http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2010/01/07/12673.html

Last August, Canadian artist Jon Rafman posted an essay, with photos, called The Nine Eyes of Google Street View. It's an interesting and thoughtful and occasionally slyly funny piece about photography and art and interpretation, even in the absence of an artist per se:

[This] new form of photography may have removed the photographer from the mechanical process, but Street View photographs nonetheless remain cultural texts demanding interpretation.

He also has some thoughts about curating—the images he shows are, of course, his conscious choices from among the collection he's chosen from the Street View photos that various bloggers have chosen.

Then, too, although there's no conscious mind behind the framing of each individual Street View photo, Google did specify the original criteria: camera height, choice of streets to drive, etc.

I particularly like some of of Rafman's asides:

Even though Google places a comment, 'report a concern' on the bottom of every single image, how can I demonstrate my concern for humanity within Google's street photography?

I don't feel that his concluding paragraph is entirely supported by the rest of the essay, but I do like the side note/caption preceding that final paragraph:

It is we who must make sense of Google's record of our experience, for good or for ill.

(Thanks to Annalee for pointing to the article at io9.)

http://carriev.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/giveaway/

http://carriev.wordpress.com/?p=1667

The inestimable Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist is giving away Kitty books!

http://carriev.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/philosophy/

http://carriev.wordpress.com/?p=1659

“I know that it’s easier to portray a world that’s filled with cynicism and anger, where problems are solved with violence.  That’s titillating.  It’s an easy out.  What’s a whole lot tougher is to offer alternatives, to present other ways conflicts can be resolved, and to show that you can have a positive impact on your world.  To do that, you have to put yourself out on a limb, take chances, and run the risk of being called a do-gooder.”

– Jim Henson

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1627

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January 7th, 2010: John "Pictures for Sad Children" Campbell is doing hourly comics again! Every hour he does a short two-panel comic about that hour, and he's doing it ALL MONTH. They're great even if you're not stalking John Campbell! – Ryan

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2010/01/07/in-which-yet-again-i-am-annoyed-by-a-review/

http://justinelarbalestier.com/?p=7457

As mentioned in my previous post, I just finished Joan Schenkar’s The Talented Miss Highsmith. I loved it so I was curious to take a squizz at what reviewers had made of it and came across this one by Jonathan Lethem. Oh. Dear.

It is exactly the kind of review that annoys me the most. The I-don’t-like-this-kind-of-book-but-I’m-reviewing-it-anyway review. Editors seem to think it dreadfully clever to get the reviewer who hates feminism to review the feminist tome, the hater of romance to review Jennifer Crusie’s latest, and those who are full of contempt for teenagers and books to review YA. It will generate conflict and controversy! Goodie!

No, it will generate annoyance and boredom. I know what people who hate YA think of YA. I want to know if this is a good example of YA. I don’t want to read some boring tosser explaining why the genre sucks. Heard it all before.

Lethem is not a fan of literary biographies so he barely engages with Schankar’s biography. The first three quarters of the review is taken up with his view of the Highsmith revival and which books of hers he thinks best. When he finally mentions the bio, he complains that Schenkar goes into too much detail:

No impression, however, could have possibly prepared Schenkar for the catalogue of torments her scrupulous and excruciating research uncovered. She is compelled by that research to tell us more than we could possibly wish to know. Much as Highsmith rates full treatment, I can’t help wishing Schenkar had spared herself (and me) and written a personal recollection instead (think of Shirley Hazzard’s short memoir of Graham Greene, “Greene On Capri”).

Trouble is Schenkar never met Highsmith, so such a memoir would have to be fiction. That Lethem came away with the impression that Joan Schenkar knew Patricia Highsmith is very odd indeed. No where in it does she so much as imply such a meeting took place, let alone an acquaintance long enough to supply material for a memoir. Which leads me to think that Lethem did not read the whole book or skimmed it.

