A Word Here...

Originally published at John Joseph Adams. You can comment here or there.

• has at last defeated FireFox 3’s stupid 3.0.1 update which disabled the essential Tab Mix Plus. There was much rejoicing. #
• The Dark Knight is not without flaw, but is easily the best Batman film. That talk of an Oscar nom for Ledger doesn’t seem so implausible. #
• just read a covr letter that basically says “Thanks for rejecting my last story; you’re right–it sucks.” ::Shakes head.:: #
• @PaulGrahamRaven The things you own end up owning you. #

http://xkcd.com/453/

71,084 / 100,000 (71.1%)

Now I'm going to rest my brain for a few hours, and pick it up again after dinner ...

And after taking Duff back to the vet. His sutures are looking a bit suss. Sigh.

Originally published at John Joseph Adams. You can comment here or there.

This song really amuses me, so I sought it out on YouTube to share it with you all. It’s really quite appropriate to do so, even though this clip is obviously an unauthorized version. Listen to the song and you’ll see why.

It’s a metal band, but this song isn’t really metal at all. Go ahead, try it. It’s by Edguy, and it’s called “The Life and Times of a Bonus Track.” As you might have guessed, it’s a bonus track on one of their albums. But what you probably wouldn’t guess is that it’s a first person account of the bonus track’s life. 

By this point, I think everyone probably heard about Jay Lake’s colon cancer news. The man is a cancer survivor the likes of which the world has never seen. When I heard the diagnosis, I emailed him asking if there was anything I could do for him from New York.

Oh yes. Yes, there was.

Jay asked me to build a puppet of his tumor, because he wanted to be “smarter and funnier” than his cancer. Before I had materials in hand, it was clear that Jay had kicked the tumor without the need for puppetry.

The colon, on the other hand, is a troublesome thing. So, I’m building Jay Lake a puppet of his colon in a jar. Today, I went shopping for specimen jars. Besides needing something the right size and shape, it also needed to be plastic so that I can drill holes in it with abandon. Tomorrow I’ll start the mech for the “mouth” of the colon.

This may well be my strangest commission ever

Comments? -- Link

I registered for eBay in September, 1998. I do not buy on eBay often, but ... damn, I've had that account for nearly 10 years.

So last week I decided I wanted to sell something for the first time.

I wrote up a blurb, took some pictures, went through the web forms and bam! an error! Some sort of generic error after I tried to do the phone authentication thing. I waited a half hour, tried again .. same thing. Waited until the next day, same thing.

Then I tried to use eBay's "live chat" to get a solution, and got two solutions, one of which didn't work, and the other was "make a new account."

So I emailed tech support. They told me that I could use the same first solution that didn't work, and a second solution -- which also didn't work -- of recreating the auction from scratch. They also misidentified the problem [I was not getting a "page not responding" error; I was getting an error from the web app, not the web server.

[You will note that I am using the term "solution" in a loose manner.]

So I went back to the tech support email form, pasted in my original email, the original set of solutions, and a note that neither of the two worked.

Guess what I received?

A form letter listing the same two non-working solutions! 100% identical except for the name signed to it!

So today I gave in and created a new account, and it worked peachy keen, and if you'd like to buy the rare-ish Classic BattleTech book FedCom Civil War, you can checkity the link below. I'll be listing some other gaming stuff that I've had sitting around my office, but maybe not until after Gen Con. We'll see how things go.

My eBay Auctions

PS: If you work for eBay, and if you have a smidge of care for me and/or my work in the gaming industry, you know how to reach me. I'd love for my original eBay account -- adamjury, not adamjury2008 -- be properly set up for selling.

Oh my, it rained today. It rained and rained and then rained some more. With thunder and lightning. Rivers ran through the yard and the barn and arena. So much for my plan to ride Cai this afternoon, because the arena had dried out.

