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A good friend of mine let me know that an editor for a major publisher likes his book and is going to pitch it to the publisher. Knowing the editor (a major force in the field), the prospects for the manuscript actually becoming a book . . . you know, a real book, Pinocchio, seem better than average.
His situation started me to thinking about that magical, intimidating moment when the possibility of becoming an honest to god, real-life, major publisher novelist looks like it might come true.
I asked him, how is it, walking around work, knowing that your novel is a heck of a lot closer to being published than it ever has been? That's the dream, right? That's why a gazillion people show up at writing conferences and go to conventions and buy WRITERS DIGEST and try fiction writing software, right? This is the dream that started with closing a book you loved, and you realized for the first time that an acutal person (just like you) had written the words that moved you, and that maybe you could do it too. This is the dream that started with pages and pages of failed drafts that you'd probably be embarrased to show anyone now, and the hours and hours spent dreaming your way around fictional characters in fictional worlds whose lives become so entwined with your own that sometimes you felt you knew them better than your friends.
Well, maybe your path to this point doesn't look quite like what I wrote, but you've been on a path, and it's been a lengthy one to get you to the point in the journey that a vanishingly small percentage of writers get to.
I remember when an agent told me he wanted to represent Summer of the Apocalypse after I first started shopping it around. He called me at school to tell me he liked the book! He told me that not only did he think he could sell it, but he also had Hollywood agent friends who were looking for material. I was ecstatic for about six weeks until I learned he was a scam agent who was trying to shuffle me off to a book doctor at a couple of bucks a page. Argh!
Still, I had those six weeks.
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May 18
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May. 18th, 2012 @ 11:24 am
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On May 18th, 1980, student protesters against martial law were attacked by paratroopers in the South Korean city of Kwangju. This led to a generalized uprising, the repulsion of the troops to beyond the city limits, and several days of radical transformations of urban society—collective meals in the parks, the formation of a people's militia called the Citizen Army, the creation of new newspapers and organs covering both daily life and the establishment of defenses against the military. The new military government responded by sending in Special Forces troops trained to invade North Korea, and the Kwangju Uprising became the Kwangju Massacre. Amazingly, the Wikipedia entry isn't terrible. Also not surprising: the US, of course, had a role in martial law and even the crackdown—the ROK 20th Infantry Division, which had a major role in the massacre, was part of the US-led Combined Forces Command and required US approval for operations.
Over a decade ago now, my friend Kap and I translated and edited a survivor's memoir of the uprising and massacre called Kwangju Diary. It's out of print now, but will soon be available again, thanks in part to the city of Kwangju itself. More news on that soon.
At the risk of tonal whiplash, here is another bit of 5/18 history. Ninety years ago today, Proust and James Joyce met for the first and only time. There are many accounts of the meeting, but here is my favorite:
"I’ve headaches every day," Joyce announced. "My eyes are terrible."
Proust replied, "My poor stomach. What am I going to do? It’s killing me. In fact, I must leave at once."
"I’m in the same situation," Joyce said. "If I can find someone to take me by the arm...Goodbye."
"Charmé," said Proust. "Oh, my stomach, my stomach." |
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....that there's going to be an Annual Booksale when I get back from WisCon, as there are giant boxes of books all over my house again.
You have been forewarned!
Also, I will be doing an r/Fantasy (that's Reddit) Ask Me Anything on June 5th. Questions may be posted all day in the appropriate thread, and I will answer them in the evening.
Because y'all don't get enough of a chance to listen to me babble...Current Mood: overwhelmed Current Music: the church carillon next door |
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...take these broken wings and learn to fly.
So I read Chuck Wendig's Blackbirds. Which is being billed as urban fantasy, but which bears about as much resemblance to most urban fantasy as, say, Evil Dead bears to Saw. They're considered the same because the labels are too broad and too flawed, but they're very different creatures. And that? Is amazing.
Blackbirds is the story of Miriam Black, a girl who, by touching you, can bear witness to your death, whenever—and however—it might be destined to occur. Aneurism in five minutes or slow wasting away in fifty years, it don't matter. Death, like the honey badger, doesn't give a fuck, and Miriam, who can't control her powers, is trying her best not to give a fuck either. (Miriam is a lot like Rogue from the X-Men: embittered by a power she didn't ask for, trying to survive in a world that has every reason to shove her in front of the nearest semi.)
The story is simple: girl meets boy, girl foresees boy's death, girl is convinced that she can't change it, boy thinks girl is crazy, hilarity ensues. Only for "boy" read "trucker the size of a small mountain," and for "girl" read "psychopomp death-seer girl just trying to run the roads to her own extinction." I think Miriam would get along well with Rose Marshall; there's a lot about her world that feels like Rose's, but different, and in a wonderful way.
One of the fascinating things about this book is...well. Okay. So I was a really grumpy teenager, right? I felt alienated and lonely and like no one could possibly understand me except for my small group of like-minded friends. This turned into our "freaking the mundanes" phase, which not everyone goes through, but which I think most of us have at least seen. We used to sit on the community college quad at lunch (half my friends were students, the rest of us snuck over from the high school across the street) playing "Penis," where you just keep shouting "PENIS!" louder and louder until you crack up, so you can see the looks on people's faces.
Miriam is like that. Her life is one long game of Penis. She swears, she's inappropriately lewd (which is different from appropriately lewd, although she does that, too), she goes for the shock value, because she wants to keep people away. I think this book contained more instances of the word "fuck" than the unrated cut of Clerks. But here's the kicker:
Chuck Wendig isn't playing Penis with you.
He manages to write a protagonist who's all about the shock, but the book never feels like the author is trying to shock you. He's just telling you what happened. It's a travelogue of tragedy, and it's beautiful and terrible, and it couldn't have happened any other way.
Miriam is a damaged protagonist, and her story is a damaged story, and I loved it. It's like the bastard child of American Gods, Sparrow Hill Road, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and you should check it out if you like these things.
Really.Current Mood:  thoughtful Current Music: Dar Williams, "I Am the One Who Will Remember Everything." |
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The page proofs of Bullettime have been keeping me up till 1 or 2am every night for the past four, but now they are done. See?
One more pass, after these corrections are made, ought to do it! |
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Black Tiger Penis Whip Staff.
Tiger Penis Whip!
PENIS STAFF! |
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The Big Click's May issue is complete with the release of Mar Preston's The Man Who Loved Birds. If you like The Big Click, please consider buying the ebook! Also, our first issue, featuring stories be Ken Bruen and Anonymous-9 is now only a dollar from us and 99 cents elsewhere!
Speaking of ebooks, The Damned Highway (w/ Brian Keene) is now an ebook on NOOK. And also Kobo for the seven of you out there who own that reader. No Kindle yet; it is coming soon. |
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Today my husband and son are out of the house--husband went to the city, picked up son, and took him to the dentist, after which they'll go to a movie and eat. So it was the perfect time to turn the heels of the green socks. Yesterday's knitting was such a depressing event that I was a bit scared, even though I've now turned the heels of the other pairs successfully. The heel turning went very smoothly, and I'm happy with the way the heels look.
 .