He concludes by saying:

The best thing Schenkar accomplished, for me, was to drive me back to the work. If Highsmith’s antidote to the poison of living was the writing of her novels, we can follow suit and read them. The antidote to literary biography is literature. [My emphasis.]

That last line is key. Me thinks Mr Lethem does not like literary biography if he feels it requires an antidote, which makes me wonder why he bothered to review one. I can certainly understand his reasons for not liking the whole genre. He’s a much more famous writer than I am so the odds of there one day being bios of him are relatively high. I worry about it and—other than J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer—there’s not exactly a huge number of YA writer bios. But then I squirm every time I read a profile or interview of me.

As a writer reading a bio of another writer I find myself wondering just how particular episodes in my past would be portrayed. It makes for much discomfort and a strong desire to destroy all my journals. And I’m a model of good behaviour compared to Highsmith.

I admit I may be projecting my own feelings onto Lethem. Maybe he dislikes literary bios because he doesn’t want to know the warts and failings of his literary heroes? Or maybe one fell on him in his cradle?

I also disagree with the implication that biography is not literature. As it happens Schenkar is an excellent and witty writer. Lethem quotes one of the many passages I’ve read out loud to Scott:

Luckily, their African trip never came off. Jane Bowles had phobias about trains, tunnels, bridges, elevators, and making decisions, while Pat’s phobias included, but were not confined to, noise, space, cleanliness, and food, as well as making decisions. A journey to the Dark Continent by Patricia Highsmith and Jane Bowles in each other’s unmediated company doesn’t bear thinking about.

Some of my favourite writers are biographers. I’m sure they’d be astonished to discover they have not been writing literature. But surely he didn’t mean that last line to be read in an exclusionary way. I have heard Lethem at science fiction conventions making strong arguments for the inclusion of science fiction in the category of literature. Which makes it even more peculiar to see him employing such exclusionary tactics himself.

What I loved so much about Schenkar’s bio was that it created such a three-dimensional portrait of Highsmith. The book is fascinating. I had to stop and read sections out loud to Scott multiple times. Over the past few days of reading it I’ve been talking about it to everyone I know.¹ It’s an incredibly intimate portrait of a writer. Of their life and their craft and their process.

It’s also a fascinating portrait of the development of a misogynist, bigoted, racist, anti-semite. Highsmith is awful. A genuinely bad person. But I now have a much clearer idea of how she got that way.

My main complaint about the book is that there was not enough detail. I was very frustrated that there was not a separate section on Highsmith’s publishing career and how, when, and where her current literary reputation emerged. We’re told in passing that her 1950s lesbian novel, The Price of Salt (later retitled Carol) sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but we’re not told over what period of time, and that Found in the Street only sold 3,000 copies on its first US publication. But those are pretty much the only sales figures in the book. The story of her finding her first agent and selling her first book, Strangers on a Train is not told directly. There are references to these events in other sections of the book but I itched for the whole story. Nor was the sale of the film rights to Hitchcock dwelt on—it’s a mere summation in the “Just the Facts” section at the back of the book. Much is made of her deal with the Swiss publisher Diogenes to handle world rights to her book but the specific details of the deal were not revealed.² For this publishing geek, it was very frustrating.

Lethem’s right about one thing though³ reading the bio has led me back to the books. To thinking about what made her such a good writer when she had so little understanding of, or compassion for, anyone but herself. Not that her lack of empathy doesn’t come through in the books. There’s a reason I can’t read more than three Highsmiths in a row without sinking into a deep depression. Bleak is too mild a word for the outlook.

Except for The Price of Salt which is the outlier Highsmith book and one of my favourites. Think I’ll be re-reading it first.

