morning temperature: -1 (with wind chill), 8 without
tea today: bancha. I awoke headache-free this morning, and am declaring myself sufficiently detoxed, though I'm going to stay off the hard stuff for a while.
teacup today: a very pretty brown Chinese-style tea bowl my dad sent me from North Carolina.  It's slightly larger than a cannonical Chinese teacup, but smaller (though deeper) than a custard cup.

Still no fever, but the sore throat persists. I believe it to be the source of the cough rather than otherwise. No fever (99 degrees fresh out of a hot shower this morning) and no swollen tonsils. I did have a lymph node that was a bit poky-outy on Monday; suspect it was fighting a rearguard action against the virus. Poor noble lymph node. You will be recollected in the annals. (Mentioned In Dispatches. *g*)

Today, I still have no brain for storytelling, so I am going to work on my book review columns, which means trying to find something to read in this pile of somewhat scary books with naked backs and slave collar imagery that doesn't bounce off the nearest available wall inside of ten pages. Wish me luck.

In other news, a little link salad for a Friday morning:

Monster fireball dominates Geminid sky--a really spectacular APOD today. One of the few things I miss about Nevada is the stargazing. It's pretty much a wash out here. You can find places that are dark enough, but... actually getting a clear night in Winter?

via jaylake

Titan has lakes! eeeeeee!

One of my earliest memories is reading National Geographic with my maternal grandfather. He was a plumber and an immigrant, self-educated, and passionately interested in science and the natural world. I got my habit of reading encyclopedias from him. he never thought it was weird.

When I was just about knee-sitting sized, the Voyagers were passing the gas giants. And NG was full of amazing photos. I know this stuff is everyday, now. But back then... we'd never seen anything like it.

It still gives me a little tight feeling in my chest to see something like a lake on another goddamned planet.

We are tidal beings. In this case, that tide is galactic....

and via hominysnark:


...I'm kind of in love.

And this? This is hysterical. And so NSFW:

Some link salad to pass the time:

Stalin's Falcons--female fighter and bomber pilots in WWII.

Justine Musk on why limits are interesting in fiction.

Very nifty Youtube video:



featuring enthusiastic scientists.

And speaking of catwaxing, here's some Saturday morning link salad.

calanthe_b reminds you that asexual people exist.

Making Light reminds you that crazy desperate people will say some shit that just ain't so. (wrt healthcare issues)

oursin has a few things to say about the same.

annafdd on treating authoritarianism and hate with compassion. 

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Man, in the past three weeks, I have gone from "I need to get in for my eye appointment" to "My God, I need a new prescription." It's amazing how fast that can happen. It's like there's a threshold you pass over, from "yep, these glasses are a year old" to "I can't see shit."

Well, it will have to wait for the Bantam delivery check to clear or some other money to wander through the door, because until it does, I am broke like a broke thing. And typing with one eye closed....

Slapfight watch:

Evil crochet: http://is.gd/1R5DW
Evil fantasy: http://is.gd/1R5Mc
Evil crime fiction: http://is.gd/1R5Qt   
Evil gaming companies: http://scott-lynch.livejournal.com/236345.html

...oh, wait. The gaming company actually is being evil.

Yep. We're ridiculous.

but dichroic wrote a good poem, and hermetic wrote an awesome essay. They're good and you should read them.

Spotted around the internet:

Safety signs blog.

A Swedish husband blogs about cultural differences in polite family behavior with his Chinese in-laws.

Link salad:

rezendi went to Ciudad Perdida and all he brought back was these amazing photographs.

METAtropolis is out.



John Scalzi has all the reasons you might find it, you know, cool.

I personally like reason #3:

3. Because this collection of stories — of a future in which economic and environmental declines have changed the very nature of what cities are – has a topic which is excruciatingly perfect for the moment, don’t you think? I mean, hey: Economic turmoil, countries on the brink, Iceland selling its children for cash on the barrelhead to buy Purina Viking Chow — who could have predicted? Well, we could have. We did. It’s all right here. And you ask, well, if you predicted it, why didn’t you do anything about it? Well, you know. We’re writers. What are we going to do, prop up the global economy with the change in our pockets? Hey, we need that for the Styrofoam vat of cheap convenience store coffee we use to make it through the day. And anyway, we did do something. We wrote these stories. Everything you need to know to survive the next, oh, 70 years is in this audio anthology. And if it’s not, at the end of those 70 years, you come see me and I’ll personally give you a refund. You’re welcome.

Yes, it really is that timely!

And also, since we're being self-serving today, some reviews for All the Windwracked Stars are up on its web page,  courtesy of the Web Ghoul.

