User:	matociquala
	Date:	2008-05-17 21:36
	Subject:
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	sleepy
	Music:	The Murder Channel - more homicide documentaries

1704 words on Seven for a Secret tonight. We have found the plot, and it is progressing. I'm still not sure exactly how it plays out, but Sebastien is the Scarlet Pimpernel.

17,000 / 30,000 (56.7%)

If there weren't this damned convention mucking up my week, I could have this done by next Monday.

*falls over in front of the television*

	User:	farwing
	Date:	2008-05-17 20:08
	Subject:
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	creative
	Music:	What's the matter with you?

For a rather small canvas bag there is still an lot of canvas yet to paint. And I'm not even painting all of it. Just...most of it. Of course, I'm being wicked ocd and painting it in crazy little patterns and shapes. It's quite satisfying, until I get bored and start painting in larger blocks of solid color. At which point I stop. But! I can totally go over the solid bits with black paint. Which is also fun.

Hmmmm. On the other hand, I have not been writing anything. Grah.

Also: dinner might be good. Ooooh! I can have mac and cheese.

	User:	greygirlbeast
	Date:	2008-05-17 19:01
	Subject:	A Remembrance, Monsters, Etc.
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	hungry
	Music:	NIN, "Zero-Sum"

Cleaning my office, packing, I came across an invitation to the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Lynn-Henley Building of the Birmingham Public Library (which, at the time, was the Birmingham Public Library). This is the same building I visited on Tuesday and spoke of in my first entry on Thursday, the reading room with the Ezra Winter murals. Anyway, so I found an invitation to the 70th anniversary, April 7th, 2002. The building was opened to the public in 1932. My Grandmother Ramey was 17 years old. The US President was Herbert Hoover. Amelia Earhart flew from the US to Ireland in 14 hours and 54 minutes. Anyway, here's a contemporary illustration of the library, the one from the invitation:

	User:	yhlee
	Date:	2008-05-17 15:40
	Subject:	Froomb!
	Security:	Public

Froomb!, whose author I have already forgotten, may be the worst sf novel title I have EVER seen. rachelmanija and I stopped by Cliff's Books, where she pointed out this treasure to me. It opens like a bad radio play with a man rambling contextlessly (is that a word?) to himself. At one point on the second page of narrative (p. 8 of the novel, I believe), he feels an, um, surge of eroticness and thinks to himself that people who die suddenly sometimes orgasm, so maybe that's what's happening to him. This is completely random and unconnected to any of the other action. ZOMG I am not making this up.

I also bought a book, whose author and title I have forgotten so I'll look it up later (I left the books in rachelmanija's car), that features a cracktastic manga-esque plot, although this wasn't really what convinced me to buy a book that was obviously going to be awesomely bad; no, what convinced me was finding several pages of numerology embedded in the book, plus geometrical diagrams, plus ellipses (the kind with two foci, not the kind with dots) that aren't actually ellipses. Normally this would drive me to sporky rage, but in context, it is kind of hilarious!

	User:	kijjohnson
	Date:	2008-05-17 15:18
	Subject:	NF.
	Security:	Public

Okay, so I just started reading Galileo's Commandment: An Anthology of Great Science Writing. The selection of authors and works is interesting, but so far I am most impressed by the editor himself, Edmund Blair Bolles. He discusses topics like the marriage of style, voice, and content; the great conversation that is science (which almost exactly parallels in its nature the conversation that is science fiction); and the imaginations of science and art, in harness or conflict.

The introduction begins, "I love great science writing for the same reason I enjoy splendid autobiography or classic letters and journals. It puts me in direct contact with an active probing mind." In these sentences he has clarified exactly why nonfiction -- and in particular these genres -- are generally more powerful for me than fiction, something I've never been able to understand. And every page of his introductions brings something equally revelatory for me.

Another really interesting book I have read in the last few months is The Best American Sports Writing 2007, edited by David Maraniss. Maraniss's introductions are terse and most of the articles and essays are journalism, not literature, though a couple of them are both. It's an unfamiliar world, interesting or moving or even enlightening.

	User:	upstart_crow
	Date:	2008-05-17 15:49
	Subject:	About a girl.
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	depressed

I've been quiet on LJ and on the IAF Salon thread because I'm depressed again, for seemingly no reason. Whether this is going to be a little down spiral that goes away in a few days or a full-blown clinical episode that lasts for a few weeks or months, the coming days will tell. I'm not very happy with my brain at the moment. It has chosen the busiest time of the year for me to break. I've got a short story collection due, an autumn line of jewelry to plan, WisCon to attend and ReaderCon to prepare for, novels to plan and a bunch of articles and interviews I want to start pitching and writing, because I need the money and the experience. So, of course, now would be the time that I become low-energy, dejected, anxious, quick-tempered and about as dysfunctional as an...well, I don't know what.

