The SF Chronicle kept giving me ads for "Dollie Marie's Fine Southern Dining", so I clicked to the menu.

Oy-everloving-vey.

Let's run some quick credentials here. My mother is a Texas native; my father was born in Missouri but mostly grew up in Texas. I grew up eating beans and skillet cornbread, fried chicken, stewed tomatoes, and trying hard to avoid collards. My husband's family is Georgian. He grew up eating the same. He likes grits. Need I say more? We lived in Charlotte, North Carolina for seven years. I have informed opinions on why Georgia barbecue is fundamentally better than North or South Carolina (mustard sauce! The heresy!), and on why Texas is trying admirably but has failed utterly to grasp the gospel that is pork.

I know from Southern food. I won't claim to know the whole South -- nobody can -- but I know what I learned from my family, from being a disconsolate Yankee in the Bible Belt, and from reading the kind of spiral-bound cookbooks the church ladies print up to make money. These people, whoever they are, got their menu items from a magazine article, not from down home experience. A Southerner could certainly cook any of the dishes on the menu, but that doesn't make them Southern; just because the cat had kittens in the oven don't make 'em biscuits*. 

Here are the few items I could read before my eyes became veiled with tears.

Ruby Mae's Pan Roasted Crab Cake
with vanilla bean aioli and a butternut squash and pecan salad with a spicy tomato mushroom sauce

Stop right there, missy. Thing about Southern cooking? It is not fussy. The only Southern dish I've ever seen that combined that many unrelated ingredients was a Jell-O salad. Crab cakes are an American classic. Take crab. Mix with breadcrumbs, seasonings (Old Bay should be in the mix), and mayonnaise to bind. Fry. Die happy.

I'm good with aioli with crab cakes. I'm good with a salad alongside crabcakes. These are flourishes that don't mess with the essential dish. But vanilla bean aioli? Butternut squash and pecan salad AND A SPICY TOMATO MUSHROOM SAUCE? Somebody hates the taste of food and isn't afraid to admit it. (edit: The tomato sauce doesn't belong to this dish. Faked out by copy-paste.)

New Orleans Style BBQ Shrimp & Grits Aunt Helen Jean's gulf shrimp simmered in a spicy herbal butter sauce over grits 
That's like saying "Seville-style bangers and mash." Shrimp and grits is a classic LowCountry South Carolina dish; it has nothing to do with New Orleans, Louisiana. I have no idea what the word "BBQ" is doing in this menu item; proper shrimp and grits is sauteed, as specified in the next line.

Aunt Ida Mae's Boudin Blanc Triangle creamy filling of smoked chicken, brown rice, bacon, vegetables and spices, coated with panko bread crumbs, then pan-fried golden and finished with a hot link gravy and grilled garlic croutons.

Boudin blanc is a Louisiana specialty. It's a pork-and-rice sausage, served in a crackling natural skin. How you get this mess from that name, I do not know. I can only assume that at this point the chef was well into his sixth bottle of Everkleer and had begun tearing pages out of Paul Prudhomme at random, and that we  narrowly escaped a pecan pie made of ahi tuna. What the hell is a "hot link gravy"? I'm guessing somebody once heard of sausage gravy but never ate any.

Lester Jenkins' Orange Duck & Black Penne Pappardelle  fresh black pepper pappardelle pasta and duck confit, tossed in a spiced orange marmalade sauce with orange segments, walnuts and chives

We don't eat pappardelle in Muskogee. Trust me on this. Duck a l'orange and duck confit are French. Pappardelle are Italian. None of them made it into traditional cooking south of the Mason-Dixon line.  And, oh, God, does that ensemble sound vile.

Big Mama Nancy's Blackened Catfish Filet.  on a bed of crawfish risotto, sauteed spinach, and gumbo pot-licker.
"Gumbo pot-licker"?  "Gumbo" is a dish all to itself.  "Pot-likker" or "pot-liquor" (your call) is what's left over when you stew greens.   "Gumbo pot-licker" is the dog you're using to clean the saucepans.

These people deserve to have Edna Lewis rise from her grave and pee in every single one of their stewpots.

* (Which proverb is actually from New Hampshire, but so it goes.)
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On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

-- Siegfried Sassoon

Just in case anyone missed this amazing photo montage of before and after the wall coming down, at and around the Brandenburg Gate.

At the cons I've attended this year, I think I've had a record number of conversations with adult SF/fantasy writers interested in writing YA. (It's been fascinating watching YA fantasy to go from a genre that was considered a hard sell even within the YA field to one that's publishing in more interesting books that I can keep up with every month.) As I was flying home from WFC, I found myself thinking about what it is I really want to say--but don't always have time to say, or don't always think to say until later--when adult writers ask about the YA genre.

So ... keeping in mind that I'm only one writer--and that writers rarely agree on much of anything--( here are some of the things I find myself wanting to say to adult SF/fantasy writers who are thinking about writing YA )

So, other YA writers reading this--anything to add? (Or elaborate on, argue with, etc?)

Off being an Angel in the House, so I've loaded up the iPod with Edwardotorian light reading—it makes a spiffy torch for those secret passages!—and I've been flicking my way through golden-age Angela Brazil, up to 1922.  Of course, I'd much rather have the books—nice, chubby, fluffy things with cocoa stains and awfully jolly plates—but the pixels will have to do.  Heaven knows, I'd hate to wake up in a girls' school, but the stories are  utterly comforting, smooth and sweet:  like bowls full of floating island.  Even the titles make me smile:  The Madcap of the School, The Jolliest Term on Record.  They're all the same and all different—seaside schools, moorland schools, Georgian halls, dissolved abbeys with optional ghosts; shy girls, snobs, hoydens, madcaps,  malaperts, twenty girls or two hundred.  Mind you, Brazil can't plot for toffee, but she knows fourteen.  There are misunderstandings, meannesses, masquerades, undying crushes,  ghosts which aren't, and the occasional uprising in the Fourth.  (She has rather a pash for gipsyish brunettes.) There are censorious or adulated mistresses; there is frolicking with garlands on the lawn, in Attic attitudes.  There is real landscape, done in watercolor—and not only English.  Much to my surprise, there are jaunts to Sicily.  She must have visited and fallen madly in love, pressing flowers, taking note of the picturesque:

"You can always tell a brigand because he never carries an umbrella."

So, what featherweight reading do you like?

Nine

Oh look, the Ninja Replacement Score has gone mainstream contemporary.

That is all.

(hat tip)

---L.

My kitten does not have a cat tree.  My kitten likes to look down on things.   I don't have the spoons necessary to build a cat tree, and in any case I do not want to teach the kitten that sometimes it is okay to claw carpet.  http://www.moderncat.net/ has many cat towers that are exquisite but ridiculously pricey.   This mini-cat tower is cheap.  http://caboodlecats.com/




</poll-1660> This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/897535.html. comment(s) on that entry.

