Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Sorry I couldn’t find the time to blog yesterday, what with that hour so rudely yanked from my evening. (Now there’s an excuse you don’t hear every day!) A recent shipment of educational videos from Jerie didn’t help, either.

My excuse for this sorry entry is a trip with a gaggle of minor cousins to the exhibit of Caroline Kennedy’s dolls at the JFK Library and Museum. Don’t let the low-key website fool you - the JFK Library is a major Boston institution, devoted to Brookline’s favorite son. You know that a spot of ground is holy in Boston when it has a T stop named after it, and the JFK comes first in JFK/UMass.

It’s very rarely that I say this, but the JFK Library is a lovely piece of modern architecture. I could almost forgive I. M. Pei for Government Center after seeing it. That black bit is all glass, with a spectacular view of Massachusetts Bay. It’s also neat, clean and modern inside, setting it apart from other Boston T-stop institutions such as the Museum of Science (Science Park stop on the Green Line), where many of the exhibits are broken and/or haven’t been updated in forty years (really - the museum itself is 174 years old) - or on the other hand, the only slightly less shabby yet far more insolvent New England Aquarium (Aquarium stop on the Blue Line), which is no longer accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.

I don’t mean to complain about the third-world conditions again, just to point out that the People of the Monarchy of Massachusetts support the royal family first and foremost, in their hearts and in their wallets. As we strolled the hallowed halls, saw the sacred artifacts, heard the timeless speeches, and read the undying words of the nation’s most beloved president, even a lower-case r republican like myself couldn’t help feeling that the king is dead, long live the king.

It’s a Massachusetts thing.

ENT humor of the day: Enterprise Characters plus reviews
VOY humor of the day: Foyager Park - check out episode 3!

Let me say straight off that I don’t like animals. Other people’s animals are ok, but I don’t want any flea-ridden beasts in my home. Living with animals leads to SARS and cat scatch fever and the death of half the population of Europe. In other words, it’s not a good plan.

I was up late last night finishing voting in the VOY catergory of the ASC Awards. When I went to bed, I started hearing things. Scratching, chewing things. I triangulated the noise: it was coming from inside the wall near one of my bookcases, about two shelves up from the floor. I knocked on the wall to discourage the chewer, but it took him a while to settle down.

Today I called the landlord to tell him about my nibbling acquaintance. He couldn’t give me a positive answer but he thought that maybe, possibly there’s a mouse in there. Ya think? Here I was thinking Elvis had entered the building. Seriously, though, Rattus rattus is a bit chubby for getting in between the floors - in my experience, he prefers Red Line subway stops. And decimating Europe.

The landlord said he’d send the exterminator next week. I hope the mouse doesn’t chew through the antique wiring and burn the building down before then. It’s not half of Europe, but it’s home.

Horseman of the Apocalypse: Ghost Town (also here)

So I was reading about a cool browser history browser at slashdot - TrailBlazer. I was wondering, not particularly hopefully, whether it would run on OSX. It turns out it only runs on OSX. Those of us who remember the Bad Old Days sometimes forget that Macs are now Too Cool For Words.

Trailblazer is just a toy, but everyone’s gushing over a new launcher called QuickSilver. It’s amazingly cool and absolutely free - don’t Mac without it. The documentation leaves much to be desired, but this quick tutorial will get you going. MacOS 10.3 is required.

Keyboard of the day: the TouchStream LP (thanks to KC for the link)

I was having a lazy day, making vague plans to blog about fear and loathing at Making Light, when I decided to check the Writers of the Future deadline. According to the materials that came with my latest rejection, the deadline is today, not tomorrow. I think I have a set of rules around here somewhere that says tomorrow instead, but better safe than sorry and all that.

So at three in the afternoon I printed out a story. At least, thought I, the Clarion deadline isn’t until tomorrow. I pulled out the application just to check. Big oops - April 1st is the deadline for receipt of the application. I hate non-postmark deadlines.

So I had to fill out the application, print out two more manuscripts, get everything down to the post office by 6pm, and send the Clarion app express. Since it was raining, I wrapped everything in a plastic bag for the journey. I wore a slicker, having forgotten that the primary function of a slicker is to channel the rain from the clothing covered by the slicker to the clothing not covered by the slicker.

