Urvashi Vaid

Has a new book out, Irresistible Revolution.  It's top of my to get list.  I've been listening to interviews on podcasts like OUT FM in NYC and watching speeches and interviews on the web and remembering how cogent and incisive Virtual Equality, her earlier book, was.  And remembering what an inspiring activist "Urv" and others like Sue Hyde, Jerry Greenberg, Linda (I'm blanking on her name, but she was fierce), young folks working for NGLTF and moonlighting in OUT! like Scott and Mary, and old hands like Frank Kameny were when I was a teenager in 80s DC with homohatred and denial strong in the local and national culture and AIDS raging.  I was constantly impressed with her and their fearlessness and willingness to speak out despite all the shaming and silencing that was still the hallmark of the time, so many years post-Stonewall.

Besides having a hot, funny GF (Kate Clinton, yes, *that* Kate Clinton), Urvashi's wicked smaht.  And lived the movement history she's writing about.

Her site has a link to a study of lesbian participation in the first two "marches on Washington of the LG flavor-  labels changed for each one and 1993...   Some interesting observations. 

It brings me back... Queer DC at the time, like Boston and other cities was split between men and women, each divided by racial groupings, with a radical lesbian underground hosting women's music, collectives, a feminist bookstore, magazines like off our backs, and the like.  And some of us straddled that scene and hung with the radical guys in scenes like Gay Community News, ACT UP!, and OUT!  It was a bit of a mind- bender, ideologically and socially speaking.  Sexism, hostile defensive disinterest, and invisibility from one side and some whack ideological social policing and infighting/trashing like only women can do on the other...  For a teenage wannabe activist, there was a lot to learn and digest, all at once from all directions.  Urvashi had a way of cutting through the b.s. effectively, from understanding where everybody was coming from but calling them out too.  The way I remember it, anyway...

North Brother Island

I have a little sideline obsession with abandoned ruined buildings, particularly mental institutions, sanitariums, and prisons.  It started with Alcatraz and the abandoned farmhouses that list on rural properties in Virginia and North Carolina, and over time places like under-church grottoes in France, the Castell in St. Augustine, the Presidio in Tucson downtown, the Sutro Bath ruins at the edge of San Francisco have re-stoked it.

Plus Melody Gilbert's urban explorer film "Into the Dark" and youtube videos of urban exploration.  An old veterinary hospital in Wales, the catacombs under Paris, old train tunnels and graveyards, and all the old asylums can be explored from your couch or bus seat.  Without fumes, falling plaster or beams, and crawling through raw sewage... or law breaking and some such technicalities.

I'm particularly obsessed with North Brother Island, a small island in the New York Harbor that is near Ryker's Island.  It hosted a typhoid quarantine residence that held Typhoid Mary, a sanitarium, a juvenile drug rehab center, and more.  There's something about the mishmash.of architecture and history that fascinates me.  I keep trying to use it in a story but it is wily and elusive...

Cleaning out my bookmarks, I found this slideshow from North Brother Island.  Some really nice shots by Ian Ference, such as the one above, plus an overview of the island's past incarnations.  Enjoy.

Fellowship

In honor of the President giving us the day off and the need for some hands-free entertainment while baking, I'm listening to an audio production of "The Fellowship of the Ring." 

A tip o' the hat to Cle for inspiring me to pick this up at Magers and Quinn, our awesome general used book store (Uncle Hugo's rules used and new SFF). 

I have trouble reading fantasy, and especially epic/high fantasy, but it turns out audiobooks cut through the attention deficit quite nicely.  So far, it's very enjoyable.  I thought background music would be annoying, but it works well.

We went to see "The Hobbit" on opening weekend.  The others in the group were not as taken, but I found it funny and tense, in the correct parts.  I guess I'm a sucker for dwarves.  One looked suspiciously like Young Hercules.  I might actually have to see it again...

I also really enjoyed "Night Train to Munich," which is now almost 75 years old.  It soft-pedaled WWII and the Nazis a bit, with lilting British accents, but it was made in 1940.  Despite this, it actually managed to imply that much more horrible things lay beneath the surface of the Reich, and made it clear collaboration was inexcusable. 

And somehow it moved very fast and remained intensely suspenseful.  Very.unusual for such an old, mannered film.

Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood, directed by Carol Reed (a dude), and lots of double-crossing spy drama.  James Bond lifted the ending scene 35 years later, with Jaws on the ski trams.