I've been thinking about the recent PW Top Ten List Debacle (short version: somehow, yet again, we get an all male list and the insistence that this only happened because we were looking for "the very best writers"), and wondering whether I wanted to yet again go through all the explanations about how, while such a list may have been made with good intentions, it nonetheless indicates unconscious biases that you need to make conscious so you can examine them instead of denying them, because you just don't get all male lists over and over again at random (the odds of that would be about 1/1000), and you also don't get them because somehow all the best books are consistently written by guys (which we all know from experience that just isn't true).

But via jimhines, I found this Politics Daily article by Lizzie Skurnick that ( says it better than I can in so many ways )

Specifically, chatting online with Vania of Reverie Book Reviews, reading from Thief Eyes at TusCon in Tucson (spell that three times fast), and reading from Bones of Faerie at the Phoenix Faerie Festival. Stop by and say hello!

=-=-=-=-=-=

Tuesday, November 10 -- 8 p.m. EST/6 p.m. Arizona/5 p.m. PST
Teen Author Chat with Reverie Book Reviews
Chatroom is here (password is bones)

=-=-=-=-=-=

Friday, November 13 & Sunday, November 15
TusCon Science Fiction Convention
InnSuites Hotel, 475 N Granada Ave., Tucson, AZ

* Friday, 6 p.m.: Panel on The Geek in Us All
* Sunday, Noon: Reading from Thief Eyes
* Sunday, 3 p.m.: Panel on Partners Who Live and/or Work Together

=-=-=-=-=-=

Saturday, November 14
Phoenix Faerie Festival
Estrella Mountain Regional Park, 14805 West Vineyard Avenue, Goodyear, AZ

* Noon: Reading/book signing with James Owen, Aprilynne Pike, and Janette Rallison & Janni Lee Simner
(Sunflower Meadow Stage Area)

Bad poetry fans, rejoice! I have found new depths of Japanese verse in translation.

Remember the rhyming haiku? I bring you something even worse: William N. Porter's 1909 translation of the classic anthology One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets. Take, for example, his version of #33 by Ki no Tomonori:

The spring has come, and once again
  The sun shines in the sky;
So gently smile the heavens, that
  It almost makes me cry,
  When blossoms droop and die.

I'll pause to let you stop shuddering.

Better now? Yes, it really is in iambics, 4-3-4-3-3, rhyming on the short lines -- rendering a tanka of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables unrhymed. But not only is it crashingly bad verse, Porter mangles the meaning: in the original, the unsettled heart belongs to the flowers, not the speaker, and grammatically it's a question of why do they fall.

But as awful as that is, I am very glad indeed that I did not meet his version of Ki no Tsuruyuki's #35 before drafting my translation, because ow did it require some brain bleach. As poetry it's not as bad, though it's bad enough:

The village of my youth is gone,
  New faces meet my gaze;
But still the blossoms at thy gate,
  Whose perfume scents the ways,
  Recall my childhood's days.

But it's even more inaccurate -- the words "village of my youth", "blossom", and "perfume" are correct, but that's about all. Poking a few others I know enough to judge the translation, Hitomaru's #3 is tolerable in a pedantic Edwardian sort of way, and aside from the gratuitously added smile and resting, Semimaru's #10 is close to correct, even if the rhyme is even more jangly than usual for him.

Although the love poems tend to come off particularly badly, the worst offense just might be #99, which turns Emperor Gotoba's graceful note of resignation into sub-Housmanian twaddle:

How I regret my fallen friends
  How I despise my foes!
And, tired of life, I only seek
  To reach my long day's close,
  And gain at last repose.

Truly, this is a remarkably bad piece of work. I will treasure this bookmark for a very long time indeed.

---L.

Want to help me name some characters?

Specifically, some faerie characters for the Bones of Faerie sequel. I'm not quite satisfied with any of the names I've come up with son far, and am thinking some outside input might help jar the right names loose.

And I realized I could turn this into a contest. :-)

Here are the rules:

1. In my world, two faerie names are known so far: Kaylen (male) and Karinna (female). I'm looking for names that feel like they're in keeping with these names and the world they come from (that would be Faerie), but of course that covers a wide range (After all, Jane and Savannah are both human names, right?)

2. Enter by posting suggestions as comments to this post. You can suggest as many or as few names as you want, as often as you want. They can be both male and female names -- I'll need at least one or two of each.

3. And here's where the delayed gratification comes in: I might not settle on final names until the book is nearly ready to be turned in. (Heck, I might not settle on final characters until then.) So I'll announce any winners in late January/early February.

4. Late January happens to be when the paperback edition of Bones of Faerie will be released. If I use one or more of your names, I'll either send you a signed copy of the paperback edition of Bones or -- if you're willing to delay gratification a little longer -- a signed hardcover of Thief Eyes when I get my author copies, probably in mid-to-late April.

5. For duplicate entries, I'll go with whoever posts first. There's no set number of winners (it could be three ... it could be none), but if I don't use any of the names posted here, I'll draw a random winner instead.

6. Open until late January -- but names posted earlier have a greater chance of being used than later ones.

And that's it! Have fun--and many thanks to everyone who's willing to jump in and help out!

(ETA: You need not be on livejournal to take part -- signed anonymous comments are welcome as well. :-))

• I have washed up on the shores of a three-day migraine and will be moving very carefully today lest it return.
• I love it when an annoyed reviewer lets his or her inner wordsmith out to play. The NYT dislikes the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport.

  Many Bugatti buyers surely have access to racetracks, yet I’m equally sure that 90-some percent of them won’t have nearly enough driving talent to exercise this car. Mostly, I picture Euro-poseurs needing valet assistance to back up the Bugatti in Monaco, while jaws drop and the owner barks orders into his diamond-encrusted cellphone. When your car makes a Lamborghini seem tasteful, there’s a problem.

• The kitten spent all day yesterday sleeping with and/or on top of me, thus paying for his keep.  
• The rigged choice of the final three of this season's Project Runway was bad enough, but it is indefensible that [deleted] didn't win the episode challenge.  You could tell that Tim knew s/he was doomed in the critique: "I don't know what the judges will think, but ..."  Oh, yes, you did, Tim.
• I need something simple and brainless to do today.  Sewing requires brains and patience,  I never like watching TV when I'm tired, and Bujold is failing to satisfy.  I  can't explain why Diplomatic Immunity never hit my narrative kinks, but it didn't.  Perhaps it's because the antagonist was offscreen and unintelligible throughout.

Postscripts:

• Friday night on NPR, the reporter mentioned that roughly (she had all the numbers, I don't) 25% of Russians believed that the Russians had put up the Berlin Wall.  The remainder believed that the Americans had done it, the Germans had done it themselves, or some combination of the true.  I am being reminded more and more how labile "truth" is; what people need to believe (see: the birther stories) is far more powerful than any recitation of fact.  This should not be news to me.
• I need to give the cat another sulfur bath today.  Ugh.

This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/896872.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Modern life: typing on a MacBook while watching Björk's show being run on MacBooks.

