Mericale, Hughes, Scheheraz'Odd & Touchshriek, Inc.

I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words...

2008-05-17T16:04:50Z

Oh, if only I had magical coffee, the coffee that bestows instant and perfect wakefulness, and eternal youth. That coffee. No, I just have this milky brown water.

Er...yeah.

Yesterday morning, Spooky took the following two photos (behind the cut) of me while I was trying to wake up. They should give you some idea of the disassembly of the hole where I hide...I mean, the office. Fold it all up. Stick it a box. Send it a thousand miles northeast. And hope this is the last big move, ever.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,138 words on Chapter One of The Red Tree. Good pages. I think I'm finally beginning to find my way into Sarah Crowe. And after the writing, there was, of course, packing. Sorting through a mountain of papers and such atop my file cabinet (visible in the first photo, packed or discarded now) and on a shelf. But the good news is that Byron showed up about 6:15 pm, and we went to the Vortex for dinner. Moose was our waiter, which is always good. Afterwards, back home, we watched the final episode of the 9th Doctor's run, "A Parting of the Ways," because I found myself needing Christopher Eccleston. And then there was Martha Jones in the new episode of the current series, and then a particularly good episode of Battlestar Galactica. Good enough that even the commercials didn't ruin it for me. Afterwards, I spent a little quiet time in New Babbage (Second Life), mostly just sitting in the Great Hall of the Palaeozoic Museum, listening to a recorded thunderstorm (on Radio 3, Bratislava), unwinding, contemplating future exhibits. Later, Miss Paine (Spooky) showed up, and we walked down to her pie shop in the Canal District, on Bow Street. There's a room upstairs I rather love.

And after that little bit of Second Life, Spooky read to me from House of Leaves. That most frustrating chapter, at least for me. XVI. The examination of the wall samples, following the "Evacuation" of the house on Ash Tree Lane. But most of the data recovered by Mel O'Geery's Princeton lab, the knowledge of the age and geological composition of those walls, has been lost, replaced with XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, because Johnny placed a leaky fucking jar of ink on that stack of pages. And pages went missing at the publisher. And, on the one hand, every time I read the book, this section drives me mad, and on the other, this is Danielewski doing it exactly right. He taunts with hints of answers, then pulls back, lest the mystery be dissolved in mere fact. When Spooky got sleepy, I read some of Chapter 7 ("Osborn, Nature, and Evolution") of the Henry Fairfield Osborn biography. At 2 ayem, I turned off the lights and drifted down to the dreams.

Spooky's taking Hubero to the vet at 2 pm, to have him checked out before the move, and to get him a bottle of kitty Valium.

Oh, and I should post this again, because the sale price of $12.99 is good until Monday:

And, also, 350.org.

"You have set something in motion..."

2008-05-16T15:55:33Z

Not quite awake, though I bloody well ought to be. What good is raisin/cinnamon toast with organic cream cheese and a glass of Gatorade if it doesn't wake you up?

Yesterday, I wrote 1,083 words on Chapter One of The Red Tree. Mostly, how Sarah Crowe met "Amanda Tyrell."* I think this is the last scene in the chapter. Another day or two of writing. After the writing, I packed eight boxes of books, before admitting I was too tired to pack anything more.

But the office is damn near done. I've never written in an empty office before, all the shelves bare of books. Almost all of them. Only fourteen days left until M Day. Fourteen Days. Two weeks. Two of those days will be lost to a couple more day trips to Burningspam (to see my doctor, then to retrieve my belongings from the storage unit), so, really, we have only twelve days remaining in which to pack, etc. And I have only six writing days left before the move. Wow. Fourteen days. 336 hours. Well, no, because it's already 11:30 ayem, so more like 324.5 hours. 19,470 minutes. 1,168,200 seconds (give or take). Spooky's gonna smack me when she sees this breakdown.

It rained all day yesterday.

Later, sometime After dinner, we...well, never mind that part. But after that part, we watched a whole bunch of the special features on the Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street DVDs. Helena Bonham Carter is cuter than anyone has a right to be. Later still, Spooky read to me from House of Leaves — mostly the section on Karen Navidson's short films What Some Have Thought and A Brief History of Who I Love. I still find the Hunter S. Thompson comments priceless. Then Spooky fell asleep, and I read to myself from Ronald Rainger's biography of Henry Fairfield Osborn — Chapter 6, "The Museum, the Zoo, and the Preservation of Nature" — until about 3 ayem.

And I'm two doses into the antibiotic, and, of course, they frell with my stomach. Stupid tick.

Oh, and before I forget again, I post the following for the kindly, T-shirt making aliens over at Ziraxia (who brought you the Stiff Kitten Ts):

Shiny! You must have one. You must. And right now, they're on sale for only $12.99 (through Monday, when the price goes back to $16.99). Though, I will say that I think "No Power in the 'Verse" would be a better campaign slogan. Maybe we can use those on the bumper stickers and yard signs.

350.org.

* We never learn "Amanda's" true name in the book, as Sarah only uses a pseudonym when referring to her.

Want

2008-05-16T02:25:24Z

I want to know how it'll end.
I want to be sure of what it'll cost.
I want to strangle the stars for all they promised me.
I want you to call me on your drug phone.
I want to keep you alive so there is always the possibility of murder later.
I want to be there when you learn the cost of desire.
I want you to understand that my malevolence is just a way to win
I want the name of the ruiner.
I want matches in case I have to suddenly burn.
I want you to know that being kind is overrated.
I want to write my secret across your sky.
I want to watch you lose control.
I want to watch you lose.
I want to know exactly what it's going to take.
I want to see you insert yourself into glory.
I want your touches to scar me so I'll know where you've been.
I want you to watch when I go down in flames.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name.
I want to reach my hand into the dark and feel what reaches back.
I want to remember when my nightmares were clearer.
I want to be there when your hot black rage rips wide open.
I want to taste my own kind.
I want to be wrapped in cold wet sheets to see if it's different on this side.
I want you to come on strong.
I want to leave you out in the cold.
I want the exact same thing... but different.
I want some soft drugs.. some soft, soft drugs.
I want to throw you.
I want you to know I know.
I want to know if you read me.
I want to swing with my eyes shut and see what I hit.
I want to know just how much you hate me so I can predict what you'll do.
I want you to know the wounds are self-inflicted.
I want a controlling interest.
I want to be somewhere beautiful when I die.
I want to be your secret hater.
I want to stop destroying you but I can't.
And I want and I want and I want.
And I will always be hungry.
And I want and I want and I want... -- Recoil

Blank Page

2008-05-15T15:42:57Z

So, Spooky called my doctor yesterday, about the tick. And my doctor immediately prescribed a ten-day regimen of doxycycline (one of of the tetracycline antibiotics), as a preventative measure, just in case the Lone Star tick in question was carrying one of the four rather nasty diseases for which they can act as vectors. But, on the other hand, my doctor is a little overzealous with antibiotics, and I've not been on any antibiotic, by choice, since August 2002 (when I needed them for an infected spider bite on my leg). But. I will take the doxycycline, though my instincts tell me not to, because I don't want to risk Alabama getting in the last laugh by rendering me sick all summer with some vermin-borne illness. By the way, the tick in question now floats in a specimen jar of alcohol on my desk. She's a rather fascinating little thing.

Yesterday, we read over what I've written on Chapter One of The Red Tree, again. Recall, we just did this on Sunday. But I wanted to be sure I have the narrator (Sarah Crowe) solidly in my head. With luck, I can finish Chapter One and maybe even toss in a vignette for Sirenia Digest sometime between now and next Wednesday. That will be my last normal "work day," the 21st, before the move (14 days remaining). We also did a lot of packing yesterday. I lost track of how many boxes of books. The new battery for my iBook arrived via the post.

I've been asked to write a "signature review" (one with my name on it) for Publisher's Weekly, though I cannot yet identify the novel or the author. I even get paid. This was one of those things I really didn't have time to take on just now, but I did, anyway.

As promised yesterday, behind the cut are photos that Spooky took on Tuesday of the Ezra Winter murals at the Birmingham Public Library. They are a far sight better than the ones that the Library has online (the link above). Ezra Winter was born in Manistee, Michigan in 1886, and was educated at Olivet College and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He also studied at the Prix de Rome and the American Academy in Rome. After returning to the US, Winter began a successful career as a muralist, and did work in Manhattan, Chicago, and Washington, DC (his studio was in New York City). In "the early 1920s," the Birmingham Public Library commissioned him to do the murals for the main reading room of their (then) newly constructed library building, depicting various figures from literature and history. They're oil on canvas, fixed to the walls with white lead. Winter was present for the mounting of the paintings. I first saw the murals sometime around 1975. Back then, they were sooty and in bad shape, but were cleaned and restored in the 1980s. Anyway, the photos:

Detail at the northwest corner of the room.

Looking east.

Looking southwest from the mezzanine.

Looking southwest.

Looking west.

