You light up my life

[austin_dern]

From the ``things to make you smile'' department, something spotted at CityLink -- a girl, maybe five or six, wearing sandals. The straps of these sandals had blue lights inside, and every time she moved, one or more would light up. She was riding an escalator and jumping around little enough that her mother wasn't bothered, but enough to twinkle along the ride. Boy, I'm glad somebody makes sandals like that for children.

In other luminiferous events, last night after going to bed (later than I should), I saw a quick sudden flash of extremely bright white light, accompanied by the barest start of a thunderclap. This has to be an illusion of some sort; my eyes were closed, there wasn't any thunderstorm nor second flash. It was just a little White Event, like the one that started Marvel's New Universe, a short-lived line of comics that I was one of about four people to collect.

The New Universe premise was a universe with no intricate backstory, no aliens, no alternate universes, no centuries-old secret histories; it was our world exactly until a worldwide flash of light leaves a tiny but growing paranormal population. This premise lasted to the first issues of the comics, introducing one guy who got his superpower from an alien (later retconned to a secret-history superpowered Dutch nobleman, later retconned to ... oh, forget it), one from a parallel universe (later retconned very badly), and one from the little-known Women With Giant Mecha Robots Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (they never suspected the alien spaceship actually at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Still, it brought D.P.7, the first comic I know set in Wisconsin; and before the end it offered the outrageous idea of the United States, victim of a massive, horrifying attack on its homesoil that destroyed Pittsburgh, attacking Libya (remember Libya?) for it, even though Libya had not a single thing to do with the destruction. As I haven't seen any notes of superpowers developing on my Friends list I'll write it off as an odd dream fragment.

Trivia: The first trans-Atlantic telephone calls, in 1926, cost US$75 for three minutes. Source: A Thread Across The Ocean, John Steele Gordon.

Currently Reading: SF: Author's Choice, Edited by Harry Harrison.

Comments

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

So I see, and it's most intriguing. I must consult with you on applying cryokinetic powers in everyday life sometime; my own would be elastic skills, making us possibly a not-quite-compatible team.