The birds woke the kids just after five, who woke me from a dream of someone showing me snapshots of all the goings on at late-night sf convention parties that I can no longer go to because I always have kids in tow. (The dream involved people who are better off dressed taking off all their clothes, but that's sf conventions for you.)

I got the kids back to sleep. Then I lay, sandwiched between them, fantasizing about buying about 60 bags of topsoil and putting it in the area of the yard where the pool used to be and buying both a plasitic pond with skimmer and also a kiddie pool, the kiddie pool to be closer to the circle of stumps and the pond to be closer to the old pool steps and th electrical outlet and how much wildflower seed would I have to buy and where could I get frog eggs to put in the pond and do deer eat lily pads and . . . And I decided since it was almost 6 AM I'd rather get up than lie there thinking about buying topsoil.

So here I am with my coffee. We put my computer table in a new place, which requires some getting used to. The rising sun was shining in my face a few minutes ago, but now it's better.

Here's a treat: In HOW HISTORY ENDED AND WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARDS, posted on his weblog, Ken McLeod takes on the problem of things happening after history's end in the manner of a college undergraduate who has read too much criticism uncritically. Really funny and requires careful reading because he keeps using phrases you think you've read before, except that line after line, his sentences are like the punchline to the joke about the guy converting to catholicism who confuses Easter with Ground Hog Day: and Jesus rolls back the rock and comes out of the cave and if he sees his shadow, there'll be two more weeks of winter.

It begins:

Karl Marx said that communist society would bear the birthmarks of the old, and Mikhail Gorbachev bore one of them on top of his head. Gorbachev rose to power as a result of the Chernobyl Reaction, which came about because the Russians discovered that their previous two leaders - Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko (these are three, but the third does not count) - were dead but still standing.

and ends:

Afghanistan was bombed to get rid of Osama Bin Laden. He now no longer lives in Afghanistan but in the hearts of millions of devoted followers. Iraq was bombed to kill Saddam Hussein and to get rid of his Weapons of Mass Destruction, which are now in the hands of the people of Iraq.

America is still Top Nation.

Good fun!

LINKS: I've added links to a few sf-oriented bloggers I found by checking who linked to Birkerts' attack on sf. Welcome Tim Yu and James DiBenedetto.