My school district needs to cut $1.5 million from the budget this year. $900,000 of that comes from "an accounting error". Think about that.

http://smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=119273
Wouldn't you think that *somebody* might have been suspicious of a miraculous decrease in special ed costs, given that special ed is both expensive and needed by more and more students?

Sigh.

(Why, yes, I am stuck in bed Saturday morning with a migraine, why do you ask?)


This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/896512.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Heard Lucy Kaplansky last night. Still pleasantly filled with music this morning.

Kaplansky is one of those singers who is already good on CD, but whose voice takes on extra power and presence in person. I'll listen to her anytime.

Clips of Kaplansky's music are here. Alas, the only full versions of her songs online are muddled concert records on you tube, and they really don't convey the full power of her music.

(These days it feels like Faerie Winter is being fueled by a mix of Kaplansky and Vienna Teng. Not sure if this says things about the book or only about me.)

• Guys with greasy hair covered in headwraps are hot.  Everybody tells me so.
• Professionals, including fashion design students,  ALWAYS send out their prototypes to be done on buttonholing machines.  (This came from comments at Project Rungay.  God I love Project Rungay.)  Home sewers, if you consider buttonholes a nightmare?  You're right.)
• I thought the show was all about Tim Gunn.  Actually, it's all about the trio of Kors, Garcia, and Gunn.  Fortunately, the bitchy members of the triumvirate will be back next season, as will New York City.
• Christopher has Polaroids of Heidi shopping at Wal-Mart.  Think about it.  You know it makes sense.  Tim Gunn is nodding his head.
• "I don't know anything about fashion" is a choice, not destiny.  There are books.  There's the Internet.  If you're going to self-educate, more power to you.  Use the resources that are available to you in the smallest of small towns.  So you didn't get to go to design school?  That's a loss and a wrench.  It doesn't release you from the responsibility of learning about things outside your own head.  When I know more about construction than one of the designers?  That's bad.
• If you can buy 30 yards for $300?  Trust me, baby, it's not outerwear.
• Bitchy is not required for talent, is not a substitute for talent, but can certainly accompany talent.
• I miss Merlin.  And Santino.  And all the other people I hated who had flair and imagination and the ability to go big and fail big.
• I miss Uli.  And Korto. And all the nice people who had talent and quietly went their own way to demonstrate it.
• When the trailer for Models Of The Runway starts "You've seen them walk..." but does not continue "But you've never seen them talk", there is a reason.  Models don't have a lot to do in between their trips down the runway.  They also don't have a lot in the way of an inner life..  Girls Hang Around is not a concept for a stellar show.    Models highlights the fundamental problem -- the models have absolutely no control.  A great model paired with a terrible designer is dead.    PR designers prefer to learn the quirks of one model's body and then stick with her to avoid wasting time on remeasurement.
• Next year, back to New York City.  HURRAY!  Please cast a set of people who have style by the yard, who have a vision, and who, most of all, can produce more than one outfit.

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Front page of today's New York "If we haven't heard of it, it didn't happen" Times:

Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays
Ya think?  In other cutting news, geologists are beginning to believe that "tectonic plate theory" may explain the volcanic activity in the Ring of Fire.    Furthermore, light is a particle.


This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/896158.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Where I live, there aren't enough H1N1 flu shots to cover the people in high-risk groups. "Lucille Packard Children's Health Services and Palo Alto Medical Center in Fremont are placing children on H1N1 wait lists and prioritizing "higher risk" children first with underlying medical conditions; such as, transplant patients, asthmatic patients and children with other medical conditions to be among the first on the list to receive the H1N1 vaccination. H1N1 vaccinations are placed by a call invite and previous scheduled appointments."

You could make a case for "critical industries must be protected", but there isn't enough H1N1 to vaccinate all the health care workers who need vaccination.

Care to guess how many Goldman Sachs employees meet those guidelines? I'm betting that number is a lot smaller than the number of people who meet the guidelines at Lenox Hill Hospital, which got exactly the same number of doses.  Lenox Hill treats 325,000 patients a year.
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First, Sirens 2010 is putting out the call for proposals. I wrote about my experience here--set in the beautiful Vail, Colorado, at a world-class hotel, this was one of the best cons I've ever attended.

Next year's theme is Faerie, as you can see by exploring the link above. I've met all three of the guests of honor--Marie Brennan, Holly Black, and Terri Windling--and found them to be articulate and interesting as well as friendly and accessible. This could be even better than last year, because so many went away this year saying "I've got to get my friend X to come . . ." and bubbling over with ideas about cool stuff to do, cool topics to talk about, and cool books recommended (or to come out).

The nifty thing about such cons is that programming is not imposed on the attendee--active participation in the planning process is not just encouraged but vital. Academic papers? Welcome. Formal panels? You bet. Informal roundtables, with breakout sessions? Bring it on. Demos and workshops? Yes!

If you like the idea, but feel tentative about it, visit the Sirens Forum and run those ideas. It's a friendly group, you'll see at once.

Second announcement. Stacy Whitman, a freelance editor with quite an impressive list of credits, is starting up Tu Publishing. There's a nifty post about the gap when it comes to ethnic minorities being represented in middle-grade and YA fiction, which you can read here.

Tu Publishing is starting up--and you know what the economic climate is like. So they're holding a fundraiser, so they can start accepting manuscripts. Check it out. A few will be helping out--including me--as more efforts get organized.

Continuing the "Fifteen Days of Deverry," over on DeepGenre, a discussion of writing, creativity, and the brain, with author Katharine Kerr, Kate Elliott, and self.

The guy who killed a lot of people at Fort Hood yesterday was a devout Muslim who believed that the Army was prejudiced against Muslims (probably true) and was protesting being sent to Afghanistan. All this comes from a relative, which makes me inclined to believe it.

The rumor that is flying around news sources this morning is that he actually shouted "Allahu akbar!" [God is great] before beginning to shoot. Given that yesterday the same sources were telling us he was dead, I'm not giving that too much credence. However, by the time it's proven or disproven, it will be fact in everybody's minds.

The people who want to condemn all Muslims everywhere are going ape. This single action by one man proves every single evil stereotype and fantasy they have about every Muslim everywhere. Damn it to Hell.

This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/895667.html. comment(s) on that entry.

 .. in veterinarian's office.  I do not care if your dog is "cat-friendly".  I do not care if your dog likes cats.  What I care is that my cat does not like dogs, and in fact is cowering in the back of his carrier.  This is not all about your dog.   This has happened more to me than once, with multiple dog-owners.  I've also seen it happen with dogs who are frightening children.  BACK OFF.

Note to my vet:  I shall be VERY VERY HAPPY when you finish building the new  separate waiting rooms for dogs and cats.

Further note to Woman With Great Dane:
My cat has ringworm.  It's contagious.  Nyah.


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I'm enjoying all your birthday links, working my way through the and commenting as I do -- they're like small wrapped presents, waiting for me to click on them. Thank you!

