Category: PERSONAL

Bluepill

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I get an email from my workplace, and what’s the first image in the content? Yup, it’s a scattering of blue pills. Of course, for someone who hasn’t seen or didn’t care for The Matrix, this has no real symbolic significance at all. It’s an appropriate image for the link to an article about the impending launch of a College of Pharmacy at our campus. But for someone who’s seen The Matrix, the Blue Pill has a rather ominous meaning, for Morpheus tells Neo that if you take the Blue Pill, “the story ends, you wake up in your bed …

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“Let The Little Children Come To Me…”

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… may be close enough to pass as a Bible quote, but I don’t think it says, anywhere in that book, that clerics get to say that to kids so they can rape them with impunity, with the aid of the Church in keeping them out of prison (or other trouble)… and I don’t think it’s specified anywhere that when this institutional crime comes out, the biggest cleric of them all gets to pretend nothing’s going on. I want to leave aside the fact that this is an obvious, and pathetic, public gaffe which can only serve to harm the …

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A Hard Decision Made

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Well, folks, I’ve decided, finally, to come clean. Those of you who have met me in person? Seen my photograph? That’s not me. It’s a guy named Leonard. He’s a pretty good actor, and a swell chap. He lives in Korea, he pretends to be me. He even spends a few hours a day just sitting in front of a computer, so that this blog is plausible. He checks the blog every day, logs in, types some crap and then deletes it. Just, you know, in case anyone decides to look into the records. He’s part of an elaborate ruse. …

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Briefly…

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“German bishop surprised at number of abuse cases.” He must be the only one. Even among practicing Catholics — in the Western world, at least — nobody who is in possession of his or her senses is ever surprised when charges and evidence come up of priests sexually molesting children, and nobody is surprised when it comes out that the Church was protecting such monsters, shuffling them around and keeping everything hushed up. In fact, the German bishop’s being surprised is either an act or a sign of utter naiveté. (Link via Mike Armstrong’s post on Facebook, which I won’t …

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Political Protest Blood Drive

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Imagine participating in a political landscape where you run a blood drive so that you can use the blood to douse the offices of the ministers you oppose, as part of your effort to drive them out of office. No, really. And better: The next day, they will collect 1,000 more liters and target the prime minister’s residence, the demonstrators said. You know, I just don’t really know what to say about that except that sometimes the real world really does make the job of the speculative fiction writer a little more demanding.

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Happy Birthday to… me.

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This year is the year of the tiger, which is my sign in the Asian zodiac. That means, of course, my age is a multiple of 12 — in fact, 36. This isn’t quite midway for average male life expectancy in the developed world, but on the other hand, for the men in my family, this might well be the average of halfway, or even farther along. So I guess I should be reflecting on where I’ve been, and where I want to go. Except, well, I did that a lot last year, and I feel like I’m on track, …

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For you Home Brewers out there…

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… or anyone interested in beer, brewing, and associated lore. I doubt the whole book will be of interest, but these few pages I typed out are probably at least a little bit interesting if you’re a brewer: From Roles of the Northern Goddess by Hida Ellis Davidson. London: Routledge, 1998. (from the Chapter titled “Mistress of the Household” (Pg 138-141): Yet another important use of water by the women was for brewing ale, the usual drink for all ages at a time when water was often suspect. Its association with a goddess may be seen in ancient Egypt, where …

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Hugo Bids? Send the Sofa Some Love

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I’m not really campaigning for a Hugo or a Nebula or anything like that, folks. 2009 was a very slow year for me, and the short story competition is huge. I love both of my published stories from 2009, but I’m much more excited about the stories coming out in 2010. Still, I guess I’m duty-bound to point out that “Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands” (at Apex) and “Of Melei, of Ulthar” (at Clarkesworld) are my two eligible stories. However, I wanted to draw attention to the bid Starship Sofa is making for Best Fanzine nomination. This isn’t just …

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Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle

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It is almost certainly unfair to Guy Delisle that reviewers will compare this book with his earlier Pyongyang, for that latter graphic novel was a major achievement, and for me at least, it represented something new in the world of comics. I read it in wonder, a few years ago, amazed at how Delisle managed to tell the story of a year so smoothly, so engagingly, and so courageously. The newer book is quite different, but this should surprise nobody: we cannot expect an artist or writer to produce work that is like the first work we have encountered from …

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