Coldheart Canyon

I am feeling impatient for my potato water to cool so I can mix the sponge for Rusleipa, Finnish sour potato rye bread.  Experimenting with sourdough starter is starting to pay off, but I haven't mastered reading the recipes ahead of time to be able to plan for 12-20 hour sponges.

So instead, it gives me time to discuss Clive Barker's novel, Coldheart Canyon.  I was hoping to read something I'd heard

of by him, but this was the one available at the library, so I gave it a try.

Coldheart Canyon turned out to be very readable, though a real mishmash of a Hollywood satire, a horror novel, and erotica.  The different genres weren't blended so much as arranged like a collage, one, then another, then back to that, then that. 

The characters were pretty strong, even the villains, which made this work.  It also worked against falling into genre cliches.  The cheesy erotica parts were a little too horrific, and the horror a little to funny, or sexy, and the bits of satire added a nice edge.

It's ostensibly a ghost story- fading Hollywood it boy hides out in an old mansion and gets drawn into congress with the undead.  But ghosts, the Devil, his goat-boy son, and monstrous animal-human hybrids, plus some magic spells, make for a grabbag of horror tropes.  Hard to say more without giving too much away...

The ending kind of dragged on, much like Salem's Lot, but this paid off a little.better in the Barker novel.  I will definitely have to check out some of his other titles, while I'm on a horror kick.

Oh yeah

I have a summary of all the books I blabbed about here, basically, up at Aqueduct Press's annual year-end extravaganza.  Mine is  here.  I've got to go peruse the other lists for 2013's to-read list...

More desert

Brrrr

I got spoiled by several days in Tucson, Arizona.  And came back to calf-deep brown snow.  ; (.

We went so the lady who sprained her ankle could try running a marathon down Mt. Lemmon.  Turned out she could, in a decent time despite doctor's orders to walk intermittently.

We made the rounds to Native Seeds to get dried chilis and gifts, to the Desert Museum, to Mission San Xavier (whose local name "san'aveer" drove the Mi'waukan crazy for some reason).  We went through the 4th Ave street fair, trying to get to La Indita, a native-Mexican restaurant that's very veg-friendly.  They had junk you'd see at any big street fair, including a screaming homophobic preacher guy.

At the Desert Museum, the javelinas, black bear, bighorn sheep, coatimundis, beaver, otter, hummingbirds, and mountain lions were in top form, but the coyote was sleeping and the ocelot was hiding in his lair.

So we ate all kinds of good food, walked around the desert, ran a little in the crazy resort the marathon got us a deal with, and lounged in their pool.  It's tough being a sherpa...

I wasn't the best sherpa though.  I made her hike up to Romero's Pools, a steep rocky trail, two days before the marathon.  My excuse is that I didn't really remember what the hike was like, but mostly it's my favorite trail.  The pools were mostly dry, it being winter.  But the sun was not quite so bad.

For the first time I saw Taliesin West, up in Scottsdale.  It's funky, and the tour is interesting.  Check out how well it blends into the landscape (up top).

I was reminded of a couple bad novels I read this year that tried to get all precious about

Great Russian SF writers

I was just reading about how Stalker was a must-read Russian SF novel, when this popped up in Locus:

Russian author Boris Strugatsky, 79, died on November 19, 2012 in St. Petersburg, Russia from heart problems and pneumonia..."  His brother Arkady died in 1991.

As they say, the Strugatsky Brothers wrote dozens of SF novels together, most famously Piknik na obochine, Roadside Picnic, was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, and was made by Andrei Tarkovsky into his classic film, Stalker (1979). ..."  Also made into a video game of the same name.  More here... 

The new translation of Roadside Picnic from Chicago Review Press has a foreword by Ursula Le Guin and is supposed to be good.  I loved the film Stalker, back when I had time to bask in a three hour very slow movie, and will have to find this book...

Here's an old review from Strange Horizons of a former edition...

Snow for Thanksgiving

Nothing like an empty train station to make going to work fun.  We each got our own door getting on...

We got snow for Thanksgiving, as usual, even though it was 55 degrees in the morning.  Early 20s now.  Quite the drop.  But that's normal too...

I cooked my first turkey yesterday, with a friend, and it worked well.  Oven bags work...  We got a 15 lb. bird but then a family of six bailed, leaving less than ten of us, with three vegan/vegetarians, so there are a few leftovers...

I finished Pirate Cinema with mixed feeings, and now am returning to one of the books that scared the bejeesus out of me as a kid: Salem's Lot, by Stephen King.  When vampires were scary and didn't have detective agencies, fated romances, or comic timing.  And small towns were... well, what they always are in horror novels.  Very very small.