Via theninth, Ernie repairs Burt's TV, with bonus commentary on the television producers...



I've been looking for a youtube of my favorite Muppets Moment, which is Kermit drinking milk in the first season of the Muppet Show, but the youtubers seem not to love it as I do.

Via Making Light, whence come so many good things, a Twitter scanner compiling US election-related tweets.

John Scalzi writes about why he should write about politics.

The most alien-looking place on Earth: Socotra Island. (via marthawells)

Keith Olbermann names "Worst Persons in the world." Extremely funny.

Well, I'm sure by now everybody's seen The Buffybot exploding on Katie Couric (And Katie, looking rather like a stunned mullet in her reaction shots--or maybe like a spliced-in Saturday Night Live regular). And I'm also reasonably sure we've all seen David Letterman and Keith Olbermann taking Sen. McCain apart by inches. "The road to the white house runs right through me." That is not all that much of an exaggeration.

Man, he's Letterman. There are people you do not fuck with.

In local news, we have a lull before the storm. Still too soon to tell which way Kyle is tracking or if it will make hurricane status, but we're sitting tight and enjoying mist and a break in the weather.

And local Connecticut boy, actor and philanthropist Paul Newman has died at the age of 83. Bye, Butch. We'll miss you.

In September, with a sigh,
While the end of the world is nigh,
I will make link-salad-y pie
Happy once, happy twice
Happy link salad with rice

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Guidelines for the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest

Now in its eighth year. We seek the best humor poem that has been sent to a "vanity poetry contest" as a joke. Cash prizes totaling $3,336.40 will be awarded. This contest is free to enter.

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The Dicktionary.

Yes, it's a web page collecting and collating euphemisms for "penis." NSFW, it goes without saying.

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John McCain, the Dark Knight. With bonus pics of Barack Obama in a bikini swim trunks. No high powered weapons, however.

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Marie Brennan on the path from apprentice to journeyman, and beyond.

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Yankee ingenuity:

...it only follows that the Connecticut for Lieberman Party would be squarely for McCain, right?

Wrong.

It's not even for Lieberman.

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(384 miles to Rauros.)

Link Salad (links collected from various open tabs, and I did not keep track of where I got them: apologies):

Sleep among the tetrapods. (With bonus slumbering elephants)

shadowhelm has 15 techniques for good writing habits.

The Eccleston/Izzard/Jacobi version of Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy. Craaaaaaaaaaaaack. (Although I had to watch it with subtitles on, because dude, Christopher, swallow the dialogue much?

Planet possibly imaged around a sunlike star.

David Foster Wallace, as most of you already know, is dead, the victim of an apparent suicide. A great sadness, of course, though I wonder if to him it came as a relief. His brilliance will be missed.

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I'm starting to get itchy to be at work again, which is sort of nice. I hope it holds out after VP.

And that it brings some ideas with it fairly soon.

One of the most entertaining things about being a citizen of the 21st century is navigating the enormous internet culture devoted to discussing how people are doing stuff wrong.

Things people are doing wrong today include Reviewing SFF* and Writing SFF** and Selling SFF***.

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*(It's sort of refreshing that the reviewers have slapfights too.)
**(I have great respect for the fortitude of anybody who writes a story that demands it be set in a culture not their own, and who makes an honest attempt to get it right. Because while this sort of criticism is necessary and useful, it also fills me with absolute dread.)
***(I totally support this idea of pre-emptively wandering into Borders and asking for--nay, demanding--Toby and Greg's books.)

Somebody please explain to my meat that I ate all the food in the world yesterday, and it doesn't need to wake me up complaining of hunger today?

No?

Okay, apparently it does.

First, obselfpromo (not pomo, or porno, both of which have recently come up in various places... bad choice of words, Bear!)--

1) my Storytellersunplugged column for September is up. It is entitled "Your genius (sung or otherwise)."

2) Publishers Weekly review of All the Windwracked Stars which is, er, starred as well. Woot!

All the Windwracked Stars
Elizabeth Bear. Tor, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1882-4

Hugo winner Bear (Undertow) perfectly captures the essence of faded hopes and exhausted melancholy in this postapocalyptic melodrama based loosely upon Norse mythology. On the Last Day, the historian Muire fled the battle, leaving her sibling Valkyries to die. More than 2,300 years later, only a single city, Eiledon, has survived as the dying world slowly turns into ice. Ashamed of her cowardice, Muire now vows to keep the last humans safe, but as she slowly pieces together the horrific truth behind the magic that has kept Eiledon standing, she must decide whether it's worth the price. Readers will be captivated by Bear's incredibly complex, broken characters; multilayered themes of redemption; and haunting, world-breaking decisions. While stilted prose slows the beginning of the tale, its finale is both rewarding and compelling. (Nov.)