Several links from other places that are delighting me this week:

asakiyume is telling a lovely story about two girls -- one who lives in the sea, one who is imprisoned beside a volcano -- and about their countries and their worlds, in the form of the pen pal letters they exchange.

papersky shares her Elf Policy, and stakebait responds with some thoughts on Elf Insurance. (I can't help thinking that if Tara read this stuff -- and perhaps also papersky's Off With the Fairies -- Bones of Faerie might have been very different.)

slwhitman, a freelance editor formerly at Mirrorstone Books, is launching Tu Publishing, which will publish fantasy for children and teens with an emphasis on multicultural characters and settings. She's currently raising startup funds through Kickstarter. There's been a lot of talk lately about just how white both YA and SF are--this is a great chance to help do something about it.

There's now a historical thesaurus to the OED! Writers, you may drool now. (Via swan_tower.)

The results of the Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity have been compiled into a Jewish English Lexicon. Lots of words here dimly remembered from my childhood, along with a scattering of others I'd never really thought of as Jewish. Includes who tends to know each word or phrase.

Some Matzo Ball soup recipes from coraa, noted here so I can remember to go back to them--and to post my own. (It took me years to realize matzo ball soup was Jewish. Didn't everyone include it as part of Thanksgiving dinner? Didn't figure it out until an Italian high school friend described her Thanksgiving, which sounded really different from mine.)

A tapestry woven entirely from spider silk. That color really does come from the silk, and isn't dyed. Also, I love how the spiders were milked for their silk and then released back into the wild each day. (Via lnhammer, among others.)

One link I'm feeling thoughtful about:

Justine Musk on the importance of not--always--putting one's writing center stage. (Via coffeeem.)

And one that makes me angry:

The story of a woman who died alone, without her wife and children, simply because she and her partner shared the same gender, in spite of having all the relevant medical and legal paperwork in place. This is why marriage needs to be legal for all. And why all the other nonsense trying to get in the way of that is reprehensible, and has to stop.

 Woke up this morning with a migraine.  I immediately started blaming myself.  The problem with knowing your migraine triggers is that they make you partially responsible for migraines, and when you get one you immediately start asking "Okay, which trigger did I willfully ignore"?  The truth is, shit happens.  The only trigger I may have tripped was annoying the Fates by thinking "Hey, I haven't had a migraine in forever."  Staying at home because it took two migraine drugs, so (A) I'll be sleeping a lot and (B) I have no brane.

Kitten, having been formally diagnosed with ringworm instead of an infection, was switched off his otic antibiotic drops and on to an antifungal pill.  I shall spare you the battles over pilling the kitten; suffice it to say I've lost my old skills.  If any of you know foods so delightful to kittens that I can pound up the pill and combine it with a tablespoon of yum, please let me know. He doesn't like over-the-counter cat treats, and mixing it with his normal food hasn't worked.

Kitten is pawing at his ear incessantly, so he has to see his vet today.  The vet suspected a polyp, and given that antibiotic treatments have failed, it's not looking good.  Sigh.  Polyps are very treatable but $$$$$$ even to diagnose.

The day before yesterday I had a pedicure.  The facialist wandered by and said I looked like the cover of a romance novel, "with your dress in soft curves, and your head bent forward, and your hair curling around your face."  I was wearing my favorite baby-blue dress, which always gets compliments from strangers.  I did a lot of thinking about appearance and decided that I used to dress for my high-contrast face: dark hair, pale skin, dark lips, which meant high-contrast clothes worked.  Now that I'm paler -- white hair, pale skin, paler lips--  I concluded pastels were a better fit and I should start buying more soft colors.

Yesterday I wore my oatmeal linen tunic with heavy orange-rust-and- brown embroidery and got compliment after compliment.  Now I have no costume praxis  and am confused.

Just started watching Chef! After I got past the first five minutes of laugh track and one-liners, I began warming to it; by the end of the episode, I was hooked.  I like the characters, I like the situation, and I wish to see more.  The lead is a black chef of a British two-star restaurant.  The other characters are his kitchen staff, his wife, and somebody I can't describe for fear of spoiling the first episode.  The relationships among all these people are excellent.   Try an episode.

This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/894897.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Back from WFC, and while I did write something of what happened, it's so small a slice as to misrepresent the whole -- making me dubious even of linking to that. Though I will say, in a fantasy context I found myself oddly reluctant to mention A Desert Year (to use the working title), and that because of a chance comment from someone, I opened the file of "Seven Myrmidons Against Thebes" and discovered that, indeed, the point the draft started going wrong was further back than I thought, and started making notes against the several stanzas to be junked or deferred.

So instead of con reportage, I have linkage.

• The newest world's largest web-spinning spider, with a leg-span of 5 inches (12 cm). (via)
  
  
• Andrew Sullivan comes along with a reminder that the United States was never a uniform, white society. (via)
  
  
• Another butler candidate for meteor that killed the dinosaurs has been identified. (via)
  
  
• Thank you, National Geographic. (via)
  
  
• Paul Krugman's scholarly science fiction. (via)
  
  
• Do not drink while reading: "A Regency Romance in 2 Minutes" (via)
  
  
• The death of teapot effect. As the writer says, "If this doesn't win these guys an IgNobel, I don't know what will." (via)
  
  
• Some light on the vexing question of what V signs mean in Japanese photographs, "victory" or "peace" or "take my photo".
  
  
• I like these animated color stereoviews of Meiji-era Japan, but if flickering animated GIFs give problems, you probably shouldn't click through. Not even for the stereoview of geishas looking at stereoviews.
  
  
• Useful tips on how to prolong your batteries' lives, be they laptop, phone, or autotrebuchet. (Not that I have a autotrebuchet, but if I did, it'd want to maximize its battery life youbetcha.) (via)
  
  
• An intriguing account of the "discovery" of the Afro-Latinosaurus Rex.
  
  
• A disquisition with footnote on how teenage girls become medieval nerds. (via all over)

Though for that last, contra the writer I think "fangirl" is the appropriate term in this case.

---L.

Young child and parent walk into the coffeeshop:

Child (who is giggling and stomping his feet): "That was funny!"
Mom (with a long suffering sigh): "Yes, I guess that was funny."

I am, of course, now deeply curious what transpired before they came through the door. :-)

A co-worker is looking for a Sheltie mix, so I checked out the Peninsula Pet Shelter.  Nearly all the dogs available today are Chihuahuas and Chihuahua mixes, and many of them have a note "must have breed experience" or "must have small dog experience".  In other words, people adopted Chihuahuas because they're the current celebrity dog,  then discovered that they didn't actually like Chihuahuas.

In unrelated news, I am wearing pretty strappy bronze platforms to show off my shiny wine-dark toenails and have re-re-discovered that I can't actually walk in heels.
This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/894637.html. comment(s) on that entry.