I forgot it started with the opening for Hill House as an epigram.  Very few writers can open a story like Shirley Jackson and terrify instead of evincing giggles.  I spent last weekend watching youtube videos of exploring abandoned farmhouses and rural mansions and hotels (like the one in The Shining), so Marsden House is extra vivid as King describes it.  Not sure I'm gonna sleep until it gets light out again at night...

Near-future fic with bite, and not so much

I've been out of it. Trying to find a used car before it snows to replace my truck that liked to slide around and fishtail even with 200 lbs of sand in the back, and just finally found something affordable yet decently kept up. The GF's son is getting married. Much planning and shopping and stressing.

I've mostly kept up with audio magazines and podcasts because they're hands- and eyes-free on the lightrail and at the gym.

But now I see there was a creepy near-future science fiction story in the New Yorker recently. It was timely, as a friend just succumbed to getting her daughter an American Girl and my niece had an American Girl party. Parents pulling their hair out all around me. Well, the mothers, anyway. Both fathers keep their heads shaved because with daughters, what else can you do...

Here's the link: . There's an interesting interview of the author up there too.

I've had this idea in my head for a story that's vaguely similar, and have been doing lots of reading about globalization and such to try and crack the nut that makes it not work very well. This story inspired me to try harder.

Another similar story that's very effective is Joanna Sinisalo's "Babydoll," which was nominated for a Nebula in 2009 and appeared in the Hartwell Cramer Best Of SF anthology for that year. This is the stuff I'd like to see more of in SF, stories that get at the socio-cultural-economic walls that the media-military-industrial complex has us up against. I like hyphens...

I just started Cory Doctorow's new YA release, Pirate Cinema. So far it's interesting but the main character is not very appealing and the corporate-government constant surveillance and domination premise even more overstated than Little Brother.

Teen boy protags whining about how oppressed they are while their mom fights the state for her disability benefits and dad tries to keep up at work to pay for the internet service teen boy throws in the toilet so he can make fanfic videos he won't even acknowledge making in ten years... they do not hook me from the get-go.

And as usual smart, tech *and* social-savvy teen girls are just the love interest backdrop and sexual objects, however hard the narrative works to give them more credit than usual for brains and strategic skills.  Why they want to service the protags with loyalty, sexual favors, and affection is generally unclear to me, but then, I'm biased.

(Momentary rant, likely somewhat unfair- These novels appreciate the presence of women, but don't really need them for the narrative to unfold, except as booty gained in the game. And look, a juiced-up Frankenbox just lands in your lap when you run away from home and lose your laptop on your first day of freedom. Oh, that's right, you did do some work on sll those sweatshop- produced parts...  And somehow you never have to consider selling your body or worry about rape while living on the streets and in squats deep in druglord territories. So oppressed, when Disney Inc. is the only real threat...)

But Pirate Cinema does have the usual tech and econ infodrops that make up for all that.  I will keep reading.  For the Win was less parochial and sheltered than the LB books and this one, as much as diversity is inserted here and there.  Sad it got less hype.

Of course,  Wired loves it.  Can ID more with the love letters to hacking chic...

Goblin Secrets

Will Alexander won the National Book Award for Children's Lit'r'ture!!  Writer's Night Out regular, Rain Taxi contributor, fellow alum, he's awesome, and Goblin Secrets is really good.

More here.  And a snippet from Ursula K Le Guin's review is there too.

We watched the live tweeting last night at WNOut and then did a little dance, sort of.  There was merriment. 

October is busy

Alif the Unseen

I am reading G. Willow Wilson's Alif the Unseen, while listening to Shirley Jackson's creepy We All Lived in the Castle.

Alif has been getting a lot of attention.  So far it's interesting enough.  The setup is a good one- all the reviews cover that.  The setting is a nice change.  But large swaths are kind of lackluster for cyberpunk, with more of a dreamy fantasy pace.  (It combines elements of both.)  It's very heterosexual as well, in the way Oscar Wao is- lots of time in the head of a red-blooded if respectful young man.  The females are worship objects for him at the same time as they are capable smart players in their own right.  It's the loveable geek guy hero thing.  After reading Cory Doctorow recently,  I'm a little tired of that protag/POV...

The Jackson is just creepy.  She's almost too good at that.  Can't listen to it while falling asleep.

Cool!