1. Sorry for being such a bore, people.
2. I get why but I’d've loved a hint. How much more than the usual 85% did Highsmith get?
3. Well, two, I also agree with his list of her best books. Though I would add The Price of Salt/Carol to the list.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/HQffa0z6GBg/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3388

Lots more, apparently.  I admit this walking home at 1 am thing could get old, although I’m more worried about my elderly car.  I’ll have to get him started tomorrow and attempt to drive him somewhere, but neither my cul de sac nor the long mews driveway has been ploughed, and while I still cope reasonably well with snow*, I don’t cope with snow and walls that are less than a car-with-both-its-front-doors-open-at-the-same-time wide.  There’s a long sort of tunnel at the mews, before you get to the jigsaw courtyard.  And then there’s the jigsaw.  Wiggling your way in and out requires a lot of as-far-but-no-farther back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth and it would only take one slither to put a dimple in one of the frelling BMWs.  And once you get to the road, you have to deal with all the other drivers, many of whom drive like they believe snow is something that happens on reruns of Northern Exposure and nothing to do with them.**

            Meanwhile.  I know I usually do a guest post on Wednesday, but I wanted to give you my photojournalistic news of fresh disasters.***  That was before the weather report said we’re going to be doing this for the next fortnight.  So there was frelling little hurry.  But I got all thrilled by yesterday’s snow sky and the obvious thing to do was a Before and After.  And then today it wouldn’t stop snowing so all my photos are really dark.  But . . . too bad.  You’re getting weather photos tonight and tomorrow you can have a guest blog.

            Now supposing I stay on line long enough to load the photos. 

Winter landscape.  Yesterday morning’s back of beyond hurtle.

Snow sky.

Snow.  We walked over to Old Eden and then out.

Snow with hellhounds. 

The snow kept getting on the lens, and doing Conan-Doyle, fairies-at-the-bottom-of-your-garden things to my attempts at photos.  So, maybe those star things are an alien intelligence trying to make contact through snowflake patterns. 

This swan is so cold he’s gone rusty.  Ha ha.

* * *

* Although I don’t want to.  That was my old life.  In my new life the grass stays green all year round, and I spend December through February looking at it and giggling.

            Wednesday night tower practise was cancelled.  Yesterday’s handbell practise was cancelled.  I dunno if Colin is going to feel like skating over from West Plinth tomorrow or not, for our usual Thursday handbells.  I wouldn’t if I were he.  But Niall is going to start going grey and sweaty and twitchy if he doesn’t get some handbells soon.    

** There has actually been an invisible lightning-raid snow plough through here.  And some moron left his car parked on the main road at the foot of my cul de sac.  Which means that the mouth of the cul de sac hasn’t been ploughed, because the plough had to go around the moron.  Don’t let me leave out the fact that it is illegal to park on the main road.   You may remember that the cul de sac is steep, yes?  And it would be really nice if your wheels had a chance to regroup on pavement before you just launch yourself into the road like a hellhound over a fence, and launching is what is going to happen as soon as that unploughed snow has been slid over and packed down once or twice more.  At the moment the situation is pretty moot for me, since we’d never make it to the top of the hill anyway, where we get to park, so we won’t be coming down it any time soon either. 

*** There must be some old Beyond the Fringe listeners out there?

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2010/01/06/12670.html

SarahP asked if there's a way to hear how the songs in Lord of the Rings are meant to be heard.

My answer is too long to tweet, so I'm resorting to a blog entry.

There are at least two parts to my answer:

• There are audio recordings of Tolkien reading his work.
• Other people have put Tolkien's words to original music.

First, Tolkien's own renditions:

In 1952, Tolkien—"depressed because The Lord of the Rings [...] had been refused by publishers," visited George and Moira Sayer, who had been reading the only complete typescript copy of the book. George Sayers brought out a tape recorder, and a great story ensued:

[Tolkien] had never seen [a tape recorder] before and said whimsically that he ought to cast out any devil that might be in it by recording a prayer, the Lord's Prayer in Gothic. [...] He was delighted when I played it back to him and asked if he might record some of the poems in The Lord of the Rings to find out how they sounded to other people. The more he recorded, [...] the more his literary self-confidence grew. [...] "Surely you know that's really good?" I asked[....] "Yes," he said, "it's good. This machine has made me believe in it again, but how am I to get it published?"

[...] "Haven't you an old pupil in publishing who might like it for its own sake and therefore be willing to take the risk?"

