General DAH on 30 Sep 2008 10:21 pm
The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul
It can hardly be coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty an an airport.”
Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to convey this in their designs.
They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colors, to make effortless the business of separating the traveler forever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveler with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.
Caught in the middle of a sea of hazy light and a sea of hazy noise, Kate Schechter stood and doubted.
So begins the new book I am reading, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams. Impressions so far? The style is unmistakable, getting carried off with obsurd details with the sometimes result of forgetting what on earth the beginning of a sentence was about. But I am enjoying it. Not as much as Hitchhikers Guide, but i am only just getting into the story, so it has time to grow.
I stopped at Borders (or barnes and noble, i can never remember which is which) last saturday, and got some GetFuzzy, as well as some heavier reading such as this. 
on 14 Oct 2008 at 8:43 pm 1.Kristine said …
It’s a good read, no? I love it for the title… which fits my mood perfectly on certain, grey and overcast Chicago days!
on 14 Oct 2008 at 8:49 pm 2.DAH said …
Yes, it is a good read – if you haven’t read it you can borrow it when you are in town this weekend. I was a little surprised to find out it has nothing to do with Tea though!
on 19 Oct 2008 at 3:36 pm 3.Henry said …
interesting book, glad you had some get fuzzy to lighten your mood. I just picked up the lastest treasury (contains the two most recent collections). also just finished season four of Lost online. interesting.
on 26 Oct 2008 at 10:02 pm 4.DAH said …
Is the latest treasury “take our cat, please”? I want to get it too.