Quite the find.   Though we don't all have acres of permafrost in the backyard.  What will they think to do with all this rich data...

This (last- post publishing delayed by Virgin/Sprint fail) weekend's Gaylaxicon was quite enjoyable, and much more approachable than I was worried it might be.  They had a meet and greet on Friday night where people seemed to be enjoying themselves and mingling and mixing beyond who they already knew.  I'm shy, so I can't say I was overly outgoing, but met some new people...

The panels were interesting.  I went to a discussion of YA that talked about different books that the usual recent bestsellers, with author Ginn Hale (The Wicked Gentlemen) making some good comments.  My panel went well.  People had some good ideas about why women underattend and what can and can't be done about it.  Kudos to Naomi Krirzer for organizing it last minute.  A panel on writing across genres was lively and interesting food for thought.

The GF busily ran her 10 mile warmup Saturday and then the TC 10 mile race on marathon Sunday, between panels.  There were some big meals interspersed to keep her from eating arms or legs.  Dim sum with a bunch of writers was fun and even had enough vegetarian options for three participants, dim sum being an iffy proposition sometimes.

Now I have a day off and can run tons of errands.  My truck decided to throw the enigine light and I have to decide whether to studiously ignore it while looking for a new car, or not...  Time to get something that doesn't reinjure my leg every time I drive it... 

I may not actually get much accomplished today though.  Already I'm like, "Is it naptime?"  While the dogs are looking at me like it's first walk of the day time.  This does not bode well for productivity.

Sensawunda

That's the thing:

"I think the sense of wonder that science fiction offers is closely related to the feeling of awe that science itself offers."

-from an interview of Ted Chiang 

A story can be good and not evoke this.  It can be very original and still not have that thang.  The thing I go to SF for that other fiction doesn't do.  That's what does seem to be missing lately.  As the critics keep saying, there's a lot of.competent and even great writing out there, but very little that gives that science fiction fix. 

I don't think this about diversity as in representation of more marginal peoples.  I think it's about diversity in terms of interests in different styles of fiction drawing new writers in; some bit of herdishness and magazine core feel and focus drawing more of the same; the very strong influence of TV and movie scifi - which has a very different focus and feel; the difficulty of envisioning nearish futures at the moment without missing something key that's already clearly in motion to other eyes, and the difficulty of optimism that isn't cheerleading and pessimism that isn't dehumanizing and lacking a sense of agency in some important way.  Writing stuff with the SF feel is very hard.  It takes energy, verve, and real research and application of some sense of logic.  Right and left brain work.  I think the other factor is so many people grinding out work to contract and focused on volume.  As the economy sucks and people are stressed and working too hard, and having difficulty seeing the opportunities, the change, and the posibilities vs. the obvious failures.  (SF also takes some mental distance, which can be a flaw.)  All coming together.

Fall camouflage

This weekend Gaylaxicon comes to town.  When did it become October? 

I'm on a panel about "Where are all the women" because Naomi Kritzer asked me to join.  I'm not sure I have any answers, but so far the panel topics aren't particularly intriguing.  I've heard there are always cute boys by the pool, but that's not really a draw for me...  I guess it's a fair question.

Should be a lot of interesting people in one place though.  I'll probably be excited once I'm there... 

There has been a lot of queer-focused SFF popping up lately, but little I've been very excited about.  I read some non-SFF YA I liked tho- Becoming Emily by local author Rachel Gold was a good basic trans teen read.  It managed to depict internal angst and family drama without falling into melodrama or cliches.  Or being pedantic.  Coming out stories are not easy to navigate these days, when it's not all new and silenced yet many teens face silencing, erasure, suppression, lack of information and community, and abuse nonetheless.

Now I'm listening to Elizabeth Hand's Radiant Days, which is technically fantasy but has more of a nostalgic feel really.  Lesbian protagonist in late 70s DC meets Rimbaud through a magical bum's lock house on the C&O canal.  She lays out decent historical DC graffiti writer background, I can say having just researched that, but the white chick protag taking credit for inspiring Disco Dan is whack, if sort of brashly Xenaesque.

I'm also reading lesbian author Carol Anshaw's latest novel, Carry the One.  It's weird and oddly grim and funny at the same time, like all her novels, which is to say I'm liking it so far...

Lynx move on in a squeaker!

One point up, Seattle time out wirh 3 seconds to go.  They all seemed tired, but it was a good game.

C in the sky tonight

Oh lord...  Wasn't that the song?

