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| Monday, July 13th, 2009 |
james_nicoll
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10:23a |
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james_nicoll
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10:15a |
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ninebelow
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2:10p |
Worldcon Panel Poll
Session ID: 893
Title: Re-reading
Description: There is a school of thought that re-reading is a juvenile habit, something children demand as a way to gain comfort. Yet most fans re-read. All critics do. What is it we gain from re-reading, do some texts bear more re-reading than others? And does this notion of comfort reading have any validity? Poll #1429104
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllHave you ever heard of that school of thought? Does that school of thought have any validity? Do some texts bear more re-reading than others? I couldn't think of a poll question for "Yet most fans re-read. All critics do." but that deserves some examination as well. |
jaylake
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4:02a |
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spiritof1976
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12:37p |
Today, for your delectation, we have a left-wing nobcheese defending the indefensible, and a right-wing nobcheese defending the indefensible. From the left...George Galloway shouting a lot at the producer of Undercover Mosque for having the temerity to expose hate speech by radical Islamist clerics. George ignores all the evidence put forward by the show in favour of hysterically ranting at them about anti-Muslim bias, before going into full-on meltdown mode in the last two minutes. The footage thankfully stops before George's mangina explodes, but not before this classic exchange. George: "This hooligan will have to be thrown out if he doesn't stop shouting at me." Producer: "I'm laughing at you, George." And from the right...Conservative Home's Tim Montgomery declares that the Andy Coulson/News of the World scandal is "about revenge, not phone taps."No Tim, it's about phone taps. Tim makes the shamelessly brown-nosing claim that: I do not wish to defend every action of the News International empire, but Rupert Murdoch has been an overwhelming force for good in this country's life and politics. Sadly for Tim, the editors appears to have snipped out the bit where he says, "OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MR MURDOCH, I RILLY RILLY RILLY WANT A COLUMN IN THE TIMES OH PLEASE!" |
benpeek
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9:38p |
L.
I am writing this from my old notebook, because my desktop video card appears to have died. It has wonderful blue screens, red dots, green dots, and removing drivers and so forth seem not to solve this. Even safe mode appears not to be safe. Wonderful. At the moment, I'm currently describing life by how this keyboard works: sometimes the L sticks. (crossposted) |
girliejones
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7:12p |
Other things have been happening
Firstly, damn you people and your email replying!!! Late last night I worked into the wee hours and I saw only 44 emails left in my inbox! I haven't see the number "44" for oooh ... years. I've spent all day replying or dealing with the replies that came back. And I am still edging back up to 60 now!! Nooooooooo............... Anyway. The good news is now no longer embargoed - my little sister is having a baby! With her husband, even!! She's about 13 weeks along now. So that's all ultra exciting! A bunch of Aussie news, reviews, mag, podcast outlets have joined together to run all our RSS feeds through the one place. I don't really understand it all, Nyssa sorted it all. It's her baby. Although the new ASif! Twitter makes the ASif! feed muuuuuuch neater! The feed is here: Aust SF News Conduit And includes updates for: ASif!, A Writer Goes On A Journey, OzHorrorScope, Terra Incognita Podcasts and Ticon4 or you can subscribe below:  |
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sh_reviews
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1:00p |
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girliejones
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2:59p |
Hottest 100 and Sexism
Yes, there are almost no women on the Hottest 100 of All Time for Triple J. Yup. We discussed it a bit yesterday on one of the threads here and also over at Twitter. And we've even come up with a bunch of female artists who deserved to be there over some of the male ones. But just now, I had to bow out of a conversation with a friend about it because I was beginning to get quite internally upset about it. See, I can't watch and discuss this kind of stuff and be removed from it at the same time. I see males do it all the time, more often with respect to the sexist stuff in science fiction publishing, and I see them say things like, "isn't that interesting ..." and I want to yell on the top of voice - NO IT'S NOT FUCKING INTERESTING! IT BREAKS MY HEART! But you know, yelling doesn't win arguments, especially on the internet. See, it's like that guy I was with that time who enjoyed holocaust movies and didn't get how I can not watch anything remotely related to the subject in any removed fashion. And he was horrified when I politely agreed to sit through one that "wasn't that bad" according to him when really what the fuck would he know? and I had to leave and sit in a quiet corner for an hour and calm down. And had nightmares that night and the next. Because, like, when I said I cannot watch anything remotely related to the subject, I meant, you know ANYTHING remotely related to the subject. To him a black and white picture of a young boy is a picture of a young boy. To me, it could be my sister or me or a boy I went to