1. The Maine result sucks.
2. My local initiative to raise sales taxes to pay for parks, firefighters, and policemen failed. The two arguments against it were that our sales taxes would be the highest in the county (true) and that town employees were paid too much, and should have had salary cuts. The second ignored that town employee salaries were set by union contracts negotiated years ago. Hope you enjoy it when the fire engine takes ten minutes to come, guys. Me, I'm around the corner from the station.
3. In New York State, Obama appointed a Republican Representative to be Secretary of the Army. This triggered a special election for his seat, Republican since the Civil War, and before that hadn't voted Democratic since 1850. The Republican establishment nominated a moderate Republican, Dede Scozzafava, who supported gay and abortion rights. The far right -- Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, &c. -- went ballistic, and backed a far-right-wing candidate to run against Scozzafava representing the Conservative Party. Money and endorsements poured in. The right-wing candidate, who wasn't from the district in question, proved totally ignorant of district issues. Over the weekend, the Republican withdrew and, in a stunner, threw her support to the Democrat. The Conservative was expected to crush the Democrat.

I have said all along that the goal of activists must be to defeat Scozzafava. Doug Hoffman winning would just be gravy. A Hoffman win is not in the cards, but we did exactly what we set out to do — crush the establishment backed GOP candidate.

It is comforting to see that the far right is just as scorched-earth about their allies as their opponents. It is better for nothing to be done, for nobody on your side to be elected, than to accept a partial victory.

Overall, though, a depressing night. I remain unconvinced that gubernatorial and Mayoral races are a referendum on the national parties; they have far more to do with State and local issues. The '10 Congressional and Senate elections will be a referendum; unfortunately, the economy isn't looking good for then.

The Maine result sucks. This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/894405.html. comment(s) on that entry.

My younger, Douglas Adams-reading self would have been delighted. (And not at all concerned to be sharing the honors with roughly one percent of the rest of population.) My current by-definition-older self is pretty amused, too. Likely to be a subdued birthday here, between page proofs and election day and a volunteer commitment this evening, but there's a Lucy Kaplansky concert later in the week to look forward to, among other things.

If you're so inclined today, point me to something random: something lovely or silly or fascinating or compelling someplace online that will make for a good diversion between rounds of reading. :-)

As the season of Yuletide Madness approaches (imagine waking up Yule morning with a story written just for you) the discussion of fan fiction also came up at WFC, in all its complexity.

There are many writers whose reaction to fan fiction is the visceral one, akin to discovering a slug in your salad. Others are flattered, or shrug it off, or don't mind as long as no one expects them to read it. Most of the viewpoints I've talked about in other posts, but one came up that I hadn't heard before, and that is how fan fiction can actually bring readers to a canon. What happens is that a really good fan fiction writer posts a story, her fans read it, and love the setting and characters so much they go out to seek the story source.

One person pointed out that that is exactly what is happening with some of the established continuations of storylines and worlds--like the complexity that Deborah Ross is bringing to the Darkover world, as she continues that storyline. And ditto with the Avalon storyline that Diana L. Paxson is exploring--coincidentally also from the creative pen of Marion Zimmer Bradley. I found that so interesting that I might do an interview with them, when their new books come out early next year.

From there the discussion branched out to other really successful continuations.

More on elves... That line creeps between cracks of intention just gives me neck prickles.

How Japanese artists saw Western dress

 A brilliant co-worker set up a clothes swap, and we all brought in bags of things we no longer wore.   I brought my pile from the Prozac-and-business-travel 1990s, which meant lots of stretch velvet.  (Prozac made me lose weight; I'll never wear those clothes again.)  Many people admired the pieces, but nobody picked them.  The woman who hired me who, like me, loves bright colors and bright prints, brought her surf pants and a gorgeous pieced satin skirt; alas,she's about three sizes smaller than me, so I couldn't grab anything, although I did snag her sparkly shoes; she got my slate-blue jacquard silk pajamas in return.

Farewell to the woman who wore stretch velvet, black leather pants, a black net shirt with embroidered palm leaves just covering the breasts.  

And hello to the woman who owns a black leather motorcycle jacket.  It may be a bit bulky in silhouette for me; then again, it may be time to be a biker babe.
This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/894034.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Heading home from World Fantasy Convention, which was one long pleasant rambling conversation (with occasional out-of-con side trips) whose details are a blur just now.

Many thanks for showed up for my readings from Thief Eyes. You were a great audience, and left me feeling like this book is going to be just fine, as it makes its way out into the world. :-)

Before I leap madly into catching up with chores around here, a few explanations and so forth.

My summation of the con? It was, this intense, sprawling, disorganized, mad conversation that ranged over hours, with people coming and going, sometimes in the formal setting of the panels and breaking out of it. This is not just exhilarating, but necessary. Even though it has its irritations--like being blown off (again) by X, and hearing Y, who really should know better, say from a panel what sounded to me like (and context is everything, see below) "Oh, those horse and castle fantasies--they're all exactly the same. I haven't been able to read them because they are indistinguishable from one another--nothing new for the past twenty years." My first thought, "You haven't read any because they are all the same, is that judging books by covers?" Though he did reference one he'd began, and it felt like others he'd read--so . . . that means they are all the same? Second thought was, "Is this a jab at women writing epic fantasy?" Another irritation was missing several people I'd wanted to meet up with but we never seemed to get into the same physical space--and when I finally caught up with one, it was at moment when so much else was going on we barely had a chance to communicate.

But. The exchange of ideas, the correction of misapprehensions, the new ideas, the sense that others are in the same boat on this or that issues--that is as necessary as food and air.

Funny moment. I'm in a conversation with an editor who started as a junior aid in publishing when young, and was telling some crackup stories about various happenings in publishing of the past. Then a name of an author now dead came up, and I said, "I heard he was a nutbar."

The editor looked at me, and there was this suppressed mirth, the lips slightly parted, the hold-the-breath hesitation, and I said, "What. No, I know. You're about to say, 'You writers are all nutbars.'" And hoo boy, then came the laugh!

From the comments and a couple of emails I see how easy it is to misstate, or to lead to false conclusions, especially when just throwing down quick summaries without the context, etc. No vocal tone. You know how it is.

So a few things.

First, the "Mormons" question.

I clearly made a mistake by conflating conversations, and what happened at panels, at Sirens, with conversations early on at WFC. In my head, there's this jumble of voices and images, and sometimes I see patterns ranging across these differing moments and start yapping as though everyone sees them, too.

First issue: the sense that many readers, especially feminists, on hearing Stephenie Meyer's background, began reading that background into the books. (Compare early reviews, when nothing is said about Meyer at all, to later, when there are reviews that assume an LDS ideology being sekritly fed to girls in order to turn them into Stepford wives. Yes, I am being sarcastic, but yes, I did come away from reading some reviews that bring up the M word in this manner, and also I heard some people speak pretty much in those terms. Including at a panel at Sirens.)