All photographs Copyright © 2008 by Kathryn A. Pollnac

Last night, Spooky made a big pot of chili, and after dinner we watched two more episodes from Season Two of Millennium — "Midnight of the Century" and "Goodbye Charlie." It was cool seeing the late Darren McGavin as Frank's father in the former, as McGavin also appeared twice on The X-Files, as agent Arthur Dales. Anyway, then I worked on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage, mostly on the wall in the Great Hall devoted the pterosaurs (Dimorphodon, Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus, and Pteranodon) and fossil birds (Hesperornis and Archaeopteryx). And I think I was in bed sometime after two ayem, and Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until about three ayem. I was up at 9:30, because I'm trying to get on an earlier schedule, even if it means I slept only about six hours. Truly, I've already cut back on Second Life, and will be doing so even more in the end of May. The move, my health, and far too many deadlines.

And this is the very last time I'll post a link to the Amazon wish list thing before birthday -04, though we are only halfway through the Royal Birthday Month. And my thanks for all the comments yesterday. They help, these days, and I don't know that we've had that many for one entry in quite sometime. I should include nasty x-rays of my teeth more often.

350.org.

"And it runs deeper than you dare to dream it could be..."

2008-05-14T23:06:24Z

A couple of things I missed in this morning's monster of a post. First, Spooky's father, Dr. Richard Pollnac (Professor of Anthropology and Marine Affairs, University of Rhode Island) will be joining Chip Barber (Environmental Officer, U.S. Agency for International Development) for a live webcast entitled "Troubled Waters: Anticipating, Preventing, and Resolving Conflict Around Fisheries." It's being broadcast from Washington, DC, but you can watch it here (May 15, 2008, 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m., EST). The talk will focus on "...the interactions between demographics, environmental stress, livelihoods, and conflict in the context of fisheries, with a particular focus on Southeast Asia." Spooky's dad has been conducting field studies of fisheries worldwide since the 1960s, from Lake Victoria (Uganda) to Alaska to Vietnam to Thailand to Indonesia to...well, all over.

On a somewhat related note, there's an article at the "ProTraveller" website, "20 Cities, Islands & Countries Threatened By Global Warming." On the one hand, well, it does call attention to particular treasures that are being and will be lost to global warming (the Galapagos Islands, Manhattan, London, Jakarta, Glacier National Park, the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, etc.). On the other hand, I think that it somehow manages to miss the point. Yes, all these sites are indeed endangered, but that's only because the seas are rising worldwide, meaning all coastlines, everywhere, will experience drastic change during this century with even the lowest estimates of sea-level rise. Every inch of coastline, no exceptions. So, spotlighting these twenty sites, and lines like "You might want to book a trip to see some of them before it's too late!" just comes off a wee bit glib. I mean, species face extinction, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced, economies will tumble, and the very face of the globe will change...and we'll lose all these sweet vacation spots. Er...yeah.

Meanwhile, new figures published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, based on ongoing studies at Hawaii's Mount Loa volcano, indicate that atmospheric CO2 levels have now risen to 387 parts per million, the highest in 650,000 years. To put that in perspective, the earliest-known fossils that can be referred to Homo sapiens sapiens only date back a paltry 195,000 years (Richard Leakey's "Omo remains" from the Omo National Park in Ethiopia). If we go back 650ka, we reach the Middle Pleistocene, a time when Homo sapiens sapiens had yet to evolve (though remains of another subspecies, Homo sapiens idaltu, the first recognizably "modern" humans, and possibly the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens, have been recovered from strata that old).

350.org.

...and her hundred miles to hell.

2008-05-14T15:38:13Z

I am a very lucky nixar. No gaping, bloody wound in my head. My dentist is wise and merciful, and I was allowed to keep that right second upper molar. It seems the discomfort was arising from a problem caused by upper and lowers no longer occluding properly (because of the work done on the cracked tooth in February). A little grinding (not even the indignity of Novacaine, thank the gods) Still, she gave me Lortab and penicillin scripts, just in case something should go wrong in there before I find a new dentist in Providence. She's been my dentist since March 2000, and it was an oddly bittersweet parting. Anyway, don't ever say that I've never given you a glimpse of true horror, because if you look behind the cut, you'll find x-rays of my frelled-up mouth:

Wow! Ugly! I tried to get all the dust off the scanner, to no avail.

It's the upper molar that's mostly filling, towards the left, of this image that's giving me trouble.

After the dentist, enormously relieved and not low on blood, we dropped by the storage unit to see just how annoying moving everything out of it will be on May 27th. Not too bad. And then we went to the Birmingham Public Library, and I sat beneath the beautiful old murals in the Linn-Henley wing. That part of the library appears in Threshold, and it's on that very short list of things I will miss about the South. Truthfully, in an alternate-world Alabama with an entirely different cultural and political climate, I could probably have lived my whole life in Birmingham. Anyway, Spooky took some photos, and I'll put them up tomorrow, after she's had time to edit them. Today, you just get gnarly teeth. We saw an assortment of flattened and living fauna along I-20: crows, buzzards, deer, armadillos, dogs, a hawk. At the rest stop just across the Alabama state line, we spotted a large (probably female) Broad-headed skink (Eumeces laticeps). Spooky tried to get a photo, but the lizard did not cooperate. Alas. After the library, we stopped by my Mother's house in Leeds, and spent a couple of hours there, just talking. She's coming up to Providence to visit in the autumn.

I suppose, now that there is not unsightly recovery to endure, I shall be trying to finish up Chapter One of The Red Tree, beginning today. I need to have that done, and also Issue No. 30 of Sirenia Digest by Wednesday, the 21st, at the latest. Not only will the packing schedule become so hectic by then that there's no way I can even hope to work, but, also, I have to go back to Birmingham next week, to see my regular doctor one last time before the move (and she's been my doctor since 1990).

Last night, after finally getting back to Atlanta about 9 pm and grabbing some Thai food for dinner, we watched two episodes from Season Two of Millennium ("The Hand of St. Sebastian" and the hilariously wonderful "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense", the latter with Charles Nelson Riley). Oh, and discovered a tick latched onto my left hip. No idea where I picked the little fucker up. Maybe at my mother's (rural location plus dog), maybe at the rest stop earlier. She was a female Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum), and was surprisingly painful when Spooky removed her. The blasted thing had apparently been on my clothing for some time, had only just bitten, and hadn't yet started to feed (no blood), or had fed only a very little. We dropped the tick in a jar of alcohol (70%), where she survived for a hour. Spooky's calling my doctor about it today, just in case she wants me to take any precautions beyond those we have taken already. And, please, no oogy tick-borne disease related stories. Thank you.

Later, I tried to work on the Palaeozoic Museum (New Babbage, Second Life), but the damned asset server was on the fritz again, so that didn't happen. I did make quite a lot of progress on it Monday. Oh, yeah. Monday. On Monday, I worked on the Museum, we got dinner from the Vortex at Little Five Points, and watched two episodes of Farscape ("Home on the Remains" and "A Constellation of Doubt"). I went back to the biography of Henry Fairfield Osborn, which I hope to finish before the move. That was Monday. Huzzah.

Also, I should repost the link to 350.org.

Is it just me, or are these entries getting far too long winded? At any rate, only 13 days remaining to the dread birthday -04. Blegh. But my Amazon wish list is here, if you are so inclined.

Oh, and since this entry has gone on Way Too Long, I may as well mention how I've been complaining about the sudden proliferation of needless contractions, because people simply can't be bothered. Sure. It's not really anything new. Nabisco stopped being the National Biscuit Company back in the early sixties, but, lately, it seems like this is happening everywhere. National Geographic as NatGeo?! The Biography Channel as Bio? I wonder how many people still remember that WB stands for Warner Brothers, or that KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken, or that iHop is shortened from the International House of Pancakes? But the one that really tears it for me, that set off a rant last night, was seeing Scarlett Johansson called "ScarJo." What the holy fuck?! Okay, sure. First we had JLo, but that was just Jennifer Lopez, so who really cares? Not only is Scarlett Johansson a fine actress (The Black Dahlia not withstanding), she has a cool name, so why ruin it with a silly contraction like "ScarJo"? It is beyond me, these things that people do. Maybe I would be a more popular writer if I went by CaitKier. Or just CRK. Regardless, I am looking forward to hearing her album of Tom Waits covers. And now the platypus says if I don't stop and drink some coffee, sheheit's going to start gnawing my ankles.

350

2008-05-13T04:03:03Z

My thanks to Barry Graham (the_urban_monk) for linking to Bill McKibben's story in The Nation reporting the results of a publication on greenhouse gases by Dr. Jim Hansen (NASA) and others, which appeared in Science a few weeks ago. This is a chilling, no-bullshit article, and it needs to be read by everyone living on this planet. Because, as McKibben states again and again, we have reached the point where the luxury of time has all but passed, and, in Dr. Hansen's words, "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Anyway, please, take a few minutes and read the article. I am not an optimist, and, personally, I think we've passed the point where turning this great industrial beast back from the brink and averting the cataclysm is no longer very likely. But, I'm also wrong a lot. And this is the thing I'd most like to be wrong about, in my whole entire life.

