The editing gig I’ve been working for a month or so is now, finally, thank the stars and the heavens, over. While I’m thankful for the filthy lucre, working on two textbook projects at the same time and mostly close to the deadline, during an already-busy semester, while keeping up my writing (somewhat, because I had deadlines of my own to keep), pushed me very close to my limits as a human being. Last week was relatively free, but the couple of weeks before, and the last few days, have been so crammed that I felt as if I were …
Category: GENERAL
Great Progress
I’ve made great progress on a few things: Textbook editing is almost at an end! A few more hours of hell and it’s all over! Whew! “Lester Young…” is now essentially rewritten. I need a good hour to proofread it and then I can send it off! (I’m reworking it for a major magazine. More news when I have something final to announce.) A great deal of “Eight Days” fell into place in the last couple of days. Chunks of it just sort of bubbled up out of my subconscious, and insisted on being written. I also made a couple …
On Ze Plate
… ‘zere is too much! I’m a little behind on grading, but not as much as I thought I would be a week ago. I have an unknown amount of textbook-editing left to go, but at least three full books I’ll need to proofread (possibly more than once for one of them) in the next few weeks. The proofing/editing requests are in the standard Korean mode: last minute, high-volume, jaw-droppingly short deadlines. I am unlikely to meet any more of those shockingly unrealistic deadlines: I’ve decided my health is more important than someone else’s panic. Chest pains are not a …
Athlete’s Foot, My Past Life, and I Look Chinese?
Somewhere along the way — probably in Japan — I picked this up, but it didn’t flare until a week ago. It’s been a busy week, so it took until yesterday to get to the doctor’s office. I suppose there might be a cream I could get over the counter, but I don’t know what to ask for and anyway, he is a good guy, and it doesn’t cost much to visit, so I dropped in to see my regular dermatologist. Dermatologist and urologist, actually. He does both, and this has indeed been handy. So anyway, I went to see …
Al Fry’s “Strange Beings”
Al Fry is the Strange Being, if you ask me. You can find some very odd videos by this man online — discussions of demihumans, dangerous chi power emitted from the eyes, and more insanity. It’s all a hodgepodge of random new age crap (qi and “psychic self-defense,” and the usual “vibrational levels” and “negative spirits”) and cryptozoology, duct-taped together and presented as if it was real. Except, almost as if with a bizarre sense of humor. You want to believe the guy narrating is joking when he says, “Now, listen up!” and goes on to explain how as late …
One More Year
(I would have posted the title in Korean but something about my Linux installation on my office desktop is ganked and I never managed to get the Korean language input interface installed.) I got the news this morning. It looks like, pending official approval by the Prez1, my contract is being renewed for one more year. I don’t know what the loophole in the new national labour legislation is, but I’m glad of it. Whew! That’s a huge relief! It seems I’m having a good week so far. 1. The President of the University… not Lester Young, “President of the …
Kangnam Microbrew with Charles
Charles at Liminality posted about our recent meetup in Kangnam at a beer/food buffet called Platinum. It’s a pretty good discussion — with pictures, good pictures — of a place well worth visiting (if you like beer) and all I have to add is that: Scots are human too. In fact, if you’re notScottish, you’re crap. Well, not really. But we are human, even if we are oatmeal savages. And I’m only half-Scottish too. Recent tests show that French-Canadians are human too. I could have told you. Their interfertility with Scots is a good sign, and I am living proof. …
Toilet Rules
articulate_ink posted this video: (LJ users, click the link to my site below and watch there!)
No Maps
It must be weird to be asked to talk to someone with a camera long enough to have an hour and a half of footage. I’m watching the William Gibson documentary No Maps For These Territories, and I’m struck by the difficulty of this kind of “performance.” No doubt it is a performance: sitting around and talking is different from sitting around and talking to a camera. It’s interesting in a number of ways. It certainly provides some context to Gibson’s career, especially his recent comments about SF and the comments in the documentary about the relative difficulty of imagining …
Scranton woman cited for cursing at toilet…
What can I say? This is fucking bullshit.