One Foot in the Grave and and A Barbarian for Dinner

The BBC show One Foot in the Grave never hit it big in the States, and, inexplicably, it almost never pops up on any of the 9000 cable channels over here. But somehow I managed to find it, latch onto it, and absorb it into my bloodstream. The ease in which the show's humor runs from absurdity to darkness to rants and to sight gags amazes me. But what I like most is how many episodes set up various threads and ideas that you don't realize are important into they're recalled at some climatic point. It's sort of like 'mystery' humor, where the ideas are clues that you don't realize fit together until the payoff.

It's the sort of humor I tried to use in my book A Barbarian for Dinner. A lot of plotting went into trying to make various ideas work and be funny in the short term, but also come together in larger ways in the long. Writing the book, I kept searching what I had written for even the smallest idea that I could extend and recall and meld with some other idea later on.

I'm in the show's debt for giving me a framework on how to think of humor in 'mystery' terms.

One Foot in the Grave

A Barbarian for Dinner

Tangential Gecko News

--DARPA Z-Man Program Demonstrates Human Climbing Like Geckos--

"A gecko is able to climb on glass by using physical bond interactions—specifically van der Waals intermolecular forces—between the spatulae and a surface to adhere reversibly, resulting in easy attachment and removal of the gecko’s toes from the surface."

DARPA article

This Gecko ability gets a passing mention in my short story There's more to Life than Biology. It was only a matter of time before we, non-bond-interacting humans would find a way to take advantage of the biological superpower of our lizard friends. They're good for more than selling insurance!

Find the short story here in this book: Book by Author