"There's only Rayner Unwin," he replied after a pause.

"Then send it to Rayner Unwin personally."

And he did. And the result was that even during his lifetime over three million copies were sold.

—from the back-jacket liner notes of the LP J.R.R. Tolkien reads and sings his The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, Caedmon, 1975.

That 1952 home recording was turned into an LP from Caedmon Records—possibly three LPs, but I have only one of them—in the mid-'70s.

Later, Caedmon was bought by HarperCollins and became an audiobook imprint, and now you can buy CDs of Tolkien reading his own work from the HarperCollins website.

There are actually two different Tolkien CDs available from that website, with no indication of what the differences are between them. I've dropped a note to HarperCollins to find out; will update this entry when/if I hear back.

(Edited later to add: the HarperCollins people responded to let me know that the Essential Tolkien CD contains only J.R.R. Tolkien himself reading, while the Tolkien Audio CD collection (at twice the price) contains both Tolkien's readings and his son Christopher Tolkien reading selections from the Silmarillion. Neat touch: clicking the Buy link from the HarperCollins page takes you to a list of purchase links, including links for some local bookstores.)

But if I remember right (it's been a long time since I've listened to the recording), Tolkien doesn't do a lot of singing per se in that recording. And other people have come up with their own music to his words.

For example, in 1967 composer Donald Swann published a sheet-music songbook called The Road Goes Ever On (still available from Amazon). It's a lovely book, with hand-lettered (I assume) bits in Quenya. But I haven't loved the music from it, the bits I've tried playing.

There was an album that went with that book; it apparently contained some readings by Tolkien and some recordings of Swann's versions of the songs. You can hear some or all of it online, though that's apparently a non-legitimate copy (and it says it's not for public use, which makes it rather odd that it's on the public web).

Unrelatedly, there's an extensive page providing discussion and music for a lot of Tolkien songs, but I don't know much of anything about that; just came across it while looking for the Swann book.

Another unrelated item: a group called Brocelïande recorded an album called The Starlit Jewel, authorized by the Tolkien estate, "with musical settings by fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley, Kristoph Klover, and Margaret Davis." (I think that means all the music is original to them.) You can buy the CD and/or listen to clips online. None of the songs on the album really grab me, but it's another approach toward a "correct," or at least authorized, rendition.

Finally, a host of musicians over the decades have created their own songs relating to Tolkien, such as Bob Catley's album Middle Earth, and zillions of filks. But those don't generally use Tolkien's lyrics at all, so this is drifting rather far afield from the original question.

http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/blog/archives/2010_01.html#000794

First, happy new year everyone. How was your decade? Oh good, or I'm sorry to hear that, depending.

I had an excellent decade, thank you for asking. Actually my life at the start 2010 is largely like my life at the close of 1999 in a lot of respects, except for two things. The big one: kids! Yay! I love having kids. And the smaller one: I published a bunch of fiction. Also cool.

Speaking of which, I have a story coming out -- "The Frog Comrade", in the Mar/April 2010 issue of F&SF. The Internet (in the person of Dan Percival) tells me that I read a version of it at Wiscon 2006, so apparently I was fiddling around with it for a long time. It's nice to have something coming out.

Lately signs have been mounting that I am entering the curmudgeonly, you-kids-get-off-my-lawn stage of life. I relish this. Like, for instance: Twitter. No.

It kind of amuses me to observe that, in 1999, "online journals" were an eccentric thing done by a few particularly loquacious , literarily inclined, chatty people like myself, mostly either aspirant writers, compulsive diarists, or folks with journalistic inclinations. They weren't "blogs" yet.

Then they became blogs, and it seemed like everybody and his dog had a blog. Ordinary people, the kind who would otherwise interest themselves for petunias and sports, were instead writing online about petunias and sports. The blogosphere was, briefly, a major way that ordinary people connected to one another, a way that post-industrial white-collar workers dealt with being stuck in front of monitors all day.

