Totally personal update. I imagine many casual readers won’t be interested. If you are, well, there’s a link, and you’re free to click it.
Month: August 2008
Trope Salad and Penis Guns and Indie SF Films… No, Really.
There it is. I hereby coin it. I googled it, and found only this, and that’s an email address for which even the cached page it was contained on was somehow empty. So Trope Salad is mine. I know, I know, you’re thinking, “You can have it. But what does it mean?” What it means is that I am trying to have fun while working on an academic paper. Always a dangerous route. What it signifies is the phenomenon wherein someone who knows absolutely jack squat about SF, or seems to know jack squat, treats it as a kind of …
The Beach
No, not the film with Dicaprio. I went to the beach a week ago with this couple I hang out with, Gwen and Mike. Good times. You might remember my mentioning a sunburn? That’s how I got it. (And I was under the beach umbrella almost the whole time! (Except when shooting these photos!) Anyway, some of my pictures actually turned out nicely, so it’s okay… The flickr set is here. UPDATE: Oh yeah, one more oddity people outside Korean will find interesting: the beach was essentially empty. And a week before, it had been crammed with people. For some …
Bwi~! and Buyeo Wives, &c.
That’s a word I think I made up myself, in Korean. At least, I’ve never heard anyone else say it, though Lime told me it sounds like the mopey protestation of a five-year-old. 븨~! This word is occasioned because my Sado Seja story did not make it into the Datlow/Mamatas anthology Haunted Legends. I’m sure competition was fierce, though, and they’re good editors. If only Nick had had the time to savage the story, I’d have learned a lot, I imagine. (But who has time?) Anyway, I’m going to do what I often don’t do… send the story out immediately. …
Bye, Yves
I don’t know my realtives on the French-Canadian side of my family too well, but I know that it’s been a hard few years. The uncle who used to chase us around the house hollering mock-threateningly (with a huge smile on his face) that he was the Cookie Monster and he was going to eat us up, he passed on not so long ago. (It feels like a little while ago.) And I just go the eulogy for my uncle Yves by email from my cousin Carlo. Liver cancer, sudden, unexpected. He passed away about a week and a half …
Great Neal Stephenson Talk
I’m a few months late, but here’s a great Neal Stephenson talk that addresses the whole SF/genre/what-is-SF dichotomy/argument/blabber in a rather interesting way: let’s talk about the people who consume SF, versus the people who consume “everything else” — which he jokingly calls “the Mundanes.” It takes a while for the video to load, but if you’re impatient, you can see it here. Adrian at mssv posted about the talk here… it seems he was there! And Adrian’s observation about Stephenson’s concept of everyone having an “Inner Geek” (as a way around discussing the link between intelligence and SF media/consumption) …
Links Updated
As a break from thinking about the film Yesterday, I threw in a plugin to help me manage the link order in my blogroll. I deleted a couple of links I no longer visit — some just because, some because the things I’ve seen at the far side of the link has infuriated me — and I have moved a bunch of links from one category to another. Plenty of links could have gone into a few different categories. If I know you personally but stuck you under “Writers” it’s because I am thinking you might benefit from this exposure. …
Wanna Read Slush for Clarkesworld?
I’d do this, but I don’t think I have the time for now. (I’d be into it if my schedule were less hectic, though.) They need some people who know and like the magazine, and can articulate why they like it, to help find the best subsmissions possible and get them out into the world. Maybe they’re looking for you…
The Hustle and Bustle of Everything Thinging
A sunburn in a place that was previously impervious to sunburn is a big hint. Yes, the hairline, she is a-receding… Ah well. I know enough about heredity to have failed to imagine myself impervious to it… All the men on both sides of my family had that going on. I do wonder if a bald spot is on the way up upon the crown? Meh. Hair… whatever. Sunburns do suck the glee out of things for a while, though. Nonetheless, the trip I made to the beach with a co-worker and her husband was cool and worth it. I’ll …
Upgraded, Listserv Added
Testing the status of the blog after upgrade. I’ve just upgraded the site to WordPress 2.6.1, which means a few plugins and things will probably need sorting in the next day or two. Excuse the mess, and please bear with me, as other commitments (especially working on a certain academic paper due next weekend) is taking up most of my time! By the way, I’ve installed a mailing list function. It’s really intended for people who read a story, like it, and pop over to my website. That is to say, most regular readers won’t necessarily need to sign up, …