school with, had we lived there and not here, and then and not now. What I'm saying is, it's *personal*. For me, there is no objectivity on the subject. There's no element of it that doesn't say: Alisa, this could have been you, it was in fact your great uncles and aunts and great grandparents. And so on. And so too on the sexism issue. See, I am female. No getting around it. So everytime it comes up, *every time*, what I hear when people say, "well it was merit based", or "we chose what we thought was the best" or "men write better than women" or "men sing better more enduring rock songs than women" or "I don't like reading stories about/by women" or "isn't that interesting that that happened like that (again)"... what I hear is this: Alisa, you are not as smart, not as talented, not as good as a man. And never will be. Because, you know, I am a woman. And of course it makes me mad when someone clearly less smart or talented than me says it. But it also makes me sad. Because it means that I am being dismissed because of my reproductive organs. I am being dismissed as never being able to contribute as much/well as a male could and *simply* because I am female. Because if women far more talented than me can't write/perform a long standing song out of *100*, or a short story worthy of winning a big prize, then what about me? What can I ever hope to do or achieve? Obviously, I don't think the above. And I don't get out of bed in the morning thinking the above. I didn't graduate last in engineering school. And I didn't graduate in an all female class. So ... I was better than some men in my class at maths and physics. (I was better than a lot of them, actually) And I don't think Twelfth Planet Press suffers at the hands of a female editorship or publisher. So what I am saying is, when I hear other people talking about the sexism ... I *hear* them say that stuff. It's like when people meet me as the first Jewish person they have ever met in real life (happens a lot, I live in Australia). And they have all these preconceived ideas about Judaism and Jewish people and that's not based on their real life experiences. It's hurtful I guess, because you are judged not for who and what you are but for what others have said about people *like* me. So I say this, when you think of the top artists of all time, do you really not include Madonna, Garbage, Sarah McLachlan, Miss Higgins, Portishead, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Regina Spektor, Blondie, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, Carol King, Ani Difranco, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Cyndi Lauper, Joni Mitchell, The Cranberries, Dusty Springfield, The Waifs? |
imomus
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8:30a |
Wrapping books with quirky zing
 Eighty Years of Book Cover Design by Faber & Faber -- as previewed in a multimedia feature in The Guardian -- jogged a few memories for me. Faber is probably the publisher I've owned the most books by, after Penguin and Picador. Seeing the covers laid out in this way made me think of Emily Jacir's artwork Material for a Film, which displays the books owned by a Palestinian poet assassinated by the Israeli secret services. The two Lawrence Durrell covers visible in the glimpse below of Jacir's piece were designed by Berthold Wolpe, a long-time Faber designer. We had them on our family bookshelves in the 1960s, so when my mother and I met and drank a pastis with Lawrence Durrell in Avignon in 1985 it felt like meeting an old family friend. (My mother embarrassed me by saying "My son Nicholas writes too!" Which totally wasn't true.)   Of the Faber covers, I found the ones designed by the books' own authors the most interesting. T.S. Eliot's design for Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats looks like a zine -- surprisingly light and scrappy, twee and pungent.  David Jones' Anathemata almost reminds me of a Peter Saville Factory Records design. Letting this poet-painter design his own jackets was totally the right thing to do -- as with the great Alasdair Gray, the effect is to create the impression that the artist has a personal stylistic universe which can be extended into any medium. That can be a welcoming and charismatic thing; the feeling that an artist's vision is immersive and comprehensive, different from everything you know.  Looking at the cover for Crow by Ted Hughes reminded me of how this book of visceral reports "from the life and songs of the crow" influenced my debut record The Man on Your Street ("songs from the career of the Dictator Hall", whose thoughts are described in The Courier as "hovering on like rooks as he wings his way below"). The generic postmodern Pentagram design that wrapped all Faber poetry titles from the early 80s onwards made me start thinking of Thomi Wroblewski, the designer I befriended and worked with from 1987 on. Thomi -- employed by Mike Alway to do the least el set of el single sleeves ever -- was known for his Talking Heads and Siouxie and the Banshees sleeves, as well as William Burroughs jackets for Picador:    When we started collaborating, Thomi had a big studio above the office of maverick Scottish publisher John Calder, in Green's Court, just off Brewer Street in Soho. I ended up spending a lot of time there, meeting Calder and some of his unlikely hangers-on (the Jewish doctor from Eastenders!). Thomi shared my taste for refined erotica (he designed an edition of Apollinaire's 1907 smut classic Les Onze Mille Verges, which publisher Peter Owen had to paraphrase, so subversive was it still considered to be in 1980s Britain), and liked to photograph you naked, writhing like a dancer. So it was up in that Soho studio that I posed, naked and masked, with various pretty girls for the Murderers, The Hope of Women sleeve. Thomi even dressed me up as dandy barfly Julian Maclaren-Ross, and put me on the cover of Memoirs of the Forties, his book about Fitzrovia. I'm seen from behind, toasting Soho.  