C in the sky keeps on turnin' I don't know where I'll be tomorrow Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'...

I'm running down that dusty road...

Actually light rail to the Lynx game, hoping they can pull it out to beat Seattle and make it to the finals.

Quote of the day: Cyberpunk's origins

"In a sense, it’s a generational thing. In 1980, the writer Bruce Bethke –whose short story “Cyberpunk” inadvertently christened the genre –was working at a Radio Shack in Wisconsin, selling TRS-80 microcomputers. One day, a group of teenagers waltzed in and hacked one of the store machines, and Bethke, who’d imagined himself a tech wiz, couldn’t figure out how to fix it. It was after this incident that he realized something: these teenaged hackers were going to sire kids of their own someday, and those kids were going to have a technological fluency that he could only guess at. They, he writes, were going to truly “speak computer.” And, like teenagers of any era, they were going to be selfish, morally vacuous, and cynical."

From an  article by Claire Evans in Motherboard...

Exhaustion in the field

An interesting discussion of what Ben Rosenbaum brought up earlier this year, the boredom, here framed as exhaustion, of science fiction, at Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolfe's the Coode Street podcast.   They were talking to Peter Kincaid about his review in the L.A. Times that discussed this re: the best of revues.

These conversations speak to me particularly, as a reader, when they discuss what is SF vs. stories taking place in a science fiction setting.  And stories that are vigorously performing SF vs. expanding its horizons truly.  Need to think about it more.

Autumn harvesting

We went apple picking on a co-worker's farm, four huge bags worth barely making a dent in the trees.  The horses live up there, an hour north of the Twin Cities.  Cool but sunny day, good for fall harvest work. 

My garden was frosted this morning, so I picked the last peppers and squash.  The parsnips and kale are happy though.

I watched an interesting set of classic documentaries about L.A. yesterday while cooking lentils, kale, and curtido (in anticipation of trying my hand at pupusas tonight).  "The Exiles" followed a group of San Carlos Apaches around L.A. during a regular night, mostly the Bunker Hill neighborhood before it was razed in1969.  The other short docos showed Bunker Hill as the city was planning its demise and the elevated railcar that went up that hill, the Angel's Flight, before it was taken apart.

The wikidescription: "(The Exiles (1961) is a film by Kent MacKenzie (6 April 1930, Hampstead, England -16 May 1980, Marin County, California) chronicling a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in the district of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, California. Bunker Hill was then a blighted residential locality of decayed Victorian mansions, sometimes featured in the writings of Raymond Chandler, John Fante and Charles Bukowski. The structure of the film is that of a narrative feature, the script pieced together from interviews with the documentary subjects. The film features Yvonne Williams, Homer Nish, and Tommy Reynolds. Filming was done in 1958."

More here.  The soundtrack, rock 'n' roll music from The Revels, keeps things moving despite the lack of strong structure and dramatic actions.  The daily normal sights from 50's L.A.  are truly fascinating, because so much has changed.

I've moved on to an audiobook of Phillip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which I have not gotten into enough to discuss.  I'm also reading Becoming Emily by local author Rachel Gold, a trans YA novel that has gotten good reviews.  I met Rachel at the Golden Crown Society convention and a reading and this made me want to check the book out...  To be reviewed...

A Viking stirs stuff up

Our not very winning football team who spent the last few legislative sessions thrusting their stadium proposals down our throats (and into our tax bills) finally shows the other side of having so much influence.  (The Lynx, our winningest team, in contrast, plays under Timberwolves logos and does not have a link on the Strib front page, unlike the losingest men's teams.)

Punter Chris Klewes has been thumbing.his nose at a lot of ideas about what NFL and football players should and should not do:  a summary.  Dave Kopay, our local E and all the dudes who waited or never came out should be happy.

Meanwhile,  this and  this are complicating football's very small world lately...

Ear candy

Lately I have been mired in a small but detailed book that has slowed my pace a bit still Wallerstein's Historical Capitalism.  It's truly fascinating and I have to really think about it.  Also reading Peter Edelman's recent discussion of U.S. poverty policy, So Rich, So Poor, a good summary of his body of work on the issue.  And some anthologies on globalization and global economics.  Complementary.

I made up for this by reading tasty snack Lee Lynch's classic Naiad novel The Swashbuckler, which is good and as a bonus focuses on the inner world of butches in early 60s NYC (IIRC the years) who have their doubts about the rules and healthfulness (hi Anita - I still think healthiness sounds better) of the gay scene and the nuclear family imperative.  The main character, Frenchie, is from a French immigrant family and her main love interest is a Puerto Rican recent immigrant, and their relationships with her families are weaved into the story in interesting ways.  Not the usual gays in the ghetto without larger lives story, yet the ghetto's importance at the time is primary.