Also, check out 350.org.

Also, speaking of cataclysm, there's some interesting new evidence surrounding the K/T impact event (you know, the "Fifth Extinction," the one that got the non-avian dinosaurs et al.). Specifically, it concerns the discovery of tiny carbon cenospheres in rocks dating from the time of the impact event.

Drinking mercury to the mystery.

2008-05-12T16:00:28Z

Behind the storms of Saturday night and Sunday morning came an enormous wind. The breath of the sky, blowing across Atlanta. Cooler weather, too. A low in the forties (F) last night, and only the low seventies today. Warmer tomorrow. But this wind is impressive, and there were gusts last night to 35 mph. (or 56.32 kph). Today, it's still blowing strong.

And speaking of that which blows...or sucks...or both...

Tomorrow, I have to be in Birmingham for a noon dental appointment (that's my one pm), which means leaving the house by ten ayem, at the latest. And maybe this molar, the one that was cracked in the Great Seizure of October '07, will be pulled, and maybe it won't be. Hopefully, we'll be back in Atlanta before sunset. However, if I return one more tooth shy, I'll be out of commission for at least a couple of days, which means no writing and no packing. We only have 15 days until we go back to Birmingham to get everything that's in storage there (and has been since November 2002) and only 18 days until the move to Providence. There is not time for mouth trauma, but that means nothing to how things will be.

Yesterday...a very bad day. But, and still, we read through all that has been written on Chapter One of The Red Tree. It's better than I recall. Maybe I can get back to work on the chapter late this week, after the dentist. That's all the writing-work there was to yesterday. I had a very hot bath. We packed and packed and packed, mostly books. I had to order a new battery for my iBook ($139.02, so ouch), and Spooky had to reserve the U-Haul truck for the 27th. About six pm, I left the house and walked to (ugh) Starbuck's, because our landlord needed to show the place to a prospective tenant. I sat and drank, overpriced mediocre coffee and finished Chris Beard's book on the origin of anthropoids. A rather good last chapter, largely devoted to the problem of Henry Fairfield Osborn's racism and also to the ongoing issue of "pithecophobia"* An hour later, I walked home again, to learn that the prospective tenant never fucking showed, so I'd exiled myself to an hour at Starbuck's for naught. After dinner, more packing, until, finally, I begged Spooky for a comfort movie, so we watched Serenity again. I was in bed by three, a little late, but there you go. Seven hours sleep.

As for today, I expect I'll wash my hair, then spend the rest of it working on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage and, well, packing. Only about half the books in my office are boxed. There's no chance I'll get any writing done today, between the distractions and the impending dentistry, and I'm not up to that sort of futility — sitting here, struggling to write through the chaos. And I need to drop Vince an email about Sirenia Digest #30. That's a tiny smidge of work, I suppose.

Yesterday, jtglover asked me, "What do you think is your best story? Top three?" And I said I'd think about it and post a reply today. It's damned difficult, and the list changes so frequently. But right now, I'd say they are:

1. "Houses Under the Sea" (from Thrillers II, Cemetery Dance Publications, 2007; to be reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Vol. 19).

2. "La Peau Verte" (from To Charles Fort, With Love, Subterranean Press, 2005).

3. "In View of Nothing" (Sirenia Digest #16, March 2007; to be reprinted in A is for Alien)

I would also list, among my "best" short stories, "The Ape's Wife,", "The Steam Dancer," "Andromeda Among the Stones," "The Road of Pins," "Riding the White Bull," "A Season of Broken Dolls,", and "So Runs the World Away." Your mileage will vary, as this is a terribly subjective question. And there are several stories I feel guilty for not including. Anyway, Herr Ornithorhynchus just showed up with my coffee, steamy hot and not mediocre, so I shall wrap this up.

* A psychological disorder that paleontologist William King Gregory sardonically "discovered" to account for those suffering from an irrational fear of apes and monkeys, stemming from the truth of humanity's own common ancestry with them ("Two views of the origin of man," 1927; Science 65: 601-5). The term derives from the Greek (pithekos ape + phobos fear). Sadly, it's probably as common now as it was is Gregory's day. Hence, creationism and its gussied-up stepchild, "intelligent" design.

Dressing coffins for the souls I've left behind.

2008-05-11T16:22:24Z

Yesterday, by some miracle (I don't actually believe in "miracles," sensu loaves and fishes, etc., so what I actually mean is by some statistically improbable, but not impossible, turn of events), I wrote a measly 869 words, and finished the preface for The Red Tree. The preface is written by the fictional editor who has come into the possession of Sarah Crowe's manuscript. The editor is strangely fond of footnotes, some of which are rather pedantic. Today, no writing, but, instead, Spooky and I will read back over what I've written of Chapter One to be sure it jibes with the preface. Already, I've caught one inconsistency. In Chapter One, the "red tree" grows on "the Old Jenks place," but in the preface, it grows on the "Battey Farm." I'll be going with the latter.

My thanks for the many comments and emails yesterday, though, of course, that's not why I said the things I said. I wasn't fishing for pep talks. And all the attention and well wishes in the world cannot change what I know to be true. I cannot go any easier on myself. Indeed, I am not going hard enough on myself. It's a goddamn hardscrabble life, pimping the playtpus, selling my dreams, growing corn on bare stone, making all these blasted words. It's not likely to ever get any easier. There is no retirement plan. There are only the words, from here until The End. One reason I am so reluctant to describe these times when it goes from bad to worse is simply because I have this inherent fear of being seen as weak, or whiny, or whatever. But I also loathe not telling the truth. Anyway, yes, thank you for the sentiments, because it's good to know someone cares, but nothing changes. Not unless the big space rock comes tomorrow, or Panthalassa rises up to stomp us all flat with tsunami paws.

I re-read Salman Rushdie's introduction to Angela Carter's Burning Your Boats yesterday, and he writes:
"...but the best of her, I think, is in her stories. Sometimes, at novel length, the distinctive Carter voice, those smoky, opium-eater's cadences interrupted by harsh or comic discords, that moonstone-and-rhinestone mix of opulence and flim-flam, can be exhausting. In her stories, she can dazzle and swoop, and quit while she's ahead."

And I think I know exactly what he means, for so often have I wished that I could make a living writing only short fiction. I do it ever so much better than novels, with their absurdly drawn-out plots and contrived twists and turns. I have never written a novel even half as good as my best short story, but, in the end, this is about the pay check. Of course, I should also note, to be fair, that Rushdie adores Carter's novels, and bemoans the werewolf novel she never wrote. It's just, as an author, I think the short story is the better form, and poetry better still. Distillation, as it were. Less usually is more.

What else to yesterday? I re-read "A new aigialosaur (Squamata; Anguimorpha) with soft tissue remains from the Upper Cretaceous of Nuevo León, Mexico" in the March 2008 JVP. We live in age of riches, when it comes to the discovery of basal mosasauroid lizards — Dallasurus, Hassiophis, Tethysaurus, Haasisaurus, Judeasaurus, et al., and now Vallecillosaurus. Anyway, I packed many boxes of books. My office is looking bare. Spooky has been craving Tom Baker, so we watched the four-part old-school Doctor Who, "The Hand of Fear" (1976). Mostly, Baker's Who is just too hokey for my tastes, and I find Sarah Jane unbearable. But I like that steampunky old TARDIS, and Eldrad was a pretty cool alien. Christopher Eccleston will always be my Doctor, and David Tenant's not so bad, either. After four eps of Doctor Who, I wandered into SL for a rather nice rp with Omega and Pontifex. I was in bed by 2:30 ayem, I think. Seven hours sleep. That was yesterday, pretty much. Oh, very fine thunderstorm last night, late. I sat here at my desk, the window open, trying to hear the thunder over the Xtians who were wailing and hooting (at 11:30 p.m.!) like they were trying to summon Great Cthulhu. Beautiful lightning. I feel asleep to the rain.

Ah, and a screencap from SL, another one that may put some readers in mind of "Flotsam." These days, Nareth sleeps beneath that old tanker:

The Bitter Nadir of Self-Doubt

2008-05-10T16:17:02Z

I have now been writing novels (and all those other things) for "a living" for a very, very long time, and I find myself, rather unexpectedly, coming upon one of the innumerable pitfalls of this existence. The sudden certainty that I simply will never be as good as I need to be to make myself happy with my writing. Sometimes, I manage it at short-fiction and vignette length work, but the novel? The novel, which is the bread-and-butter of the "genre" author's existence, has always been a peculiar beast for me. Every novel so much harder than the one written before it. Sure, it seems to me that each novel is better written than the one preceeding it, but...that's partly because each time I pour twice the energy into the effort as I did the time before. And now there is The Red Tree, and I see it quite clearly in my head, and I just do not know if I am a good enough writer to write it the way it must be written. Not as whimsical dark fantasy or some cliché-riddled "horror" show. The shape of it is something I've never done before — at least not at novel length. And I feel entirely inadequate.

