back on the exhausted side of tired.

er. yes. i guess that's all i have to blog about.



oh wait. there's more after all.

this, by Geoff Ryman, had me scratching my head. not because i disagreed with it or wasn't excited by the 'serious' ideas behind the Sinister Mundane Manifesto--in fact, it's sort of not quite almost the kind of thing i tried to do with the work-in-progress i've tentatively called Spooky--but because i find myself increasingly uncomfortable with the culture of writers this sort of speechification portrays. yes, i know i have been and continue to regularly be guilty of the same behavior, but that just makes it worse, dunnit?

even more baffling, despite the correspondence between the SMM and my own perspective of fiction, i couldn't quite find myself on Mr Ryman's side, and the little voice in my head i'd bound and gagged regained consciousness and started knocking its head against the panels--first on the walls, then on the floorboards when the chair it was tied to collapsed from its violence--trying to catch my attention.

and then M. John Harrison said this:

SF is an opportunity to have an intense relationship with your own imagination. It's a kind of drive-by poetry, trashy and addictive; it's fun. After that, for me, it's an opportunity to explore that kind of imaginative artefact from inside, and use a little camped-up contemporary science as a way of generating new metaphors around my typical obsessions. While I agree with almost everything that Geoff Ryman and the Mundanes say about SF, I can't join them because I find it impossible to assign different levels of plausibility to acts of the imagination. If you limit yourself on the grounds that faster-than-light travel isn't "realistic," you might as well go whole hog and write only fiction set on the street where you live; if you limit yourself to that, you might as well go whole hog and write nothing but nonfiction; if you limit yourself to that, you might as well go whole hog, admit that writing is not the real world--and can't even successfully represent the real world--and give it up altogether.

I'd be happy to do that, and indeed I've already done all of those things more than once in the last forty years. But if you're going to write SF in the first place, why not lie back, admit it's a farrago, and enjoy it ? I think there's a great deal to be gained from revaluing and enjoying the distinction between the invented and the real. As long as you maintain that, SF's a great genre.

(in an interview by Jeff VanderMeer for Amazon, here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKU9IKGSQRRMJA)

and suddenly, all was right again in the world.

yes, i know. disgusting how much the internets has had me relying on ventriloquism, ennit?

apocalypse whoa

i've been writing hard (for me) everyday (yes, including weekends, which should explain some things to certain people who will probably never read this anyway) from a little over a month ago (Liv informs me i created the file 16 August 2007) to get my first draft done running against a self-imposed deadline: i'll be flying out for work in a few hours, and will be pretending to be a real journalist with little time for anything else in Ha Noi til Sunday.

if Beijing and Jakarta are anything to go by, i'll most likely be taking nothing but exhaustion and a sense of not-having-been-anywhere-in-particular home with me. in short, something like a regular nine-to-five work month condensed into five twenty-four-seven days. yes, i'm probably exaggerating. but still. i most definitely do not thrive under pressure.

i'm still hoping for another San Diego, though that seems highly unlikely. oh, i never said anything about that, did i? the closest i apparently got to talking about it here was this. (the trip did, however, provide a lot of these photos.) well, it was crazy, but it turned out well in an 'i can't feel my face' sort of way; but again, highly unlikely. still, fingers crossed.

i was worried the interposition of all that work might kill the momentum; for something this long, i'm surprised it sustained itself as long as it did. to be honest, i probably needn't have worried: i started losing it about a week ago, and it shows in the last third of the draft; still, i'd have been rather more bothered by the 'narrative schizophrenism' having a gap in the process would most likely have produced, an effect i've seen before with another story i wrote a few months ago. it's an effect that can probably be useful for some things, but one i feel would have had no place in this.

as it is, the gradual loss of momentum took its toll; much work to be done. but at least i've got something more or less complete to work with when i get back; hopefully that will make it easier to maintain a consistent tone when i start doing revisions.

for those concerned, i'll probably not be in touch til i get back Sunday night.

right. i really need to be packing now. now...which hat to take to Ha Noi? hmm...

seizure.

right. first draft. novel length. more or less. brain seizure. buzzed.

lots to do yet. a break, yes: a break. sounds good.

mmm...

more tomorrow. maybe.

fifty thousand words

fifty thousand six hundred and seventeen to be exact, by the automatic word count. i don't think i've ever done 50k of anything before.

lots left to do: an ending, for one thing. maybe another scene or two, though i'm hoping i'll be able to avoid that. i expect i won't. once that's sorted, there's a lot of cleaning, cutting, rewriting, rearranging, &c left to do. the end product, in fact, might not be 50k at all. given the shape it's in right now, it'll probably be significantly less.

so yes, i'm jumping the gun. potentially jinxing it, even. but still. right now. fifty thousand six hundred and seventeen. 50k.

i'm exhausted.

i think i'll do something with higher octane next. and shorter sentences. fewer adverbs. maybe no adverbs. and none of what Chris once called my signature, those unwieldy compound-complex over-constructions. or as little of it as i can manage, anyway. i think i'll keep the semi-colons, though; i find them comforting. (now how might that work?)

