A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

GIVE A MAN A FEW LINES OF VERSE AND HE THINKS HE'S LORD OF ALL CREATION: Ray Bradbury died this morning at 91. I am -- unapologetically -- a plot guy. Good prose is fine and all (and bad writing can get in the way), but if there's not a plot with good guys and bad guys and things at stake, I mostly don't care to read fiction (in which case, I'll stick with history with good guys and bad guys and things at stake). And while that remains true, that's all I ever thought there was to reading until I was about 11 and read Fahrenheit 451 (firemen who burn books!?) and soon most everything else Bradbury ever wrote and realized words were important -- and fun -- entirely for their own sake.

There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.

Also, Fuck me.