Add to this the stress — the fact that I have four to five months to complete a novel that should take me two years. The fact that my office is being disassembled about me, and in another 18 days, we leave Atlanta, Georgia for Providence, Rhode Island (a move of more than a thousand miles northeast). There are endless interruptions and distractions. My overall health is worse than at any other time in my life. The part of me that has never believed that writing is "work," even though it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do, insists there are far more important things I should be attending to now than this novel. And, in the end, I just do not know that I am good enough. My desire may be exceeding my reach. I know that this novel has to be at least twice as good as Daughter of Hounds, which is by far the best novel I have ever written, and I am struggling to make it simply as good. Yesterday, I wrote a mere 657 words. I sat here, all day, straining for each and every syllable, cursing the whole foolish endeavor. 657 words. The preface is not finished, and neither is Chapter One. I have less than 10,000 words done on a 100,000-word ms. And I am exhausted, and not well, and worried, and there's so much packing left to do, and, in the end, I fear I am simply not good enough. But the only way through is straight ahead. And no, this is not whining. This is telling the truth about my life as a writer, which is the only reason i keep this journal.

Behind the cut are photos of the Moosup Valley area in west-central Rhode Island where The Red Tree is being set. All these were taken along Moosup Valley Road. The geology here is igneous for the most part, and has been poorly studied, poorly dated. All metavolcanics (light- and dark grey-, fine-grained, interlayered feldspathic gneiss, schist, quartzite, amphibolite, and lime-silicate rock; composed chiefly of feldspars, muscovite, biotite, quartz, and amphibole; locally staurolite and sillimanite) and gabbro (dark-grey to dark-purple to black, mostly coarse-grained gabbro. massive to foliated; main constituents pyroxene, plagioclase, amphibole, and biotite; some partially altered). Near as I can tell, from my limited research of the local rocks, these unnamed formations are either Carboniferous or pre-Carboniferous in age, which doesn't tell me much of anything. Imagine asking someone how to find San Francisco, and they reply, "Well, it's farther west than the Mississippi River. "Pre-Carboniferous" is about as useful. Not that the local geology is relevant to the novel, I just felt like a tangent. Here are the pics:

Tyler Free Library, ca 1896-1900.

Turn off to Barbs Hill Road. Most of the novel actually happens out Barbs Hill Road.

They call this trickle the Moosup River, but I think that's some sort of local joke.

The Mount Vernon Tavern (not that you can find a "Mount Vernon" anywhere nearby), ca 1760.

All photographs by Carol Pollnac.

After the writing yesterday, I packed maybe five boxes of books. My office is beginning to echo. I finished Chapter Ten of Chris Beard's The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans, a chapter largely devoted to the likelihood that anthropoid primates may have arisen as early as the Paleocene (about 56 million years ago), and appear to have entered Africa even earlier, after evolving from prosimians in Asia. Then I went with Spooky to Candler Park to get a pizza from Fellini's. Back home, we gorged on television because I was too tired for anything else. No Byron, because he and Jim went to some show at the Variety Playhouse. Another episode of Millenium (2-7; "19:19"). Then the new Doctor Who, and this Donna Noble woman isn't growing on either of us. It's like the Doctor's new companion is Edina fucking Monsoon from Ab Fab. Then the new ep of Battlestar Galactica, which was rather good. And then I did a little rp in Second Life, just a brief scene in the library with Omega and Neri and Bellatrix. Bellatrix is Nareth's new thrall. Last night, Bella was wearing her adorable new meat dress (thank you, Hyasynth), which was very appropriate. About 1:30 ayem I crawled away to bed, and Spooky read House of Leaves until about 3 ayem. Ba da pa pa. And that was yesterday.

"But we'll dance in their dark..."

2008-05-09T16:14:06Z

I'm truly not awake, so bear with me. Or lion with me. Or tiger with me. It really makes me no never mind, so long as you don't expect me to be terribly coherent or entertaining. I think I actually slept too well last night, which is odd, given I have finally started to get stressed out about The Move. 19 days to go. Maybe two-thirds of the packing left to be done, and a thousand odd little bits of detail to be attended to. And the blasted trip to Birmingham we have to make on Monday. So, yes. I overslept, and I'm just a bit nervous.

A blustery spring/early summer day yesterday, great gales of wind, and then a little rain last night. Clouds today.

Yesterday, after catching up on many long-neglected emails, I went back to work on The Red Tree. First, I looked over most of the material Spooky's mother had sent, especially the photos of the Moosup Valley area, and topographic maps, and a map from 1870 showing the division of Providence County, Rhode Island by landowners. Looking at a genealogy website, I found a name for the old Farm where the "red tree" grows — Battey — and then I was rather surprised (well, almost unnerved) to discover that a Mr. Battey had once owned the land adjacent to the parcel where I'm putting the tree. These things happen. By the way, today's icon was taken from that 1870s map, from the relevant corner. I did 1,269 words on the "Editor's Note" that will preface the book proper, the journal of Sarah Crowe, which contains within it excerpts from a manuscript left at the farm by a deceased folklorist. I committed my first two footnotes of the book yesterday. Oh, and I emailed the full manuscript for A is for Alien away to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press.

After dinner, we watched another episode of Millennium ("Monster"), then packed four or five boxes in my office (Spooky had spent the whole day packing), then watched two more episodes of Millennium ("A Single Blade of Grass" and "The Curse of Frank Black"). I spent a little time on SL, nothing fancy, just fishing with Miss Paine in McElligot's Pool behind the Abney Park Laboratory in New Babbage. And then we went to bed and read more of House of Leaves. I think we read until about three ayem.

My cold seems all but gone, which is a great relief.

The office is beginning to feel odd and empty, too many shelves without books.

Anyway, the sun just came out, as if to remind me that the day isn't getting any younger and there's so much work to be done. So, let's wrap this up, kiddos.

Late-Nite Science! Platypus Genome Edition!

2008-05-09T04:28:23Z

So, my thanks to everyone who emailed to let me know about the new study published in Nature, regarding the sequencing of the genetic code of Ornithorhynchus anatinus, otherwise known as Herr Platypus. I've not yet had time to sit down and read all the reports, but there's some weird and wonderful news coming out of this study. For one, we now have genetic evidence that monotremes originated as far back as the mid-Jurassic Period, 170 million years ago (though the actual platypus fossils date only as far back about 100,000 years). This suggests that the Order Monotremata is quite a bit older than the earliest-known member of the group, Teinolophos trusleri, discovered in the Lower Cretaceous (approx. 123 mya) strata at Flat Rocks, Victoria, Australia. But far stranger is the discovery that ye olde platypus possesses "five X and five Y chromosomes..." which in theory "...means there are 25 possible sexes, though in practice that doesn't happen." A bloody shame, says I.

All hail the noble platypus, and hisherit's formidable toxic spurs!

And though it has nothing much to do with platypuses, you really should check out the James Gang. Some things are better heard and seen than described. So, have a listen. But, in the words of the Gang:

The James Gang is an updated 1920’s Vaudevillian throwback-style group of three magical entertainers that sing songs, dance, ride unicycles, perform magic and blow fire to name just a few of the things they do in their full show. There are (3) main performers with more background performers to come as the movement grows. T J G consists of Jellyroll James, Deacon Boondini and the Great Gatsby “for short we go by Jelly, Deacon and Gatsby” This group dresses in a high fashion style that is not seen today in music. They have many looks that range from 1920’s suit jackets with knickers, bow ties and knee high argyle sox to all denim jackets and pants tucked into Equestrian knee high boots with Barret and Poorboy hats armed with wooden canes. Think Harlem when they dressed really regal. It is the mission of the group to restore real performances back into the African American community and the world community at large.

Booyah!

Falling Behind, Leaping Ahead

2008-05-08T16:50:01Z

Yesterday, I was reading John J. Pierce's Odd Genre: A Study in Imagination and Evolution (Greenwood Press; Westport, CT, 1994), when I came across this rather wonderful passage:

Cordwainer Smith's opening passage from "Scanner's Live in Vain" (1950) may be the acid test of a reader's taste for science fiction. A genre reader, coming across this scene for the first time, will think, 'I don't know what a "scanner" is, or how he adjusts his blood away from anger, or why he has to "cranch," but I've got to find out.' A nongenre reader, by contrast, is more likely to think, "This is gibberish — I don't know what's going on here, and I don't even want to know.' Smith's technique of plunging his readers into such a strange situation is not universal in science fiction even today, yet "Scanners Live in Vain" illustrates a principle that is universal to sf: It is a literary juxtaposition, even a synthesis, of the strange and the familiar.

