• Location: Deuteronilus Mensae
• Music: Peter Gabriel, "Signal to Noise"

dream of the flood

Is there anything good I can say about 2006? It would be nice if there were, given that 2005 was such a fiasco. It would be good to think that this year went better than last. There were the two World Fantasy nominations. There was Alabaster. There was the visit to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, back in August. There were private moments. There was news of liquid water on Mars within the last seven years. There was Hubero. There was the They Might Be Giants show. Mostly, though, I find myself falling back upon films. Films are the "fond things" I remember. These are my favourite from 2006:

1. The Fountain
2. The Prestige
3. Lady in the Water
4. Marie Antoinette
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
6. An Inconvenient Truth
7. Tideland
8. The Departed
9. A Scanner Darkly
10. The Ant Bully

There are films I know should be on this list, but are not yet, as I've not been able to see them (for example, Pan's Labyrinth will likely be my fave of 2006, if it ever opens in Atlanta).

When all is said and done, 2006 is a blur, an instant, the blink of an eye.

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Nothing to say about yesterday, work-wise, that would be the least bit interesting to hear. The day earned its W.

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We watched Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly last night, and I found it brilliant and almost impossible to sit through. I cannot say that the rotoscoped animation was not effective, as it certainly kept me disoriented and ill at ease, but I'd prefer never to sit through another film executed in that hideous paint-by-number style.

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My thanks to Elizabeth Bear (matociquala) for this link. It's a map created by the National Arbor Day Foundation, illustrating changes in "hardiness zones" from 1990-2006 as a result of global warming. It was compiled based upon data from 5,000 National Climatic Data Center cooperative stations across the continental United States. And it explains why the dogwood trees are budding in Atlanta and Birmingham in December. What is a hardiness zone?

The Plant Hardiness Zones divide the United States and Canada into 11 areas based on a 10 degree Fahrenheit difference in the average annual minimum temperature. (The United States falls within Zones 2 through 10). For example, the lowest average temperature in Zone 2 is -50 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit, while the minimum average temperature in zone 10 is 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit.)

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I decided, almost at the last minute, to include a sneak preview of Daughter of Hounds in Sirenia Digest 13. So, you get "The Voyeur in the House of Glass" and "Metamorphosis B," plus the entire prologue of the novel. I'm hoping this will sell a few more copies. It's also resulted in the longest issue to date, at (I think), 56 pp. Spooky will be sending Sirenia Digest out later this afternoon. We're running a little slow, what with just the one iBook and all.

Meanwhile...