Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

New Things
Phoenixine Eighty-Eight, December 1996
It's been a busy month. I bought a yo-yo with a patented built in clutch and now for the first time in my
life I can walk the dog and sleep at the end of the string. I feel quite proud -- I mastered round the world
very early on in my yo-yo life, but my skills never progressed much beyond that. Now, thanks to the
miracle of a patented built in clutch, whole new yo-yo horizons have opened in front of me.
Don't read the new Poppy Z. Brite novel Exquisite Corpse if you are the least bit squeamish. Never
have the mechanics of killing, the taste of human flesh, and the feel of dead bodies as they move
through the various stages of decay been so explicitly described. The plot, such as it is, revolves around
the exploits of an English serial killer who has fled the country to America. He finds a home in the French
quarter of New Orleans (Poppy Z. Brite's usual stamping ground) where he makes contact with a
kindred spirit, Jay Byrne, the scion of an old family, grown bored by his heritage and seeking his
decadent pleasures in torture and death. I have never read anything quite so revolting -- I loved it, and I
worry a little about what that says about me.
My cats have decided that they like yo-yos and Milo (the big fat black one) actually managed to wake up
for something that wasn't food and chased it. He caught it as well (it's all in the clutch, you know) and
now I have to be very careful where I practice and develop my yo-yo algorithms. Ginger (the slim,
athletic one) quickly lost interest after her initial burst of enthusiasm and returned to her favourite
occupation of being a serial killer in the French quarter of Avondale, seeking her decadent pleasures in
torture and death. Sparrows go crunch most satisfactorily when they are eaten. She's eaten a lot of
them this month, and I heard most of them.
In search of lighter things I turned to Robert Rankin's new opus which rejoices in the title Nostradamus
Ate my Hamster and which, unusually for Rankin, actually has some semblance of a plot. Since the
plot involves time travel, movie making, Adolf Hitler, Marilyn Monroe and flying saucers you could be
forgiven for taking it less than seriously. Rankin returns to his old stamping grounds, and Brentford has
never been better served. Pooley and Omally and Neville the part time barman do have small parts to
play in the book, but the majority of it belongs to Russell, a nice chap. This is vintage Rankin and I
enjoyed every insane syllable of it.
In the course of my work, I constantly have to point at things -- usually things I have written on the
whiteboard in the fond hope that my students will absorb them. Until now I have used a pointer which
reminds people of a snapped off car aerial (and many and varied have been the rude comments). But
now I have gone all high tech and I have a laser pointer that can point at the board from the opposite
side of the room and which allows me to indicate the subtle truths written thereon while simultaneously
chastising a recalcitrant student around the general area of the ear with a heavy technical tome for not
applying them. I have also discovered that in a darkened room, my cats will happily chase the little red
blob it generates for hours. In normal daylight they apparently have some difficulty seeing it and they
evince little interest. As a result of all this activity I now need new batteries. Oh woe!
Perhaps I could learn a thing or three from the ancients. The utterly fascinating Ancient Inventions is
a guided tour through archaeological wonders. I was astounded at the skills available to the ancients. Did
you know that Roman surgeons routinely performed eye operations? (Removal of cataracts was
particularly common). In the first century BC, plastic surgery was almost commonplace in India. Medieval
Baghdad had a strikingly efficient postal and banking service, and the secrets of distilling whiskey appear
to have been discovered in China around 700BC. This amazing book is endlessly entertaining and
informative and I devoured it in about four hours of utter wonderment.
It appears to be my month for acquiring new possessions. I am writing this little essay on my new
computer which is playing a CD at the same time as it processes my words (ah! The joys of multitasking).
In my upstairs study I now have a network (I don't need one, but when did that ever stop me
having fun) and my old Unix box, my laptop and my new 32MB multimedia PC can swap data backwards
and forwards with gay abandon. Networks are a good idea. When a computer goes wrong and causes