I wrote somewhere around 1,000 words yesterday. I don't have an exact count. I spent the entire day trying to write an afterword to A is for Alien. And then, finally, having finished the first section, and having had Spooky read it back to me, I realized that it was pedantic, and wearisome, and that mostly I was grinding an axe I have with a particular reviewer at Locus, which is not the sort of thing that a) I should be doing in public or b) expect anyone else to want to read or c) should burden the collection with. I'd had in mind an afterword that accomplished a number of objectives — justification of dystopian sf, examination of mankind's innate hatred and fear of the alien in itself (making the idea of "first contact" with an extrasolar civilization absurd), an explanation of why I feel science fiction should not be expected to have predictive value, and, lastly, confess that it does not bother me that I wear my literary influences on my sleeve. But...it would have gone on for at least four thousand words, and, as I said, it was terribly pedantic. I stopped writing and called Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. We talked about the problem. I suggested I find someone else to write the afterword. He agreed that would be a good idea. A number of authors were discussed, people we might approach, and finally we settled on one we were both pleased with — Elizabeth Bear (matociquala). I asked her last night, and she kindly agreed. So, that's one thing I don't have to do in May.

Actually, I also spoke with the fellow who's publishing Joshi's Machen collection, and my deadline is not until July 30th, and he'll settle for 2,000 words, so that's something else I don't have to do this month. This means that today I can go back to work on The Red Tree (thanks, in large part, to the package of reference material and photos of the Moosup Valley region of western Rhode Island, which Spooky's mother helpfully gathered and sent to me). So, huzzah!

Also, note that subscribers can expect Sirenia Digest #30 a week or so early this month, sometime around the 21st, as I'm going to have to get it out of the way well ahead of the move (we leave Atlanta on the 29th, a mere 20 [!!!] days away, if we do not count today). And if you are not a subscriber, now's as good a time as any to correct that.

A couple of links. I wanted to repost the Green Porno link, Isabella Rossallini's bug porn, as it really is marvelous stuff. I've been making myself watch only one or two a day, so it'll last a few days (so far, my favorite is "Snail"). Also, my thanks (again) to robyn_ma for this link to Evan Dorkin's take on the phenomenon of furcons. Spooky and I laughed until we bled. Truthfully, I had nothing at all in particular against furries until I started Second Life, where they are, quite simply, a plague. Just try helming the bridge of a Federation starship when your captain is an anthropomorphic "funny animal" fox. Just try! Sure, I'm a pervert, and I have more than my fair share of parahuman and paraphilic turn-ons (Isabella Rossellini bug porn, for example), but really people.

My cold is much, much better.

Last night? Byron dropped by with Season Two of Millennium on DVD, so we can watch it as quickly as we want and don't have to wait on Netflix. We watched the first three eps — "The Beginning and the End," "Beware of the Dog," and "Sense and Antisense." As good as Season One was, Season Two is much better. Later, I did maybe an hour, an hour and a half of SL rp, so my thanks to Pontifex and Omega. Then Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until we were too sleepy to think anymore.

Postscript (3:05 pm): I meant to include this in the morning's entry, and forgot. The opening monologue for the first episode of Season Two of Millennium, which gave me shivers (behind the cut):

[Blackness. Fade in slowly, as we listen to Frank Black, to a scene of asteroid debris in space and a solitary, distant sun.]
FRANK: In number, there is one for every life which ever was, or ever will be. And like most lives, they wait for a moment, the moment, when it will be sent on its journey back toward the yellow sun.

[A single asteroid spins, falling away from Saturn's rings.]
FRANK: Approaching the sun brings definitive change.

[An asteroid veers away from the planet, trailing vapor.]
FRANK: It will never again be the same.

[A comet soars over the Earth.]
FRANK: Appearing in our skies, it is believed to be the prophecy of extraordinary events.

[A religious painting depicts a comet in the sky, and below it the Madonna and Child.]
FRANK: The birth of kings.

[The Bayeux tapestry shows an ornate comet.]
FRANK: The death of empires.

[An asteroid moves in space.]
FRANK: After centuries, or millennia, the journey must end.

[An asteroid again, falling towards Saturn's rings.]
FRANK: Perhaps smothered by its own dust, the dark, soulless body continues eternally through space and time.

[The asteroid breaks up in the planet's gravitational field.]
FRANK: It may disintegrate and crumble into inconsequential rubble.

[Another asteroid passes by, moving towards the sun.]
FRANK: Or it may be lost forever, crashing, burning, into the yellow sun.

[A view of the bright sun fades and we see Frank Black's face. He is staring up into the night sky.]
FRANK: And as I look into the sky and it looks back on me, I want to know, which am I? I need to know. Is this the beginning of a journey –

[A twin-tailed comet flies in the starry sky. Frank's bloody hand holds a gun. Frank stands, still looking skyward. Blood stains his left shoulder.]
FRANK: – or the end.

Late Night Science Strikes Againe!

2008-05-08T05:17:53Z

A couple of paleo'-related news items i wanted to pass along. First, a new confuiusornithid bird (avian theropod) from the Early Cretaceous Dabeigou Formation (131 Ma) in Fengning, Hebei Province, northern China. It has been named Eoconfuciusornis zhengi. This fossil is about 11 million years older than all previously known confuiusornithids, such as Confuciusornis sanctus, which are known from the famed Chinese Liaoning fossil deposits. In May 2001, I was fortunate enough to be at the American Museum in NYC, examining mosasaurs these, when an exquisite feathered specimen of the dromaeosaurid Sinornithosaurus millenii (a non-avian theropod, also from the Liaoning deposits) was briefly on display. In fact, there's even a rather fuzzy, low-rez photo of me with the specimen (I swear, my nose doesn't actually look like that):

Part and counterpart.

Also, paleontologists at Brigham Young University have discovered evidence of dermestid beetle larvae having fed on the carcass of a Late Jurassic-aged ornithopod dinosaur Camptosaurus. Cool stuff!

Non gratum anus rodentum.

2008-05-07T16:06:21Z

Not nearly as ill this morning as I was afraid I would be. Yesterday, I loaded up on elderberry extract, zinc, Smith Brothers' cherry cough drops, and with the help of two Red Bulls, managed to get through a long and arduous day of proofreading and reformatting.

As soon as the Afterword (it was going to be an Introduction, but now it shall be an Afterword) for A is for Alien is finished, the ms. will go to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press, and it will be out of my hands. At least until the page proofs. And I can get back to work on The Red Tree. Well, right after I write a 3,000-word Introduction for Joshi's Arthur Machen collection.

Anyway, after we did another five or six hours of work on the AifA ms., Spooky and I took a mountain of books back to the Woodruff Library at Emory, and then had blisteringly spicy Thai noodle bowls for dinner. After dinner, back home, I suffered an absence seizure (which are beginning to seem almost routine). I crashed on the sofa, too exhausted for anything but the passive comforts of television. We watched an episode of Millennnium, "Maranatha," then the new ep of Deadliest Catch, and then the last episode of Season One of Millennium, "Paper Dove."

And there's this email, from Tim Huntley, regarding Sirenia Digest #29:

"I wanted to offer some (very brief) words on 'Concerning Attrition and Severance'. I am pleased this story was not a hidden piece and that it did make it into the Digest. As well as resembling a disturbing twist on Huis Clos peopled with Cenobites, the piece made me think of Pirandello (well, Six Actors in Search of an Author, to be exact).

"And, on today's anniversary of Sigmund Freud's birth, an almost randomly located line from Einige Charaktertypen Aus Der Psychoanalytischen Arbeit (1916): 'Let us leave it to future research to decide how many criminals are to be reckoned among these "pale" ones.' Perhaps not a citation - or a paper - that has anything truly in common with your story, but it seemed an apposite conjunction of sorts.

"'Flotsam' was another splendid brine-soaked piece which lingered with me and spiraled in my thoughts across this May Day weekend. Together with 'Concerning Attrition...' it made #29 feel like an old-style Digest in that it was, as your Prolegomena informed, comprised of two rich vignettes."

The parallel with Barker's Cenobites seems natural, in retrospect, though, with "Concerning Attrition and Severance," I was trying for something a bit more subtle and a bit less concrete than "The Hellbound Heart." Thank you very much, Tim!

Someone else asked for details on Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder, so I thought I'd post a scan of the cover of Spooky's copy (behind the cut, mais oiu):

Oh, and here's a marvelous little thing, which I can now stare at to my nerdy heart's content, thanks to sclerotic_rings, the Solar System Visualizer. It even includes numerous extrasolar star systems!

And once again, because it is my Royal Birthday Month, the Amazon wish list thing. A mere 19 days until that dreaded -04...

Patient Zero

2008-05-06T16:30:58Z

So, even though there is absolutely no time for being sick, I'm sick. Hard to tell yet just how sick, but sick enough. It started off yesterday morning as a scratchy throat. Thing is, Spooky's been sick for almost a week, and every time I'd ask her about it, she'd tell me it was just allergies caused by the dust we're stirring up packing. To me, she looked sick, not allergic, but hey, she ought to know. So I didn't worry about catching it. But now I'm sick. Last night, fevers and chills. We have to hope this fucker is short lived, because here it is May 6th, and we leave Atlanta on Thursday, May 29th for Providence. And there is all the packing, and a mountain of work, and deadlines and scheduling that simply can not be Put Off Until Later. I used up all my sick time, back in February. And, possibly the worst problem here is that colds and flu often (since the mid '80s) leave me with a severe cough that can last, literally, for months. After I had the flu in February, I coughed an additional six weeks. And the bad tooth cannot be pulled if I'm coughing, because then it won't heal properly. So. Yeah. It's sort of a disaster.