What I notice about Thomi Wroblewski's 1980s book jacket work now is that while it often transgresses against the standards of good taste, it has an interesting maverick diversity -- exactly the sort of quirky zing that Wolpe-period Faber books had, but Pentagram-period Faber had lost by the time they standardised their poetry line with the tight-assed, Laura-Ashley-like "pomo ampersand classic" design. This period of 1980s late pomo design is now coming back with a rush; the stretched typefaces on Thomi's 1988 Quick End anthology, for instance (The Quick End was a collection of short stories by Michael Bracewell, Don Watson and Mark Edwards, a writing group formed under the tutelage of Kathy Acker -- I faithfully attended all their readings) look rather like what Mike Meiré is doing now at 032c magazine. There's an awkward, ugly energy here which suddenly looks interesting again. |
rosefox
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2:03a |
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girliejones
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11:12a |
the story so far
I've been putting off this post for days. As I said, it feels very personal. On the other hand, with time and perspective (and research), it also feels like maybe I overreacted a bit. Although not really. And whilst in some ways I feel like there should be parts of my life that I keep private and don't blog (I do not blog everything, I know you think that I do), I also strongly believe in women's health and that prevention is so very important in that and that as a society we talk about all the wrong things and none of the really truly crucial things. So with that, here's my horoscope for today: It has been quite a week. You may need some time to recover from it. Don't make plans or commitments until a little more time has passed and you have gained some perspective on recent events. Gradually, this week, you will start to see how much power you have, and your sense of purpose will deepen and sharpen too. A situation may seem frivolous or trivial but the game that is now being played has a very real consequence; one which could yet benefit you greatly. Wait a while longer and you'll see.See how it implies I should hold off a bit on the Santorini plan?! :P It was a really memorable week for my family this week gone. A lot of really significant things happened that I doubt any of us will forget this particular week. For me, personally, it happened on Tuesday night when I was having my routine papsmear. Long time readers of this blog will remember that about 5 years ago, my routine papsmears started coming back abnormal. After you get three abnormals, they send you to a gyn oncologist and you have a colposcopy which is a papsmear under a microscope. It's an opportunity to have a look at a part of your body you'd never normally see on a TV monitor, I guess. The Dr put something, I want to say silver nitrate?, on my cervix and told me the abnormal cells will appear white, or the other way round, it was a while ago now. In any case, the entire visible area showed to be covered in what was later confirmed to be Stage IV precancerous squaramous cells - cervical displasia. That was a very scary time. I was booked in for laser surgery and the doctor burned off the layers of abnormal cells. You might recall my description - half sitting up in a chair, with him at my feet, some kind of smoking equipment between my legs and a bucket at my feet. That bucket, and what it was used for, will forever be scarred on my memory - I can only imagine the horror of a backyard abortion which this felt for some reason so akin. It wasn't. This doctor is the best gyn oncologist in Perth. I was in a very expensive private hospital with the best of everything. And I remember shaking through the whole procedure. The nurse kept holding my thighs because I was quivering so much. But to be honest the rest was fine. I don't remember any pain at all. I went home and watched old movies in bed and was fine really. After this procedure, you have regular colposcopies till you get a run of clear papsmears. I have not had an abnormal one since. After a few (went from 6 monthly to yearly), the doctor told me that even though they were all clear, because of my Crohn's Disease, he wanted to continue to monitor me. And he has done yearly since. And I was perfectly happy with that. It's a more expensive way to have your routine papsmear but with a brilliant doctor, and if there was any risk, I wanted to be on top of this. And it was with all of this in mind that I sat and waited for two hours last Tuesday night for my routine papsmear. I take a book and I don't mind the wait - he's the best and it's worth it. But he's an oncologist. I'm usually the youngest woman in the waiting area. And this Tuesday I watched as woman after woman went in there for a long consult and came out and booked surgery. Every time this happened, I watched and felt for these women. And then I thought, "but that's not me. I'm here for my regular papsmear." And for some reason, I was really really sure that he was going to say to me, "look it's been five years, never been a problem, no need to keep seeing me." He was running late and I got shunted to examination room 2. And I could hear the receptionist chastising him for examining the woman before me when he wasn't scheduled to and that she had labelled the samples with my name and not the other lady's. When he came in, I playfully hassled him too, telling him that I watch TV and I don't want that other lady's results. We got into the usual banter, he hassles me about not having had babies yet, and chats about my work and this time about TPP and he was telling me about something that he is prototyping etc etc and then ... the tone of the room changed as we were both looking at the