The "eye of partridge" stitch shows clearly on the heel flap. I did the heel turn itself in stockinette. The center portion of the heel (the part with stitches that run "straight" from the back of the leg around and under) has eight stitches. That's the same as on the blue pair that preceded this pair. The heel flap itself is 28 stitches, two stitches narrower than the blue pair's heel flap because I decreased four stitches below the cuff ribbing. Now to pick up the stitches along the side of the heel flap and reconnect the heel to the top of the sock.
With the family out of the house, I should be able to do this without interruption. I'd like a nap, actually (short of sleep again last night) but it's too good a chance to miss. It felt really good to have today's knitting do so well, after yesterday's fiasco.
Current Mood: accomplished |
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Look what the Book Elves left on my porch today!
You can get yours here.
Also, some other good news today, which I will share when I can.Current Mood:  happy Current Music: Josh Ritter - Wings |
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Anything else I had to say about the Criminal Minds season finale is subsumed in ZOMG Reid knitted it himself!
He makes a pretty good Four.
Also, I'm glad they did the Emily thing the way they did the Emily thing; it's good to see Will but he should have known better; I'm pretty sure that UNSUB plan fails on usual the Evil Mastermind overclever subroutine of relying on a coincidence they could not have known about in advance; I bet that's Kevin's cousin; Penelope needs a Stern Talking To of the variety she just gave Morgan a few weeks back; I'm still the only person in this fandom who likes Strauss, but dammit I still like Strauss; and FASTER JJ KILL KILL!
Discussion in comments of parallels between JJ in Hit/Run and Hotch in 100 is open for business.Current Mood: mostly quite pleased, really |
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Yesterday, I sat in a basement recording studio in Austin, connected via satellite (already SFnal!) to a BBC-radio studio in London. I was participating in a panel discussion on Future Wars on the BBC Radio World Service series "The Forum." Fellow panelists were David Rodin and Elizabeth Quintana. I confess to some nervousness--though I've done radio interviews before, and panel discussions before, I've never done a long-distance panel discussion like this, where the others have the facial and body-language cues and I don't. So it was fairly intense concentration--an interesting challenge. The BBC helped me prepare for this with ample information about the process, and the other participants (as well as what I'd looked up on the internet.)
"The Forum" has a superb moderator, who managed to keep us all more or less on track and moving forward, without being a tyrant about it--there was natural flow to the conversation. I enjoyed it immensely. There's information on broadcast times in the UK, plus links to the podcast or--if you want to check it out later--the archives of the series--below the cut. This is what the BBC sent me.
( Read more... )
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The following contains discussion of fitness, health, and weight issues. If that is triggery for you, please page down now!
Ob. Disclaimer: I absolutely support anyone's right to live in their body as they choose, at any size they find comfortable. This is entirely about me, and my efforts to reclaim my health and strength after half a decade of abusing and neglecting my poor body.
Well, I'm wearing a pair of jeans that, based on the brand and cut, must date back to 1987 or so.
They're Chic, size 14 tall, and in high school they would have been baggy on me. Now, they fit loosely except for the waist, which is a bit snug--but then, that happened when I was sixteen, too, though the jeans were size 11 then. This is because eighties jeans were cut to fit absolutely nobody except a young Brooke Shields. They do, however, still make my ass look fantastic, a characteristic generally not shared by modern lower-rise jeans, which make nobody's ass look good. Not mine, not yours. Possibly Jessica Simpson's.
But they do let one bend at the middle without pinching one's ribcage on the waistband, which I suppose is a win.
I guess that means I am officially back in my high school clothes, generously speaking. As I also have a black bat-winged sheath dress from Chico's that I loved in high school, and have been hanging on to for sentimental reasons. I might dust it off for an eighties party later this year. If only I had some slouchy elf boots.
I suspect I will save the jeans for eighties nights at goth clubs. I think I still have one pair of slouchy socks hoarded away somewhere... ;-)
This is all prelude to saying that I'm hovering somewhere around 187, and have been for about a month now with the usual ups and downs--but I'm obviously building muscle, because I seem to be shrinking. At one point a month or so ago I noticed I had obliques, there under the slack middle-aged tummy. This week, I noticed the top set of ab muscles. Also, my thighs are no longer getting in my way during most of yoga--that stopped after ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) scott_lynch and I walked somewhere around 40 miles in three days of NYC. I can do Hero's Pose and Lightning Pose without cheating now, and my body doesn't actually interfere with my ability to do a lunge anymore.
It's still getting in the way of twists, and my biceps interfere with Eagle Pose, but that's not new. I'm a solid girl.
I can also wear most of my beloved old corp-goth work clothes again, justifying my hoarding tendencies. Two suits are a bit tight, but they were always on the skinny end of the rack. I had to move the buttons back on a green suit I love, that I had expanded a bit when I was gaining weight. It's a size 12.
I am facing the surprising possibility of shrinking out of my wardrobe again. In any case, look for a much better-dressed Bear at conventions this summer, since I love these clothes and don't have a dayjob to wear them to anymore.
Curiously, I'm about 17 pounds heavier than the last time I fit in these clothes, which tells us about the power of rock-climbing. Muscle is heavy!
My current weight goal is somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 pounds. Which should make the same size, roughly, as when I was in high school and weighed 150-ish. I was on track and field then, and at my most muscular before now, but I'm pretty sure my upper body now dwarfs what I had then. (Shoulders! They're awesome!) Also, um. Boobs. Some cup sizes have come to roost since then. Ahem.
So I'm less than thirty pounds from my goal, which is very pleasant. My body is behaving as it should; everything physical is so much easier than it was in 2004, when I couldn't walk a half-mile without agonizing pain (now I can run five 12-minute miles back to back); and I'm enjoying the reduction in back and joint pain and the ability to sleep comfortably on my side or back again without feeling like my own belly is crushing me.
I seem to be part of a coterie of SFF writers and fans on the "get healthy the old-fashioned way; move more and eat less crap" bandwagon, which pleases me. (personally, I have been following the efforts of Scalzi, Doctorow, Lynch, Sykes, Downum, Silverstein, Connolly, Buckell, and I'm sure a few others whose names are eluding me because it's time for lunch.) It pleases me because I'd like to see a lot of these people around for a damned long time.
I'm also noticing changes in appetite, which tell me my body is adapting to its new lower caloric demands. Two whole pieces of fruit is too much to eat with lunch now; I am contented with half of each (plus some protein and vegetables and brown carbs, of course). (I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, about ten servings most days; I've finally figured out how to reach my RDA minimum of potassium, and it goes like this: a cup of fortified cereal in the morning (Special K protein plus, since I can't find Total Protein around here anymore), half an orange, a small banana, eight ounces of green coconut water, and half a sweet potato. Some strawberries or mango don't hurt either, or some beans.))
For those who are curious about how I did it (my doctor was, and she laughed out loud when I said, "Counting calories, restricting sweets and saturated fat, and getting off my ass!" She then replied, "So doing all the boring shit we tell people to do, huh?"), here's my plan, fondly called The Discipline:
It's a refined version of the Hacker Diet, which relies on good old thermodynamics to make things happen. I'm keeping my caloric intake around 1700-1900 calories a day, exercising for about an hour a day on average, drinking lots of water and not too much caffeine, avoiding refined carbs (mostly: I get 100-200 calories of "treat" a day, which could be a glass of wine or a beer, or a brownie, or... PRO TIP: Guinness is lower in calories than most "lite" beers, and tastes a fuckload better. Now you know.), eating roughly twice as many vegetables as the FDA suggests, and trying to keep my protein intake around 20% and my fat intake around 25%--and also trying to keep my protein intake above 100g a day without too much reliance on red meat, or meat at all. (I do use protein supplements--whey and soy, mostly.) I eat a lot of high-protein dairy (skyr!) and I try to limit myself to 100-200 calories a day from refined sugar, which is roughly 20-40 grams. Or, well, half a can of non-diet Coke.