ETA: LOL I forgot to complete that sentence. By the way, I just found out that my suspicions that the anti-depressant I'm taking has adversely effected my short-term memory were well founded. Woo-fucking-hoo.

Way to go, brain.

Sometimes my hatred of this disease exceeds my ability to find words, even obscene ones. Really it does.

Also fun: My Web site seems to have a glitch. I'll try to get that fixed as soon as possible, and I'm sorry to anyone going over there from the IAF auctions who can't really check it out because pages aren't loading. Not sure what's up with that.

Since the goal of interventions is to teach you to be positive while everything around you and inside of you is falling to pieces (sometimes it's about as effective as holding an umbrella up in a hurricane, but whatever), let's focus on the positive now. A little while ago, one of the cats caught a bird and ate up everything, leaving only the hard skull behind. With the help of erzebet, whose knowledge of caring for bones is encyclopedic, I salvaged the skull and am in the process of treating it now. If all goes well and nature or my own clumsiness don't interfere, I will be creating a single piece of beaded bone art to be sold with my autumn jewelry line (provided, of course, that I can also learn the skills I need between now and then for the fall line to even be done the way I want it to be done, and that I can scrape together the money to get the materials I want for it).

As someone who has spent most of her life thinking she would only ever be able to create art with words, this is very exciting. I like being able to have more than one skill at my disposal. It makes the world much more interesting.

So take that, depression. :p

	User:	papersky
	Date:	2008-05-17 18:08
	Subject:	Ooh, Canada!
	Security:	Public

We've just come back from the trip down to the border to actually do the "landing" bit of being landed immigrants. Some of us were a bit worried that they'd change their minds at the last minute, but they didn't. We left Z's girlfriend in our apartment with instructions to post all the books if they wouldn't let us in again... but they did. We are home! We are as Canadian as possible under the circumstances!

We've been working towards this for a long time.

	User:	thistleingrey
	Date:	2008-05-17 14:23
	Subject:	a small kdrama roundup
	Security:	Public

At the end of 3.25 dramas (one is mini) with very different foci and settings yet with some overlapping actors, I had observations. Then I misplaced the draft post and watched a few more. This post was more than long enough six months ago, so I’ve tried to tidy it without adding later perspective. It’s still not very tidy….

(The 3.25: Coffee Prince (17 eps + special), Dal Ja’s Spring (22), Taereung National Village (8 half-sized eps, so ~4), The Vineyard Man (16). Let’s use VineYard Man/VYM to keep any Veronica Mars watchers from flipping. Overlap of actors: one CP + TNV, two CP + VYM, one DJS + TNV, one CP and DJS.)

Um—series structure, the prominence of family, alcohol as narrative shorthand, and music/soundtrack usage.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at the stack. Please leave any comments there.

	User:	elisem
	Date:	2008-05-17 15:18
	Subject:	ArtLog: wishlists!
	Security:	Public

What do you wish I would make for WisCon?

	User:	kijjohnson
	Date:	2008-05-17 12:21
	Subject:	Dear Hive Mind,
	Security:	Public

Just as last year, I am teaching the Novel Writers Workshop this summer, which involves a lot of reading and preparation. However, I am insane, so (also as last year), I am planning on also taking Jim Gunn's short fiction Writers Workshop.

I find myself once more in the position of writing three stories in a limited time. Last year, I only had an idea for one of them, so I asked athenais to pick two topics from my LJ interests list. She selected macaques and gazing into the abyss, and I wrote "26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss," which is in this year's July Asimov's.

For the third story, I posted a poll, intending to use the top two ideas to get going. In the end, I used the top four: extinct birds, sex, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and a chatty fool to write "Wife reincarnated as a solitaire—Exposition on the flaws in my spouse's character—The nature of the bird—The possible causes—Her final disposition." I sent this precisely one place before I decided that the world probably wasn't interested in my Tristram Shandy pastiche, however successful I think it.

Both the poll and the LJ interests thing worked rather well, so I am going to see what happens this time. A few of these are leftover from last year, but that doesn't mean they're any more intriguing to me than the rest on the list. You don't have to pick four, though you're certainly welcome to.

Poll #1189521 What do you think? 2008 edition
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

What should the stories include?

	User:	elisem
	Date:	2008-05-17 12:29
	Subject:	ArtLog: in progress, and my conundrum
	Security:	Public

Well, "The Waters of Twilight Are Endless" is over 24 feet long now, and not finished.