screen and saw something very much there, very much looking like it shouldn't be there and that very much had not been there last time. It was really big and when I commented that and asked if it was just cause it was on the microscope, he told me that no, it was very big. It was a polyp. He biopsied it and then he treated the base with silver nitrate. What he didn't tell me is that that was going to cause my cervix to shed several outer layers which would hurt a lot for several days and be worsened by twisting in yoga. He told me that it would be a week or so till I heard the results but that it would be benign. The receptionist told me it would take several weeks. So I don't know if I will hear this week or next week. I've been trying to assume things will be fine. Chatting with my sister, who was overly informed on this particular subject due to a friend going through it, encouraged me to google about for a bit. I found out that 99% of cervical polyps are benign. I found no correlation between displasia and polyps and cervical cancer and no correlation between these and Crohn's Disease. So in some ways I feel silly for my intense and serious mood of the last week. On the other hand, if there were no links between autoimmune diseases and cervical cancers, why would he have wanted to continue monitoring me? And ultimately, it feels like no matter the outcome, I will never really be free of this. The good things are these - it was there but now I know and am doing something about it. I trust this doctor with my life and I am getting the best of care. Polyps can prevent pregnancy so this could have been a problem for later on that may not have been obvious, had I not been under such careful care. And unlike the last time (10 years ago) that they took biopsies (for the Crohn's), the thoughts that immediately ran through my head with the "what if this is it?" thought were not in fact regrets. They were two very definite things that I was glad I had done -> one was personal and the other was Twelfth Planet Press. And that shows, if nothing else, that emotionally and mentally I am in a good place. The stats say this will come out benign and until I know differently, I am running with that. But my headspace suddenly tunnelled into what was important and what wasn't last week, and I think a lot of things were made very clear to me and will mean I change things in my life and how I live. Cause otherwise, what the fuck is the point anyway? And so I conclude with my usual - make sure you are up to date with your papsmears. |
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 |
james_nicoll
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11:38p |
Is it just me
Or was Agatha Christie fascinated by the idea of orphans, adoption and identity issues related to orphans and adoption? |
| Monday, July 13th, 2009 |
arabel
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1:16p |
House of Wolves
Okay, so I finally got off my arse and did another drawing, yay! This one is of a slightly higher quality than the last, because it's not an oekaki for once (*gasp*), it's done in photoshop and painter. I'm quite happy with it, althought it could use some more development in the face, and maybe, gee I don't know, some actual detail in his clothes? But um, anyway, this was for the lovely ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) saint_sorrows and was inspired by her lovely story Where the Animals Go. <3  Why is he lit from below in a forest? WHO KNOWS? My current theory is there is a hench-person of some description beneath him with a flashlight. Shut up.Also I took screenshots as I went, so if people are interested, I can put up a WIP to show how it evolved. It's pretty funny. Y/N? edit: here is a WIP.Also also, dragonwhishes, you're up next - I'm so sorry, I have been the hugest slacker on the face of the earth drawing for you - I've been so ridiculously exhausted. Would you still like the drawing of your girl reading, or would you like to change ideas? Current Mood: at lunch |
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 |
jaylake
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4:29p |
[cancer] Some days you fly, some days you fry
Had a cancer meltdown over lunch with kenscholes. Not a full tilt, crying-screaming fit. (I've had a few of those, too, just not in the middle of the Lloyd Center Stanford's.) A lot anger, a lot of grief, some good old-fashioned rage, and a whole lot of fear. I said a bunch of irrational things about myself, about the cancer, about calendula_witch, about my writing, about my publishing career. He was very patient and loving and thoughtful. I don't suppose the details matter much, but they felt very real to me in the moment. Still do. And some of them are real, or at least meaningfully possible pending we see how hard chemo hits me and what comes next with the lung scan on the CT, etc. This disease turns me inside out, makes me not myself. And it drags everyone who loves me along through the hole. Emotional terrorism, courtesy of rogue cells within my own body. Who ever expected it, eh? |
jaylake
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4:24p |
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jaylake
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4:19p |
[writing] Endurance progriss riport, day 27-28
Day 27 was lost to illness. Today I managed 2,400 words in an hour, making 18,400 for the past week (measuring Monday-Sunday), so I did manage goal in spite of illness. Manuscript now stands at 105,900 and is going to end considerably shorter than predicted. I think Fred is trying to outrun the chemo. Writing up on revision will be a novel experience for me, as I am usually madly cutting down. Live and learn. (Or hopefully so, in my case.) ( WIP... ) |
shortform
[ calico_reaction ]
|
5:41p |
The Homeless Moon