I've also been supplementing the study of historical capitalism with listening to the audiobook of Cory Doctorow's For the Win, which focuses on capitalism's social effects and bases in the current 'globalization' incarnation.  Or avatar.  It's full of protests and strikes, a 'Webblies' gold farmer union, As You Know Bob yet useful explanations of a wide range of historic and new social engineering-based economic scams, and tales survival in the urban wastelands shaped by the web economy.  And stuff. 

The wide range of characters are likeable and make bad choices that we all make as a matter of course in HC that keep things moving rapidly.  Some aspects are kind of...  It's Cory, and it's aimed at American geek boys is how I will put it.  But it makes for good commute- to- downtown day job well- entrenched- in - the- system listening.  While cooking and doing chores too...

I tried listening to French SF novel Gringoland by Julien Blanc-Gras, but its wackiness and literary style make it difficult to follow without really focusing.  Not sure I'll have the time right now.

Otherwise, I've been trying out a bunch of SF podcasts and queer podcasts.  Galactic suburbs, a feminist SF podcast from Australia, the Outer Alliance 'quiltbag' SFF writers organization podcast, and various interview shows have been the most interesting. 

It's an easier way to find out what's going on in fandom, the world of cons, and the writerly web networks than keeping up with blogs and livejournals.  For someone who does not Facebook and uses a phone on the run much more than a computer.  Web bookmarks take up phone dataspace, but the podcast app saves to the SD card...  So thanks podcasters for all your hard work!

Bounty

It's that time of year where every neighbor, co-worker, family member, and friend is trying to give you zucchini but you're full up too...

Quote of the day: manhood

"There are two ways to define manhood. One way is to say that manhood is the opposite of womanhood. The other is to say that manhood is the opposite of childhood."

Cited by Kelley Eskridge, from a site The Art of Manliness, discussed be her here. 

Maintaining

Waiting for the plumber and reading Immanuel Wallerstein's "Historical Capitalism" while listening to Teenage Kicks on KFAI.  Beans in the pressure cooker are spitting at me.  Sorry, sorry!  It does seem meaner than the crockpot somehow. But who wants to wait.

I took out a bunch of books from thrre social/economic theory shelf and now I'm having to actually read them...  Interesting, but slow going.  Watched "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" last night, which was ok but made me want to read the book.  It was paced weird and slightly obscure, just enough to make me sleepy.  I think I stayed awake the whole time...

Le Carre's "Call for the Dead" (IIRC) made for a good audio book.  The reader had a good pace and tone and it was a pleasantly old school style of prose. 

"American Psycho" did not entertain as much as "Bright Lights, Big City."  I gave up after leafing through 20 pages of descriptions of 80s clothes, decor, and grooming habits and awful awful people, before anything happened.  Took notes on this, eh, as I tend towards these openers and have to CUT them out.  As he could have.  But then, it was probably entertaining in the 80s or shortly after when it all signified more...  But I remember being bored then too. 

The movie by Mary Harron and Guin Turner is more sly and clever, and moves along more... All that detail slides by more easily on film.

Anyway, I've earned this holidat weekend by upping my production numbers this past month.  The methods and checklists I've spent so much time developing seem to be slowly paying off.  I can't stop my perfectionism, but I think I can reign it in without feeling too much like I'm phoning it in...  It's hard when you get a lot if praise for thoroughness and complexity...

Meanwhile my favorite state workers are being told they don't deserve 2% raises after the long furloughs without pay, serious attrition amidst hiring freeze shrinkage, and multiplying duties.  Yay, business oriented economic analysis- those CEOs getting all those bonusus and raises just don't figure in...  Run it into the ground like all those Savings and Loans and banks and brokerages and businesses and farms that are the lifeblood of our healthy GDP, willya?  Sure, you betcha.

The photo is our old, one of the worst in the US, skid row (Washington Avenue) transformed into downtown residential playland.  It still surprises me every time I go there.  The dark empty lots are gone.  There's a before picture on a wall of a building I walked by before taking this photo...  Then the Guthrie decided to move and, bang, renewal.  (The people were displaced decades ago, so no real fight, AFAIK.)