Obviously blogs grew to take on other roles -- like taking on a big chunk of the world's investigative journalism as newspapers fell apart economically as the Internet debundled information content. But for a while there they were also a way ordinary people talked to the internet.

Then ordinary people discovered that they actually only needed 120 characters to talk to the internet. That was the end of blogs as social networking.

I fully realized this only the last time I posted here, actually, when two people responded to my "I'm going to Readercon" note here, compared to... some larger number of responses to a similar note on Facebook (and I avoid Facebook). I want to say 12, or 20? But I don't know, because I have no idea how to find old posts on Facebook. They don't make it easy: Facebook is a river you cannot step in twice.

So the blogosphere now feels like an East Coast beach town in November. The tourists are gone. There are of course very big-deal bloggers making a zillion dollars a day, like big casinos down on the shoreline staying open all winter, and then there are little townies like me in cottages on little roads some distance from the dunes.

I kind of like that. It's cozy.

One other bit of curmudgeonliness: does it seem normal to the rest of you for USA Today to use the verb "to be cool with" non-ironically, in straight, non-editorial political reporting, as in the sentence "White House.... officials made it clear they're cool with fast-tracking the final phase of legislation..."?

http://carriev.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/its-alive/

http://carriev.wordpress.com/?p=1664

(I always wanted to say that.)

The chat at Bitten by Books is live…

http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/2010/01/get-nat-too-excytede.html

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1626

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← previous	January 6th, 2010	next
January 6th, 2010: John "Pictures for Sad Children" Campbell is doing hourly comics again! Every hour he does a short two-panel comic about that hour, and he's doing it ALL MONTH. They're great even if you're not stalking John Campbell! – Ryan

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2010/01/06/patricia-highsmith-much-crazier-than-you/

http://justinelarbalestier.com/?p=7454

All writers fear they are a bit crazy. Some of them are. Obviously, I am at the hardly-crazy-at-all end of the crazy-writer scale, most other writers are much loopier than me. While that is clearly a fact, I confess that I have my moments of doubt. I have found just the cure for those moments of doubt: Patricia Highsmith.

I am reading the new bio, The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar. Oh my. Oh wow. Oh Elvis. Highsmith redefines the crazy end of the crazy-writer scale. I have a million different responses to this book, but one is relief. Cause no matter how crazy I might (rarely) fear I am, Miss Highsmith will always be much much much much worse. Because she’s not just crazy, she’s mean crazy. She’s curse-out-everyone-at-your-favourite-restaurant crazy. Throw-a-dead-rat-in-your-room crazy. You know, not even slightly charmingly eccentric.

*Heh hem* I must get back to it. Best bio I’ve read in ages. So glad I never ever met Highsmith.

But, yeah, if you’re feeling loopy, read this bio. You’ll feel much much better.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/YJ5VuBC8c5E/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3386

 We’ve got house-sized drifts from the wind but by carefully employed scientific calibration of the top of my town-centre, semi-protected  garden wall it’s only about four inches total.  However these are evidently the advance-guard guerilla inches sent to infiltrate our technology and render us helpless to do anything but sit by a wood fire and read hard copy.  It’s also still snowing and the sky is fully loaded.   Peter has no internet connection at all and mine here at the cottage is on and off.  If I don’t post later it’s because I can’t get on line.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/XfK33UM2ApA/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3384

It is so beautiful out there right now.  There are lights on the main road but both the long mews drive and my steep little hill are dark . . . except they aren’t.  There’s moon behind the cloud and the white snow lights up amazingly.  And it’s all new and fresh and . .. white.  This entirely mundane little town is a fairyland, just like the stories.  We might have found ourselves in Lothlorien.*  

. . . Phew.  And that was a brief flicker of power outage.  No, no, I want my broadband.**  And my electric blanket.  There are towns not far from here where the electricity is lying in a snowdrift in a dead phone zone too. 