Managing sodium intake is a killer. But I'm working on it.
Sleeping eight hours a night also pisses me off, but it seems to be necessary. I got six last night, and noticed the difference on my run this morning--I kept having to walk up hills I normally cruise up in second or third gear.
I also exercise six days a week--usually two days of climbing (with a little yoga); three days of running; one day of yoga. I also try to get in some vigorous outdoor time when possible--kayaking, hiking, walking the dog. Walking to the store. Picking up my jump rope for five minutes on an otherwise sedentary day.
As I said, one of the most successful weeks of the Discipline recently was when Scott and I were on Manhattan, eating every goddamned thing in sight. But we also made a point of walking two-thirds the length of the island at least once (Riverside to Chinatown, with side trips), and we walked as much as time permitted, otherwise. I know it sounds like my fitness routine is crushing, and seven or eight years ago, it would have crushed me. (Hell, I had the pleasant experience recently of putting in a Rodney Yee video that, in 2006, I could do maybe fifteen minutes of, and having the full hour workout be only just pleasantly challenging.)
But remember, when I started out, I weighed 285-290 pounds and could not walk a half mile. One good habit builds on another, it turns out--and I find myself drinking more green and herbal tea because black tea doesn't taste good after the first mug, and I find myself not hungry for seconds unless the food is exceptionally good, and even then not always. There's not actually a lot of privation; I just want more of what's healthy for me.
It's okay if I have a measured ounce of cheese on my beans and rice, instead of as much as I can fit in the bowl. It still tastes just as good! Better, since it's as easy to afford small quantities of really delicious food as it is large quantities of sort of icky food. And far more satisfying.
Who knew?
Which is so different from all my old pathological ways of dealing with food and drink that it's a little croggling.
Most of this, of course, is just basic health maintenance stuff, and not too hard once you get the hang of it. And it's not like I don't give myself days off: I will in fact have two or three drinks on a night out, for example. I'm fully planning on onion rings after archery tonight when I get dinner with the Thursday Night Shooters.
Just... not too damned often. And budget for it.
It's not the extremes that set one's level of health; it's the baseline.Current Mood:  relaxed Current Music: the sound of the sound of lawnmowers must never stop! |
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Boy, being on Facebook means never having to say, "No one remembered my birthday," I tell you what. Took the afternoon off to goof off a bit, try paint-your-own pottery for the first time, and take afternoon tea with a few friends. Got flowers from Hal and had steak for dinner. A lovely day. This weekend I'll make a pilgrimage to Kirkland to get a slice of proper birthday cake -- it's not a birthday unless there's green marzipan on the cake -- and eventually I'll use the Groupon for glassblowing a flower, glassblowing being something else I've never tried and long wanted to. As I embark on my second half-century, I figure trying something new for each birthday is a reasonable ambition for keeping things fresh and forward-looking. I've got a whole year to get my nut up for indoor sky diving next year... |
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"I fear that lucid dreaming may be a form of censorship. One must face horrors in dreams."
—from The Primal Screamer by Nick Blinko |
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Tangent Online has reviewed Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. Reaction to my story was mixed, though come the end of the review the reviewer more or less acknowledges my piece might not be her thing, so it could be worse. On the plus side, "The whimsical language reads like Lewis Carroll and is rather a pleasure." I agonize over my prose all the time, as I never feel it's good enough. Lewis Carroll was a master of wordplay, so to read that I captured his voice and that the language is a pleasure really makes my day.
The reviewer was also pretty positive about the antho overall. The other review I've seen for this anthology was also positive, and to date it's been nothing but five stars on Amazon, so early feedback has been pretty darn good.
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The first volume of Shadow Unit is now available as a proper paper book with a gorgeous Kyle Cassidy cover.
It will be available through Amazon within a week, and will slowly filter its way through the rest of the online distribution system.
 This volume contains the first half of Season 1. Volume 2 should be available in about a month, with other volumes to follow.
And of course, Shadow Unit in its entirety is available for free online, and as a modestly priced ebook through the usual sources.
The story began in 2007, and will end in 2013. It's not too late to discover one of the coolest collaborative serials in the genre internets!Current Mood: chipper Current Music: All Things Considered |
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Over the last few days, I've learned a valuable lesson about whiteness. As in "what shade of white is this damn trim?" and "who the ever-living hell knew there were this many KINDS of white?"
See, for some reason the window frame/sill in my office is left partly unpainted. No idea why. Didn't notice it on the house's walkthroughs, but once I'd seen it, I couldn't un-see it - and anyway, there were a number of places in the molding and trim that really needed a good once-over. Most of the problem areas occurred in the wake of some distant electrical updates, and the more recent smear mistakes some clumsy moron amateur* made while painting over an Unfortunate Yellow room with a Pretty And Sensible Lavender/Gray.
Since our home is an older house, and the previous owners were all about doing "period appropriate" stuff, I went to Lowes and found an "antique white" that was allegedly certified in some ridiculous fashion as being historically valid (no doubt some kind of marketing scam, I know) ... and it looked about right. I mean, it's white, right?
Ha.
Got the paint home and it was, in fact, not nearly the right white. So I fussed and fumed, and wandered up to the attic to stash my now-useless quart of not-the-right-white paint, and I discovered a row of old paint cans. Hooray! These must be the colors used in my house! Thank you, previous sellers!
Of course, all these paint cans were dry as a bone, but that was okay. They had the formulas on the top - and when I found what MUST be the right white for pity's sake, I copied down all the info on the top label. Yes, all of it - all the little numbers that made no sense whatsoever to me, but clearly indicated a color formula to a better-educated eye than mine.
Then I went to Ace, because it's much closer than Lowes. I asked the nice (actually, rather amusingly cranky) lady at the paint counter if she could help me.
She said, "Nope. That's a proprietary brand and formula for Home Depot. You'll have to take it to them - unless you can get us a paint chip about the size of a quarter, in which case we can color-match it, but we might not be able to match the texture, depending."
So I went out to Home Depot, figuring this would be a slam dunk. I had the paint's brand. I had its weird number formula-thingy details. I had a debit card and a willingness to fork it over.
Ha again.
When I got there, the paint woman was being badgered by an older lady who couldn't be compelled to understand that she could not merely describe a color she totally saw this one time and expect the paint woman to pull it out of her ass. This conversation went on for probably fifteen minutes, during which I did verily salute the paint woman for her continued patience, because if it'd been me, I'd have grabbed a rifle and climbed a tower.
But finally the old lady wandered off in a dissatisfied fashion, having learned nothing except that the paint woman wasn't a wizard, and behold: It was my turn. Smugly, I thought that I would be an easy customer. A pleasant chaser to a difficult situation.
Eh.