Hmm.  Nothing much more to babble about.  Blondie is hanging on the telephone after she hollered for that dude to call her.  Teenage kicks rocks harder than most of the misplaced noatalgia fests aimed at my demographic, but only because it's light, lazy, and as Brit-oriented as punks and alt rockers were then.  Not all REO and Night Ranger...

Truly awesome crop art

 The Bride With The White Hair Lives 

American Psycho

I'm excited 'cos I got ahold of American Psycho y Bret Easton Ellis.  I read this as a teen, because it was sitting around, but did not realize what a great satire it was 'til the movie by Mary Harron and Guin Turner.  The lesbian version has depth.  Now I want to see what the original has to offer...

I'm still trying to finish Absolution Gap. It's long.  But it has moments of absolute brilliance.  And I like the gentically enhanced pig, Scorpio.  The baddies are pretty cool too.

I'm listening to the first LeCarre Smiley book on the commute.  I got hooked on audiobooks while sick and unable to hold my head up, much less hold and stare at a book for hours.  The Scottish accent of the last one was awesome, and the guy reading LeCarre's pretty good so far.  I like when they're not too slow.  I read fast...  The LeCarre starts rather slow, but the curious mystery about a guy's death is developing, with interesting character descriptions.  The telling detail...

Garage bands

Went to see a friend's band, Element 113 (Yes, they're geeks), at Geezerfest, a benefit for prostate cancer.  Lee's Liquor Lounge is a stylin' dive, and the bands sounded good, if too loud.  My rule of thumb for live shows in a small venue: turn it up to where you, the band, with your earplugs and rock n' roll vanity, think it's good, then turn it down a notch.  Or two.

State fair this week, debating my interest level.  Swine flu brews in the pig barn, but Dawes is playing the Leinie's Lodge or Soundstage or whatever.  Have to see what's on a stick...

Getting some writing done.  Slowly.

Bass

I have started reading the local fishing forecast, to find out if my nearby lake is swimmable.  So I can aqua-run.  Like aqualung but less skeevy...

Apparently it's prime bass season.  They like to freeze their little tushies off, I guess.  Mid-August and 48 at night...

You can deduce my mental state

From the fact that I am taking notes on After Liberalism, by intellectual heavy Immanuel Wallerstein, while listening to Absolution Gap by Alistair Reynolds and really actually contemplating the narrative structure of this thing I've been trying to write.  I voted.  I worked 9 hours too.  I did something productive today.  Now it's time for attention deficit to work its magic...

The Closing Ceremony

Watching now.  Wow. 

It may mean that steampunk and scifi have jumped the shark, to be so thoroughly... I'm not even sure what.  But it's actually quite interesting as a statement of "here's where we are and where we're headed." 

As a display for all the former colonies, it's...  something.  Especially the slave ship with Annie Lennox as pirate queen.

Are we that old that it was time for a Spice Girls reunion?  Wow.  Kudos to the planners for finding someone who could really pull off "Walrus" without being precious.

The men's marathon was pretty cool this a.m.  I was hoping for a surprise winner, and Uganda upsetting Kenya with only one American even finishing was definitely that.  Great smile as he cruised towards the finish.  The women's 4x400 relay with a serious new record after past fiascos while the Bahamas took the men's relay, Usain doing his thing like it's easy, the 17 y.o. bringing home gold in the first women's boxing while the U.S. men did not, and Rudisha winning the 800m with a world record were all great viewing...

It almost makes me wish I could run...

Keeping up

In a story I wrote for a Loft class seven or eight years ago, this, er, empty lot played a key role, in 2020 .  Didn't foresee the condoization of that industrial part of downtown by the highway...

The mural overlooks the parking lot by the Loft, our writing center.  And the Metrodome.  Pretty cool.

Absolutin Gap

Quote of the day: "Joan of Arc was just a girl.  Look at the bloody mess she left."

Listening to the audio book for Absolution Gap, part four of Alistair Reynold's big saga.  Chewy far future true-to-science extrapolation with a huge cast of ornery characters.  Very satisfying, and the reader handles the complexity well.

Anatomy lessons

After recovering from food poisoning, I scheduled an appointment with an ART (Active Release Technique) practitioner.  It's weird and painful, moving and pushing range of motion through activated pressure points, but it felt good at the same time.  Since then, I've been sore but feeling like the muscles are less tight.

The appointment was interesting, because I got to feel exactly where each muscle was and how they work together.  Instead of the piriformis, which was not happy, it seems I strained the hamstring right where they connect up to the trunk.  And connected back muscles, causing sciatica.  A big mess, basically.

