Because the boiler was broken

Because the boiler was broken and I was confined to bed this freezing morning and besides I’m under the gun to pick a novel for my class I read all the way through _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_.* WHAT AN AMAZING BOOK! I’m definitely (or as they often say in blog world, *definetely*) going to teach it. It won’t be easy. I’ll have to make a list of all the bizarre invented terms and concepts and have the students fill in definitions as they come to them, but I think it will be very rewarding on the whole.

I don’t know why I put off for so long reading Philip K. Dick. I did use to read science fiction in my teens, and I loved dystopias like Huxley’s and Orwell’s (doesn’t/didn’t everyone?), but for some reason I steered clear of Dick, who I always stuck in the realm of the nerdy. Guess I was really wrong. I’d heard Drew and Gary and Mitch speak so eagerly of him — I should have trusted their judgment.

kipple!

Penfield mood organs!

I love the part where he takes the money he gets from “retiring” three androids and goes to buy a beautiful Nubian goat. He calls his wife to tell her he’d bought a real live goat.

I suppose none of this makes sense unless you’ve read the book…

Now I want to read lots of Dick novels. Suggestions, anyone? Is anyone actually reading this? YOO-HOO! Write and tell me you’re reading this and send me your earth address and when I make my next chapbook I’ll send you a copy.

*Anastasios writes in his new blog (interesting! — especially when he writes about the beautiful borough of QUEENS!) “I always wonder how people can read so much poetry so quickly. I tire when I read poems, and it is rare if I can get through an entire book of poems in one day.”. I’m the opposite — the world’s fastest reader. Not sure why but I’ve been that way since I was a kid. I read everything quickly — poetry too. I’m sure this is wrong but I can’t help it. I have what I described in _Swoon_ as a ‘hamster brain’. There’s a little hamster wheel in there that turns round and round and round as the little critter pointlessly runs, and a cloying smell of cedar chips…