Ed Rants has interviewed Rupert Thomson, author of the quietly brilliant Death of a Murderer for The Bat Segundo Show. listen as Ed Rants once again reads things that aren't there, and then insists that they are.

part one: http://www.edrants.com/segundo/?p=171
part two: http://www.edrants.com/segundo/?p=172

peace, Mr Rants. dig the show.

undetermined; or, long live the little chamberlain

this morning, i realized that while i'd expected the worst, i hadn't really planned on it. which i realize now would have been rather obvious had i bothered to read what i'd posted last night. so when i peered into the little chamberlain's cubby and found it lying at an odd angle over the dish of crumbs i'd given it last night, i sort of just looked at it for a while.

for those of you reading this blog who have more sense, it may console you to know that i'm kicking myself now for being so impulsive last night. of course the little chamberlain was dying. of course it would be dead by morning. of course i'm an idiot for having potentially brought 'a plague on both your houses'. actually, technically speaking, there are four 'houses' here i could have 'brought the plague on', so to speak. good grief. and the children...

not that a single avian (now there's a red flag word if ever i heard one) death is automatically something to worry about. i believe i may have mentioned it before that walking through town in Spore City is almost like walking through the end of The Birds; i can almost believe the soundtrack for that movie had been recorded right here in the city. i'm sure pigeons die in residential buildings all the time hereabouts, and most of them probably go unnoticed.

having got up early to check on the little chamberlain, i decided to go out for a run. (not as impressive as that sounds. i go out for a twenty minute run about once every one or two months, the run staggered into twenty-second half-sprints. so no, i'm hardly out there for my health, much less getting ready for a marathon. it's just something i do every now and then.) i found myself watching the birds: mostly columbiforms and passerines--a lot of them corvine, though some of the ones i've seen might actually be mynas (which would make them, i just recently learned, starlings, i.e., Sturnidae, not Corvidae)--and the occasional, less visible apodiforms (i saw my first hummingbird last week, on my way to work, darting in and out of the hedges at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Queenstown station). i suppose i must have seen a lot of them before--hanging about the outer walls of the building, in the fields and empty lots out back, on the sidewalks and streets and by the cafes and hawker centers and railway lines &c--but of course, one can't be too sure. they all look pretty much the same to me. but as i went running, i had the sneaking suspicion i was being talked about...

of course it was only my imagination. of course it was. what's important is, apart from that, none of the birds i saw on my run seemed to be behaving unusually. not in any particular way i could identify. of course i'd have to get in the little nooks and crannies where the pigeons actually roost to know for sure, but that's well beyond my personal sense of initiative, so let's leave it at that.

still, all this has left me--admittedly not for the first time--hankering for the old lab. it isn't the work, it's the access. (normally i'd say it's the people, but in this case i've got more practical concerns in mind.) i could have performed a full autopsy on the little chamberlain back home, had body fluid and tissue specimens processed at the clinical pathology lab--bit of an abuse of resources, i admit, but one i could have justified with talk of public health and safety and all that, or just palmed-off for a favor...that doesn't quite sound right, but i'm sure you see what i mean--and examined them myself; after which i could have said, with scientific certitude, that the cause of the little chamberlain's death was most definitely undetermined.

i could say that now, of course, and i *had* done a cursory external examination of the little chamberlain's body (and found nothing unusual, by the by), but it just wouldn't be the same.

well, we all have to make our choices, and at some point you've got to stick to your guns. i have to remind myself how utterly miserable i was back there, nevermind how miserable work can be here.

anyway. i wish i could say i at least provided the little chamberlain with a comfortable place to spend its last few hours on earth, but, to be perfectly honest, i expect i probably only gave it even more reason to be terrified.

blackbird; or, the little chamberlain

i'm currently holed up in my room with a black pigeon. i have no idea what to do with it. i had the misfortune of running into it in the elevator. it had somehow found itself stuck in the suffocating little box that opened its doors to different places without really seeming to move, letting in and letting out strange wingless giants with flat, featherless faces. it had a mortified look plastered to its face when i found it, a look it's still giving me now crouched in a little cubby under the writing desk across from the bed where i'm typing this. (edit that: it seems to have fallen asleep now, head tucked under its wing, the dish of mooncake crumbs i'd given it as yet untouched. i hope when the ants come, it'll realize the crumbs are edible, and take a bit of it before the ants can rob him of sustenance, or, worse, overwhelm him. i'd hate to wake up tomorrow with a bird corpse covered in ants.)

