So, today I:
- was reassured not to worry about tinnitus that I wasn’t worrying about.
- had, I will actually admit, a song by a J-Rock band used in a mobile telephone commercial stuck in my head, enough even to download it. (5 points to the first person who can name the song.)
- got a (somewhat unsurprising, since it was a long shot) rejection letter from the Very Good Zine which is called Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
- realized (horrors!) that I have exactly one story out at a market at the moment, and that one’s on hold. Must have a look at what’s been sitting for the last six weeks, and post it out before leaving for Japan
- figured out where I can go to buy my JR Railpass for my August trip to Japan. (Which will be 3 weeks long, ye gods.) Jongno, it looks like, is the closest place. I should check for Incheon, though: it’s almost closer, with fewer tempting places along the way home for me to spill my money.
- read a bit about Peak Oil and some claims that it’s already past, and I am now somewhat horrified at our lack of a substitute as well as the horrorshow predictions. I haven’t found much to reassure me that it’s all just doom and gloom, not so far anyway. (Except, mind, for the gleefulness with which some predict the end of all human civilization. The glee sort of stales my apprehension, but not much. I do kind of wonder about anyone who is 100% sure apocalypse will come in our lifetime, though. People have said such things for, oh, forever. The tech difference is the thing that kind of scares me, is all.)
- started thinking about the inverse, the “transcending” imagination of optimistic SF writers, as I found myself naturally parlaying my anxiety about Peak Oil into thinking about optimal worlds where we’ve survived it. There’s a short story by Stephen Baxter that features a quiet human extinction after a long dark age (I can’t remember if humanity even gets offworld in that story), but it’s still somewhat saddening, too saddening for me. Thinking of the extinction of us, before the suns are all burned out, saddens me. Shall there really be no love, no ii-V-I, neither prelude and fugue nor ii-V-I, no poetry, no fresh-baked bread in a thousand years? A million years? Could humanity really be knocked over that easily? The imaginative refusal, at least, gives me hope, even if we’re not dealing with our energy situation and environment all that well yet.
- got a bit of exciting news regarding a link that I’ll be posting tomorrow. My first actually-published story (though not my first sale) simultaneously on paper and online.