A Late Night world of love

Dave Letterman, is there nothing you can't teach us?

After giving us Larry "Bud" Melman, bubbling fountains of mail, the viewer mail theme song, velcro walls, jumping in guacamole, and innumerable Top Ten lists, he's now breaking news about Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face.

Cheney's press conference
The White House's new commercial

Just a big bowl of bad.

Finished Ilium by Dan Simmons, the writer who makes everyone else look bad. Mostly since he's won just about every genre fiction award there is, and he does it by writing some really interesting stuff. OK, sure, Hyperion's second half is padded it out but that was mostly the publisher making him split his novel into two rather than anything else.

This book involves the Gods re-enacting the Trojan War on a newly-terraformed Mars, while Earth is filled with illiterate eloi, Odysseus, and a sleeper from our near future. Jupiter has half-biological androids who read Shakespeare and Proust, and they encounter Little Green Men for whom communication is lethal.

There's a ton going on and it's a satisfying read. I read Odysseus in college, but never got around to the Iliad. I wonder what effect on publishing this book has had, as it's making me want to pick up Proust, too. But maybe not to summarize him.