take it in stride

just cruisin around on my new laptop. this entry is one in a series about being pleasantly surprised by humanity. today's focus brought to us by amazon.com, made possible in part by dictionary.com's word of the day.*

"Beginning with Edgar Allan Poe, Disch elaborates a vision of science fiction as one of the twentieth century's most influential manifestations of America as a culture of liars. Among the frauds are ...the co-opting of cyberpunk by postmodern academics and avant-gardists trying to stay hip."

--Amazon.com editorial review of
The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of,
by Thomas Disch

A lot of The World Seeming to Get Cooler must be due to our generation's increasingly dominant grasp on the reigns of commercial media.


truculent \TRUCK-yuh-luhnt\, adjective:
1. Fierce; savage; ferocious; barbarous.
2. Cruel; destructive; ruthless.

I ask whether impeachment will become still another arrow in the quiver of the warrior class of ever more truculent partisan politicians in Washington.
--"Former Watergate Prosecutors See Censure as Alternative in Clinton's Case," New York Times, December 9, 1998

...officers mistook his father's cursing and argumentative reception of five men with guns for the actions of a truculent fugitive.
--Frank J. Murray, "Media can't join police raids of homes, high court decides," Washington Times, May 25, 1999

Those bamboozled into believing palpable untruths that are recognized as such by the larger community are likely in time to develop an attitude of truculent resentment and outright paranoia rather than self-esteem.
--Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World