I'm going to call that an unqualified win, even the "Hey, we have to say something critical" bit at the end.

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The news from the real world, of course, is much worse, and Hurricane Ike is going to plaster the already-quite-sufficiently-plastered-thank-you islands of Cuba and the Bahamas as a potential category IV. Here's that Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Fronteires donation page one more time...

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q. What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle?
a. Lipstick.

---

Seriously, guys.

Yes, I'm a feminist.

Yes, in general, I will vote for an equally qualified woman, queer person, or person of color over the same version in straight white male (I consider it affirmative action; if you'd like to call it racism or sexism, I'm pretty much okay with that at this juncture--and I figure I'm counterbalanced by plenty of people who will go the other way--so you needn't come blast me for it in comments.) Yes, I voted for Clinton, H. in the primaries.

But I voted for her because she was a woman and all that, not because she's a woman. Contrary to the apparent opinion of the republican party, I do not actually do whatever my ovaries tell me to do. (Ongoing commentary about The Electric Company's fixation on Morgan Freeman in the bathtub notwithstanding. Um, I'm sorry. Where were we?)

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If you were thinking of not voting this year, I'd ask you to reconsider. If you can't see your way clear to doing it for yourself, do it for me!

*g* I'm only (nearly) 37; I could be living in this country for another thirty years. (Fifty, if we get a decent healthcare system.)

Further to politics before I drop the topic for a while, I take back all the mean things I said about Joe Biden:



"I wasn't around when Harry Truman was around." Ooo, snap.

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So last night, in between playing with the broken version of the Creature Creator, I wound up revising the hasty climax I had keyboarded to finish "Smoke and Mirrors," and fleshing it out a little, to the tune of 230 more words. (Since it was after midnight, I'm counting it as today's words.)

My wordcount for the year is now 182,722, which does not count Internet Words, as I don't log those. While that's still not a particularly good year, it's improving on the wasteland of productivity I had going on for the first quarter. What I have done so far this year (including collaborations), not counting nonfiction:

Finished:

"Your Collar"
"Overkill"
"Ballistic"
"Wind-Up Boogeyman"
"Smoke and Mirrors"
"The Red in the Sky is Our Blood"
Bone & Jewel Creatures
Seven for a Secret


In Progress:

"Smile"
Chill
"The Tricks of London"
"Mongoose"

Various Shadow Unit extras

So, yeah, not one of my best years. But all things considered, it could be worse.

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And at the last, in news that I know will interest some of my flist:

VIENNA (Reuters) - Two women have made history at Vienna's Spanish Riding School by becoming the first female riders to pass the entrance exam in 436 years.

Good on you, ladies.

1) Infoworld article on a security exploit for Firefox 2.0. Sadly, upgrading to 3.0 lost me my snap links.

2) Nine hundred thousand pounds... of bananas.

3) In Shoreditch, archaeologists unearth what seems likely to be the remains of The Theatre. (This is the Burbage's original playhouse, which was pulled down after a lease dispute, the timbers then being used to construct its more famous offspring, The Globe, on the opposite bank of the Thames.)

4) My monthly article at Storytellers Unplugged, which is (this time) on self-promotion.

5) Due to the incredible coolness of the fan community, the Shadow Unit Wiki is full of spoilery and speculaty goodness.

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Right. Time to get that last pile of books out the door. By the way, if you ordered books, and you get your books, and I screwed something up, please let me know and I will fix it to the best of my ability.

1) Franz Kafka's pr0n

2) Warren Ellis on the seemingly moribund SFF print magazine marketplace.

2.5) John Klima asks who's reading short fiction, anyway? (I have a theory. I think SFF short fiction is turning into a club scene, hothouse, by writers for writers. I think it serves an important purpose as that club scene. But I'm not sure how many non-writer readers it attracts anymore. This is the film festival stuff.)

3) Lis Riba on feminist perspectives on Mamma Mia! and the Female Gaze.

4) Emma Bull on Scenic (and stubborn) Horses.

5) My Clarkesworld story "Orm the Beautiful" is nominated for a WSFA Small Press Award, along with stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Erik Amundsen, Tom Doyle, John Kratman, and Ken Pick and Alan Loewen. "The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 17-19 in Rockville, Maryland. "

Autocannibalism on NPR (Actually a Talk of the Nation interview with Richard Preston on his book Panic in Level 4.)

Authors feel pressure to produce a book a year may affect the quality of their work. (Catty comment about the quality of Patricia Cornwell's recent work heroically redacted.)