And that was how I discovered Lake Sock, which I named after the laundromat on the corner that Lake Sock is threatening to flood. Here in the third world we have no drainage, so the lake had spread to cover an entire corner of two major streets. Tidal activity almost got me, but I found a route overland.

So now I hear we’re cutting off rail access to half the state and closing a major highway for the Democratic National Convention. KC informs me that we’re also suspending the blue laws (including the newest one against smoking in bars and restaurants) for the duration. When our dark-robed masters come to town, they want to smoke in the bars until 4am, and damn the laws of the City of Boston! Don’t you wish you were above the law?

New Hampshire is looking better and better.

No, this isn’t a political post. I’m just stopping by to apologize for not blogging. I managed to find the muse by sitting very still and waiting for her to poke her foxy nose out of my subconscious. She’s in a first-person present-tense mood at the moment. I hope she gets over it soon, because I don’t care for the first person. Present tense is no object, at least in a short story.

I suppose I should go vote for some more VOY stories.

Link of the day: So You’ve Decided to be Evil

NaNoEdMo sent out a home stretch email today. There are 50 hours left in March (or so they tell me) and I have 25 hours left of my EdMo quota, and other things I need to do. Thus, I’ve added another year of not finishing to my EdMo record. But I did get the restructuring of the novel done, so it was a month well spent.

Part of my EdMo problem was that the novel gave me ideas for related stories. In my research, I discovered that the left side is the lazy half of the brain. (The right side is the creative half.) Laziness is a feature of consciousness - schizophrenics and hypnotized people are far more industrious in their non-conscious states. I suppose that explains why the muse (a non-conscious entity by definition) is so industrious, when she shows up at all.

If you see her, please remind her I have a deadline coming up.

Writing metalink of the day: The Writer’s Desk writer’s on-line resources

And I’m only halfway through the ASC Awards. I voted in a couple of categories of interest in ENT, and did a more thorough job on TNG and TOS. So far I’m one drabble category into VOY, which has to be done by the 4th. MIS is a must-read, but I’m not voting for that many writers, so the overall author category shouldn’t be too much work.

I have 85 votes in the mailbox where I’m collecting my copies. Out of those, I messed up two and had to fix them. The on-line voting interface is much more convenient than last year’s. If you’re a fan who usually avoids ASC, I’d recommend going and reading a category or two according to your tastes and vote. It’s fun.

I gather from various responses I’ve seen, such as Rocky’s, that the point is to list all the pairings you’ve written. Here goes:

The perils of the midlist continue. While I was reading this midlist report [PDF ] from the Author’s Guild, TNH was reporting the closing of Avenue Victor Hugo Books.

TNH and her readers were put off by the whining. I was more confused than bothered - it’s not clear to me that publishers or chains have any effect on the used-book market. I don’t know how a used bookstore survived in the high-rent, high-price atmosphere of Newbury Street for as long as it did. As others have pointed out, the selection hasn’t been what it once was for few years now. I certainly haven’t had much luck in the sf section lately.

But like the bottom feeder of the publishing food chain that I am, I’ll be there on April 1st for the 50% off sale.

Quote of the day: “At all times and in all circumstances, all over the globe, there exists a conspiracy, framed by nature herself, of all the mediocre, inferior, and dull minds against intellect and understanding.” –Arthur Schopenhauer

As long as I’m complaining about books, I should mention that I hate hardcovers. I want a nice little book I can read in bed, not something big enough to brain burglers. I don’t want to risk a hernia every time I visit the library. I have plenty of lovely old hardcovers that are barely larger than paperbacks, so why are all the new ones so big? So the publisher can charge three times as much for them?

I’ve seen some small hardcovers lately - The Girl Who Played Go was so short that it couldn’t have filled the standard super-sized hardcover, but Ombria in Shadow was just the right size. Unfortunately the hulking masses are still the vast majority. Someday there will be a nice e-book format (sans glowing screens), and all those cement-block-sized books will be recycled into…cement blocks.