Tryin' to make a living...

I'm headed in to work Saturday OT, to help crush our ever-mounting workload.  On the train, I've been madly reading Charles Stross, Rule 43.  It's very good so far.  I  hadn't realized that all but one or two characters are decidedly not heteronormative, because he made a point of making it so.  It's relatively well done, so far.  The cyberpunk is chock full of tech goodness, suspense, economic extrapolation, and good old fashioned cynicism.  I'd say more, but I have to get back to it.  Here's the MN zoo's new tapir, because he's pretty.

You know it's summer when...

A 10k blocks the road Saturday, and a triathlon Sunday.

There are backyard parties at more houses on the block than not.

You're looking up zucchini recipes, desperately trying to find something really different.

You feel bad for the people running at 4 p.m., even if they look happy.

A retro funk band is playing LOUD in your neighbor's backyard, and nobody cares 'cos they're pretty good.

You're about to break the record for most (fake) BLTs in one week.  Or fresh salsa and chips.

It's hot and you want these people with gardens and parties to shut up and go away.  So you can sleep in the shade.

You're dead tired of mowing.  You're even more tired of your neighbor mowing.  Because he makes it clear you should be too.

Chafing.  Ouch.  And a singlet and shorts are too much clothing.

Weeds.  Dreams of blowtorch or DDT.

Dogs panting and sighing and looking at you like it's all your fault.  And it is, of course.  Like fireworks and squirrels who taunt them.

Everyone else at work is on vacation.

Everyone gay is getting married.  Oh, that's new, and state- and year-specific.  But let me say, one wedding per couple, please...  You're hardly unique if we have more than one until-now-denied friend.  And don't honeymoon in a hater state, please.  Spend those niche dollars wisely.

At least my hometown is vacated by the transient powerbrokers, and everyone else can breathe that August drained swamp air freely...  Did you hear, they may have a vaccine that works for malaria?  That's actually news.

Anyway... It's hot.  And the neighbors are playing "... I got the moves like Jagger..."  *You* try to be interesting.

Writing advice from the pros

I'm an internet slacker.  I catch onto things only years later.  Following up on a recommendation to read  this, by Charlie Anders, I ran across a lot of other funny stuff, including  this. 

"There are two things more difficult than writing. The first is editing, the second is expert level Sudoku where there’s literally two goddamned squares filled in. While editing is a grueling process, if you really work hard at it, in the end you may find that your piece has fewer words than it did before, which is great. Perhaps George Bernard Shaw said it best when upon sending a letter to a close friend, he wrote, “I’m sorry this letter is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” No quote better illustrates the point that writers are very busy."

So true.  Write your heart out.

Deep summer

Tomato season.  Peppers, tomatillos, corn, eggplant, bitter melon.  Salsa canning.  Need I say more?

Best use of Game of Thrones in social theory

Jack Halberstam hits another one past the fence: on Bully Bloggers.

"...Sedgwick, she tells us early on, had critiqued Lord Halperin (House of Homosexuality and House of Joan Crawford) for investing in a Foucaultian model of genealogical thinking that placed too much emphasis on the notion of the clean break, or the Great Paradigm Shift. Sedgwick, in her emphasis on the coexistence of different models of sexuality, obviously leans more to the house of Unhistoricism than that of Historicism. But because Sedgwick is such a powerful player in the Game of Thrones, she cannot so easily be ceded to the other side."

The dog is skeptical.

So is Nena.

Watching me dance to "Let's Dance," playing on Teenage Kicks (The Current).  She's a Bowie purist.  But I remember trying to sound like Bowie did on that album, his voice deep and snarling.  That voice made the blonde bouffant and pop backing strange and artificial, as posed as any of his former guises.  Maybe.  The girl I like like liked was a huge fan, what can I say...

Listening to Tina Fey's Bossypants and wondering why I had delayed.  Freakin' funny.  She makes some timely observations about how straight people, even and maybe especially nerds and other unpopular people, have used gays for entertainment and succor, a captive audience, from a place of privilege.  I would say more, but she puts it very well from her own "oh, revelation about my past" POV.

I'm also reading Vestal McIntyre's Lake Overturn, which is slyer but just as funny in moments, a very gay take on "normal life" in Amrrca, in the form of Utah here.  The plot revolves in part around a science fair, so there's a geeky edge.

Diversicon is this weekend  with Catherine Lundoff and Jack McDeavitt as GoHs, and the GF's mom is in town.  I am trying to rev up onto the half marathon schedule again, after a two week break from various stupid injuries (no doubt from being tired).  I still plan to get some writing done, as I've been tossing some disparate things around in the noggin, not quite ready to throw on the blender.

Ah, Purple Rain.  Dig if you will, a picture...