Huh

Dunno if it's the season, or a low time in their cycle, but the SFF Online Workshop reviewed me twice in five hours. With my last two submissions, I waited two weeks or more before anyone decided to write an opinion.

I don't believe either of my reviewers is known to me... Maybe it's just that college is out and there are a lot more potential writers reading and reviewing. Maybe I'm getting more interesting.

Another meme, so I can ply you with more lies...

Matociquala sez its time for the first lines meme. So let's see:

New York’s endless parade of pedestrian museums, stodgy libraries, dull theaters, redundant opera, unimaginative concerts, and boring ethnic restaurants had long ago lost Neville’s interest. "N is for Neville"

People packed the small room to listen to Mark’s speech. "Darwin's Cosh" (A bit shit isn't it?)

Len lay on his belly, overlooking a huddle of filthy shacks. The ammonia reek of chicken shit was like sandpaper up his nose. "God of Chickens"

Robert was a coward, and he knew it. "Too Short For an Angel"

George Orne and Harry Whitfield were chopping up a stump when George glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. "Queen Anne's Lace and Juniper"

Dudley hated taking the bus. It was full of niggers, faggots, retards, and worse. "Not an Ulcer"

Tamara “Psycho-Therapist” Lee grunted and went down as Maria “Sister Mary Maniac” Eddiston slammed into her. "The Sisterhood"

Dramus’s head snapped up when the intruder alarm went off. "A Certain Society of Concerned Citizens"

Falling snow turned the wet tree-trunks beside of the road into a faded, black and white photograph. "Beanie Baby"

Novel

Azubuike had been in the reek of bodies, sweat, shit, and despair for so long, she couldn’t smell them anymore. Hag

Know the rules, respect the laws

I’m doing my duties as the Bartender to Geeks, and I’m listening to two gamers talk about combat. One of them keeps repeating a word that sounds wrong: feent. It’s only when he says that you do it to set up the next attack that I realize he’s talking about a feint. This I recognize as the standard nerdboy (I include myself) need to sound out a word that they’ve never heard. OK.

I go over and correct him. I do not say that it’s a French word imported after teh great Vowel Shift and therefore has Continental vowel pronunciation. Because that would have been, you know, too much.


Later, the some other guys are talking about Internet porn and rule 34. One of us has the temerity to say that there’s no site devoted to hot girls in the shower playing electric guitars. Approximately thirty seconds later, I was able to demonstrate his wrongness. Do not doubt Rule 34.

Arm-wrestling With Technology

So, the Queen of Science got an MP3 player for her birthday. On the ghosts of Oppenheimer and Darwin, that was the damned longest continued struggle with technology I've ever had.

The Queen has a laptop which she uses for basic stuff--word processing, etc. We don't connect it to the net much, so we've kept it with the same basic Windows XP that it came with. Well, last generation's MP3 player can't work without Service Pack 2 and the most recent version of WMP. We're on dial-up. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

At noon (we started the SP2 download at 8), I go to work where, we have high-speed. Additionally, woot has just delivered one of the 4 gig USB drives. Oh good, I'll just download it at work, then take it home. Only the USB drive doesn't work. I spend some ten minutes trying to figure out why it doesn't work, and eventually borrow a different drive to put the stuff on.

Installation takes its time. We check yes to the EULA we don't read, we install SP2, we install WMP. We install the program that makes the MP3 player go. We plug the MP3 player in, according to instructions. The computer cannot figure out that the fuck it is. Contrary to the instructions (thanks, manual writers!) we eventually figure out that er have to install the MP3 player as a piece of hardware. And viola, a mere thirteen hours after it was unwrapped, we listened to the first MP3 off her new player.

Ain't technology grand?

After Twenty-Five Years... a Return to the Stage

Well. I have been invited to play a bit part in the Hubbard Hall production of Carmen.

Yeah, Carmen. The opera. The director asked for someone to be a swaggering gypsy who can fence, and somehow, they came up with me. And I said yes.



I am, I have to admit, nervous. The last time I was on the stage, George Orwell's most famous book had special edition.

Dates:

August 13 pay what you will open rehearsal
August 14, 15, 20, 21, 22 at 8pm
August 23 at 2pm
$30 nonmember / $25 members / $20 students

I blame PD Cacek for getting me into this mess.