Yesterday. We spent eight hours (1-9 pm) working on the corrections to A is for Alien, and we're still not done. So, that will be today. We also need to take books back to the Emory University library, but that may have to wait until tomorrow. Today, I get more misplaced or missing commas, fact checking, clumsy word repetitions, and other assorted tedium. Oh, and a good example of why sf writers should worry only just so much about the science in their sf stories. When I wrote "Zero Summer" in the summer of 2005, Saturn was believed to have 43 moons, but now, revising the story in 2007, I know that Saturn has more than 60 confirmed natural satellites. But the story is set in the nearish future. By then, we may know that Saturn has 80 moons. Do I stick with 60, knowing that astronomers consider that number provisional? Do I "guesstimate" ahead? Do I revise the story again in a few years? Frankly, the facts are hardly relevant to the truths of the story, so screw it.

My thanks to robyn_ma for pointing out that I can now actually see Isabella Rossellini's "bug porn" (Green Porno) at the Sundance Channel website. Yesterday, the site wasn't letting me in; today it is. Oh, and yes, I have downloaded the new, free NIN, and I'm listening to it now.

At some point yesterday, I left Spooky alone to work on the corrections to A is for Alien. I lay down on the sofa, thinking I could at least read the next chapter of Chris Beard's book on primate origins, but, instead, the best I could manage was an hour of being half asleep, dreaming though I was partly still awake. Later, late last night, Spooky read me more from House of Leaves, the terrible scene on the staircase, Navidson trapped alone at the bottom when it suddenly grows to impossible proportions, Tex's story of the sinking of the Atrocity. Not the perfect thing before bed, so then she read me Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder (1957), which won a Caldecott Medal and is one of my all time favourite children's books. "Where do hummingbirds go in a hurricane?" Beautiful.

I got the following from Alan S. Montroso, via email, "...As was your story "Concerning Attrition and Severance"; its imagery and majesty have haunted me through the weekend. I understand why you felt it belonged in the obscurity of a closed drawer, but I am also grateful such a cruel creature has been unleashed." Thank you, Alan. It's good to see these reactions, because the story's out there now, and there's no pulling it back in. Comments on Sirenia Digest #29 are still welcome, by the way.

I haven't given the list of books in print in a while, so here it is again. And, though it might be cheaper and the "green" thing to do, buying used copies of my novels from Amazon, sadly, in no way helps my sales figures. Sadder still, I have to actually think about shit like sales figures:

Daughter of Hounds

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Murder of Angels

Tales of Pain and Wonder

And here's the Amazon wish list, because, after all, this has been declared my Royal Birthday Month and -04 is a mere 20 days away.

There's a lot more of substance I wanted to write about this morning, but I feel like unto butt, and somehow I have to make it through the remainder of the corrections to A is for Alien.

This "meme" thingy.

2008-05-06T05:10:11Z

Snurched from kambriel, I think I'm supposed to call this greygirlbeastology or some such nonsense:

TECHNOLOGY
Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A squid.

Q. How many televisions do you have in your house?
One.

BIOLOGY
Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right.

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A toe, but I did that myself. Oh, and those teeth.

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted?
A forty pound box of fucking books. Damn it.

Q. Have you ever been knocked out?
Yep.

BULL*OLOGY
Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
No.

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
I'm ignoring this question, as I frequently change my name.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
Spooky says green, forest green. I say black.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item?
Define.

DAREOLOGY
Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
This is a heterosexist question.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
Well, I cut that toe off for free. But, yeah, sure. A lot less painful that writing novels. Better paying, too.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000
Yep.

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
Fucking A.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
Money first.

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
As long as I get to choose the human.

DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket?
Precious...

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
No.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
Hardwood.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
I take baths.

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
Paul Frank is your friend.

LASTOLOGY
Q: Last person who texted you?
Whoever it was is now dead. Wait...no one has ever "texted" me.

Q: Last person who called you?
My mother.

Q: Last person you hugged?
Spooky.

FAVORITOLOGY
Q: Number?
7. Do the math.

Q: Season?
Summer.

Q: Color?
Many different blues.

CURRENTOLOGY
Q: Missing someone?
Me, at 27.

Q: Mood?
Foul.

Q: Listening to?
Distant traffic.

Q: Watching?
This stupid "meme." (Which is really only a questionnaire.)

Q: Worrying about?
Moving. Health. Global warming. Money.

Q: Wearing?
tank top and panties and these purple leg warmer thingies and wool socks from New Zealand and Eeyore slippers

RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning?
Bed.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
Get the hell out of Atlanta.

Q: Do you smile often?
Do you wanna hurt?

Q: Are you a friendly person?
See above.

By the lives that wove the web

2008-05-05T15:58:43Z

And yesterday was the sort of "day off" that I dread, the usual sort. Truthfully, I should have had the good sense to leave the house, go to Fernbank or the Zoo in Grant Park or maybe the Botanical Gardens...anywhere. In fact, I didn't step outside the house all damn day. I thought I had a plan, but it spiraled into something else, which, as I have said, is the usual way of things. I could neither rest nor keep my mind occupied, and the frustration mounted, the frustration and the boredom.

High points of yesterday: I read Chapter 9 of Chris Beard's book on anthropoid origins (Chapter 9, "Resurrecting the Ghost"). The chapter was mainly concerned with Beard's fieldwork in the Eocene beds along the banks of China's Yellow River (Huáng Hé), between 1994-1997, before the strata were flooded by construction of one of the nation's many idiotically short-sighted hydroelectric dam projects. I packed only two boxes.

And speaking of the packing of the second box, I shall now offer another unsolicited testimony to the durability of Apple computers. Somehow, I tangled my ankle in the power cord of my seven-year-old iBook last night, pulled it off the desk, and it fell three feet to a hardwood floor. And besides a bent jack on the yo-yo power adapter thingy — which is not truly a part of the actual computer — no apparent damage was done. It's only my secondary computer at this point, as I now work on the iMac, but it was still a moment of sheer fucking horror, watching it crash to the floor. I assumed the worst. I was amazed. Thank you, Apple.

Oh, but that was not a high point. Uhm. There must have been others. We watched two more episodes from Season One of Millennium ("Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions" and "Broken World"). I built a sort of homage to Dr. Suess' McElligot's Pool behind my Abney Park Laboratory (in Second Life). To quote the message I posted to the New Babbage forum (written, of course, as Prof. Nishi):

"The Abney Park Well:

While trying to recalibrate a portion of the lateral array of my temporal-spatial teleportation beam, I confess that I accidentally confused the X and Z axes, and, thereby, vaporized a vertical shaft of masonry and bedrock just behind the laboratory. The width of the vacated area is approximately 4.2 metres in diameter, with a depth of some 100 metres. The accident has unexpectedly tapped into some subterranean extension of the Mare Verne, creating an Artesian well (though the salinity of the water renders it unpotable). However, initial investigations indicate that the pool is inhabited by a number of species of marine life, including fish of various sorts. All those curious are invited to visit the pool (which, for the sake of public safety, I have walled in) and fish there. I have named the pool in honour of that great, lately deceased New Babbage ichthyologist, Dr. Theodor Geisel McElligot. No swimming, please. Study of this new hydrological feature will continue..."

Spooky (Artemisia) did most of the actual work. I did the design. And yes, you can really fish there, and really catch fish. I also made a few new LJ icons, inspired by what I'd written about Panthalassa yesterday. The one that I'm using today is, of course, a view of North America during the Late Creaceous, with the Mississippi Embayment and the Western Interior Seaway very prominent. I also did one of Pangaea, and one of a Tyrannosaurus rex, and a William Stout painting of a trilobite. I did a little work on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage, adding another of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins paintings and two lithographs of Archaeopteryx. That was the best of yesterday.

Today, we make corrections to the manuscript of A is for Alien, which came back to me from sovay and Massachusetts on Friday.

And here, a mere 21 days remain until Birthday No. -04. Shudder. Belatedly, I'm taking a cue from docbrite and faustfatale, and declaring the whole month of May to be my Royal Birthday Month. So, if you are given to such things, here's my Amazon wish list. Thank you. You wouldn't think a world could get this much more messed up in only -04 years, but you'd be wrong.

I want to write more about Panthalassa — particularly about how one can simultaneously be an atheist and a polytheist, and how one of the things that, increasingly, disturbs me about "orthodox" Wicca ("Gardnerian") is that it is drifting ever nearer a default monotheism, a sort of surrogate Xtianity where the tripartite goddess stands in for Jesus/"God"/the Holy Spirit (maybe chuck the Virgin Mary in there as a "female" mask), and any number of Panthalassa-related issues. But this is getting long. I'll save it for tomorrow, instead.

You leapt into the abyss, but find it only goes up to your knees.

2008-05-04T17:38:35Z

One of the marvelous things about having two consecutive days off is, on that second day I can blog about anything I want, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with writing, unless I decide that it will. For example, the fact that Spooky made toasted slices of raisin-cinnamon bread with cream cheese for breakfast. It's as relevant in this moment as anything else.