The paint woman agreed that I had copied all the appropriate information required for her to recreate the paint in question, except that (a). they no longer made that precise type of paint with its attendant qualities, and (b). the paint can from which I'd copied this intel had apparently been whipped up during the last ice age - for it was so dreadfully old that the entire system was now on a different set of formulas.
But thank God for paint woman, who (it turned out) actually was kind of a wizard. She jiggered the formulas around, found me a comparable paint, and then sought about shaking me up a can of The Correct White.
At which point the machine locked up, and had to be rebooted/restored/reprogrammed with help from some specialist from some other end of the store.
Long story short, it took over an hour for me to get my gallon of paint - which I now cherish with an unreasonable fondness, because get this: It's The Correct White.
Or if it isn't, bugger all if I can tell the difference.
Since I was on now a roll ... back up into the attic I went, hoping to find matches to the rest of the spots in the house which required touching up - namely, the kitchen and The Nice Bathroom.** Nope. Just dried up gallons of Unfortunate Yellow and a rusted-out pail of whatever someone had used in the living area.
But encouraged by my hard-won success with the Correct White, I went back to Ace (they're close, remember?) with a peeled strip of bathroom paint.
(Why was the bathroom paint peeling? Suffice it to say there was an incident involving a clumsy moron amateur,*** a mirror, some double-sided sticky tape, a cast iron tub on which one should not balance whilst wearing socks nor at any other time, and the house's previous owners who apparently didn't prime before using glossy latex in a bathroom. Ahem.)
The adorably cranky paint woman at the Ace counter performed some magic, and gave me a quart of paint. Ladies and gentlemen and the otherwise affiliated: IT WAS PERFECT. I did a little dance, right there in the bathroom. (But not on the edge of the cast iron tub. In socks. Fool me once, etc. etc. etc.)
And then I turned right around and went hunting for a place from which to swipe a paint chip in the kitchen, which is a pleasant shade of green - yet featured an unpleasant, unpainted set of plastered-over bits left over from some electrical work. Eventually, back behind the washing machine (laundry nook = same color) I found some painted-over tape buckling up. EXCELLENT.
I snipped the tape, ran to Ace, and was home again in twenty minutes with a quart of Precisely The Right Green. Or, again - if it isn't Precisely The Right Green it's The Green Which Is So Freaking Close That Cherie Isn't Running Back To Ace Anytime Soon Because She Sure As Shit Can't Tell The Difference.
And anyway, that's what I've been up to. Driving all over town trying to Do It Right, and eventually getting it About 99% Right Which Is Probably The Best I'm Going To Do And I'm Okay With That.
If you're curious about how the office turned out, well, that probably means you don't follow me on my Twitter feed - where I've posted about it already. But that's okay. Here's what the room looked like in progress, half lavender/gray and half Unfortunate Yellow.
And here's what it looks like now - two views: one, and two. (Yes, I have a daybed in there. I have back problems, and prefer to work with my legs/feet propped up - and with a lot of lumbar support. So I improvised.)
Anyway. That's all there is to tell about my painting adventures (for now), except that I am very lucky the previous owners used the same semi-glossy white on just about everything they wanted white. So there's that. And now I have the correct and modern formula, so if I run out, I can ask the nice Home Depot paint woman to wizard me up some more.
And now I'm going to see about making myself some supper. In my kitchen that still smells very, very faintly of paint.
* Me.
** As opposed to the other one. See previous post.
*** Me again.
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Remember the other day, when new writer Mandy DeGeit found her story substantially rewritten, with errors introduced, by a small press editor/publisher Anthony Giangregorio, who proceeded to act very unprofessionally when DeGeit complained about the added bestiality and outrageous introduced copy errors (e.g., the story is now called "She Make's Me Smile")?
Well, another writer, Alyn Day also came forward to describe a story she had placed with Giangregorio being substantially rewritten and retitled without her permission or even awareness.
And apparently, Giangregorio is upset enough about these revelations to invite himself over to Day's house. A Facebook screencap-you'll see that the conversation begins last year, and was updated 22 hours ago:
Is there a way to read this as something other than a threat against Day-especially as Giangregorio had previously told DeGeit that he would only communicate through lawyers? I tend to think not. Please spread the word. |
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John Scalzi has a good post comparing life to a video game, in which being a straight white male (SWM) is akin to playing a video game on the "Easy" setting. Being of color, queer, a woman, etc. is like playing on a harder setting. There are many many other variables of course, including class, which he touches on by writing "If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed." I think this is both a factual and rhetorical error, and that class should be fully integrated into Difficulty as opposed to stats, to make the analogy more apt.
(For those who don't know, a "dump stat" is the stat where you only put the minimum of points. It's not like you're "dumping" extra points into that stat, but that you dump your lowest score into it.)
The error, I think, can be seen in the comments to the post—and all the usual disclaimers about reading the comments on any Internet posting apply here, double. Two of the recurring themes are as follows:
1. SWMs complaining that their low class/socio-economic status/wealth means that their lives aren't so privileged after all.
2. SWMs who appear to be better off who a) want to know why they should act against their own interests by critiquing their advantages regardless of the origins of those advantages, and b) like expressing their ownership of and stake in the system built by previous generations of SWMs, and distaste for all those awful black African Jewish lesbians in wheelchairs who want to take over.
So, we have a group that feels it doesn't have a stake in the system, and is feeling the harshness of competition, and a group pleased with the rules of the system as they stand scoffing at the activities of their social inferiors. Clearly, there's a significant break in SWMdom, and it's along class lines.
This plays out in the real world in several ways that demonstrate to me that class is fundamental and thus part of "difficulty setting" in Real Life: Dragons of the Murderdome, or whatever you want to call it. Back in the 1970s, Albert Szymanski studied income and race and found that, of course, black workers made less than white workers. However, he also found an interesting regional difference—white workers in the American south made less than black workers in the American north. While the white workers in the south made more than their black co-workers in the south, they were underpaid compared to both blacks and whites in the north.
So, while whites were better off in a region of greater racism and thus greater race privilege for being white, most of them would benefit along with black workers in a region with greater equality. White privilege was paying white workers an extra dollar to keep from having to pay both white workers an extra five dollars and black workers an extra three dollars. (Clearly, we've not yet gotten any numbers from a truly equal society with no race privilege.)
What explained the difference? The north had integrated labor unions; the south, thanks to segregation, had many fewer labor unions (and those that existed were less powerful). Basically, white workers did not benefit substantially from racial discrimination, not even relative to blacks in another area with less explicit racist laws and social policies. Greater benefits would have accrued had they fought against their privilege, and in solidarity with black workers. Victor Perlo has found similar dynamics existing even today, a generation after the end of Jim Crow laws.
Sure, plenty of SWMs did benefit—managers, the highest tier of (almost invariably white) workers, factory and mine owners, people who play the stock market, etc. And sure, there is an important "psychological wage" white workers are paid—at least we're not black!, but psychology is even easier to print and inflate than fiat money. And yes, poor whites are less likely to have to deal with police harassment and the like. But they both get it worse in an environment where police are allowed to run rampant as a tool of keeping neighborhoods segregated and the property of landowners and businesses safe. Basically, the greater the race discrimination, the higher the inequality among whites.