Waiting to see if the soreness subsides.  However, this is the first week I've been off ibuprofen and not icing as much.  Running in the water at Lake Nokomis has felt good at the time and after.  So there's finally a little light in the tunnel... 

If the lake didn't freeze over by November, I'd just stick to water running... But the winter thing has not completely abated.  We just get no x-country skiing snow...  Making cross training that much more difficult.  Gonna have to hope rehab is not too heinous.

"I got up at seven, just to watch her win"

A great contest, with some real changes of fortune.  I bet that this was Kenya's year, but, no, the GF won- Ethiopia for the gold.  Russia for the bronze.  And Gelana set a new record:

"Surging into the lead in the last mile and a half and running the second half of the race more than three minutes faster than the first, Tiki Gelana of Ethiopia won the women's Olympic marathon on Sunday in 2 hours 23 minutes 7 seconds, a record for the Summer Games."

Now watching Murray top Federer in men's tennis, another well-fought match. 

The men's volleyball US vs. Russia yesterday was a nailbiter.  The women's and men's track yesterday were close races with some upsets of favorites.  Britain's Mo Farah winning the Men's  10,000m.  Pistorius moving to the semifinals in his event.  And of course, earlier, Gabby Johnson!  There have been a lot of very watchable events.  I love a good Olympics.

Distance running and feminist history

Reading about how Olymic President Jacques Rogge refuses to award the women's marathon gold medal while of course he will for les hommes, and I stumbled on this reminiscence by pioneering gay writer Patricia Nell Warren about pioneering women's marathoning and distance running.

Not surprising, but Wow.  It's good to be reminded what we ladies take for granted now...

Clarion West Write-a-thon: Back on Track

So, yeah, I got derailed in the second week of the Write-a-thon by PAIN.  And spent a lot of time icing and stretching and researching and going to medical appointments and making up work hours to cover that.  And now my leg is becoming functional and the piriformis is considering becoming less angry.  Work is still a bear.

I was getting reorganized.  Then I got food poisoning, yay.  At least it's all given me a lot of time to consider my projects, as well as the fragility of the body and mortality and bunk like that...

I will do six weeks of the original goals from next week on.  June and early July are not my most productive period anyway.  I know, I know... Excuses, excuses...

I did get a chance to focus on research that is much needed, and to rethink the big story problems I've been wrangling with in the novel project.  Weak as an excuse for not writing, but nonetheless needed work.

So, write on...  Redux.

Geek Girl seeks rights from the Brethren

"The relationship that may usher in a new era for gay rights began in a typical way one evening in Greenwich Village. The year was 1963, the restaurant Portofino—a fashionable Friday-night spot for women, and about the only place a white-collar lesbian could be out and at ease. Edith Schlain Windsor (GSAS ’57)—Monroe-esque, cherubic cheeked, and her hair in a perfect flip—was an NYU-trained mathematician and fast-rising IBM programmer, just back from a fellowship at Harvard University. She was tired of being single and past ready to jettison the “therapy” meant to make her straight. ..."

More by Jill Hamburg Coplan here from the NYU alumni mag.  More info than the recent coverage of her seeking to come in early at the SCt in this lawsuit. 

A bit of not-uncommon history: "Thea was more experienced, having been expelled from Sarah Lawrence College for kissing an older woman." ...and, ah, those mafia-owned bars.  The fifties were so cool like in Grease, weren't they?

How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe

I finally got ahold of Charles Yu's book, as an ebook.  So far it's pretty interesting, despite the laconic wordiness that originally made me hesitant.  It's growing on me...  It's kind of zippy and laconic at the same time.  Figuring out how to use Overdrive wasted time I could have spent reading, but it's not bad for phone reading.

"If you see yourself coming out of a time machine, run."  The best line so far.

I'm also reading Game of Thrones, because the GF had it lying around, and then bought it for me when she had to turn the library copy in...  Intensely readable.  It's rare that I truly like high fantasy, but Martin has the right touch to keep me plowing through 800+ pages without noticing the time.  In my youth we read all the Sword of Shannara bools again and again, and this feels like that- what the heck is gonna happen next?  How can things get any worse? 

Writing rule #1: Have the characters make the worst possible choices, every time.  Making this believable is the tough part... But if you can, gold...

Line of Beauty

"Well, it'll soon be over."

"What?  Oh, the election."  Catherine stared out into the drizzle.  "The 80s are going on for ever."