Second issue--"Mormons" and science fiction and fantasy. Actually, I think there is an awesome panel topic here, because there are a lot of hot new writers on the scene who are, or have been, members of the LDS church. How do they deal with the negative vibe from the genre? How do they deal with the more conservative element of the church, who may look askance at the spec fic world? Why are there so many fantasy and SF writers from the LDS community--is the yearly con at BYU, "Life, the Universe, and Everything," the inspiration? I've been to that con--it was a fantastic experience. [See above about WFC]

Sidenote and plea: I so hope this topic is not going to loose off a spew of LDS-hate; the church has its range of voices and points of view just like every other segment of society. And Us Against Them lines aren't always so easy to draw if one strives to understand and not just to condemn--for example, take a look at the spewage aimed at Orson Scott Card after he wrote sympathetically about a gay character--I've always loved this book for the way he just pegs what music can do to you. Anyway, I think there is a possible interesting discussion here.

Second clarification and its context.

Bad editors. Actually, I should have said there were two conversations, one about rude editors, and how writers have to take it and pretend not to notice the slamdunk, because bitching about it online is sure to make it real tough to sell anything.

And yes, I know that there are rude writers. See above about past writers who were . . . not known for their elegant manners. At WFC I experienced this enormous sense of relief to be among a bunch of writers who felt they could finally talk about vexing issues without the shadow of public exposure that is a big part of being online. And some of what we expressed was that anxiety-making sense of being helpless about series cutoffs, crap advances, phone calls never returned, weather-vane vibes, etc.

O am fully aware that three tables away, four editors sitting in head-bent, earnest conversation could very well have been core dumping about writers who are late, who turn in messes, who rant about more money when their books just aren't selling, who post crazed riffs that cause an avalanche of necessary cleanup, and the editors have to sit lip-buttoned.

The potential for adversarial tensions resulting from being on either side of the negotiating table is a part of this life. It is good to be able to share, to vent, to get your perspective straight--it does not mean that the talkers all go away with the conviction that "all editors are bad."

Okay, now there was also a conversation about bad editors. The crux of this one was noting who didn't stay long in the business, and why they would want to edit when they don't actually know how to edit. How did they get there--the whole "got a business degree, and books are widgets" thing--editors who are strategic editors--that is, see the whole story, and those who are tactical, that is, really get in at the prose level, and different editing styles--who's been around a long time, and whose editorial viewpoint seems to have changed over the decades. When writers edit.

Last, YA, YA versus general genre, when writers (some encouraged by editors) write YA. The context of this one was a friend (who can speak up here or not as they choose) who has a long backlist of adult work, who is thinking of commencing YA. Whom to approach about that proposal? Will that long backlist work for or against the writer? Who is actively seeking YA--editors in both YA and general--whose lines are working and not led to a discussion of what makes YA work, and what doesn't--and why some books read like adult (are the kids reading them?) and some don't, and why some fail but they should have taken off. My example was Graham Joyce's delicately spiky The Exchange--here's this terrific writer for adults who really pegged a teen book. I liked that book, but more to the point, I could see myself checking it out several times as a teen, as I tried to assimilate it all. Why isn't it a big seller? It should be! We talked about this kind of thing the entire weekend long--in fact, I would say that there was a YA subtheme to my experience of the con.

Anyway, there was a lot of consensus, as Melinda Lo commented on yesterday's post, on emotional immediacy being a key ingredient. She didn't write Ash aimed at the teen readership, nor did Cindy Pon intend to write a YA with Silver Phoenix--but someone saw the potential to reach teen readers, and was right. So we, a bunch of writers, were talking round and around about this.

Then yesterday, I had breakfast with someone who has that strategic vision--has always has, but it seems to me from my distant vantage to have gotten sharper over the years. She said she knew first thing out the gate that Harry P (and Twilight) would be big enough sellers to cross into social phenoms. She said they had all the markers--and my thought is, a lot of those markers are "wish fulfilment" and "accessibility." She also described that tension between the things that sell big and the things that we readers might love passionately, but which sell for beans, as the conflict between story and art. They do not have to be mutually exclusive--Pride and Prejudice still works because it's a brilliant marriage between story and art. Lord of the Rings.

But even being conscious of this tension doesn't give a magic recipe for success.

Okay, I think I got it all done--now to work off the calories from the DAW dinner Saturday night, which was absolutely fantastic (food and company) and get cracking.

First, a couple of really nifty links--after a reminder that thistleingrey has put up some superb panel reports.

From randwolf

and the Symphony of Science from from estara

I just had it mansplained to me that women don't write alternate history.
When I proposed, among others, Naomi Novik's "what if the Napoleonic wars had air power", I got "secretly suspect you are making that up."Postscript: ARRGH!  I completely forgot the other prong of my gynocratic argument.  Victoria's eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, married the heir to the throne of Prussia; she, Victoria, and Albert all hoped that together the newlyweds could bring modern ideas to the throne.  Instead,  the Princess Royal [another Victoria, so I'll call her by her English title] was a disastrous fit with the Prussian courtiers, with the King, and in particular with the King's adviser Bismarck, who called her "die Englaenderin".  When the Princess Royal came to her first childbirth, the child suffered a damaged nerve, which led to a crippled arm, which led to multiple failed and excruciating treatments.   Bismarck was successful in having the child mostly raised by his adherents; the child grew to become Kaiser Wilhelm. This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/893929.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Congratulations to my beloved publishers, Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant of Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House, on their World Fantasy Award!  Congratulations and commiserations to all the winners and the brilliant runners-up.  This must have been a heartbreakingly difficult year to judge.

Nine

Argh. I spent an hour rethreading the serger for 5-thread safety stitch (3-thread overlock plus a securing chainstitch.) It was not fun. I got the threading line itself correct, but two of the looper arms you need to thread have almost no clearance and tiny eyeholes. I eventually needed hemostat-ish tweezers, a wire threading loop, and a magnifying glass to get it done.

I then discovered that I was missing the Allen wrench necessary to install a second needle; my husband has an Allen multi-tool but unfortunately it's English measurements and the Elna, being Swiss, is presumably metric. My attempts to sew ended in disaster. I wound up removing two of the threads and dropping back to 3-thread overlock. Then the tension was frelled; after heroic amounts of tweaking I gave up in disgust. I hate it when I spend more time futzing with the machine than sewing. I'm going to hire somebody to come to the house and give me serger lessons. Obviously getting the tension right is an art, and I need tutoring. Pfeh.

I pressed all the bits for the Japanese knot bag, which will be silk-faced brocade (multicolor butterflies on black) on one side, and, cut from a Thai wrap skirt I no longer wear, bright purple with gold woven in. They (I cut two) should be quite pretty. I may try sewing them on my trusty imperturbable Singer. I also pressed out some thin black silk jacquard that's precut and presewn for bias; that needs to be marked off in straight lines, then to have the ends sewn together, at which point it can be cut into one long continuous spiral of bias.

First, however, a nap.
This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/893609.html. comment(s) on that entry.

There's an excellent long review of Cloud & Ashes—an essay, really, by Paul Kincaid—just up on the SF Site.