I can, for example, take another moment to mention Panthalassa, which is the name I have chosen to signify the sea "goddess" whom I shall use to encompass all sea goddesses and all non-anthropomorphic features of the sea. In paleogeography, Panthalassa ("all seas") is the name given the world-wide ocean that surrounded the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea. In the NeoWiccan/Neopagan system I'm working on, Panthalassa will function as one of my primary godforms, and will never be given any single physical form. I arbitrarily refer to Panthalassa as "she," and even as "goddess," but, in truth, Panthalassa is by definition without gender (though she contains all genders and all forms of reproduction), as she is without any single form. I would be equally justified in giving her the form of a trilobite, a stone lying on a beach, a water molecule, a kelp forest, a seal, a great white shark, a sailing ship, a hurricane, or a mermaid's purse. She is equally all these things. Within her is contained all true and useful myths of sea deities and beings: the Oceanids, Poseidon, Amphitrite, Oceanus, Tethys, Triton, Proteus, Rán, Ægir, the nine daughters of Ægir, Pontus, Nereus, Doris, the numerous Nereids, Varuna, Manawydan, Manannán mac Lir, Arnapkapfaaluk, Idliragijenget, Nix, Susanoo, Bangpūtys, Tangaroa, Yemaja, Neptune, Phorcys, Ceto, et al. Panthalassa, though not factual, is true, in that she is the avatar for my reverence of the sea, the focal point of my devotion and meditation. From space, the world is blue, and blue is the colour of Panthalassa, but so is black and all shades of brown and grey and green and the white of sea foam and clouds and water spouts. She is as colourless as she is colourful. It's an idea I've been working on for some time, and it seems to satisfy my needs for a central, infinitely faceted godform tied to something which evokes awe in me (magick being the willful evocation of awe). All life on Earth comes from Panthalassa, and all rain, snow, all rivers and swamps and marshes and deltas, the act of sedimentation, salt, plate tectonics, and so on, all these things are merely expressions of Panthalassa. Panthalassa is indifferent, non-conscious, unfathomable, and endlessly seductive. The choice of name was made largely for personal aesthetic and symbolic reasons; Mother Hydra would work just as well. So far, it's only an idea, an appealing, functional idea filled with contradiction, but it's a start.

As for yesterday, a good day off. Spooky and I drove up to Roswell, to the Phoenix and the Dragon, the witchcraft shop we've used for years now, because we knew we'd likely not have another chance before the move to Providence (not counting today, we have about 26 days until the move). Spooky got me a new hematite ring to replace the last one I broke, and a pretty little Pierre Shale ammonite, Jeltzkytes nodosus I think. Oh, and a night light for the bathroom in the new apartment, translucent porcelain with the moon and a mermaid. The traffic up Peachtree and back down Piedmont was awful, but the day was cloudy and not too warm. I packed four boxes. My tooth hurt less than the day before. I read Chapter 8 of The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey ("Ghost Busters," mostly about the Duke University primate origins conference in the early '90s). After dinner, we watched two more episodes from Season One of Millennium (1-17 and 1-18, "Walkabout" and "Lamentation"). Later, there was a bit of Second Life, and when we went to bed about 1:30 ayem, I read McElligot's Pool to Spooky, which is unusual, because she usually reads it to me. I got a remarkable 8 hrs. sleep. That was yesterday, pretty much.

Oh, two screencaps from SL last night, courtesy omegamorningsta. The first one should put Sirenia Digest subscribers in mind of "Flotsam." Behind the cut:

And speaking of Sirenia Digest #29, my thanks to scarletboi for the exchange yesterday on "Regarding Attrition and Severance." One of my greatest fears about letting people read the piece was that it would be misinterpreted as mere "torture porn," that they would miss the Cosmicism that is critical to understanding the story's intent. He wrote, "I'm glad you chose to share it. It was graphic and horrific (in the original meaning) and brutal. But it was also beautifully written and deeply involving. To be honest, I probably shouldn't have read it until my current work is finished, because I have a feeling it's going to affect the mood of it...I understand the worry. The narration is indifferent enough to be almost clinical, academic. If it took more glee in the proceedings it might edge toward the torture-porn of Saw or Hostel. But I think it came across more elegantly than that, and I hope other readers pick up on the cues as well." Too which I can only add — me, too.

Whoops. I went and fucking wrote about writing. Ah, well. Blame the neglectful platypus for not yet having brought me coffee.

A grey sky, a bitter sting.

2008-05-03T15:52:43Z

Yesterday, I did a very respectable 1,277 words and finished "Rappaccini's Dragon," which you may read in Sirenia Digest #30 (May 2008). I do like this story, though its voice and directness, the very matter-of-fact way it approaches plot, surprised me. It's a sort of revenge tale, and I have subtitled it "Murder Ballad No. 5."

There's a wonderful line of storms bearing down on Atlanta. I am tempted to get my willow wand, go to Freedom Park and stand beneath the oaks. I would scream my frustration to the roiling sky and dare the lightning to touch me. Of course, I will sit here, instead, and finish this entry.

I just counted. I've done 43 stories specifically for Sirenia Digest (not counting "Rappaccini's Dragon"). This means I've published, since 1995, about 130 short stories and vignettes (short hardbacks, such as The Dry Salvages, were not included in the count). And fully 33%, almost a third, have been done for the digest. 130 stories in 13 years. That's insane.

What else to yesterday? Well, after the writing, I packed about 4 boxes, mostly paperbacks, in my office. Spooky made her yummy Spanish rice dish for dinner, and pintos. I got a check for $330.17 from Candlewick Press, royalties on "The Dead and the Moonstruck" from Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales (it's a very rare short-story sale that actually earns me royalties). I read Chapter 7 of Chris Beard's book on the search for the origin of anthropoids. I had a long phone conversation with my mother, mostly about moving. Byron had to be at a party in Athens, so we watched the new episodes of Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica alone. My tooth hurt, but not as bad as the day before. Then I did just a dab of Second Life. We drove over to Videodrome around midnight, but couldn't find anything we actually wanted to rent. Instead, we read more of House of Leaves, and I got to sleep about 3 ayem. That was yesterday.

Today will be a day off, as will tomorrow. My first days off in nineteen days, and likely my last until after the move. I still have to pack books, but no writing.

Had a short, but interesting, conversation with a fellow New Babbagite last night, who has also, independently, come to the conclusion that Second Life simply is not ready, yet, for "full immersion" roleplay. I would say it's only ready for rp on this level of intensity in very small groups. Three or four, and things seem to go just fine. But large-scale rps inevitably get idiotic. For rp to work, there must be complete suspension of disbelief (as with literature and movies), which means I do not rp with people who constantly slip out of character, or who use 133t, or who stop everything to IM with friends, or to chat ooc with friends who wander by, or who are illiterate, or who are not capable of keeping up, or who think "we're getting too serious," or what the hell ever happens to get in the way of good rp. It's a shame, because I'd love to see epic rp in SL. But there are just too many factors holding it back, the most serious of which may be the average age of SL users, and the tendency towards exceedingly short attention spans. Good rp sessions, I have found, require anywhere from 2-6 consecutive hours, and few I've met on SL (and I have met many) are up to that. Right now, I have a small number of people I can do exquisite rp with, and, as soon as I can get to it, we'll have the "Sirenia Players" up and running, but I am done with sim-level rp for the time being, until SL grows the hell up (which seems an unlikely proposition, at the moment).

I'd still love to hear some thoughts on Sirenia Digest #29.

Okay. Coffee. I've only just discovered that the damned platypus grinds the beans in hisherits bill...

Bunnies dashed their brains out on the trees...

2008-05-02T16:37:32Z

Seems one of the cracked teeth has refused to heal. Dr. Booth warned me this was very possible. The damage was just too great. I awoke at 5:45 ayem or so, in something at least approaching agony, and it was near 7 am before I was asleep again, and the only thanks to pain pills and Ambesol. So, in all likelihood, I'll be going to have this tooth extracted sometime in the next two weeks, right in the middle of packing and all these deadlines, and I'll be losing at least a few days to recovery when I should be packing and writing.

I've been meaning to mention that "A Season of Broken Dolls" has been selected for a forthcoming trade paperback "sampler" of stories from the online version of Subterranean Magazine.

