Monday Update

I'm going out of town on business, so blogging may be light. In the meantime, a few updates:

Car update
The car is working now - the piece that fell off proved to be part of the air conditioning compressor. A funny (for certain values of "funny") story about the repair: I had the car towed in, and I called Saturday morning about 8:30 to ask how things were going. The conversation went like this:

Dealer: "The car is fine, just needs a new muffler guard."
Me: "What about the piece that fell off?"
Dealer: "What piece?"
Me (irritated): "The piece that's sitting on the floor on the passenger side!"
Dealer: "I'll check."
They did check and found it, but I'm glad I called.

Reading update

I read Sherri Tepper's The Fresco over the weekend. Her aliens had an interesting religious system. The founder of the religion had painted a fresco in a temple. However, the temple was illuminated by candles, and the fresco wasn't allowed to be cleaned. The aliens only knew what the fresco actually showed by reading a commentary.

When, as a result of a internal revolt, the fresco was cleaned, the aliens discovered that what the Commentary had described as peaceful events were actually very warlike. In the words of one (human) character: "It was as if, in the second century AD, somebody had destroyed all copies of the Old Testament, and the only way we knew they existing was by reading his commentary on them. A commentary that made them more like the New Testament."

Reviews

My official review of Jim Hines' (jimhines) new short story collection Goblin Tales is available on POD People.