Hmm.

This is very heavy, as it's on 20 gauge sterling silver.

Am contemplating a wild thing:  selling it by the inch to order.   It might be cool, although there's a certain something to having such a long long necklace complete.  (However long it turns out to be.) But I am contemplating splitting it partly for the same reason I split "Women of Japan and the Sea," which is that a long heavy necklace might take itself apart by actions of physics involving movement and gravity and suchlike.

	User:	matociquala
	Date:	2008-05-17 12:33
	Subject:	i tell you all my secrets but i lie about my past
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	productive
	Music:	CSN- Cathedral

Dear Bear's Brain:

A corpse of drum majorettes is very different from a corps of drum majorettes.

Love, Bear.

	User:	greygirlbeast
	Date:	2008-05-17 11:17
	Subject:	I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words...
	Security:	Public
	Music:	NIck Cave & the Bad Seeds, "Midnight Man"

Oh, if only I had magical coffee, the coffee that bestows instant and perfect wakefulness, and eternal youth. That coffee. No, I just have this milky brown water.

Er...yeah.

Yesterday morning, Spooky took the following two photos (behind the cut) of me while I was trying to wake up. They should give you some idea of the disassembly of the hole where I hide...I mean, the office. Fold it all up. Stick it a box. Send it a thousand miles northeast. And hope this is the last big move, ever.

	User:	farwing
	Date:	2008-05-17 11:48
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

Tai chi (done backwards- my poor brain!) followed by a nice walk to get groceries, iced coffee, and a chocolate chip orange scone. Which was followed by a leisurely walk home with lots of peering at green and flowering things in front-yard gardens. Life does not actually suck.

Also: I usually sleep on one smallish slice of mattress. Last night I apparently found it absolutely necessary to sleep on the other side of the bed, thus pushing everything off onto the floor and tipping over the clothes rack that lives on the floor on that side of my bed. I kept waking up confused, wondering why I was so far away from my usual side. So...that's kind of odd.

I think I shall open all of my windows, pile all the crap on my floor onto my bed, and vacuum. Because...yuck.

	User:	truepenny
	Date:	2008-05-17 09:57
	Subject:	Upon Receiving the Edit Letter for Corambis
	Security:	Public

Yesterday, I got the edit letter for Corambis.

You'll notice I didn't post about it yesterday. That's because I was busy having the ObFreakOut, which is the author's Pavlovian response to editorial feedback. The content of the feedback is immaterial to the response.

I like my editor, and I think she's smart. But her great value to me is that she doesn't read the way I do.

I've mentioned this before, I think: that my attitude toward text, any text, all text, is that it's there to be close-read. I came a nasty cropper over my dissertation when it was finally pointed out to me that that's not how you're supposed to engage with secondary texts. (I have to admit, I still don't see why.) I assume that if the word is on the page, the author put it there for a reason, and that it's my job as a reader to figure out what that reason is. And I assume, until forced to believe otherwise, that the reason is both good and important. (I also have freakishly good recall for things I've read. Not so much for things I've done, or things that have happened to me, or things that people have said to me. But things I've read? Mind like an oiled steel bear-trap, people. I disturb myself sometimes.)

You begin to see why I am very fussy about my fiction-reading.

And of course, as a writer, I assume that all readers are like me. This is a subset of writing for yourself: I write books that I would want to read, not merely in the kind of plots and characters I have, but in the way I write. I expect readers to pay the same kind of attention to words that I do. And, as logically follows, I have beta-readers who read that way themselves (I'm not entirely sure whether I selected them or they selected me). heresluck, matociquala, and mirrorthaw all give excellent feedback of various kinds, but mostly they are on board with my project. In other words, they pick up on the subtleties.

My editor exists (in my tiny solipsistic universe) to remind me that not everybody reads that way. That, in fact, the vast majority of readers don't read that way. If I only say something once, especially if it's in dialogue, most readers will miss it--or not remember it a hundred pages later when it turns out to be important. And, you know, while I can be a prima donna and pitch a fit about it, a better response is to revise the book so that people who aren't exactly like me can enjoy it, too.

My ego would naturally prefer an editor who Understood My Genius, but I think it would be bad for me. And ultimately, bad for my books. Because the point here is not for me to stand on my pedantic little moral high ground and insist that everyone else is wrong. The point is to write books--to tell stories--that people will enjoy. Whether they read the way I do or not.

	User:	thistleingrey
	Date:	2008-05-17 08:30
	Subject:	faded crushes
	Security:	Public

Myst (DS): such a disappointment. Fifteen years ago, Myst in its original incarnations (Mac/Win) dragged graphical adventure games into the mainstream: its point-and-click simplicity required little prior acquaintance with computer gameplay. It’s a visually and aurally impressive creation, then or now.