One of my hellhounds’ loveliest virtues (paired as it is with its opposite virulent nuisance) is that they’re always up for an adventure.  They’re sleepy this time of night, when I roust them to stagger out to cold dank Wolfgang, and especially lately when we just keep driving till Wolfgang warms up, by the time we get home they’re all warm and cozy and crashed out again and don’t want to go through the whole moving business again. . . .  But when we got out there tonight and I turned toward the drive instead of the car they were awake and ready for business instantly.  Hey!  An adventure!  Just what we wanted at 1 a.m. in a blizzard!

 * * *

* Does it snow in Lothlorien?  I can’t remember.  And Galadriel would probably whap me up longside the head for ‘fairy’. 

** And it’s just taken me two tries to get on.

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2010/01/05/hair-stories-redux/

http://justinelarbalestier.com/?p=7438

Thank you so much for all the wonderful, moving, scary, funny stories about hair.

I wanted to highlight this comment from Wonders of Maybe because it underlines how hair and fashion and politics and identity (self and imposed from the outside) co-exist:

Hmm — I’m multiracial (Black/Native American/White) and very, very light-skinned with extremely thick, curly hair. I’m talking spirals on “good” days and fluffy frizz on “bad” days! When I was young I wanted to straighten my hair because of how much I got hassled but once I turned 12, I was intent upon my hair staying natural. With such light skin, I feel it’s an honest indicator of what I am and who I am since I so often am mistaken for being Latino or Italian or Jewish or “something.”

Have you all heard of the “pencil test”? I learned about it as a child and it was, apparently, used in apartheid South Africa. If a pencil was stuck in your hair and it fell out, you could be counted as white (or coloured, if you were darker skinned). If it didn’t fall through, if the pencil simply stayed right in your hair, well, you were coloured or black. As a youngster, I was obsessed with learning about the various tests governments, leagues and clubs had through out history to determine someone’s background based on their hair. Interesting hobby, kid!

So for me, taking care of my natural hair is part a matter of respecting my history, as much as it is part of trying to look nice.

I remember my friend, the wonderful South African writer, Yvette Christianse, telling me about the pencil test. Like everything about Apartheid it was hard for me to get comprehend. A person’s race was reclassified, they were made to move, to lose their jobs—sometimes their lives—because of how a pencil sat in their hair.

Of course, as Susan, points out people are still being discriminated against because of their hair. Though, it’s hard not to wonder if it’s really only hair we’re talking about. How often in the US do racist commentators go after a black person’s hair and then claim they’re not being racist because they’re just talking about hair? Answer: too often.

The other thing Wonders of Maybe touches on is the “good” hair versus the “bad” hair debate. Frizz seems to be a key indication of badness. And as someone with straight hair, I can attest that sometimes the short, new, flyaway hair sticking up everywhere causes me despair. Lay flat, damn you.

So, why do we hate frizz? There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with frizz. I think we’re taught to see it as “bad” hair. I think years and years of ads and movies and tv shows full of women with “controllable” hair has shaped how we see hair and what we expect of it. It’s even worse now when the vast majority of hair product ads are photoshopped into shiny, unfrizzy, unmoving or moving-in-a-really-weird-way, impossible-to-achieve hair.

About ten years ago, an acquaintance with very tight curls left the house without doing anything to her hair as an experiment. It was a ball of frizzy fuzz haloing her head. It looked amazing. I wish I had photos to show you how great it looked. Many people commented. Most were very positive, but she abandoned the experiment because she couldn’t handle everyone staring at her and everyone commenting. Bad enough, she said, when it was in its usual state of curliness.

Her chief pleasure in straightening her hair is that, other than people who know her, it’s the only time her hair is what she thinks of as “neutral.” People don’t comment, people don’t ask to touch her hair. She isn’t seen through the lens of her hair in quite the same way.

To bring this back to writing,¹ I think what goes wrong in many books is that writers give their characters traits to distinguish them, such as curly hair, without thinking about how that would shape who the character is and their experience of the world. Not to mention how long they spend doing their hair. So, you know, don’t do that.

