery novels as I either don’t understand what they’re talking about in sci-fi/fantasy these days or I just don’t care anymore. Additionally, I’ll be doing odd jobs around the house renovation/restoring bits & pieces of my castle2. Lastly, I’d like to be working more on my photography skills and possibly learning to build furniture3.

    2026

    • Age: 51
    • Employment: Starting to think a lot more seriously about retirement and giving this work crap over to these younger guys with all the energy. Probably shifting my retirement investments to being more conservative. Also, taking advantage of my seniority to get myself sent to all the interesting conventions, training seminars and events. Or at the very least all the ones taking place in interesting places.
    • Vanity: Not so sure I like the all grey hair anymore. Particularly when the little whippersnappers running around call me gramps.
    • Health: Finally got rid of my cookie gut, but getting awfully cranky about all the meds I have to take.
    • Hobbies:

    2031

    • Age: 55
    • Employment: Some sort of senior design position, as management jobs might get better pay but they all suck.
    • Vanity: Seriously, I’m 55 and not dead. That’s probably all I need to be vain about at this point.
    • Health: Seriously hoping the current research into cybernetics will be completed in time for me to dump my meatbag for some shiny steel & silicon.
    • Hobbies: Going to public places and pretending to be older and meaner than I actually am to annoy all little whippersnappers running around. 😀

    Side note: I started writing this post up a couple of weeks ago when the friend’s post first appeared, but as happens a lot set it aside to work on later. Now that I’m going back to work on it again, I noticed a few differences in how I’m organizing the information. Whereas my friend wrote her post in a more narative form; I’ve got bullet points. I can think of two immediate reasons for this difference.

    1. I’m lazier than my friend
    2. My friend studied English and writing; while I studied business & computers. All my training tells me that nobody really wants to sit there and read the crap I’ve written so I’d better convey my point as quickly & clearly as I can. Her training is all about trying to engage the reader in what she’s saying. I think I like her way better. Ah well.

    1 I don’t really care for beer, while I do love munching on freshly, baked home-made cookies. Yummmmmm!
    2 “Castle” is used here in the sense that every man’s home is his castle. Rather than in the more literal sense, though if that did somehow happen I think it would be pretty dang rockin’.
    3 I like woodworking, but opporunities for doing it while living in an apartment have been extremely limited. Since I’m buying a house, I expect I’ll get to do more of this. If only in home repairs and it might lead to more interesting things.

    Wednesday morning, my supervisor pulled me aside to tell me since management wants to go into beta just before I take 2 days of vacation. And since one of those vacation days conflicts with a week long Microsoft training course I was signed up for they are pulling me out of the class. I wasn’t happy about it. She wasn’t either but the decision came down from on high.

    Wednesday afternoon, a co-worker and myself had to drive 4 hours to my current employer’s home office. Instead of heading straight to the hotel, we stopped along the way to get dinner. We ended up hitting the hotel around 8 PM. When we checked in there was a message asking us to call our supervisor. Neither one of us liked the sound of that. We tried calling her back but got her answering machine. We left a message and I went to my own room. I had been laying down for just about an hour and was thinking of hitting up the hotel’s hottub when the room phone rang. I picked it up and it was my supervisor. She was calling to tell me the company had decided to close our office once the lease runs out. Apparently, there’s going to be some sort of transition plan if you want to move out by the home office and continue working for the company. But as I told a co-worker, I’d rather slit my wrists then move to keep working for this company. So I’ve got somewhere between 4 – 8 months to find a different job1. Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night and I wasn’t feeling motivated for teaching the next day.

    Thursday, I went into the office. I chatted with a few people and they were all sympathetic (and wanting to know what we were going to do). Then I checked on the classroom and it wasn’t setup correctly, so I got to do some last minute running around to get it fixed. Then I taught, trying not to put them to sleep. The two big problems with the class were that it had to be put together at the last minute and I had 3 different groups of people attending the class. Each group having a different, non-overlapping skill set; making it impossible not to be too basic for one part of the class while being totally over the head of a different part. *sigh* Still some people seemed to get something out of the class and nobody actually snored through it.

    Thursday night, we drove home.

    Friday, I went into my soonish-to-be-closed office and while it was a dark humor going around; most people seemed happier than I’ve seen them for some time. Maybe good things will come of this moronic decision. Who knows? I just know that I’m going to be much more motivated to find a different job (I’d been half-heartedly looking already) and the company’s customers who pay support fees are going to get seriously pissed off2.

    So if any of my readers are in the Eastern Iowa area and are hiring, maybe you could let me know?

    1 We’ve got some kind of extension on the lease so it’s anybody’s guess when exactly our office will be closed, but we do know it will happen sometime between September and December.
    2 From what I understand the majority of the company’s best help desk personnel are in my office. So the customers will have to wait longer to get somebody to talk to them about their issue(s) and then wait even longer for that person to fix their issue(s).