Midway shouldn’t have bothered undertaking the current port for the Nintendo DS—they left the images blurry and pixellated, fucked up the timing on the animations, and provided one of the worst uses of the DS’s two-screens-plus-stylus interface I’ve seen so far. The images and interface are so ill-tailored for the DS that the game’s literally unplayable: I knew where the marker switches are near the beginning, but I “clicked” the second one blind: knew where it had to be but couldn’t see it. One isn’t supposed to know where stuff is to play successfully…. Given that tapping the stylus operates (a) movement, (b) selection, and (c) manipulation, all without benefit of the original game’s differentiated cursor, tapping investigatively isn’t rewarded. Mostly, it turns the view, which is exactly what one doesn’t want while exploring the current room. There is a magnifying glass for reading books and for moving the room view a bit closer, but not enough to be of use. *flails* I turned off the game after that second marker switch, which is, what, two “rooms” in. So much for the extra Age, left out of the old Windows game and apparently restored here.

(Okay, so I have crap night vision and turn up the brightness a bit whenever it’s an option—but darkforge’s eyes see 20/20 unaided, and he had trouble with DS!Myst’s visual details, too.)

What a botched job. So much for bringing a good adventure game to a new audience. …”Good,” not “great”: I always liked Riven best of the series.

Originally published at the stack. Please leave any comments there.

	User:	thomasfreund
	Date:	2008-05-17 10:23
	Subject:	1907 - 2008
	Security:	Public

I have been sorely lax in posting here, and there have actually been quite a few good things that have happened which I will post on in the next few days. The Vivaldi that I was planning for church went off extremely well, lots of people in attendance and a standing ovation led by Phyllis, who is the veteran member there (since 1953 and going strong). I have also purchased a car, which I will pick up this afternoon. I got a black Volvo XC90 with tan leather and wood steering wheel... it's really a great car. With European cars, you have to have an instinct, and this one hit all the right places.

Unfortunately, as is so common in our society, it is bad news that prompts me to write today.

Donna Gropp, the last of my three great-aunts, passed at about 5:30 this morning. She had chest pain yesterday afternoon and her home nurse called hospice care, as per her instructions that she did not want doctors. Probably a heart attack, and maybe 18 hours later, she's gone. She was 101.

The three great-aunts were not young women by any means when I was born! Josephine, Alice, and Donna were fixtures in family events from as early as I can remember. Josephine died in 1992 in her late 80s, Alice in 2006 at 95, and through it all, Donna was still there. She was a fiercely independent woman, lived with her mother until she got married in her sixties (her mother died in 1970, nobody quite remembers how old she was but since her daughter was in her sixties she certainly wasn't a young woman). She and her husband traveled extensively in the US and Europe, especially Spain where they spent at least a month a year for a while. He was killed when he was caught in an undertow in the West Indies, and she lived alone from his death until her own.

I remember clearly an Easter Sunday when Donna did not come to the family dinner, and some relative speaking ill of this because she chose something over family. Turns out she had gotten tickets to the Bolshoi ballet in their first performances in the US for something like fifty years! I wish I could have gone! She was a great lover of the arts, especially classical music, and had been to many of the world's greatest concert halls and opera houses. She could recount memories of things that happened in her teens as easily as the day before, and she was extremely sharp as recently as a couple of weeks ago. Whenever we visited her or she called us, she always remembered what we were up to (the last phone call she said "weren't you preparing some Vivaldi for church?" which I forgot I had even told her!) She heard dozens of my concerts on tape and many of them live. She drove into her 90s and continued to be active until she broke her hip at 95. After having surgery on it, she was put in a nursing home and felt she wasn't receiving adequate rehabilitation care. Sadly, people write off people her age as being unworthy of rehab, but she put up such a stink that they gave her sufficient physical therapy and treatment that she went home, though she did require home healthcare workers for the rest of her life.

When I was maybe ten years old, she gave me a foggy Xerox of some Wagner, arranged by Franz Liszt. I later obtained a clear copy; it is Isoldes Liebestod from the opera Tristan und Isolde, which I then came to know through Vladimir Horowitz's recording, his last recording and the second to last piece of music he played. (Horowitz, arguably the greatest pianist of the 20th century, died a few hours after his final recording session in his home in 1988). So this piece has a history, and I will likely be playing it at her funeral service next week.

So, for all of you and for Donna, here is that last recording:

Wagner-Liszt: Isoldes Liebestod for piano, Vladimir Horowitz, October, 1988.