Thanks again for all your responses.

1. I’ve had a few complaints that I’m not devoting January to answering questions about writng like I did last year.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/y9PSfI-uuqs/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3381

It’s snowing.  And snowing.  And snowing.  And . . . There’s only about an inch and a half** out there now, but it’s coming down in that steady, concentrating way that is bad news.  Well, it’s good news if you’re a kid and want to stay home tomorrow and build a snowperson.***  It’s bad news for those of us who get claustrophobia easily, don’t like falling down, and have hellhounds.  And are worried about the fresh-veg deliveries† to the local greengrocers’, fresh veg having become about the only thing I eat in quantity in these metabolism-challenged days.

            Meanwhile I have managed to get through nearly an entire day without really noticing that I haven’t done anything.††  I could get used to this.†††

            Meanwhile . . . tell you what, I’ll write another quick post when I get back to the cottage.  Just so you’ll know I’m not lying in a snowdrift trying to strike wet matches to see why my RaspBerry is refusing to function.  If I fall in a snowdrift I more or less guarantee it will be a snowdrift in a dead phone zone. 

* * *

* It didn’t start till this evening.  It’s just been threatening us all day.^  Hellhounds and I had a lovely walk . . . waaay the ungleblarg out in the middle of nowhere, because it took that long for Wolfgang to stop whimpering about being cold and all his engine oil is pooling in his ankles.  And have I mentioned how I’ve got a box of matches on the dashboard so I’ll remember to leave them outside under the windscreen wiper on the driver’s side in case of unlocking problems when we come back from our hurtle?  Outside on the driver’s side so I can’t possibly miss seeing them?  Actually a box of wooden matches rides around perfectly well in the little hollow at the hinge of the bonnet where the wipers attach.  Ask me how I know this.  

^ With luck there will be before-and-after photos tomorrow.  Snow skies and . . . snow. 

** Mmm.  Two inches. 

*** I am building a snowperson.  Remotely.  He’s called Wolfgang, and by morning all he’ll need is the carrot and the lumps of coal. ^  Hellhounds and I are walking home tonight.  I haz yaktraxz.  I walk on water.  Well, so long as it’s frozen.  I actually did walk in them for the first time today:  although I had previously spent a remarkable amount of time figuring out how to get them on.  I suppose the manufacturer thought any damn fool ought to be able to stretch some rubber bands over their shoes and decided to save 10p on the purchase price by omitting the diagram.  Well, yes, but there are variations on this stretching process, and I was assuming that the YAKTRAX insignia would be arranged for the wearer’s delectation.  Silly me:  of course it faces out to gain new friends and influence people.^^ 

            I told the Midwestern friend who’d recommended them^^^ that they’d arrived and she said that she hoped . . . well, no, she said, she knew me well enough that she was SURE that I had ordered them in an AMUSING COLOUR.  She said that aside from aesthetic considerations, you wanted them in an amusing colour so they were easy to find when they flew off and landed in a snowdrift.  Um.  Pause for deep throbbing sorrow.  No.  The British market is clearly deemed not ready for amusing colours.  Mine are black because the choice was . . . black.  

^ Hey.  What do kids use for snowperson eyes these days? 

^^ Hey!  She’s not falling down!  It must be . . . YAKTRAX! 

^^^ She’s recommended them before.  But this is the Longest Spell of Really Cold Weather in Britain in Over Twenty Years, which is how long it takes to make me pay attention. 

† And if they’re serious about this nonsense continuing for the next several days then I’m going to start worrying about all the other deliveries.  Like . . . Green & Black’s. 

