The problem with capitalist governments (or companies) is that they always run out of other people’s money — either the customers’ money, or the shareholders’ money. No company lasts forever, just as no one is PM forever. {cough}
For years, I’ve had this recurring gig from Alexander Kaletski’s novel Metro in my head as, “Nobody ever believes Sashulka,” instead of Andrewlka, as it should be. Oops.
“History is the trade secret of science fiction, and theories of history are its invisible engine.”
— Ken MacLeod, Introduction to the American Edition of The Star Fraction.
I could swear this used to be “secret weapon” instead of “trade secret,” but that just be my intermittently useful memory…
“Claridge’s is a great training ground. One story we do like is that of the young couple who forgot some clothes during one visit and found them at their next visit, laundered and dry-cleaned, hanging in the same wardrobe.”
— Rene Lecler, The 300 Best Hotels in the World (1978)
Oft told story. I usually embellish by saying the couple are of modest means, and don’t return to Claridge’s for some years. As is frequently the case, the story needs no embellishment by me.
“…so who was to believe that some crazy mix composed of bits of Ghiradelli and Portmeirion and Valencia and Taliesin and God knows what besides would turn out right when everything else went wrong?”
— John K.H. Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
So there I was, a freshman at Pomona College, in Claremont, Calif. I read that passage, and I really want to figure out what those four sources were. I’ve cheated — I’ve linked them so you can look. But back in those days of 1982 there was no way to do any retrieval in a similar way.
so, down to our monster, Honnold Library I went. I started flipping through the library cards under SUBJECT : ARCHITECTURE. I found a big under the A’s. 1200 some-odd pages. Author by the name of Alexander. I’m lazy, but surely a book that big would point me somewhere. It did. It sent me down the rabbit hole. Didn’t answer the question at all, but oh, what a journey it’s sent me through the years.
Which is why I’ve always felt indebted to Brunner. It wasn’t intentional — but I’ve had fun.
“i’ve been practicing the behavior of when something happens, what can i control and what can i influence? this has helped immensely. for example, i can control not bitch slapping a co-worker.”
— jenn jumper
Robert: She’s a pretty girl.
Sunita: I don’t call that pretty, I call that beautiful.
Chancellor of the Exchequer: What do we think the difference is between pretty and beautiful?
Sunita: Well, something to do with bone structure. Pretty is pretty while young, beautiful will stay beautiful forever.
— Richard Curtis,The Girl in the Café
Lexicon. Music that blends into the background. Originally used by Trudeau about New Age (or newage, rhymes with sewage), but Classical, or Jazz, or coffee-shop guitar… All will do. (Which only reminds me of Larry Niven’s bon mot, “The applause should be louder than the music. Play better, or softer.”)
Back to Gumperstown. The bank. “What’s my balance? I think I’m overdrawn.” Foxes to the right of him, foxes to the left of him. Goddamn branch hires tellers the way restaurants hire waitresses. Sell some tit with the sausages to stimulate appetites, better tips, return trade. But a bank?
“You’re not OD’d.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re not overdrawn. This is your balance.” She passed him a slip of paper that read $126.23.
“Absolutely ridiculous, madam. I haven’t had that much in there in months. Why do I give you my money to play with?”
Lexicon. I usually rephrase as, “Why do I let you people play with my money?”
From Stephen Minkin’s excellent 1979 novel about play (“Ludics”), and Northern California in the late ‘70s, A No Doubt Mad Idea.
“One of the more interesting and thought-provoking courses given at the Academy was the class in writing orders—the most useful English Department course Heinlein ever got. Each midshipman was given a tactical situation for which he had to write an operations order. Then everyone in the class would pick it apart, trying to find a way to misunderstand the order. This process was called “Major-Browning,” after an officer in General Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War staff, whose sole duty was to misunderstand Grant’s orders. If the order got by Major Brown, Grant okayed it for release. At Annapolis, the Major-Brown test was pass-fail: if anyone could colorably misunderstand the order, the midshipman got a zero mark for the day. This process, with its panic-making incentive, “gave me a life-time respect for exact meaning of words and clarity of construction of sentences.””
— William Patterson, In Dialogue With His Century, Chapter 6
(This has got to be in one of Heinlein’s novels, because I knew this story long before I ever read Patterson. I just can’t remember which one. Comment below — preferably with a citation — if you know which one.)