Went blueberry-picking today; not to eat them, but to freeze them for my wife's research. Had to eat a few, though. I hadn't realized that there are subtle flavor differences between different kinds of blueberry. Some are sharp and tart, others subtly sweet. Others not so subtly sweet, of course.

Currently trying to read Plus by Joseph McElroy. It's a science fiction novel by a writer who apparently doesn't routinely end up in the SF marketing category, the better to shelve it in the inscrutable modernism catagory. It seems (fifty pages in) that the protagonist, one Imp Plus, is a former human whose mind has been transferred into a ship or satillite of some kind, transformed into some posthuman state. It seems that his memories (of life, of words) have been altered or damaged, but he is slowly remembering and regaining his awareness of who he was, all while figuring out what he is now. It's a bit like waking up slowly, groggily, in an unfamiliar place. A tough read but I'm finding it rewarding; the notions of being in some bioengineered posthuman state and of being isolated in outer space are hellish nightmares for me, so watching this guy come to terms with it feels like it might be instructive in some fine-grained face-your-fears fashion.

Finally finished The Sopranos. Let me get out in front of the blogosphere with my thoughts on the final scene. By implying that Tony may be about to get killed, but may just be about to have dinner with his family, the show leaves us in a state not unlike Tony's every waking moment. If we're wondering if he's about to die a sudden violent death, we know what Tony has to wonder, all the time. Instead of leaving us with plot-point closure, the show leaves us with a final thematic point: a life of erratically applied violent punishment and retribution is likely to cycle back around at any moment. Just a matter of time. Like Morte Arthur, The Sopranos is full of fascinating lessons in the inadvisability of killing people.