"I am drunk on the words, I am feasting on the allusions that are both timeless and contemporary, that seem to take us to the very root of folklore and to its most modern expression, that is every legend you have ever heard and a tale you have never encountered before. It is pure story; enter at your peril..."

I rejoice.

ETA:  I am particularly pleased that he noted this:

"Above all, I have barely hinted at how much it plays with gender roles, how much it has to tell us about the role of women in shaping the world, indeed how every potent active character is female."

Nine

We'll be hitting the road in a couple of hours or so, so last report.

This is just free form throwing out of conversations.

How POD needs to become the new model for book printing, which creates less of a eco footprint--way future bookstores might look--people doing browsing differently now (on line)--need to wander shelves and touch and look at books. Hope that used bookstores stay with us as there is a deeply satisfying feel to a book printed 180 years ago, owned and loved by others. (Love discovering old notes and things in old books.)

Bringing one's backlist into e-book form; Book View Cafe and its evolving business model. (Lots of conversation about Book View Cafe.)

Language in fantasy (after a panel)--when language gets in the way of the reader--sloppy worldbuilding (Q "What do you mean by sloppy?" A "I mean when I have to memorize a zillion terms for supposedly new things, but then I find stuff like 'She aped his movements' when there is no sign of apes in the world, and I really hate 'Okay' in fantasy or far future sf worlds")--long discussion of "okay", when it trips the reader, when it doesn't--can't imagine okay ever falling out of use--history of cuss words, words found in Chaucer--

New writers and agents--agents--bad agents

What makes a YA voice--genre writers trying YA (or being talked into it by editors, and why those books fail) --simple language vs. simplistic language--tone--what kids actually read vs. what adults think they should be reading (reasons adults want kids to read a thing, not always for reasons you think)--

What exactly constitutes emotional payoff--how that works for adults, for kids, hardest of all payoff for both--adults as well as kids got emotional payoff from Potter--emotional memory makes old favorites work whereas the book encountered as an adult might not work (L.J. Smith in this context: those who first read them as teens love them still, others who encountered them as adults find them less engaging)

Bad editors, but you can't talk about them on line so they can stay bad with no repercussions

New York in 1959, when Bob Dylan arrived in town and musicians thought he was just carrying the guitar around as a chick-magnet until he took out his harmonica

Oxford versus Cambridge--Oxford in literature

German food (regional food) -- weirdest foods ever had

Stooges vs. Marx Brothers

Authors who try to gain readers by building a cult around themselves (when it works and when it doesn't--Neil Gaiman currently made a cult figure ("wins awards because he's Neil Gaiman, but in ten years, will people read the books in the same way?)

Dogs and how they communicate

New authors and books one loved--books outside the usual white person context--big love for Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix--Malinda Lo's new book--

Old favorites we wish were still in print--old faves that are really dated now

      But on a certain day when the nights are drawing in, the dancers leave
   work early and take, from attics and cupboards, the other costume, the
   black one, and the other bells. And they go by separate ways to a valley
   among the leafless trees. They don't speak. There is no music. It's very
   hard to imagine what kind there could be.

      The bells don't ring. They're made of octiron, a magic metal. But
   they're not, accurately, silent bells. Silence is merely the absence of
   noise. They make the opposite of noise, a sort of heavily textured silence.

      And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the
   frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of
   the balance of things.


      You've got to dance both, they say. Otherwise you can't dance either.					

						--Terry Pratchett

Nine

While sorting out the garage I found both The Spiral Dance and the book that goes with my Victoria Regina tarot deck; the last has been OOP for years.  I am now prepared with reading material for All Hallows' Eve.

We've decided that two more Gorilla Racks and we should be able to move most of the boxes out of the house --hurrah!  The shelves are properly spaced so that we can pull individual boxes out and sort/discard at will.   The kitten has discovered that he can get up into the top shelves overhanging the garage, and is now playing Invisible Ceiling Cat for all it's worth.  (No, he can't get out of the garage.  Pinky swear.)  We may wind up putting a cat door into the door into the garage, so as not to have cold air blowing into the house in winter.
This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/893375.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Ta-Nehisi Coates links to Latoya's passionate, informed, and thorough defense of Zahara Jolie-Pitt's hair, and Latoya in turn links to an awesome page full of Ethiopian hairstyles. Here's a bit from the last that stood out for me:

Speaking as a mother, what a brilliant idea.  Don't miss both Ta-Nehisi's and Latoya's (and their commenters') takes on Zahara's hair, which boil down to "MYOB"; LaToya also comes up with the best encapsulation I've seen yet, " the Pokemon-style adoption tactics of Angelina Jolie".




This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/893181.html. comment(s) on that entry.

Saturday morning at WFC--I'm down in the lobby with tea and borrowed laptop so my roommates can sleep.

A lot more stuff, some very intense--the sort of thing writers desperately need: frank talk with other writers as reality check, especially about the business, (especially right now), but which are not sharable. (And I only mention this as a signal to other writers who are thinking about attending these things. This part of the proceeding is a real plus.)

It is so very good to meet LJ people and see the actual face behind the phosphors.

thistleingrey (who I keep missing, and hope to meet today) has an excellent summation of some of the panels.

Several conversations circling around the tension between what is popular and what longtime readers consider good. The frustration of being a longtime reader and finding oneself harder to please--for various reasons. . . not superiority (though one finds that) but because we humans like patterns, but at some point familiar drops over into predictable. When and where predictable/comfort becomes predictable/boring?

[I can answer that for me, though for no one else: if you make me laugh, then I am along for the ride, no matter how familiar. If it is serious (especially serious with preachy overtones) I am gone.]

Shock prose does not equate insight. (that includes poetic prose that leans heavily on the oxymoronic.)

Criticism--has everyone gotten online killed criticism? Yes--no--being polite--netiquette--don't slam those in your circle--fatiguing sense after mutual shout-out praise of friendship circle's books. "I am beginning to think of those "My awesome buddy's awesome book squeeee!" as commercials--loud and content free."

Content free. That stayed with me--I think there is something important here. Supposed reviews that are all friend squee, or whatever squee, being essentially content free. Hmmm.

Anyway I caught this off my fast LJ triage last night before I crashed--on the supposed death of criticism, by Bookslut, which so parallels my thoughts that I was all wow.

My thought has been that online-ness means that everyone is an authority, and we no longer regard critics as the gateways to what we were taught in school is "good literature"--especially with the classics being examined yet again, and the definition of good literature changing.

Anyway time to go, but here's the link--scroll down to Oct 30.

EDIT: If you're reading this, our maintenance is OVER! The problem was not found on our equipment, which means we'll have to work with our ISP to fix this small problem -- which also means another maintenance window in the future -- but at least we have eliminated our side.

Thank you everyone, and a special shout out to rekoil for giving me a great suggestion AND also the opportunity to feel like I've just called in to a local radio station.

Have a great day, night or afternoon wherever you may be.