But rain like that means road closures and flash floods. My dear husband is sitting in his car up at the corner of our road and the main highway, waiting for the washes to stop running. He can't go anywhere else, because the highway is closed to the west, and Houghton Road is closed to the north. I'd be willing to bet that Sahuarita Road is also closed to the east, too. At least we have cell phones and can talk to each other.

He's not alone -- there are about 20 other cars also waiting. Our neighbors are not stupid. They'd be having a tail-gate party, if only they weren't all on their way home from work and therefore without picnics.

We all expect the wash to clear out in another half hour or so. And we hope that it's done raining for the night.

Practice went rather better tonight. I'm still not hitting my pops with sufficient emphasis to make myself happy, but I'm feeling more like I'm going to go through with the performance. I also decided to jettison my previous costume idea since I didn't want to be wrestling with a slipping belt, and practiced in my flowered skirt instead. Guess what? I stepped on it a few times. Whee. Still, it's better than the slipping tassel belt, so I think I'll stick with it.

Mind you, I wish I had more stamina. After about a half hour of rehearsing, I was dripping sweat, and my abdomen was so fatigued that I couldn't pop my moves for shit. I memorize by repetition, and when there's only so much repetition my body can do before pooping out... Feh. And then I still had to rehearse the dance for tomorrow's fusion class, by which point I was so tired my body pretty much gave up on doing anything even vaguely like the choreography. And between fusion class and my performance, I haven't had time to practice hip shimmies in over a week, so I fear any progress I've made there is slipping away...

*breathing into paper bag*

One cool thing did happen, though. I don't practice in front of a mirror when I'm running choreography, because I don't have a mirrored wall anywhere in the house. But as I was getting ready for my shower, I practiced an arm move in the bathroom mirror while doing what I thought of as one of my half-assed mini stomach undulations. Except it was neither half-assed nor mini. I had no idea! The damned thing actually looked good!

So, class tomorrow, performance Thursday (probably), duet rehearsal with my friend Kate on Saturday, writing group on Sunday (which means I have to read and crit on Friday and Saturday evenings)... Yeah, I'll write again next week.

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/?p=1280

I just watched a hard fought game between the LA Sparks and Detroit Shock that ended in a real fight. The ending was horrible with three players and one coach ejected and, I’m sure, lots of unwelcome attention from the press which ordinarily completely ignores the WNBA. Gosh, maybe now even the New York Times will cover a game.

I was most shocked by Detroit Assistant Coach Mahorn, who is male and well over 7ft tall, pushing over Lisa Leslie. He needs to be suspended for the rest of the season. You do not touch the opposing team’s players ever. Under any circumstances.

But mostly I blame the referees. There were several incidents leading up to the fight between Parker and Pierson. Cheryl Ford should’ve been T’d up. So should Coach Laimbeer. And Candace Parker. The officials let things get out of control. They let the nasty atmosphere boil over into violence. Can the refs be suspended for the rest of the season? I’d like to see that.

And now several players are going to be out for a bunch of games. Plenette Pierson, Candace Parker and Delisha Milton-Jones for sure and most likely Muriel Page and Deanna Nolan as well. Not to mention Cheryl Ford getting injured trying to keep Pierson from attacking more LA players.

I hate this crap. This is not why I follow the WNBA. If I want to watch people brawling I can watch the thugby (otherwise known as Rugby League) or the NBA. The New York Liberty plays the LA Sparks on Friday. It’s not going to be as good a game without Parker and Milton-Jones.

And all because the officials couldn’t put a lid on Laimbeer and Ford and Parker. When a coach is screaming abuse at you, when players have to be held back, when players are going after the ball long after the whistle is blown—T them up. And if they do it again—throw them out. As I saw tonight that aggressive nastiness spreads.

I really hope this is the WNBA’s first and last brawl.

Yes, that’s right FOXSports. Michelle Wie needs to learn her lesson. She should stop competing against men. Maybe you should get the belt ready in case she doesn’t learn her lesson this time. Danica Patrick and Billie Jean King are next in line, eh?

