Geekety Geekety Geekety

My following has grown by twenty percent in a single day! Welcome Lisa in Indiana! If you really are Lisa in Indiana, that is. Your picture looks suspiciously like Grant's. Coincidence? How many faceless grey-skinned people are there out there? Hmmmm . . .

It occurs to me that I have not yet posted an actual link to The Golem at Everyday Weirdness. Now I have. Hit the little link at the bottom of that page and it will bring you back here. It's a freaky loop that will blow your mind!

Scalzi tells us of a new edition of The Forever War coming later this month. I'm pretty sure I have to read this again. I haven't read it since high school and I think there's more stuff in it than there used to be. I have to read that new stuff. The Forever War is one of my favorite books and I am not alone. If you haven't read it, do so now. Or on February 17th so you can get a copy that's not covered in greasy fingerprints. I'm just kidding. No one picks up science fiction books.

Saw this at the job last week:

The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I like Neil deGrasse Tyson. I like seeing him on Nova Science Now (Though I am a big fan of Robert Krulwich, whom he replaced (Am I super-geeking?)). But I don't, I'm sorry to say, give a rat's ass about Pluto, or whether or not it's a planet. The truth is, I would probably still like the book. Though America may disagree, I'm unconvinced that Pluto is its favorite planet. I'm putting my money on Earth (both literally and figuratively) because that's where America keeps all its stuff. Like air.

Linky Links

Love this Scalzi blog post: Open Letter to the Scraggly-Bearded Dude in the Concert Tee Who Stood in Front of Me in the Line for the Airplane Yesterday

From the "How the fuck is this news?" department: Obama Breaks Bush Jacket Rule In Oval Office Way to go, HuffPo.

I had this memorized when I was a wee one: The Cruel Shoes

Found on grinding.be: Naked Doll People!

My Life's Goal Has Just Been Turned On Its Head

There's a new magazine in town called Thaumatrope and it publishes on Twitter. That's right, Twitter, the land where no post can exceed one-hundred and forty characters. I just learned about it a couple of days ago on John Scalzi's blog. He did an interview there. My compadre, Grant Stone, has pounced on this and asked me just an hour ago if I'd submitted. I checked into it and I've already submitted two stories.

Here's where it gets stupid.

Given my my rules at the onset of The One-Thousand, these stories count toward my goal. Hell, Thaumatrope is even a paying market! Given all this, I could conceivably meet my goal in a few months time, rather than ten years. By the way, for those of you keeping track: Bright Idea (Number 77) and Sweetheart (Number 78). This isn't exactly what I had in mind, but that was the goal. This changes everything. I'll have to rethink.

How does The Ten-Thousand sound to everyone?

My August 19th

John Scalzi ran himself a contest on his heavily-trafficked blog, Whatever, last week. In it, he asked his adherents to describe the events of August 19, 1994. To make it short, I didn't win. To make it longer, here's my entry:


It was a bright night, August 19, 1994. Two moons worth of bright, owing to that same mirror in the sky that made Gemini spring into quadruplets. My son was just eighteen months old and I remember holding his tubby body up close to my face while we waved upward. We couldn’t see ourselves up there but we greeted us just the same. The whole neighborhood had spilled all over the street, impromptu barbecues and cheap fireworks going up all around us. We’d gotten the Independence Day we’d missed a month and a half before because the damned city said wildfire risks were too high with the drought.

It was a night of miracles. Every fifth dog burst into life-affirming green flames. Through the neighbor’s window we saw Clinton’s speech for the fifth time that day. Behind dusty slats he declared that our war with Uzbekistan was over and tomorrow was to be a spaghetti holiday. Hell, at that point I didn’t care that he was in bed with Big Semolina. The draft notices we’d just received that day for my only boy and his unconceived sister were now null and void.

Although the celebrations went on for many hours all over the world, the night ended for us when creepy Tommy Marcella whacked the kids’ piñata, a rainbow colored pony, with his aluminum baseball bat. Stronger than that bat was the half-hour of frustration behind it. Seventeen-kids-and-one-yellow-broomstick-,-brown-where-the-paint-had-chipped-off-the-end’s worth of frustration. Eight and half sugar-jonesing child-hours of frustration and the power of one hormone-squirting, shadow-mustached man-child fell behind that silver and black Louisville Slugger.

The rainbow pony burst. And where candy was expected, intestines poured out onto the cracked grey pavement. The clot of pre-adolescent bodies shattered into its constituent screaming parts, littering the bloody scene with dozens of hyphens in their wakes.

John Butts suggested we make sausage. We laughed a little but the party had gone out of us at that point. But for an occasional shout or crackle of salutes in the distance, the quiet had descended upon us. There were a few lingerers who didn’t know until it grew uncomfortable that good times ever ended. The rest sought their beds, only now realizing that there was work the next day, spaghetti be damned. My joy was mellowed but persistent. In the warm glow of Mrs. Demers’ Scottish Terrier, Poopie, I kissed my wife. I even kissed her husband (closed mouth for Barry, though).

Everything since then has seemed so ordinary in comparison.

Take A Seat On The Sofa

Check out the John Scalzi episode of StarShipSofa podcast, just posted today. On it, Tony reads my review of the Android's Dream. www.starshipsofa.com

Review on StarShipSofa

Hey, everyone, take a gander at the review I wrote about John Scalzi's The Android's Dream at StarShipSofa: http://www.starshipsofa.com/The-Androids-Dream-by-John-Scalzi

And when you've read that, click on the sofa's homepage, scroll down a little and download and listen to Spider Robinson's fun fun fun story Distraction, a big hit on the forums and with good reason.