---

Hi everyone, sorry for the late notice but I'm going to have to do some testing on 1 of our 4 internet circuits TONIGHT; Friday night or Saturday morning depending on which time zone you're in.

Most of us shouldn't notice any impact, though there may be some slowness or lag when I switch traffic on to our other ISP circuits and then another hit when I stop the tests. If a page won't load or times out, try hitting refresh 1 or 2 times and it should load then. If it doesn't work at all... trust me, I'll be typing really really really fast to try to undo whatever I just did. Hopefully you'll have some Halloween candy (if you're in the USA and celebrate that kind of thing) nearby to take away the bitterness of a small site outage. :(

Here's the handy-dandy Website That I Always Use to get a feel for when the maintenance will start in your area. Our site traffic historically dips on Friday afternoons until Saturday morning which is why we tend to pick this time for maintenance work.

( tech details )

status.livejournal.org will, of course be updated before and after the maintenance window. Or else marta will get mad at me. :D

bt

I may be the only one, but I get bored when folks talk about a con and only list names of people they encountered.

I understand that the name evokes a vivid time and place, a conversation, but to anyone not there? A name. Even a Name is not all that interesting, though I realize I might be alone in that.

So I'm not going to mention any names. Maybe this is not interesting either, but here are a few conversational topics I've had to far:

Publishing and e-stores

(subheading, authors whose contracts did not include e-rights updating out of print files and selling the books as e-books . . . and marketing these where publishers will not hog most of the royalties as they do for print books, which actually has production costs.)

Why many who used to read sf no longer do (and why younger readers don't, or what they do like)

Chesterton, the Byron menage, and Declare (Trevelyan's subsequent life)

Writers' processes, and how to talk about that on line (why sometimes it's boring, sometimes downright irritating, and when fascinating)

Breaking out of niche limitations--definition of niche limitations, "when readers move on as fast, or faster, then new readers appear"--real workshopping, as opposed to getting only praise from other unpublished or niche writers, is crucial--workshops--crit groups--editors--Viable Paradise

Viable Paradise (and Clarion) how one's experiences actually unpack over years afterward

Travel--and sharing travel experience

the history of Lippizaners

Sirens and how cool it was (and why) and next year's Sirens

Mormon fantasy and sf writers--how in the genre world it's okay to despise Stephenie Meyer for being Mormon but that's not bigotry

and a lot of very nifty "So what are you working on now?" news from various people.

...and that's the first 24 hours.

ok, I rested my achy bones--back to it!

Starting a new Press [will post more about them later]

 1) Post a list of up to 20 books/movies/anime/TV shows/video games/bands [fannish etc.] that you've had an obsessive fannish love or interest in at some time in your life.
2) Have your f-list guess your favourite character/member from each item.3) When someone guesses correctly, strikethrough the item and put the name of your favorite character next to it.

I'm going to loosen the bounds a bit to include series and 'verses.  I'm leaving out some books because they're obvious: LOTR/Eowyn.  Hello!  The only woman with agency in the WHOLE DAMN TRILOGY!  I'm also realizing how many of the books I love don't have ensemble casts.

1. Dunnett, Lymond series Kate Somerville, catherinejs with an assist by forodwaith.
2. Die Zauberflote  Queen of the Night, guessed by vonnie_k
3. James Bond sex interest (For purposes of this competition, M is technically not a sex interest because otherwise she PWNS EVERYTHING)  May Day, as played by Grace Jones, guessed by my daughter.  But what about Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin?  ARRRGH.  SO CONFLICTED.
4. Jane Austen heroine Anne Elliot, guessed by vonnie_k
5. Conan the Barbarian (movie series; pick 2) (1)Valeria, picked by hecubot (2) not yet found
6. Robert Altman's Nashville  Linnea, picked by onemildrat
7. Robert Altman's Gosford Park Mrs. Wilson, guessed by drho
   
8. Singin' In The Rain Lina Lamont, guessed by madrobins
9. Susanna Clarke-verse
10. Laurell K. Hamilton-verse Edward, guessed by drho
11. I, Claudius (TV series) Livia, guessed by mamadar
12. Greek goddesses Athena, guessed by maga_dogg
13. Patrick O'Brian, male 
14. Patrick O'Brian, female
15. Lois McMaster Bujold Ivan, szandara
16. Diana Wynne Jones, Chrestomanci series  Millie, guessed by filigree10
17. Oz books (all authors up to 1970) Polychrome, guessed by hecubot.  (An achievement, given the number of characters involved!)

And I'm done. A belated, rich  and interesting birthday year to [info - personal] rachelmanija ! This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/892683.html. comment(s) on that entry.

They were digging up the Yard again today; having staked out the back yard of the Indian College in the proper chessboard pattern, they were bringing up the earth in dustpans and shaking it down on screens.  Rather nice to have a 17th-century midden on the premises.  And maybe they found Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck's shoe nail.  Who could tell?  Their best finds were on display:  pipestems and quarried-window-leading; shoe leather, oyster shells, a button; gnawed sheepshanks, clinkers, and nails.  One of the bacca pipes was marked "Davidson Glasgow," of all places.  And I note that none of these ever look smoked—you'd think they'd be deeply stained with nicotine, but no, all the pipestems that I've ever seen have been as ghostly white as the woodland plant, and must have been broken as often as eggshells.  And hurled on the middens for their afterclass to find.  There was a 17th-century lead musket ball, about the size of a sourball candy, but astonishingly heavy in the hand; being shot with that thing would be brutal.  There was a very nice shard of slipware, maybe from an ale mug or a jug.  From the upper levels, 18th- and 19th-century, they had smashed crockery and one rather tawdry gilt ring, now stoneless—was it flung aside angrily? lost and mourned?

Postscript:  the Staffordshire Hoard it's not, but the continuity is moving.  All these brawling scrawling boys are long ago, all dead; and yet the light must be the same now, and the leaves whirling down.,























Nine

I was sitting hip-deep in books and detritus when a man drove up with a van, hopped out, and asked if I were moving, out, moving in, or having a garage sale.  I told him I was cleaning and went back to deciding whether I really needed Heart of Darkness..  He said "I'm selling fresh meat and fish ... do you ever eat meat?"  S I said "We don't have any freezer space, thank you."  He said, "But does that mean you won't answer my question?"  I said,  absently, "It means I was trying to cut off the conversation."

He regrouped and asked me if the bikes in the driveway were for sale; I said "Sure, name a price."  "Would you give one to a tired arthritic door-to-door salesman?"  Me:  "Nope."   He tried again to get me to name a price.  I reminded him that I'd told him to name the price..  He said, "I suppose it wouldn't be worth offering $20.00."  Me, "Nope."   He said he'd think about it and drove away.

And then I gave them to charity, the way I'd intended in the first place.   (Note:  This guy looked like a comfortable middle-class salesman; he did not appear to be in any particular need.)

I didn't *mean* to be curt; I was just too busy to have my Midwestern kick in.  It was kind of fun.
  This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/892579.html. comment(s) on that entry.