I’d say more, but it really kind of speaks for itself, and I’m between attempts to resurrect my wife’s laptop harddrive. Noticed this today when I pulled up an MSN homepage on a client’s computer. Grabbed a screenshot in case it went away. The article is still at FOXSports, but with a much less inflammatory headline.

ETA: Don’t blame me if you go to FOXSports and read the comments. I didn’t link to the article for a reason.

Crossposted with klech.net

*holds manuscript above head and makes Tusken Raider noises*

Revision is DONE!!! I'll be reading it aloud over the next couple of days to fix some of the language, but it is done!

On the one hand, I think it's a pretty good novel. On the other...well... ( This pretty much sums it up. )And now for ice cream, possibly some Dr. Horrible, and then the email backlog! ...Yay.

According to my e-Mail backlog, I've picked up several new friends/readers over the past week or so. To all y'all, I bid a big "Howdy!"

If you're so inclined, throw out a comment and tell me what brought you here.


(I suppose that also goes for anyone else who's bored and looking for something to do.)

( images behind cut tag )

I am playing a silly game involving social networking and dragon eggs. Basically, the idea is for people to click on the images above, which helps keep the eggs and/or hatchlings warm and nourished until they can grow into adult dragons.

Yeah, I know. Humor me. *g*

July 21st:
"Governor, thank you very much. I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport."
-- Arlington, Virginia; October 2, 2001


So, uh...you know...duck.


July 22nd:
"I think younger workers -- first of all, younger workers have been promised benefits the government -- promises that have been promised, benefits that we can't keep. That's just the way it is."
-- Washington, D.C.; May 4, 2005


Smell that? It's the refreshing odor of honesty, baby. Of course, he stumbled over that part of the text on the teleprompter, so he missed the next line...the part that read, "So, suck it. Kneel before Zod, bitches."


182 days to go!

Weird Tales #350, which includes my story "Mainevermontnewhampshiremass", is back from the printer and will be percolating through the mails soon enough. Check it out, especially if you ever wondered what would happen if all the horror novelist-narrators who return to their small hometowns to face down an Ancient Evil in various paperbacks all hailed from the same neighborhood.

This weekend at Readercon, on the "Generation Dark" panel, I made the remark that the production of books based on traditional mass market categories will tend to lead to a very large number of bad books.

Another panelist objected, though not to anything I said. He instead said that he "had a problem with the idea that just because a lot of people like something, it has to be bad." That is, he turned my opinion inside-out and argued with that instead. I attempted to correct him, but his brain had already uncorked the canned arguments against the point he imagined I made.

Of course, a few minutes later he declared that horror died as a category because of a large number of bad books that were being produced in the late 1980s once slots needed to be filled, that paranormal romance may well die soon as well for the same reason, and that he believed that the publishers producing large numbers of books in the category could not tell which of their titles were good and which were bad. That is to say, he actually agreed with my point.



Something similar happened when I made fun of the many Dr. Horrible posts I've seen on my f-list. People objected, claiming that I was just being snooty about what a lot of people liked. Never said any such thing. Point of fact, MOST of the posts I remembered had nothing really to say about Dr. Horrible, except that it existed and would be available for free for a limited time. Most of the posts I saw were simple commercial messages from people who hadn't even seen the material. That was the core of the joke. I had, and still have, no idea whether or not the people whose posts I poked a little fun at even liked the show. (Apparently, some people didn't like that the female lead died or something?)


The faux anti-elitist canned argument is one of the most tedious regular features of the comments section of this journal, and of panel discussions I'm on at cons. Complain that a movie makes no sense — elitist! Prefer a good book to a bad one — elitist! Note that people are making commercials for free about something they haven't even seen — elitist! Wonder how it is supposed to be that a publisher can produce 400 books a year with all of them being great, just great — elitist!

Does it sound a bit more stupid when presented in the abstract? It should. Next time you're feeling defensive, really, check yourself.