There are similar analyses that have been done as regards gender discrimination, discrimination against gays, etc. It's not a cookie-cutter sort of thing—queer issues often have to do with the "nature" of the family itself and the need to protect certain kinds of families and eliminate other forms of families, for example—but in general there are lots and lots of SWMs that don't benefit materially from racism, or sexism, or homophobia, or national chauvinism, etc.
Of course, many white people, regardless of their own class "stat", accept racist ideas. Their perceived interests and their actual interests are two different things. Some confusion emerges when SWMs for whom racism (or sexism, or anti-queer sentiment, etc.) is beneficial declare themselves spokespeople for all the poor put-upon SWMs are who are the outrageous victims of Affirmative Action, or too many black ladies with dreadlocks being cast as wisecracking judges on TV, or women who won't have sex with the "beta males." And when discussions of intersectionality and oppression take class as a secondary issue*, the rhetorical floor is ceded to people with a material and ideological interest in racism, etc. to recruit the rest of SWMdom. Low-SES/working class/poor SWMs end up siding with billionaires who make the correct-seeming noises about "liberal elites" and competition from blacks and women and gays.
But when class is fully integrated into an understanding of the difficulty setting of the Game of Life, I think the arguments get much clearer.
The question: "I'm a poor white guy; should I fight against systems of privilege?"
The answer: "Because you'll benefit from it. The more equal things are, the better off you are."
For rich white guys who ask the same question, well, they're clearly on the other side, so they don't need an answer.
*Class actually is complicated when it comes to intersectionality. Very few people believe that the best solution to sexism is the elimination of men, or that the best solution to racism is the elimination of whites. And yet, many people do believe that the best solution to class division is the elimination of the bourgeois class. And yet, when so many theorists of intersectionality are themselves bourgeois aspirants with privileges of their own to protect... |
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I've spoken before about my love of fanfic, and how it allows you to do things you can't necessarily do "in canon." One of those things, one of my favorite things, is the alternate universe. What would have happened if Toby had never become a fish? If Thomas had convinced Alice to go back to the Covenant with him, instead of leaving it for her?
If someone else had been the first to die?
I have written an alternate ending to Feed, picking up at what was originally chapter twenty-five. It's called Fed, and I'm very pleased with it, in part because it shows that no, the original ending wasn't the worst possible outcome. This was.
Fed is kindly being hosted by Orbit, thus preventing me from becoming a blibbering mess in the week leading up to the release of Blackout, and for right now, you can download and read by liking the Facebook page they've set up specifically for this purpose. (It's getting a one-week Facebook exclusive for marketing purposes, and I surely would appreciate it if you went and hit the "like" button.) This is full of spoilers, so I recommend against reading it if you haven't read Feed.
Rise up while you can.Current Mood:  geeky Current Music: Halestorm, "Freak Like Me." |
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As I said, roses don't die in my yard. This is the next unidentified rose that flourishes despite my poor gardening karma.
I planted a couple of new roses this spring, but I know what they are: Austrian Coppers. They're gorgeous in the spring when they mature.
The rose pictured below is carrying a bunch of blooms as attractive as this one. I can see why some people become rose fanatics.
Our seniors graduated last night, so there's no school. I'm watering and writing, a great way to spend the day.
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I can't believe there have already been seven episodes this season. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised though--as with the books, this is going to be over before you know it. As always, there will be spoilers for the show and the books, so do make sure you're caught up before reading this post.
( Read more... )
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The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is currently open for voting! This award uses the same nomination and voting mechanism as the Hugos, even though the Campbell Award is not a Hugo, and will be presented this year in Chicago, during the Hugo Awards Ceremony. Having been on the Campbell ballot in 2010, I can testify that it is a huge, huge honor to be nominated, and that it gets your name in front of a lot of eyes that might not otherwise have heard of you.
(I can also testify that winning is amazeballs best thing oh my sweet Great Pumpkin corn maze paradise wonderful. But that's probably true of winning most awards that you really, really want.)
If you are currently a member, either Attending or Supporting, of Chicon 7, you are eligible to vote for the Campbell Award, along with the Hugo Awards. If you're not a member, either Attending or Supporting, you can view the membership rates by clicking right here. A Supporting Membership comes with voting rights and the complete Hugo packet, and is only $50.
Because writers who are eligible for the Campbell are, by their very nature, relatively new writers, it's possible that you don't know anything about this year's candidates. Jim Hines has sensibly decided to help you with this little problem, and has conducted interviews with all five of this year's nominees. Go, read, and be enlightened!
We have a truly awesome class of Campbell nominees this year; any one of them is worthy of the tiara. Because remember, the Campbell is one of only two major genre awards that comes with a tiara (the other is the Tiptree).
In closing, I present the comic strip I drew to commemorate my own eligibility:
TESTIFY!Current Mood:  contemplative Current Music: Repo, "We Invented This Opera Shit." |
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I just had one of those labor-saving strokes of genius that I need to share with the world. Which is to say, the easiest method ever in the history of popovers.
Here is my basic popover recipe:
2 tablespoons solid fat (butter or animal fat (duck fat, mmm) or solid shortening)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (250 ml) whole milk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup (140 g) all purpose or white whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten
This tactic assumes you own a wand blender and a wide-mouthed quart Mason jar and a microwave. If not, just make the popovers the way you normally would--or if you are missing the wand blender but have a normal blender, you can melt the butter in a different container and use the normal blender.
About an hour or two before dinner, take your Mason jar. Put the butter/whatever in it. Put it in the microwave and melt it. (If you are making Yorkshire pud and are waiting for the roast to be finished before you add the fat, skip this step for now, and stir the fat in before you bake the popovers.)
Add the milk, eggs, salt, and sugar to the butter in the Mason jar (or blender)(or just put them in the blender if you are adding the fat later). Do not put the eggs directly into the hot butter before diluting it with the milk. Otherwise you will have scrambled eggs, which are nice, but not popovers.
Whiz them all up with the wand blender.
Add the flour and the wheat gluten.
Whiz that too, until you have a nice smooth batter.
Let the batter sit on the counter until dinner is nearly ready. If you are roasting something at 400 degrees, you're good; otherwise preheat your oven to 400 (F). (200 C)
Liberally grease 9 cups of a 12-cup muffin tin, or if you are making Yorkshire pud, drizzle a little of the fat from the roast into the bottom of the cups. If you have one of the giant-sized six muffin muffin tins, then you will have bigger popovers and they need to bake a little longer.
Using silicon cups for this results in popovers without stumps or a lot of loft, as they just levitate themselves out of the super-slick cups entirely. They still taste good!
If you are using fat from the roast you're making, add it now and stir it in.
Divide the popover batter between the nine greased cups. You can just pour it from the blender or the Mason Jar.
Stick in oven. Do not peek! If you open the door before they are set, they won't rise properly.
Bake for 35 minutes or until deep mahogany brown.
Pull pan from oven. Tilt popovers in cups, or remove them to a rack or basket. Pierce each one with a bamboo skewer. (careful of the steam!) The purpose of these two procedures is to (a) prevent them from getting soggy and (b) prevent them from collapsing.
Eat.
However you meant to eat them. Do not plan on leftovers.
Wash your one. dirty. dish. Oh, and the wand blender, sure. And the muffin tin. But that was inevitable.