at first i urged it out of the elevator when it reached my floor, but then i thought 'what would a pigeon do with itself up here?', and urged it back into the elevator and accompanied it to ground level. once there, i followed it out to see what it would do. i couldn't just leave it, could i? (of course i could, but if you know me, well, i wouldn't. not when i have nothing better to do, and no one around to watch me being silly over a strange bird.)

it waddled about in the enclosed atrium thing on the ground floor for a bit. old people use the space to get some fresh air at unexpected hours of the day. luckily, the old people who'd been sitting on the benches there had only been waiting for the elevator, and they got on it right after we'd gotten off. i'd hate to have had someone watching me try to figure out what to do with a silly little pigeon that won't fly away.

and it wouldn't fly; it just kept waddling slowly about like an old man with a fractured hip, or a little skeksis. yes, almost exactly like a little skeksis, only--as far as i can tell--without the pure wickedness. i followed it around some more. i tried to pick it up when i realized it wasn't going anywhere. (there were cats about and i thought it should find someplace else to be. i like them well enough, the cats, but they aren't really friendly, least of all to a hapless pigeon, as you might imagine.) the first time i tried, it spread its wings and finally fluttered away from me. it made it up about a foot off the ground...not quite high enough to keep it from bashing into the low ledge fencing in the atrium. almost, but not quite.

eventually i managed to pick it up; once you got your hands on it, it couldn't put up much of a fight. now i had a bird in hand with no idea what to do with it. a bird in hand is much overrated, times like this. i could have hoped for two in the bush to take this one off my hands, but there were cats, not birds, in the bushes, what few bushes there were, at any rate, and anyway, it's night time. the other birds have no doubt gone to bed by now.

i decided we should try a test flight. maybe all it needed was a jump start to really get off the ground; if it could fly far enough from me, what happened after that would be none of my business.

i walked out of the atrium with it cradled in both hands, into the football field out back. i counted to three, then tossed it into the air like i'd seen them do at magic shows, or on TV when they were making John Woo films and the pigeons wouldn't cooperate.

this time, with the additional altitude at take-off, it made it out a few meters further than it had in the atrium, before setting down in the grass. at least it had no low wall to bash into. i walked over to where it had landed and sat down beside it. 'you're not getting anywhere on your own steam, are you?,' i said to it, or something like that. 'what am i supposed to do with you now?' it just looked at me like i was crazy for trying to talk sensibly to a pigeon.

anyway, it seemed too exhausted to even try to respond, much less waddle away when i picked it up again. i didn't even need both hands.

so now it's up here, in my room, with its head tucked under a wing, while me, i type up this blog post and hope my landlord doesn't find out i've got a guest. (i'm not allowed guests. much less if they happen to be pigeons, i imagine, what with the baby and all.)

i can only hope all it needs is food, maybe some sleep, the latter of which it's finally getting a bit of. at least it's relaxed now, the mortified look (mostly) gone from its face. who knows what it might be dreaming.

i'll figure out what to do with the little chamberlain--as i've decided to call it, what with the skeksis reference--in the morning.

endangered species

as if we didn't have enough to worry about, what with decaying concrete meltdown containers and unaccounted-for nuclear weapons and inconvenient truths and noxious gas-emitting meteorites and blood-sucking mutant dogs and new Ebola outbreaks and dengue and tuberculosis and Viktor Bout and politics and censorship and religion and obsessive bosses and quantum physics:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/enduringvoices/

and here i was thinking it would be nifty to learn French at some point in the near future.

Adobo

...and Beng Calma. oh, the music's tasty, too.



(post inspired by The Theoretical Chef.)