 The Homeless Moon (2008) Written by: Michael J. DeLuca, Jason S. Ridler, Scott H. Andrews, Erin Hoffman, Justin HoweGenre: Short Stories Pages: 43 (Chapbook) This is a rather odd review for me to write. For starters, if you click on the title of the chapbook, you'll find out rather quickly that you can read this chapbook for free, online. Or, if you must have a print copy (and if they have any LEFT from 2008), you can pay for the shipping and they'll send you one. So that's one reason this is, in short, an odd review. The other, more important reason this is an ODD REVIEW is that I know every single one of these writers. All of them were my classmates at the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2005, and one of them was my roommate! Consider that a warning of sorts in terms of how objective I'll be. I've read their work before, so there's a tendency to want to compare their stories to what I've read before, especially if I've critiqued the story in the chapbook. However, I'll give my honest opinion, but my official rating is going to be odd. Since all of my ratings are essentially based on my purchasing of the material, well, you can see how the current ratings don't apply. The premise: I didn't recognize a discernible theme holding the stories of this first chapbook together. The only connecting factor is that the writers attended Odyssey 2005, and have formed a kind of group. Is it a critique group? I don't know, to be honest. But they call their online blog "The Homeless Moon" and decided to put together a chapbook to showcase their fiction. This chapbook they handed out at ReaderCon 2008. There are three stories I'd label as fantasy, one I'd label as science fiction, and one that simply defies genre of all kinds. So really, there's no premise to this: it's just a batch of short fiction. :) My RatingNo Rating: this was free for me, and it's free for you too, because you can download it from the website as a PDF. Just go here to download not just this first chapbook, but the second too! In terms of summarizing, I can objectively and safely say that the writing in each of the stories is very strong, and each story is unique to its author. Critiques for the chapbook as a whole include wishing there was a unified theme (I was kind of hoping all of the stories would relate to the moon, but at least two did), and I also noticed a number of formatting errors, where lines weren't indented correctly, and I recall noticing a number of typos as well. But you know what? The chapbook is free, so who am I to complain? The stories are enjoyable, though not all of them sat well with me. I love the DeLuca the best, and that story alone is worth reading the chapbook. If you're a mythology buff, I dare you not to fall in love with Hoffman's story as well. The Homeless Moon writers are definitely making their mark on genre fiction (it's not a huge mark, not yet, but wait, one day!), so getting a chance to sample their work for free is more than worth it. The chapbook is only 43 pages, and doesn't take that much time to read at all. So read it. And enjoy. Review style: I will review each story individually, though I reserve the right to use the term "review" loosely. Will there be spoilers? I'll speak in generalities the best I can, focus more on the technique and the ideas driving the story rather than any specifics. So if you want a story-by-story review, just click the link below to go to my LJ. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome. The Homeless Moon ChapbookHappy Reading! |
grizzlybearrrrr
[ besidethesea ]
|
7:43p |
Grizzly Bear to tour USA with Beach House!
What a glorious combo. Wish I could be there. Dates are as follows: August 30 - Brooklyn, NY - Williamsburg Waterfront (freee!) Sept 26 - Ann Arbor, MI - Michigan Theater Sept 27 - Chicago, IL - Metro Sept 28 - Chicago, IL - Metro Sept 30 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue Oct 01 - Columbia, MO - Blue Note Oct 05 - Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse Oct 06 - Norfolk, VA - The NorVA Oct 07 - Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory Oct 08 - Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre Oct 20 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Palladium Oct 21 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern There's also four more new dates in the middle of the tour without BH (sorry kids) Oct 14 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Vogue Theatre Oct 15 - Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom Oct 16 - Seattle, WA - Moore Theatre Oct 18 - San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Music Festival That means that, from the dates announced thus far (there could be even more) the guys are scheduled to play over 40 more dates this year, on top of the 30 or so they've already done! Hardworking bunch. I hope they eat properly on tour... The Barbican LSO show has also sold out. I make that 10 days? Nice. :D |
feorag
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7:35p |
The trouble with all these videos putting funny subtitles to Hitler's rant in Downfall is that every time I watch one (and how could I resist a fonts one?), I understand a little bit more of what he says. If this keeps up, I'll understand the lot, and it will be less funny. |
james_nicoll
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1:10p |
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james_nicoll
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12:30p |
The text of the ERA
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. Nicked from here. |
james_nicoll
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12:25p |
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james_nicoll
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12:08p |
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james_nicoll
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11:59a |
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