ICFAdventures

Happy Easter, to those of you who are into that sort of thing!

I'd never been to a conference or convention or anything else before last week. It's usually a money thing, sometimes a scheduling thing, but the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts is a Florida thing, and I'm a Florida thing, so I can drive there and not sweat the hotel, so that helps. I'm going to be name-dropping like a muhfuh here, so get used to it.

I swung up to Orlando for the pre-conference party the Tuesday night before last and met some cool people there including Kathleen Ann Goonan. I felt a bit like a dope because I knew I'd read something by her, but couldn't remember what. I met quite a few Scandinavian writers and academics and a couple from Australia. I felt dumb after asking Peter Halasz if he was Adam-Troy Castro. But Castro lives in Florida, I figured he might be there, and I've only ever seen tiny little pictures of him on Facebook. I spoke to Guest Scholar Constance Penley who teaches about the intersection of feminism, porn and related matters at UC Santa Barbara. I saw others whom I knew by seeing their photos online (after the Peter Halasz incident, I should probably say I "thought" I knew them) but I didn't see a non-intrusive way to say hello. I had some great conversation with Diane and Lee Weinstein, who have been involved with science fiction for, I think, thirty-five years. Diane answered lots of questions that I had about her years of slush reading for Weird Tales and told me the story about how she was hired by George Scithers.

Mango Feed Is Fixed

My boss, who is a newly converted fan of Beware the Hairy Mango, told me he wasn't able to access the first forty-nine episodes of the show. I realized that I had to adjust the thingie on the site that handles such things and have done so. All the episodes should be available now. I'm seeing them on my iPod, anyway. If you're still not seeing the first episodes, wait a few days, check again, and if there's a problem, let me know at upwithgravity@gmail.com.

As I told the boss, it took me maybe twenty episodes or more to really figure out what the show was, so there are some shows that don't feel as Mangoey today because the stories are just weird, rather than weird and funny. So, bear with it. You shouldn't necessarily start at the beginning with the show and I always, always, ALWAYS warn folks not to listen to them all in a row, because I am best taken in small doses. You'll burn out, people. Of course, listeners regularly ignore that advice. Proceed at your own risk.

Updated Works

I updated the list of my stuff that you can read and listen to. You can see that here, over at http://bewarethehairymango.com/about-2/. I added links to three or four stories, updated a couple of other links and sadly removed quite a few other links to sites that are no longer in working order. Some of those stories were ones I actually removed from this blog when they were published at another side. I'll have to add them back when I get the time and remember. Perhaps I can post the others here as well. I should have another Fiction Crawler to add to the list in a few days.

Caterina Mota: Play With Smart Materials

Hop on the train, folks! From TED:

Feel Inside (And Stuff Like That)

Stumbled upon this video today and it made me eye-wateringly happy. Not only is it Flight of the Conchords material I haven't seen, but it's a fantastic song performed brilliantly with a story behind it. Donate to the charity that inspired it all, Cure Kids. Enjoy!


 

Stop Motion

Just saw this on Facebook. Too wonderful not to share.

The Novel, She Is Done

I just finished my first novel, By Any Other Form, and shipped it off to New York to find its way in the world. This is number 139 in The One-Thousand, and boy, does it feel good to change that tally again. This was the longest thing I've ever done (90,000 words, a year and a half of my life) and I feel the best thing I've ever done. Grant Stone tells me I should throw a party. At the moment, I'll settle for a shower.

In the immortal words of Ned Flanders, "Godspeed, little doodle."