Cabal, Chuck and Camille; also, a panda on [my] lap

i'd known this all along, ever since the first pictures of the i-believe-then-yet-unnamed Cabal started hitting the internets (formerly known as the interweb on this blog).

i even wrote in about it, all the way back then. no one ever listens.

ah well. can't stay miffed for long. apart from being a perfectly amazing world-famous writer, Neil provides one of the best reasons to aspire to be a perfectly amazing world-famous writer:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/uploaded_images/IMG_0181-751862.jpg
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/chengdu%20panda%20centre.html

a few days ago, i met a black and white kitten--imagine Sylvester or his son, or that relative pussy, Figaro, or Snoopy's antithesis--while waiting at Kallang station for my friend Ana. he seemed to like the carefully worn ragged ends of my jeans, and it was then i noticed he was the same color as my beloved leather Chucks. so i named him Chuck. i could have named him Taylor, but there you go.

then a local couple who'd been watching us from the steps approached. i stepped back and they lured Chuck away from me. i didn't mind. not really. i didn't want us to become co-dependent, anyway; there was just no way it would have been a good idea for me to have taken him home.

after the couple lost interest, Chuck wandered into the station, stumbling about recklessly until Kindly Maintenance Guy led him back out, away from all those Careless Big Shod Feet rushing blindly about. then another local couple started playing with him.

thank me for introducing you to kittens, Spore City. Mercer would have been proud.

i think i must have mentioned before that i'd become enamoured with Camille, whose Le Festin i first heard while watching the movie Ratatouille. before the movie, i caught a bit of an interview with her on a television set set inside a Ratatouille poster, playing what would undoubtedly become a DVD extra by way of entertaining movie-goers before they were allowed to find their seats in the theater, and became curious. after the movie, i immediately went ought and bought the soundtrack.

thanks to Kala, who might occasionally be found having a perfect day for bananafish, i now have a copy of her CD, Le Fil. and yes, i am now most definitely in love with Camille.

i am proud to say i can now whistle the instrumental bit of Le Festin, even though i can neither sing the song, nor even properly say the words out loud.

Nine over Ten

finally finished my nth viewing of the Complete First Series of the Russel T. Davies incarnation of Doctor Who, right after finally getting to watch the Third Series Finale (The Last of the Time Lords). i'd been putting off watching Father's Day coz i'd been feeling a bit too fragile for it, and it turns out i was right.

anywho (see what i did there?), i'm done now, even the First Series Doctor Who Confidential episodes, and all that's left is to watch the episodes with DVD commentaries with the DVD commentaries on--but i think i'm ready to put this out there: contrary to general opinion, David Tennant's Doctor Number Ten isn't the best Doctor ever. he's pretty amazing, i'll admit, and even Tom Baker's Doctor (just because he happens to be the 'Original Doctor' in my head, me having come to the series ages ago off those particular episodes once shown on the now long defunct FEN--meet the Doctor and his various incarnations here) is hard to pit against Tennant's, but i still say he isn't. i've always been of the opinion that Christopher Ecclestone's Doctor Number Nine didn't have it fair at all, what with having just come off the Time War and having survival guilt and all, but having seen it all over again, it isn't just that.

Tennant's Ten has a more conventional charm, owing to his brilliant sometimes-verging-on-maniacal behavior, but this often takes away from the complex subtlety that comes off as a poor echo of Ecclestone's Nine's; admittedly, he's a bit more healed from the Time War, so this can only be expected, and besides, yes, there are other subtleties to Ten; still, Ecclestone's stone-face is often more effective than Tennant's playdough features at showing the exact same sort of thing--the shift from confounded contemplation to dismissive delight, for instance.

this may sound like me repeating myself, but in the past few months, i had, in fact, grown to love Tennant's Doctor as much as Ecclestone's. (i'd also grown, at last, to actually like Rose, but that's another thing altogether, and something i don't think i've ever mentioned before. what?!? you didn't like Rose?!? not initially, no. mainly because i thought Billie Piper hammed it up a bit too much a bit too often, but i'm about ready to change my mind on that as well. there may be another post in that; the Doctor's Companions. stay tuned after the break.)

er. where was i? ah. may sound like. repeating myself. love Tennant's Doctor. so, how to decide between the two Doctors? well, i wasn't about to, but then comparing the three serieses (?!?) in my head changed my mind.

the problem here is that we aren't just talking about the Doctor and the actors' distinguished portrayals; we're talking about how they've been written as well. had it been just the two Doctors to decide between per se, i'd have had to chalk it up to my mood at the time: damaged, occasionally sullen and potentially ruthless, or schizophrenic (in the typical literary sense of the word), ginger and rude?

despite dishing out some of the best episodes (for my money Girl in the Fireplace, Love and Monsters and the absolutely fantabulously unequabble Blink), the latter two serieses have been, for the most part, rather uneven. when those serieses's (?!?!?) episodes were bad, they weren't irredeemably bad (except perhaps, off the top of my head, the utterly malodorously horrendous The Shakespeare Code, saved only by a few brilliant one liners: 'Fifty-seven scholars just punched the air with their fists' after a homosexual innuendo from the Bard, for instance--oh and that 'Human Dalek'. wtf), and unevenness, by itself, isn't particularly fatal. but, on top of the unevenness, there was a failure to satisfactorily tie-up all the threads that had been woven into the series, and, on top of that, an insistence on even trying to tie everything up--more a disservice to the series than anything, really, seeming, in the end, nothing more than an unnecessary obeissance to the precedent set by the First Series--or, perhaps by contemporary television in general (thank Babylon 5 for that; i hear they're to blame for all this 'story arc' business in serial TV these days).

