seriously, fuck the false dichotomy between Science and The Arts. as if capital-S Science isn’t an art that requires creativity, perseverance, patience, and skilled observation. as if The Arts don’t require rigor, discipline, practice, and attention to detail. as if both aren’t cultural structures that stand on foundations of sexist, racist, capitalist hierarchy. as if they both can’t be used for purposes of enrichment and revolution. i am so fucking over this idea of presenting science and art as opposites, when they have so much more in common than people think.
I love older science fiction where the author wants to make it known that he thinks homosexuality should be legal and accepted but doesn’t actually want to go so far as to openly depict gay characters… instead, he has his straight characters stand around and make asides to each other or the reader about how In The Exciting Spacefaring Future, Gay People Exist And We’re Okay With That, For The Record.
Not quite that, but that moment in the beginning of H2G2 where Dadams mentions that Ford Prefect learned drinking games from some mining dudes in which Ford would intentionally lose to get topped by the mining dudes
Oh yeah…
Janx Spirit – almost exclusively referred to as “That Old Janx Spirit” – is an extremely potent alcoholic beverage, and is used heavily in drinking games that are played in the hyperspace ports that serve the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta.
The game is not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and is played like this:
Two contestants sit at either side of a table, with a glass in front of each of them
Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit.
Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his opponent – who would then have to drink it.
The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again.
Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one of the effects of Janx Spirit is to depress telepsychic power. As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological.
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 