What is more important still is that I quite honestly believe that she saved my life. Not only did she observe very keenly that my own illness in 1990 was not a behavioral problem but something serious (and indeed it was the manifestations of clinical depression for the first time, and I was a very sick young man), but when I was in the hospital for five weeks, she kept tabs on me. I wasn't allowed incoming phone calls, and only one call out per shift, which were naturally to my parents. But every day, without fail, she sent me something. Never anything big, sometimes just a postcard or a little note, but it kept me remembering that there was a world and people outside of that hospital that was not only my immediate family, and that someone else cared. I kept all of these cards and notes for a few months until they unfortunately became too much of a reminder of being sick and I threw them out along with the other things I had received in hospital.

I can remember two specific things from this correspondance. One was a genealogy of how the two of us were related, and the other was a rather unassuming postcard of a landscape, from Holland I believe. But the latter came with a story about her being on that exact spot, and something about it made me laugh. In days when smiles were rare and laughter a more precious thing still, she was there. She was always there, somehow watching over us. And she is still there now, though her view upon us is from a considerably higher vantage point.

	User:	the_red_shoes
	Date:	2008-05-17 07:03
	Subject:	Okay people, you want to cheer me up?
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	hopeful

YOUR BOLLYWOOD RECS
U SHOW ME THEM.

tatterpunk and shewhohashope are already giving me crack titles. But I want MOAR. (callunav? panjianlien? rachelmanija? thewriteratwork? Whoever else on my flist I totally forgot? ((LIKE rparvaaz, MOI, FOR THE EMBARRASSING FAIL)) Plz plz?) I LOVE what Bollywood I have seen but have absurdly seen something like five films, because a couple of YEARS ago when I was trying to watch some T would make really rude comments. BUT I think he has been won over by this clip from Fanaa:



shewhohashope SAYS "IS IT NOT ALL THAT IS BEST ABOUT BOLLYWOOD, RIGHT THERE?" AND OMG, I MUST AGREE.

So suggest recs! Direct me to your awesome Bollywood posts! Awesome Bollywood comms! Awesome Bollywood YouTube clips! Any and all suggestions are welcome!


THE LIST SO FAR:

• Fanaa
• Omkara
• Kuch kuch hota hai
• Kal ho na ho
• Bunty aur Babli
• Dhoom 1 & 2
• Rang De Basanti
• Krrish
• Jodhaa Akbar
• Lagaan
• Devdas
• Shaurya
• Namaste London
• Om Shanti Om
• Black & White
• Kabul Express
• Baghbaan
• Parineeta
• Rang De Basanti
• Pinjar
• Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham

rparvaaz

mamculuna

callunav

shewhohashope

User:	jeffvandermeer
Date:	2008-05-17 12:34
Subject:	Are Editors Responsible for Who Sends Submissions? (Alternatively: What the F— is Homeland Security
Security:	Public

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/05/17/are-editors-responsible-for-who-sends-submissions-alternatively-what-the-f-is-homeland-security-doing-calling-us/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/?p=1097

So you may remember this post, in which I said one of Ann’s submissions had been opened by Homeland Security.

Well, this morning Ann got a purported call from Homeland Security trying to verify her name and social security number. They asked for Ann “Kennedy,” not only her ex-husband’s name but the name on the envelope of the submission HS had opened. The person had the wrong social and Ann didn’t volunteer the right one.

If this call was legitimate, and we think it might have been because no one calls us asking for Ann “Kennedy”–they either call asking for her under her maiden name or VanderMeer–it does raise an interesting question: Can magazine editors be held responsible for who sends submissions to them? The sensible answer is, of course, NO. But Ann’s still going to follow up on this to try to verify the legitimacy of the call, etc.

	User:	matociquala
	Date:	2008-05-17 09:18
	Subject:	and there for honey bees have sought in vain
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	bouncy
	Music:	NPR- Weekend Edition

Well, this is excellent news...

( A starred PW review of INK & STEEL, which is indeed, rather spoilery )

162.9 miles to Lothlorien.

In other news, I will never understand how my body can be competent one day and inept the next. I managed a jog for about a half mile out and a half mile back this morning, but mostly twinges in my right hip, both calves, and my right shin meant I walked the rest. In urban wildlife noted, however, I did see a cottontail rabbit in the middle of a residential street at around 6:45 am. And two lovely dogs out for a morning constitutional with their persons--a German shepherd and a springer spaniel. I am so very dog-deprived.

The cat opines that SHE is not dog-deprived at all, thank you, and also that she would like to warm her feet up on my thigh. So move the laptop, Monkey!