wildcat

1. Erasure's cover of "Take a Chance on Me" is notable mostly for its video, which is close to a shot-for-shot reproduction of the ABBA video, only with Erasure's singers in drag; it's funny and fun and plays into perceptions held about ABBA. Their cover of "Video Killed the Radio Star," by contrast, is a textbook example of sound being used to generate story. It's not about reproduction; it's about layering. It's the Oral History of Machines, it's a bunch of robot students standing very still in very clear rows in a Museum of Robotic History while their top-heavy robot guide instructs them in the evolution of technologies. I'm not sure why they'd be communicating in English rather than binary code, but I suppose even the robots must be allowed their little affectations.

2. Following Joy's suggestion, the space angel character is going to be called Rahab or some derivative, although there's something about the original being a biblical prostitute-spy that makes me want to hang back on that name and use it for a story with Teiresias Jones and Johnny Damocles. Which is a good argument for using Esther instead, but her story doesn't quite mesh with the infiltration aspects of the story so well.

3. I'm on about page seven of the first draft, although I need to delete the last half-paragraph from last night and rework it and take in a better direction. Occasionally you end up in these narrative dead-ends and have to cleave them right away and force the juices to squish in another direction. The (first?) climax has happened but where do I go from here? I suspect, once I've fleshed things out into a more coherent second draft the story will finish itself off more naturally.

4. There's still the question of the title.

5. After an exhausting day at work -- not bad, necessarily, but merely taxing from the constant movement and energy and noise -- I went for a drink with a friend from work and we had a rather good time discussing dream interpretation, PhD theses, comic books, and living situations. She had a beer but, being the delicate wisp of a flower that I am, I had a raspberry martini. It felt idly decadent in the low lights, surrounded by servers in black. Refreshing.