My current goal is to find a way to live off a a mere two books a year, because that seems like a pace I could sustain without killing myself.  

Maybe I should start writing thrillers.

ursulav with the QOTD: But in the long run, Obama spoke to that chunk of idealism that I have been trying to kill for years with alcohol and the Daily Show, and I voted for him as a result.

jaylake with an important PSA for WAMU credit card customers: your data may not be as secure as you think.

The Webghoul has updated my website with Act I, scene iii of Ink & Steel. And that's all you get until the book comes out! (Thank you, Webghoul!) Also, I handed in an essay yesterday to Jessica-my-lovely-editor at Roc, which will be featured (along with Ink & Steel) on the Penguin website next month.

truepenny on Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan."

1468 words on that vignette! Go me! And now, back to the reading.

First essay assigned for today is finished. Second essay... cooking now. I think there will be a little eating lunch and decompressing now, though, and some guitar practice.

Meanwhile, a collection of links--

Elise Matthesen, aka the Lioness, has published a chapbook of photos of her wearable artwork and other people's stories inspired by that artwork, which includes work by me, truepenny, casacorona, and others.

Bookslut liked New Amsterdam.

Via yendi, a wonderfully obsessive rendering of Watson and Holmes' lodgings in Baker Street. With liner notes. Now that is fandom. It also makes me appreciate how obsessively detailed the set-dressing in the Jeremy Brett Holmes was.

Man, I need to buy those, one of these days. I always seem to be renting them....

In other news, I'm currently watching both Soap (remember Soap? Brilliant!) and the television adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (I saw one or two of them in the edited-for-PBS versions, way back in the mists of history, but I have never actually watched the whole thing. Which is odd, because I grew up reading the books, and love them with all the love in me. Yes, I had a weird childhood. And I'd totally get a sex change for Michael Tolliver.) and all I have to say is that I keep getting distracted from how wonderful both programs are by the OMG ICKLE TEENY BILLY CRYSTAL! OMG ICKLE TEENY THOMAS GIBSON! OMG ICKLE TEENY NEKKED THOMAS GIBSON! moments.

Ahem.

Sometimes, it's just hard to set aside the meta, yanno?

Refining Fire, Part 5, is live.

The final installment of the final episode of the very first season of Shadow Unit is live.

Thank you to coffeeem, willshetterly, truepenny, stillsostrange, and netcurmudgeon for one of the most amazing experiences of my life. And thank all of you for reading, encouraging, and playing along.

In other news, the first tropical storm of the Atlantic season is a day early, and his name is Arthur. And this is the best LOLsloth evar. And cristalia has posted her version of my Upper Respiratory Death Drops cold tea recipe. (My version is in comments. It really works.)

And megmccarron links an awesome Tom Waits interview.

I have been such a productive Bear this morning. I answered a huge pile of lurking email, found, organized, and printed out the chapter head ornaments for All the Windwracked Stars to send to the production manager, paid bills (I love that my bank deducts the credit card payment from my checking account immediately, but waits between 24 and 72 hours to apply it to the credit card balance. Gotta make a few pennies on the float. (Somehow, I am reminded of Richard Pryor in Superman N and his half-pennies.) Although they are kind enough to retroactively credit me for the missing days. So it's just like they're borrowing the days. And the interest.

I feel like I should get a kickback for the short-term loan.

I still need to shower and eat something and read some slush, and then I am curling up with the start of S2 of The Wire and seeing what happens.

And I have a plan re: Chill. The plan is, I get the rest of February off, except for administrative work and research and all that stuff. And yes, I do have to sit down and make myself read Dust again, as much as it hurts my heart to do it. And in March, I am walling myself up in my tower and writing the book. I will come out for exercise and food and occasional internets, and other than that, there will be noveling. And we will see how much of the damned thing I can get done in 31 days. I have four hours of driving to do on Sunday, and four hours of driving to do on Monday, and driving is good thinking/plotting time for me. (We're going out ot Logee's Monday, a field trip I'm really looking forward to.)

I am restless, and would really like to be working again, which is a good sign. (I kind of feel like I am wasting my life when I'm not actually producing fiction. Because really, it's what I'm good for.)

There's an inch of snow on the ground, and it's supposed to be intermittently spitty through the beginning of next week, but nothing serious.

Mort Castle has an excellent post up at Storytellers Unplugged today. One that made me nod, and reassess what I think I'm doing with my art.

In other news, I've been made aware of what looks like a really excellent site on trekking Kilimanjaro, which I note here for your interest, and so I can find it later.

Noted without comment: And according to Michael Eisner, a deal is in the works to end the WGA strike.