†† No.  Wrong.  I have done things.  I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Hannah.  And I watched a programme on TV.    I mean . . . wow.^  Now you’re all avid to know what I watched, right?  A rerun of Simon Schama’s The Power of Art?  A no-holds-barred study of how to clear your gutters so they stay clear for at least fifteen minutes?^^  The end of season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?^^^

            Nope.  Stargate Universe.  Huh?  There’s another one?  With Robert Carlyle?  It was the first intro ep, and we learn that (a) winning on-line computer games is dangerous (b) Robert Carlyle is a Bad Guy and (c) they’ve got enough backstory loaded for a very long series.  Other than that I’m damned if I followed about two-thirds of what was going on.  Is it now de rigueur that ‘excitement’ is demonstrated by mad cutting techniques so that no scene lasts more than twenty-two seconds and that you then zap to another one which takes place at another time, in another place, and with enough of the same characters to be really confusing?

            But it was great.  Lying on the sofa covered in hellhounds with the professional brain in abeyance.  Every few minutes it would stir and make little anxious thinking gestures:  shouldn’t we be doing something?#  No, no, I’d say.  We’re just going to lie here and watch more stuff get punched till it blows up.##  Notice how happy the hellhounds are.  We are providing joy to little furry creatures from the fifth infernal circle.### 

^ It’s less unheard-of that I should spend an hour and a half on the phone with Hannah than that I watch an entire TV programme at one go.   Well, barring Sky Opera.  And they didn’t run an opera every night for the entire month of December.  Hmmph. 

^^ First you hire your Klingon. . . .  The one drawback to the magnificent copper beech in the churchyard that hangs companionably over the back garden at Third House is the way it sheds.  

^^^ Please.  Buffy isn’t television.  

# Still haven’t found the beginning of what is now, or had better be, PEG II 

## I don’t really have to remind you of http://wondermark.com/520/ and http://wondermark.com/521/  do I? 

### Also possibly the eighth.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante) 

††  No, no!  Must find rest of PEG!  Or at least write that story (which Peter gave me the plot to) about the parking fairy!

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2010/01/05/12665.html

In case anyone's curious about how long the submission form has been open each day before reaching the daily submission limit, here's some data. But note that days 1 and 2 are rough approximations, because the form inadvertently closed too early both of those days and had to be reopened later by hand.

Day 1: 10 hours.

Day 2: 12 hours.

Day 3: 16 hours.

Day 4: 18 hours.

Day 5: 14 hours.

When we first floated the idea of having a submission cap to a few friends a while back, people were concerned that it would mean everyone would rush to submit moments after each reopening, so we'd be open for only a few minutes a day. That's a legitimate concern; if the cap were lower or volume were higher, I think it could happen.

But I'm pleased to see that it's turned out that we've mostly been open for at least 12 hours a day; I think that gives a sufficient window for people anywhere in the world to submit at a reasonable time of day.

I'm guessing that the cap will continue to limit submissions per day through the end of next week. But I'm also guessing that by the end of this week, we'll be regularly open for 18 hours a day or more.

One nice thing about the way all this is set up is that it's easily tweakable. We can adjust the cap if we need to, and if it turns out having a cap is a bad idea, we can easily remove it. We'll see how it goes. But so far, I've been pretty pleased with it.

http://carriev.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/rsvp/

http://carriev.wordpress.com/?p=1656

Gosh, book release weeks are busy times!

Tomorrow, Jan. 6, I’ll be doing an event at Bitten by Books — I’ll be dropping by the blog all day to answer questions and so on.  There’s also a contest for a Shapeshifter Movie Night pack put together by me.  I get to inflict my favorite shapeshifter movies on an unsuspecting winner.  Bwwahahaha!

Anyway, RSVP for the event and get more entries for the contest.  You know you want to.

http://carriev.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/book-signings/

http://carriev.wordpress.com/?p=1653

I have a few House of Horrors signings coming up, two local and one afield:

January 9, 3 pm, at Who Else! Books, now at the Broadway Book Mall, at 200 S. Broadway, in Denver.

January 16, 2 pm, at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.

January 30, 1 pm, at  Beth Anne’s Book Corner in Colorado Springs.

I hope to see some of you there!

I may be going to Albuquerque in late February as well, so stay tuned.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1625

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January 5th, 2010: Here is a comic by KC Green about a ghost ship. KC Green is really good, you guys! – Ryan