No writing yesterday, not really. We took Hubero outside on his leash, and it was good to be out in the spring sunlight, listening to the blue jays and the robins. We had someone from United Van Lines coming to give us an estimate on the cost of the move to Providence. He needed access to all rooms, and I knew I couldn't work through that, so I took a book and went to (boo, hiss) Starbuck's (and they may not have enough sense to use the apostrophe, but I do). I don't remember how many months ago it was that I laid aside Chris Beard's The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans (University of California Press, 2004), but shame on me. It's a wonderfully written thing, and I sat there and drank a white-chocolate mocha (too sweet, but not bad), and read Chapter 6 ("The Birth of a Ghost Lineage"), which was mainly about collecting fossils of the omomyid primate Shoshonius cooperi from the late Eocene Willwood Formation of Wyoming's Wind River Basin. Meanwhile, Spooky got our estimate from a guy named Ron Goodbub, a retired Pepsico salesman from Kentucky who grew bored with retirement and went back to work (I think it's very suspicious that LJ knows how to spell Pepsico, but not Shoshonius; hell, it can't even spell "Starkbuck's" without the apostrophe). Here's a bit from Chapter 6 of Chris Beard's book I wanted to quote:

"It hardly ever makes sense to refer to a given species — whether living or fossil — as being 'more primitive' than another, for reasons that go beyond any value-laden connotations the comparison carries along with it. Tarsiers are more primitive than humans in having three premolars on either side of their lower jaws and in lacking a complete mandible formed by bony fusion at the chin. Humans are more primitive than tarsiers in retaining a separate tibia and fibula and in having much smaller eyes. The important distinction here is that, while entire species can rarely be arranged from primitive to advanced, individual features usually can be. In fact, paleontologists rely on exactly these trait-by-trait comparisons to decipher the biology of extinct organisms, as well as to reconstruct how they fit on the evolutionary tree."

Myself, I prefer to speak of character states being more and less derived from a given ancestral state than to ever use the word "primitive" or "advanced," as any given organism's evolutionary "status" can only be assessed or judged relative to how well it is adapted to its environment. Tarsiers have been around a lot longer than humans (by tens of millions of years), but they are no less well adapted to their environment than are humans, and therefore no more "primitive" (which, of course, is just another way of saying what Beard is saying above). Yes, that was a tangent.

Mr. Goodbub took longer with the estimate stuff than expected, and it was after 4 pm before I got back to work. I read over the pages I did on "Rappaccini's Dragon" on Monday and Tuesday, made some corrections, and then decided I'd spend the rest of the afternoon packing, give up a Friday off, and plan to finish the story today. I packed something like seven large boxes of books, hardly the tip of the fucking iceberg. Then again, Mr. Goodbub was telling Spooky about having just moved a mathematician who had 500 boxes of books, which makes me feel a little better.

How I'm going to cope with my schedule this month — especially with the bum tooth — is sort of beyond me. I have to finish "Rappaccini's Dragon" for Sirenia Digest #30. I have to do the line edits and introduction on A is for Alien, and an introduction for an Arthur Machen collection that's being edited by S.T. Joshi. I have to get back to work on The Red Tree and make some real progress. I have to go to Birmingham and have a tooth pulled, then recover. And Spooky and i figured out yesterday that it's likely the pace of packing will have become so hectic by the 20th that I'll be forced to stop working. We will probably leave here on May 29th, a Thursday. It's insane, truly. I'd wait and have to tooth pulled after the move, but after the pain last night, that may not be an option.

I was in bed a little after one ayem, and we read more of House of Leaves, because I needed to hear the words. I was asleep by 2:30, only to be awakened a few hours later, which is where we came in...

Ah, and only a few weeks until I hit -4, on May 26th. I do have that wish list at Amazon.com, even if it does mean more packing. Distractions are always welcome, even when i have no time for them.

Coffee, platypus. Coffee, you fool!

News from Nowhere

2008-05-01T16:21:57Z

By now, everyone who is a subscriber should have Sirenia Digest #29. It went out about 11:30 p.m. last night. It would have gone out earlier in the evening, but there was a slight hitch (Spooky forgot to attach the file, which is funnier today than it was last night). Comments are welcome, especially as regards "Concerning Attrition and Severance."

Today, I'll finish "Rappaccini's Dragon" for Sirenia Digest #30, and then, tomorrow I get a day off, the first in eighteen days, I think. And then I'll finish up the ms. for A is for Alien and get back to The Red Tree.

And now it is May again, and Beltane. Last night, there was something I wanted to write out about how I've come to view choice as regards belief and paganism, but now it's mostly slipped away from me. For a long time, I could not allow myself to involve choice in matters of belief, as I held belief back for objective science and material concerns. I did not see how one could ever choose to believe. Partly, the epiphany simply required a different perspective on things I've been saying for years. The Cosmos (=tripartite goddess/horned god/divine adrogyne/etc.) may, in my veneration of it, assume any form. It contains all forms within it that can be realized or conceived. It hardly matters if I "worship" Brighid or Mórrígan or Aphrodite or Kali. They are all merely attempts of a conscious being to sum up an incomprehensible and nonconscious universe. They may, perhaps, each function like characters in a novel, avatars that grant access to the story of existence. It does not matter if they are not factual in their existence, as their existence is true, if they are true in our minds. If they contain within them useful truths, as is the way with all myths. It is not their objective existence which makes them useful avatars, but their subjective truth, what these deities mean to each of us. For me, this is the heart of Neopaganism. Designing ritual and godforms to function as conduits between conscious organisms and the remainder of the Cosmos, which is generally a nonconscious entity. Anyway, it went something like that, and today is Beltane.

A beautiful first day of May. The sun and all the green. It's 75F outside. The holly bush below the kitchen window has a nest of fledgling robins.

I did not leave the house yesterday, which makes five days straight, I think. I wrote the prolegomena, did everything else that needed doing to pull the digest together. We finished the chili Spooky made on Monday. I got no packing done.

Some good roleplay last night. I am shifting away from trying to functon in large roleplay communities (such as Toxia or the late, imploded Dune sim), in favour of rp with a small group of individuals with an especial talent for it (and no, I haven't forgotten the "Sirenia Players": just let me get moved to Rhode Island, and I'll get that going). This way, I avoid the idiots and all the noise and strife that idiots bring. Last night, well, we were in 1920s New Orleans, a beautiful house with a grand piano. A street car rattling past outside. There was Paganini and a game involving truths and falsehoods, and blows from a walking stick, and blood drawn with obsidian sharp nails. A game, and a dance, and a cold tile floor. Sublime. Oh, and I also began planning the pterosaur exhibit for the new and expanded Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage.

I was in bed by two ayem, so good for me, and asleep shortly after two-thirty, with is even better. Today, the moving guys are coming to look at all our furniture and junk and give us an estimate on the move. I'll slip out to Starbuck's or the park or someplace until they're done.

Another amusing Nick cave quote: "A man without a mustache is like a woman with one."

The platypus is grinding beans, so I guess that means I should wrap this up. The wheel of the year turns...

Prolix, indeed.

2008-05-01T01:19:05Z

One of the songs I'm really loving from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, behind the cut:

What we once thought we had we didn't, and what we have now will never be that way again,
So we call upon the author to explain.

Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets, we've shunned them from the greasy-grind.
The poor little things, they look so sad and old as they mount us from behind.
I ask them to desist and to refrain.
And then we call upon the author to explain.

Rosary clutched in his hand, he died with tubes up his nose.
And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals chanted his name in code.
We shook our fists at the punishing rain,
And we call upon the author to explain.

He said everything is messed up 'round here, everything is banal and jejune.
There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon.
Well, he knew exactly who to blame.
And we call upon the author to explain.

Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!
Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!

Well, I go guruing down the street, young people gather round my feet,
Ask me things, but I don't know where to start.
They ignite the powder-trail straight to my father's heart,
And, once again, I call upon the author to explain

We call upon the author to explain.

Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought?
I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker. It's fucked up, and he is a fucker.
But what an enormous and encyclopedic brain.
I call upon the author to explain.

We call upon the author to explain.

Oh, rampant discrimination, mass poverty, third-world debt, infectious disease,
Global inequality, and deepening socio-economic divisions.
Well, it does in your brain.
And we call upon the author to explain.

Now hang on, my friend Doug is tapping on the window .(Hey Doug, how you been?)
Brings me back a book on holocaust poetry, complete with pictures.
Then tells me to get ready for the rain.
And we call upon the author to explain

I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix.

Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best!
He wrote like wet papier maché, but he went for Hemingway, weirdly on wings and with maximum pain.
We call upon the author to explain.

Down in my bolthole, I see they've published another volume of unreconstructed rubbish.
"The waves, the waves were soldiers moving."* Well, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And, again ,I call upon the author to explain.
Yeah, we call upon the author to explain

Prolix! Prolix! There's nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!

*"It was the battering of drums I heard
It was hunger, it was the hungry that cried
And the waves, the waves were soldiers moving
Marching and marching in a tragic time
Below me, on the asphalt, under the trees."

Wallace Stevens, "Dry Loaf" (1938)

Also, I adore this quote from an interview Nick Cave recently gave to the Sydney Herald Sun:

"My muse was such a bitch, I sacked her years ago. And now I just...I go into the...I mean she's so totally unreliable. You know, one day she'd be there, and two weeks later she might turn up again, and so on, and so forth. So, basically, I got rid of the whole concept of the muse and just went to work everyday. And it has absolutely nothing to do with whether I feel inspired or not. I just get up, go to my office, and start work. Sometimes things come, you know, sometimes things don't, but it's...I just feel that, at least if I turn up and I'm sitting there, and I've got a pen in my hand, whatever's going to come can come, and I'll be ready and prepared to write then."