ETA: Nota Bene
For even more loft in your popovers, preheat the muffin tin with the grease in it in the 400-degree oven for a few minutes before pouring the batter in. This is a bit tricky, though, and can be skipped. Current Mood:  i'm a fucking genius Current Music: All Things Considered |
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And now, the May 2012 current projects post, which makes me a little sad, because I made the April post from Cat's place in Maine, and I am not in Maine now. Oh, well. This is the post in which I tell you what I'm working on, and you finally understand why I don't have time for tea. To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."
Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Blackout, Ashes of Honor). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.
Not everything on this list has been sold. I will not discuss the sale status of anything which has not been publicly announced. Please don't ask.
( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out! )Current Mood:  rushed Current Music: Typing, and silence. |
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Today is the official release date for The Future is Japanese, an anthology I co-edited with Masumi Washington for Team Rocket! It sure looks neat, see?
It's the first Haikasoru title with original content by both Japanese and non-Japanese writers. That is to say some of the stories are appearing in translation before they appear in Japanese. Plus, we have new stories from Bruce Sterling, Catherynne Valente, Pat Cadigan, David Moles, Ken Liu, Ekaterina Sedia, Rachel Swirsky, and the triumphant return of Felicity Savage!
Our Japanese authors include Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D!), Project Itoh (PKD-award citation winner for Harmony), Issui Ogawa (of the Haikasoru books The Last Continent and The Lord of the Sands of Time), Toh EnJoe (whose collection we're releasing soon), and TOBI Hirotaka, whose story I think has serious award potential.
You should buy this book. Partially because I want to do another one. Partially because it's awesome and has a cute cover with an actual Asian person on it. And if you are a bit short this month, you can enter my latest giveaway contest on the future of the short story. We're giving away four copies and will hip anywhere in the world, so get to it. |
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May. 14th, 2012 @ 09:05 pm
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Sunday May 13, 2012. The Mayday Parade is usually held first Sunday in May; but this year it was postponed on account of sogginess.
I keep meaning to attend, and keep missing it. This year, I went.
There were marching bands. People costumed as dragons, horses, unicorns, bees, wood ticks (a group concerned with Lyme Disease prevention), vegetables. Political groups ranging from pro-Obama to ones which consider Karl Marx a rightwing extremist. Hare Krishnas and at least one other Hindu group. Skateboards, kick scooters, bicycles, one dekacycle. Atheists.
When I'd seen the end of the parade, I walked to the festival at Powderhorn Park.
There were food trucks and food booths. Available food included Amish chicken al pastor tacos.
At a place selling pasties, one employee's tshirt said "Stop staring at my pasties."
And one spectator's tshirt said "Hail Seitan."
Various organizations and businesses had booths. Including the Minneapolis Republican Party; the man at that booth looked lonely.
I didn't see more than glimpses of the official entertainment.
I did watch a belly dancer who was busking. I didn't find her particularly interesting. However, her drummer looked hot.
It was fun; and I walked enough that I got a fair amount of exercise.
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The Unfortunate Master Bath is actually not the worst bathroom I, personally, have ever lived with. Far from it. My entire adult life, I've lived in dormitories and apartments - a good number of which might reasonably rate someplace high on the "shitty" scale, so in the grand scheme of things, it's really not all that bad.
Therefore, to begin on a positive note: The UMB is a rather large bathroom (relative to my experience); it is open and clean, with Jack-and-Jill sinks; everything is in good working order, with no mold, mildew, or rust to be seen; it is adequately lit and ventilated, and conveniently connects to the master bedroom.
But compared to the rest of the house, it is inexcusably ugly.
To the best of our knowledge, the UMB was last updated in the late eighties - and all the fixtures, bulbous Flashdance vanity lighting, and color scheme strongly support that sad speculation.* And as it turns out, the 1980s clash painfully with the 19-teens.
Behold, my real estate agent Andy Bond** - gazing with abject horror into the prison-tiled abyss. It was pretty much the last room we saw - and well played, sellers ... well played.
But here. Let me give you a guided tour, starting with the bathroom entrance.
What happened is this - sometime in the early 1930s, the back porch was closed in and the bathroom + another bedroom were added. That sick putty-colored wall that looks like it's covered in exterior siding ... is in fact covered with exterior siding.
By the way: LOOK UPON OUR FESTIVE DISCO PARQUET. There's only a few square feet of it; the rest of the place has proper oak flooring. It really IS as if the fug in this bathroom managed to contaminate everything for a couple of yards in any direction.
(You'll also see our alarm system in that photo. I'm trying to teach it not to freak out like a giant digital cricket when it spies motion in the den area at 3:00 a.m. We have a cat. She makes motion. We would prefer to sleep through it. When I log off in a few minutes, I'm going to sit down and study that system's manual like I have a test on it. And I do. Every night around 3:00 a.m.)
Right. So.
Upon opening the door you'll see the following - tricked out with all our own belongings, and not those of the sellers. All subsequent trashiness is ours and ours alone.
I'll start with the small things.
How small? This small: scads of empty holes. In everything. At some point, I assume these holes held toothbrush holders or drawer pulls or cabinet hardware ... but they've been empty as long as anybody knows, and it drives me crazy.
I suppose I could find hardware to fill the miniature voids, but since I want to rip the whole room out and set it on fire, that seems like a waste of perfectly good energy.
Now here.
Come in a little closer.
How close? FLOOR CLOSE. Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket, you guys. I know it's supposed to look like "marble," but all I can think is "prosciutto."
GAZE UPON THE HAM FLOOR YE MIGHTY, AND TREMBLE.
Are we all done trembling?
Okay, good.
Because immediately beside the patch of floor where I captured the HAM FLOOR picture ... you'll find an unassuming white closet with double doors. "Linen closet," one might think. "Broom closet," one might guess. Mais non.
FUSE BOXES, BITCHES!
Okay, switch boxes - which I mostly don't show in that shot. Because honestly, the boxes are not the ugliest thing hiding in that-there closet. See that old siding? Peeling, graying, and undoubtedly chock full of tasty, tasty lead-based paint? Yeah. That used to be the outer wall of the house.
I suppose if the power goes out while I'm peeing at night, I'll know just what to do. Hm. On second thought, maybe I should stick a flashlight by the toilet.
Then again, it might not help; after all, one of the switches is labeled "WTF."
I know, I know. Someone has crappy handwriting, and it's probably short for "water heater." But I kind of like the idea that there's a MYSTERY SWITCH that if I flip it then NO ONE KNOWS what the hell will happen. CTHULHU MAY RISE.
I bet the Old Ones could really heat up water like nobody's business. If those who sleep beneath R'lyeh can save us money on our energy bill, maybe we could strike some kind of deal. Or maybe I've had enough of these tasty hard ciders for one night, and should not open yet another one before I continue.
Hang on. Gotta get ... uh ... something. From the kitchen.
Okay, I'm back.
Next to the Cabinet of Electrical Mystery we have the actual linen closet. It is mirrored. I like mirrors. There is no other point to the image below.
Now in this next shot, you can see the poor attempt at linoleum camouflage I call a rug, plus a handful of Aubrey Beardsley prints I thought might class up the joint ... and the aforementioned sinks.
Jack and Jill. Hard molded plastic. Shaped like shells. With wee little ledges upon which to rest one's soap.
