It's a struggle not to bloviate again on some random issue. I've got nothing to report and my workaday routine is unworthy of mention.

No, that isn't self-pity, that's just self-conscious cynicism you smell. Yeah, I know. Just like chocolate poptarts.

Or did I mean cynical self-consciousness…?

Book news. I recently finished The Difference Engine, a decent enough book I bought solely because it's the posterchild for an obscure genre: "steampunk." Think alternate-universe historical fiction with a cyberpunk ethos.

[Hit-or-miss Wired columnist] Bruce Sterling and [overrated cyberpunk legend] William Gibson cowrote the novel, which might explain why — like the travelogue I cowrote with Graham in grade school — it reads like a bunch of causally-unrelated scenes patched together into a semblance of plot.

So it was underwhelming, although the concept was intriguing. I'm now thoroughly convinced that neither of these supposed cyberpunk masters can hold a candle to Neal Stephenson, whose Snow Crash made me believe in that possibly-already-dead genre. If only he would go back to writing shorter, less intimidating books…

That was Monday, and now that I no longer have a book to read, Brainerd is boring again. I will live in a city next summer. That's the only thing I think I know.