San Fran by 10

That’s my prediction. On paper, looks like a real close game, a toss-up to whichever team comes out wanting it most. But as we saw two weeks ago, it may just come down to whichever team comes out after halftime wanting it most.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. Back when I was thirty, me and the wife (then my fiance) lived down in Maryland for two years. I couldn’t root for the Redskins, so we became marginal fans of the relatively-new Baltimore Ravens. As luck would have it, that year they made it to the Superbowl and spanked my Giants.

But I still have a residual liking for them, whereas I don’t really have any feelings for the Niners. I don’t care for Ray Lewis – did you hear this is his last game? – but I do like the whole backstory of Michael Oher’s, and Joe Flacco is a New Jersey native. Jim Harbaugh proudly acts like a toddler in public, tantrum-wise, whereas his brother John maintains a more stoic outlook, so that’s another minor point in Baltimore’s favor from me.

So, while I’d like the Ravens to win, I think it’ll be something like

San Francisco 37
Baltimore 27

I guess. This one’s hard to predict.

Scared the You-Know-What Outta Me

As a child-of-the-70s kid who pored over scores of everything from science fiction novels to physics tomes, I must admit that


Much more than Star Trek

Much, much more than Star Wars

Much, much, much more than Battlestar Galactica

Much, much, much, much more than Close Encounters


THIS impacted me more than anything else:

Fruits of Labor

Well, been at the new job for a little over a year, and they rewarded all my hard work with a nice, big, fat raise. Woo-hoo! My first raise in, er, six years, give or take, given my spotty employment record of the past decade.

Anyway, seeing’s how the wife likes to treat herself annually when she gets her nice, big, fat bonus, I decided to treat myself in a similar fashion. But economically downsized; we still need to pay for this castle I live in and all the perks that go along with raising two children and providing for their needs. So I decided to spend $30 on myself.

Bingo! That means a trip to my favorite online bookstore, alibris.com.

I love ordering from this place for a couple of reasons. All the books are like a dollar or two. The shipping costs more than the book. Oh yeah – they’re shipped to my house! Every night I come home from work, I’m wondering if one of my books arrived! It’s one of the few sweet pleasures in my life. Don’t know if that’s pathetic or not, but that’s the truth.

So … here’s what I’m thinking about searching for this weekend, from most likely to least likely:


The Face of the Waters by Robert Silverberg. Read it twenty years ago, floored me, wanna read it again, haven’t found it in my bookstore rounds.

Nine Tomorrows by Isaac Asimov. As I said in my top-100 reads post, the best of his non-robot stories. Read it as a kid, wanna read it again.

Invisible Residents by Ivan Sanderson. Don’t remember much, if anything, about this book, except that I borrowed it as a kid from the library and loved it. Cryptozoological stuff on one end of the spectrum, weird kookie stuff on the other. I think.

Roller Ball Murder by William Harrison. Short stories, the titular of which that 1975 James Caan movie is an adaptation. Read it as a kid, disappointed trying to read other stories in the anthology, but willing to give it a go as an adult.

Planet of Death by Robert Silverberg. How can you not love that title? Read it as a kid, wanna read it again.

The Monster from Nowhere by Nelson Bond. See entry above, except that I never read this, just read about it.

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. His name raises red flags with me, but this whole thing could be just weird kookie enough to stimulate some weird kookie thinking in me.

I’ll probably pick up four of these, whichever ones I can steal off the website. Of course, anything of interest read will be blogged about.