Revision, revision, revision: The writer's life for me.

Yeah, in addition to blowing the faces off super-mutants, ghouls, raiders, and Enclave soldiers, I'm also doing the glorious grind on "N is for Neville." I've gotten good feedback on it (workshopped it on Tuesday), have done major revisions on it twice. The story continues to improve, mostly as I remove superfluous prepositional phrases on each pass. Fortunately, it can rest until I get some more feedback on it.

Oh, and the proofs came in for Tales Out of Miskatonic University. Proofs can be a bit humbling. While it shows how much I have learned in the past year, it depresses me to find so much that I would change in a story.

Long Time, No Post

Well, I haven't been keeping up with this blog in June. I do have an excuse. Over April and May I managed to crank out the initial drafts of four stories. I'm not saying they're awesome stories, but the bones are laid down, and now the polishing begins. And I've got a special market in mind for an older story, and a kind hired gun has helped me to clean it up. So back to the grind.

In my copious spare time, I've been going here:



And doing a lot of this:




It's been ten years since a good Fallout game, and I'm really enjoying myself. I wish Bethesda could have introduced a few new elements, which would have created a sense of difference between the East Coast and the West Coast. I also understand that they were relaunching a beloved franchise, and didn't want to take a lot of chances. That said, through, I'm enjoying the heck out of myself.

What a Weekend!

Memorial Day was crazy crazy crazy. But we did run down to the Rock of Ages home to see friends. The Queen of Science and I love the Rock of Ages family, they're our age, they're parents, and they really didn't change at all after they had their kids. And they've got interesting, engaging children.

In a moment of rare unity, all of us, four adults and two kids, aged nine and six, gathered around the computer screen and sang. You know, like people used to do in the old days, singing together, gathered around the radio, or the phonograph? Of course, what was sang was incredibly geeky...



A good time was had by all.

Of the whole weekend, there was really only one false note. I saw this disturbing piece of equipment:



Yes, that's a Hello Kitty sewing machine



WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

Taking a Stand

I missed by a day, but this is important.



There has been a lot of discussion about race and race issues in science fiction. I've tried to ignore it because I didn't think it touched my writing. I have characters who are of color, as well as queer ones, sort of randomly sprinkled into my fiction, and I thought that was enough. And then I read this incredible essay by Nalo Hopkinson about her experience in science fiction. And I realized that I wasn't doing enough. The problem of the perception of race won't go away if people of good conscience ignore it, and worse, to do so myself is disrespectful to my friends.

Race and race relations need to be discussed. It can't be 'gotten over' and ignoring it has resulted in bad situations, oppression, and the belief that it will just go away. It won't always be pretty, and it hurts to realize that I've been going about this wrong. But this is more important than my hurt feelings.

More Derby!

In what I hope will become a yearly tradition, Kim Paffenroth and I went to see the roller derby team that he sponsors, the Hudson Valley Horrors. This time I brought my camera and took some very bad photos.



Roller Derby is interesting. There aren't a lot of non-sexualized contact sports for women out there, and watching them in an aggressive sport is fun. Because we know Kim, we're supporters of the Horrors, but Albany has its own team, the Department of Public Hurts. Slightly closer are the Hellions of Troy, who within easier reach than our own state's Green Mountain Derby Dames, who just finished their first season.



Game-wise, the Horrors got their collective assets handed to them by the extremely team-oriented Suburban Brawl. The Brawl had some impressive moves, including the team-mate sling, in which they would grab a teammate's hand and pull them ahead, giving them a momentum boost. They were also consistently faster off the mark than the horrors, and had pin-point accuracy in body-slamming the Jammer (the person who scores the points by lapping members of the other team) off her feet. Following my thought that Derby is more about treachery and teamwork than being young and fast, we're pretty sure the star player of the Brawl, Hard Core-Vette, was an original Disco dancing queen, a possibility reinforced by her victory dance on her final jam.



A good time as had by all, not the least because Kim is a lot of fun to talk to, and he signed the books I shoved under his nose without complaining. The punk sensibility of derby tickles me still. Who wouldn't be a fan of the New York Shock Exchange? Wrestling seems overhyped and over 'roided in comparison. Who cares about such dull names as Triple H when you can cheer for Ann Sane or Pinky Swears?

The Queen of Science has decided her 'derby name should be "Decked-Her Horrible."