Chasing Silver
Writer: Jamie Craig
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Pages: 282

I put off getting this book for a LONG time, and I do mean a LONG time. I mean, look at that cover! Not that's poorly done, but I'm tired of seeing such eye-candy on covers of books, particularly those aimed at women. COME ON.

But I got on a Juno Books kick a while back, so between that and curiosity (this being the first Juno book that had even a HINT of SF), I picked it up. Decided to read it now because I wanted something fast and easy to get through, and trust me, fast and easy to get through it is.

I'm going to be honest: this book DOES NOT BELONG in the SF/Fantasy section. I don't care who published and what their reasons were, and I don't care that there's a time travel element involved. Do you see Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series shelved in SF/F? No. But it's time travel. What about Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife? It's one of the THE BEST time-travel stories I've ever read! But no, it's not shelved in SF/F either. Both of the previous mentioned books are shelved in "fiction," and rightly so: they attract a slightly broader audience than would normally frequent the SF/F shelves.

So where does Chasing Silver belong? Not in SF/F. Not fiction either. No, this book deserves a spot on the Romance shelves, and even though I'm no expert on the genre, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it specifically needs to be shelved in Erotica.

There is nothing, not even the time-travel, about this book that excuses it being shelved in SF/F. Take out the sex, and it's romance thriller/suspense with time travel. That's it. And I'm stressing this whole genre thing so heavily because I want potential readers to know EXACTLY what they're getting when they pick up this book, and also because book two, Touching Silver, didn't get picked up by the bookstores and was therefore canceled, and you know what? I think the first book's shelving is why.

The premise: Remy is on a heist in Washington, DC trying to make a frantic getaway when she's suddenly transported back in time to the year 2008, in LA. Not only does she have to reconcile her new surroundings with how she's used to living, but she also has to reconcile her feelings and desires for the man who finds her. More important, she's still running from her "futuristic" past, and if she's not careful, it's going to catch up with her.

Spoilers ahead.

( Chasing Silver )

My Rating

Worth the Cash: IF, and only IF, you're looking for what amounts to as sex, sex, and more sex with a splash of thriller/suspense and time travel mixed in. It's fun and it's fluff***, in a good way, but don't let the SF/F shelving fool you into thinking this book is something it's not. I'm sorry to see that Juno won't be publishing the sequel, but I do hope the authors (Jamie Craig is actually two people, yo) find a way to publish it, even as an e-book. It's fun, and if you're into sex, sex, and more sex (with a time travel twist), you'll find it fun too.

Next up: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

*** = Let me define "fluff" here, just to be safe. In this case, any time there was a chance to complicate the plot or create conflict, there was usually a sex scene. I enjoyed the story, but there could've been a LOT more done with it, and maybe it's because I'm no critical reader of erotica (I don't know what to compare it too), I can't see the sex scenes as escalating or standing out from one another, except the last two. That's that.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/07/quick-newsy-thing.html

A sneak preview of the Sandman 20th anniversary poster: http://celebritygossip.epicureforum.com/great-comics-artists-draw-sandman-characters-for-special-edition-poster-119.html

And Henry Selick told me that We will have our two top puppet fab people - Georgina and Martin - at the NECA toy booth with lots of Coraline puppets. Exhibit Hall - Booth 4345 (across from Warner Brother's 4329 booth)

So if you want to see what the puppets -- our actors from the film -- look like, now is your chance.

Some days, I find myself wondering if I'm really expecting too much of the human race.

( Rant #1: )

( Rant #2: )

Despite all that, I actually got a lot of work done today, so we'll end on a non-ranty meme: ( In Three Words )

My friend showed me Hulu.com today, which has TV shows and movies available for free viewing on the desktop. The system is supported by advertising.

One of the movies they have is Naked Lunch, which I haven't seen in a million years, though I did think of it the other day.

Anyway, guess who the sponsor is?


HUNGRY-MAN DINNERS