Or, wee little ledges upon which to whack one's forehead while trying to wash one's face, if one is as catastrophically nearsighted as yours truly. Cough cough.
Perhaps right about now you're thinking to yourself, "Self, that's not so weird and/or bad. That Cherie sure has a talent for exaggeration."
But wait.
There's more.
What if I told you ... that these sinks ... LIGHT THE FUCK UP!!???
THEN HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?
Oops, I mean: THEN HOW CRAZYPANTS WOULD YOU FIND THIS BATHROOM?
I, for one, am trying to look on the bright side. Or perhaps the somewhat drunk side. Which is to say, in lieu of a bathroom flashlight for making ridiculous spooooooky faces, one can simply TURN ON THE SINKS.
And on that note, I suppose I'd better hit "post" and call myself done for the night.
[:: waves cheerfully ::]
[:: and spooookily ::]
[:: goes looking for the alarm manual ::]
[:: GIANT DIGITAL CRICKETS ENSUE ::]
* Our home is place of Batman memorabilia, monster action figures, and a mantle tableau of a zombie apocalypse. Our down-home tackiness takes a different form, that's all I'm saying.
* Who I totally recommend, by the way. If you're looking to move in - or to - the Chattanooga area, ping me for details. I'll be happy to put you in touch with him.
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My luck with gardening, or even lawns, has been abysmal. My house is where plants go to die. I even managed to kill a huge tree by my driveway by a too enthusiastic application of weed killer to the weeds growing up in the driveway's cracks. If I had even thought for a couple of seconds, I would have realized that half of the tree's root system went under my driveway. That's why the driveway has buckled and cracked in places!
So, I've been quite proud of my roses that not only haven't died, but actually florish. My pride was only slightly tempered when a Master Gardner friend of mine told me that the Grand Valley is the ideal place to grow roses, and that here most roses once established are hard to kill.
I have five kinds of roses growing in my front yard. I don't know their names, but they're blooming and beautiful. I got this picture yesterday:
 Current Mood: chipper |
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It's been that sort of month. A "We'll Get Back To You Soon" sort of month, where soon means after all the staples are stapled and then removed, the Post-it notes alphabetized and a special memo sent around for explaining how to integrate blank Post-Its into the alphabetical files, and then someone forgets to pay their own phone bill so they certainly can't call you back.
But a few things have been happening. Here's me, on the cover of Locus:
I was the second interview. The magazine's been out for half a month, and except for one Twitter comment and some talk of the appealing(?) cover ("The new romantic comedy Thought Experiment, with Nick Mamatas as 'Webs' McGee...") nobody has said anything which is just further proof of what I always expected—Locus subscribers just skim the table of contents to see if their own work is reviewed, then give the magazine a flip to see if there are any photos of them inside, then put it away. It's like the society pages, for people who think it's acceptable to wear two fanny packs at the same time.
My latest Writing Salons class started on Saturday—I decided I wasn't going to beat the drum to publicize it anymore, and miraculously got eleven sign-ups. When I do spam you poor innocent people who aren't even anywhere near California, I usually get six. A fair fraction of people signed up thanks to some positive word of mouth from former students; I also allowed two repeats to take the class again, after warning them that the jokes wouldn't be updated. I do get on a paid per-head basis, like a hairdresser or psychotic serial killer, so that's good.
Speaking of classes, I'm undergoing some excruciating training for my forthcoming UCLA Extension course, which is to be taught online. I had one person marvel at my ability to create hyperlinks already, and I got to rewrite my already-approved syllabus according to a rubric that would be very useful were I teaching Fuctionalizing Utility Platforms for Social Media Leveraging Derivatives 101: The Bullshittening. Anyway, if you're one of those people who asked me if my writing class would ever be online, here it is. Online.
And what's the news? Looks like the left will make further gains and the Nazis experience some decline in the Greek elections next month, which is good. (Though there needs to be more Nazi-crushing going on.) Greece will certainly end up out of the euro, which is fine. At the very least, the examples of Argentina and Iceland will be instructive. But will Germany just buy some US drones and solve the "problem" of their clogged-up vacuum cleaner the hard way? (Or is that the easy way?!) Domestically, is gay marriage news? Obama is in favor of it now, in some odd and theoretical way that will certainly have no impact on the many states that have barred gay marriage—in this he is just like Dick Cheney, but eight years behind. And Romney led a gang of sweatervest-wearing goons to shave someone's head in a homophobic attack fifty years ago. Of course he did, and of course it was leaked right now. It just goes to show that parents raising pre-teen psychopaths need not worry. So long as they're already rich.
Well, other than all that, what have I to say except aaaaaaarrrrrgh won't something happen already! |
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(As always, this was written by Deborah, who is awesome and amazing, and can answer all your questions.)
Alright, guys, here we go:
YOU NOW HAVE FIVE DAYS TO PLACE YOUR ORDER FOR A WICKED GIRLS SHIRT.
Orders close this Friday, May 18th, 2012. At 11:59 PM PST, just to make it all official.
Now, to crib from my earlier announcements:
Everyone who has confirmed their Wicked Girls shirt order has been sent a final invoice with payment instructions.
There are currently a few people who have not confirmed their orders; you have until May 18th to do so.
Everyone who placed an order for a Wicked Girls shirt—and had that order acknowledged—should have received an order confirmation email.
If you did not receive a confirmation email, please do the following:
1. Check your spam filter. (Related, please make sure seananmerch at gmail is on your approved senders list.)
2. Check your comment on the original post and make sure I didn't need more information from you.
3. Check your comment on the original post and make sure there are no typos in your email address.
If you're missing the email and I need either corrected or more information from you, please respond in the comments on the original post. (Not this post. The original post.)
DO NOT send unsolicited email to the seananmerch email address. Unless we are already in contact, it will get lost in the shuffle for quite some time.
Thank you!Current Mood:  busy Current Music: Halestorm, "Daughters of Darkness." |
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invaderxan offers a beautiful artist's impression of sunset on Venus. With bonus rising evening star--Earth and its Moon, in this case.Current Mood:  curious Current Music: Morning Edition |
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Do you ever hear a bit of music from a television show or movie, and then just HAVE to know where it came from?
Season one of Scrubs, episode 13, "My Balancing Act." The song is "New Slang," by the Shins, a group I'd heard of but whose music I never associated with them.
This will keep me sane tomorrow, I think. Eight days of student contact left.
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So I'm finally catching up on the last three episodes of Criminal Minds. And damn, I really like "The Company."Current Mood: pleased |
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May. 13th, 2012 @ 07:48 pm
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Saturday May 12, 2012 Advance news about the 2112 Hugo winners (chosen by members of the World Science Fiction Convention):
Best Mindcast, Long Form: The Demolished Man
Best Mindcast, Short Form: Planet of the Hairless Apes
***T shirt: "Come for the sheep, stay for the maps http://www.floatingsheep.org"
I looked it up. "...Five geographers mapping the geographies of user-generated online content" is what they say about themselves on Twitter.
Top 10 Floating Sheep Maps
The Beer Belly of America
The Price of Weed
The Great American Pizza Map
Mapping Christianity
Visualizing the Abortion Debate
Church, bowling, guns and strip clubs
Google's Geographies of Religion
Allah, Buddha, Hindu and Jesus
Baptists, bibliophiles and bibles
Mapping Escorts
***From Twitter: VicNickDaily @VicNickDaily
So let's say you are a sheep or think you are a sheep and you can't fall asleep
Dan Goodman Dan Goodman @dsgood
@VicNickDaily Then you count humans.
