Cookies for dessert

You find out the coolest stuff on the web.

I belong to a bunch of Yahoo! Groups. Usually what happens is I join one when I'm having a problem with hardware or software or something, read every message from the beginning, then when I've finally solved the problem, with or without the help of the folks on the group, forget about it for awhile.

And then sometimes I plug in an interest and see if there are any applicable groups. I read them for awhile then, as before, forget about them. I'm a member of a Science Fiction Haiku group, for instance. I think I visited that one once . . .

Tonight I was just kind of mindlessly surfing around, and decided to look at some of my groups, and clicked on one of the PDA ones, and found a message from Suzette Haden Elgin, a science fiction writer who I greatly admire. She wrote a book back in the 80's called Native Tongue that I thought was wonderful, about a future society where women have lost their rights, and in retaliation, they invent a secret language that they keep hidden from men. Ms. Elgin also invented the language, Láadan. There was a second book, The Judas Rose, and a third one that I don't believe I ever read.

In a section of her website dealing with the fictional language, she writes that at the time she began the book, and the construction of the language, she was reading Douglas Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach. At about that same time, I was trying to read it. I tried, I really did, but it made my brain hurt. Sometimes, of course, it's good to make your brain hurt, and that was actually what I was striving for, something to challenge me intellectually.

I found it too much of a challenge, though, and gave it up partway through. I can't imagine trying to construct a language. Pretty impressive.

Anyway, intrigued by the memory of Native Tongue, I went looking for Ms. Elgin's website, found it, then, out of curiosity, clicked on a link at the bottom of the page that said the site had been updated by "Webspinner," who turns out to be Vonda McIntyre, whose books I've never read, but whose name I'm very familiar with. It's always interesting to find out what famous authors do with their spare time. Ms. McIntyre apparently makes beaded sculptures and websites.

Sunday night I got an email from Janel saying that I might want to check my post office box soon. Shortly thereafter, Bob came downstairs (it was probably about 9:00 at this point) saying he was hungry and thought we should make a Taco Bell run.

I said, well, I might as well check my post office box while we're out, because I'd gotten an email from someone saying I should check it. He asked why, and I said I didn't know for sure, but that Janel had been baking cookies . . .

Sure enough, among the junk mail and internet magazines there was a box of cookies, so we drove through Taco Bell and got tacos, and had cookies for dessert!