I’m back in Korea. I should have left my camera at home: Fukuoka was rainy and grey, and though being there was pleasant, I didn’t feel like shooting any pictures, so the camera was just unnecessary weight. Will never again travel with my big huge brown briefcase: it’s just too heavy. One other annoyance was that my netbook was useful for writing, but not for getting online. With the exception of my (landline, not wifi) hotel room, I couldn’t get online anywhere in town. Granted, when I got home I discovered that the wifi capacity on my iPod touch had …
Category: PERSONAL
On my way to Japan
It’s a lucky thing I didn’t leave as planned. I ended up spending Monday at the hospital. I’m now on high blood pressure medication. Which is good, because it’s managing issues, but it’s hard not to be frustrated and let down by the fact my efforts in the last few months didn’t even dent my health issues. I guess I’ll have to try harder. My goal is to get off these medications in a year. We’ll see if I can manage it… I was told it’s possible, but that many people just go on the meds and have to stay on …
Recent Annoyances
Believe it or not, I’m trying not to rant and complain too much these days, as I said last night to some friends I was hanging out with. But you know, I just spent the afternoon dealing with something that, as usual, incompetent idiots didn’t deal with, and I’m in a mood. And yes, this involves a water leak and my closet, though it’s a different closet — though the source of the previous one’s leak, if that says anything to you… But if you’re not up for a rant, just click on the link above, about the friends I …
Tweet
Since picking up an iPod Touch, I’m now on Twitter. Just saying.
Reactions…
Here are some recent reactions to my writing, or collections in which my work appears: Karen Burnham’s discussion of Hugo-worthy stories mentions my own “Dhuluma No More” and even links to a very flattering discussion of it in the course of a review of the Oct/Nov 2008 Asimov’s SF, tellingly titled “So What Should SF Be Talking About?” She called “Dhuluma No More” “the stand-out story” of the issue, and explained: This story hits a lot of Big Issues, and Makes You Think. Obviously there’s the idea that whatever we come up with in the West to mitigate climate change …
No Tokyo For You! (Er, Meaning Me…)
A couple of factors combined to make the potential trip to Tokyo that I mentioned here unworkable. (Not the least, a great deal of uncertainty until, well, this morning about whether I’d need this or that or the other thing to get the code number I’m supposed to get in order to do my visa run.) Now I have stuff going on this week, stuff to get done, people to see and places to be — heh, even an orientation tomorrow, which will probably be several hours of incomprehensibility to whatever foreign profs actually make it there — so the …
SOAO Workshop 2009 Pictures Up
There’s lots of snowy ones, and some not-so-great photos, but the majority of the shots I’ll be posting are now viewable here. I’ll add some descriptions when I get time, and write up the experience here soon. Here are a couple of pics, with a few more in the extended post…
Databased & V-Day
Well, a friend sent me a link for the The Ultimate Guide to Modern Writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which was compiled by Avi Abrams and explained in this post at Dark Roasted Beans. I was shocked to find myself in it. Shocked in the sense of being hit by a wave of, “Oh, crap, I need to get some more stories submitted out there soon!” The semester looms, and I have tons to do before then. Ah well, for now, I’ve other things to take care of. But I was chuffed to know I warranted entry into a …
Hiking Boots?
I’ll be going to a mountain on Wednesday, as part of a very interesting workshop involving Korean SF writers and astronomers — oh, yes, a listening comprehension test three days long, which I’m already failing, but more about that afterwards — and I’ve been told it would be a good idea to have some hiking boots. I’ll be in Seoul tomorrow, and would be able to pick some up, except I have no idea where such things could be gotten — that is, winter boots, in “large size” (ie. 300, 305, 310, or bigger, depending on the brand). Apparently the …
Sh*tbag Attacks Constitution (Again)
So, Kenneth Starr is once again doing his bit to hold a rifle to the groin of American democracy. Yeah, the same guy who wasted millions trying to find out whether President Clinton did the same sorts of things we all know Republican Presidents have done in the past, because the real scandal he was investigating turned out to be politically useless… Well, now he’s now out to delete all those same-sex marriages that happened in California before vast numbers of inmates members of the Church of Mormon decided it didn’t believe in separation of Church and State, and that …