VicNickDaily VicNickDaily @VicNickDaily
@dsgood @VicNickDaily The fluffy white ones?
***"Unlike most nursing mothers, the government hadn't covered herself and child with a shawl."
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It's been a week since that last fluttering, passing update which announced our continued survival and indeed, our arrival in Tennessee. And now, for the first time in the last seven days, I actually have (a). a few minutes to sit here and play catch-up, and (b). something to sit upon, which is a not-altogether untrivial factor in my failure to blog.
My husband and I have spent the last decade living in apartments smaller than 800 square feet (and sometimes as small as 430 sq. ft.), so you can safely deduce that we didn't have a lot of furniture to start with ... or, um ... any furniture except our bedroom set. So for most of this week, it's been an echo chamber up in here. We've had to run out and buy an entire household.
I never thought I'd see the day when I was sick to death of shopping; nay, the hunting and gathering instinct is strong in me. But right now, I am utterly wiped out by the hypothetical prospect of even darting down to the Walgreens (I know, I know, some things never change) for some face soap. I just can't stand the thought of it.
Therefore, I sit on this awesome new couch instead, trying to type around the fluffy round ass of a freshly flea-bathed house cat. But that's another story. I'll circle back around to it.
Yes, well.
We moved in.
Some lovely friends showed up to help us unload the truck, and in the wake of that, we spent a few days unpacking everything we'd unloaded; and then we bought more things to put places, and figured out all the small, weird, unexpected things we still needed; and then we went out and bought those things too.
The husband had a few Requirements, and I had made some Promises with regards to our lifestyle upon our return to Tennessee - not least of all that he could have the house's parlor for his study, complete with wingback chairs and whatnot; and also I vouched for the inevitability of a porch swing, since we have a lovely wrap-around porch to accommodate that sort of swinging.
Naturally, the chairs and the swing were the most grueling items to acquire. Wingbacks because they're a bit out of date, and the porch swing ... shit, I don't know. You tell me! This is southern Tennessee at the start of summer - yet whenever we inquired after a swing, people acted like we'd asked for some crayons so we could make soup.
Eventually we found our way to a big patio-specific retail location, and we unlocked achievement: porch swing. But it shouldn't have taken four days, fer chrissake.
The wingbacks I eventually found in a truly hilarious showroom out near the mall. I've driven by it a million times, assuming it was closed - an inexplicably abandoned piece of prime real estate, with a huge parking lot in which I'd never seen another car. But Thursday, on a whim, I thought I'd give them a try.
The salesman who greeted me was a charmingly cadaverous older fellow, a genteel southern Lurch in an ascot. I told him I was looking for wingback chairs. He nodded slowly, lifted one long finger, and curled it - telling me to follow him.
I did follow him, wending my way through a tasteful collection of what might best be described as "new old-fashioned" fine furnishings.* (I don't mean to sound disparaging, because that isn't the intent - what I mean to say is this: I love old-fashioned styles, and I was thrilled to see that someone, somewhere, still makes these things.) And there, in that weird gallery that felt peculiarly out-of-time, I found the husband's dream chairs. We bought them. They arrived the next day. And now the whole parlor smells pleasantly of good leather.
Yesterday, our bed arrived. This was somewhat momentous, because in the entire time the husband and I have lived together, we've never had a proper bed.** Best of all, we didn't have to put it together! I say "best of all" because I've long said that I would be a Real Grown Up on the day I owned furniture I hadn't been forced to assemble. The bed was the last major item, and so far, we haven't assembled a damn thing.
[:: fist pumps ::]
Around dusk, I met a couple of our next-door neighbors - a guy about our age and his toddler daughter. They brought cookies! They came inside for awhile, and then we went out on the porch and watched bats fly out of the belfry at a nearby church. It was delightful.
But yesterday wasn't all wine and roses. Yesterday we learned that the house's previous owners - a lovely couple who we liked quite well - left us one ... icky ... little ... present. By accident, no doubt. But it's the gift that keeps on giving. To our cat.
Fleas.
The kitty had been acting weird since shortly after we arrived, but hey, no shock there, right? She began shedding like a fiend, and horking up hairballs so massive I swear to fucking God this one time I thought she'd eaten a bunny. Of course, it's late spring/summer here, and she'd been losing her "winter coat" even in Seattle; and obviously there'd been a lot of upheaval in her recent life. We thought she was stress-grooming.
Nope. Fleas.
I discovered the fleas while my husband was out running errands. So I called him (repeatedly) trying to walk him through the supplies required to rid her of the problem. Apparently I'm the only dumbass on earth who didn't know you could get Advantage at any petstore these days, so thanks for bringing me up to speed, Twitter and/or Facebook. The name-calling really wasn't necessary, but up yours, too, haters.
Eventually the husband returned with a bottle of good flea shampoo, some spray, and a six-month supply of Advantage For Large Cats. (Over 9 pounds, that is.) The For Large Cats bit is important, because Spain weighs almost 12 pounds - as we know for a fact, given that we just took her to the vet less than a month ago.
Not that I could convince anyone of it. Not with pictures like these. It's funny, how much tinier she looks when wet - but I promise you, that is a very large sink. And she is, in fact, a total fatty. My husband's big-ass hands are just hiding the folds of tummy chub.
Before long, the worst was over. She recovered her dignity swiftly, and seems much happier today. Mission accomplished.
Hm. What else?
Well, I painted my office - which once was a kids' bedroom, and a shade of yellow that I just wasn't "feeling." It's now a soft lavender, with a lot of black and gray and white furnishings, and an awesome daybed. Frankly, it's an eldergoth paradise. I am proud of my handiwork.
The Perplexing Back Room will remain a game room/guest space/whatever for awhile. Our plans to yank out the carpet, throw down hardwood, and make a formal dining room came into conflict with our budget, but such is the way of things. Right now it's The Cat's Room, and also the room where we store everything we're too lazy to tote all the way out to the garage.
The Unfortunate Master Bath remains unfortunate. But you know what? Everything works, and it's a large space with a spacious linen closet and also, um, the household fuse boxes. Not the first place you'd look for fuse boxes, no, but the house was added-on-to in the thirties, and the bathroom used to be the exterior wall of the house. So we have fuse boxes in the bathroom, okay? They're in a closet. We keep the closet shut. It's not an issue. It's just kind of funny.
My next post will probably be about the Unfortunate Master Bath. There will be pictures. Undignified pictures. Stay tuned.
But for now, I think this post has run long enough. Thanks for being patient with me, and thanks for reading; thanks for all the well-wishes and congrats, and I'll be back online tomorrow. Still playing catch-up, sure. But I'll be back.
:)
* If you're any fan of Faulkner, it'd be 100% accurate to say that Miss Emily would have shopped the ever-living shit out of this place.
** Proper bed: Mattress, boxsprings, headboard/footboard. We've never had anything but the mattress/boxspring on rails, except for one brief, unpleasant foray into one of Ikea's low-slung, boxless sleeping systems. Which was awful.
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May. 13th, 2012 @ 11:16 am
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