and while the latter two serieses might boast some truly niftier-than-nifty eps, the First after all had The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances; the utterly revealing Dalek; the disturbingly insightful Boom Town; and, yes, the gut-wrenching Father's Day (a rather silly ep, really, but utterly effective); oh, and who can forget watching the TARDIS hurtle through space as it charges bravely into the thick of the two-hundred-ship-strong Dalek armada? and while the First Series did have the potentially annoying tendency to resort to Deus Ex Machina (but what is the TARDIS, after all, but a ready-made, custom-built D.E.M.?), there was a majesty to the way the series engaged in its resolutions, and, though i admit to being initially miffed by The Apotheosis of Rose (in The Parting of the Ways), i now, surprisingly, find it rather satisfying. (the D.E.M. resolution of Boom Town never really bothered me; there was just no other proper way to end it, and by that point in the ep, it was a definite relief for the TARDIS to have stepped in just then.)

(it was interesting to see, then, The Apotheosis of the Doctor in The Last of the Time Lords; an even more complete apotheosis, in fact, with Martha Jones playing the role of uber-companion: prophet to the Doctor's deity. more on this, if i feel like it, later.)

the Doctor's overall story arc seemed to have hit a peak with the First Series and with Nine, akin to my mind to the way Neil Gaiman's The Sandman caught Morpheus at exactly the right time for us to come into his story.

(and, like Morpheus, Doctor Number Nine also had reached a point at which he had to change or die; sure, they'll tell you, Nine died to save Rose and that's that, and they're exactly right. but there's an undeniable weariness to Nine which makes me almost believe that, yes, maybe the Doctor had, at last, seen just that bit too much of the cold, hard universe...alors!)

at this point, i now feel capable of sympathizing with those who feel the show isn't what it used to be; i would even add that what the show lost, it lost immediately after the end of the first series, and the Doctor's ninth regeneration; it faltered at The Christmas Invasion and never recovered.

however, i will say this as caveat: yes, it lost something, something precious, even priceless; something worth missing. but no, that shouldn't keep you from watching what remains a damned fine show; Russel T. Davies' Doctor Who is still better than Doctor Who has ever been, and the show remains one of the finest on TV these days.

and anyway, the latter serieses, after all, only fail to my mind in comparison to the First.

watch it for the Doctor's wit, his incomprehensible brilliance, his endearing rudeness, or his suspicious penchant for sneakers...watch it for the scary monsters; the bold, imaginative silliness you won't find on any other SF TV show that isn't a parody (MST3K, for instance; or Red Dwarf and Hyperdrive); the well-developed humanity...watch if for the TARDIS...

or watch it for Catherine Tate. i hear they're bringing her back for the entire Fourth Series. i can't wait.

why yesterday's blog post was not a proper blog post; and, return of the tool

1) i should have posted this link:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1651341_1659152_1659089,00.html
and/or this one:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/completelist/0,,1651341,00.html

it should then be easy to find where to go from there.

2) i should have put up this video:



and linked to it like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKBnR43-7cI

and let you know that it can also be found by clicking yourself onto youtube through the next link, or by putting said link in the address line of your browser:

http://www.youtube.com/

3) i should have paid more careful attention to what labels i was using, because i missed out on a few useful ones such as:

Q., hackery, The Simpsons, return of the tool, thinking too much and spending way too much time in your own head,

some of which i only made up just now after spending way too much time in my own head.

right. now that's sorted.

working on my current project (really, it shouldn't sound so pretentious; but how else should i refer to it? i'll let you know when it's done.) makes me appreciate how useful it can be to think of what you're doing as 'not SF' when it isn't, even if, from some particularly stubborn perspectives, it might look like it isn't 'not SF'. it is, in fact, at least as useful as thinking of what you're doing as 'not not SF' when it isn't 'not SF'. either of which is only about as useful as thinking about what you're doing at all.

which is apparently--for me at least--almost completely inadvisable. unless you're good at that sort of deliberate tinkering with what you're doing--like Gene Wolfe; or M. John Harrison; or Thomas Pynchon; or Ballard; or Borges. which, as i'm sure i've demonstrated before, i'm not.

and which, to be clear, isn't meant to say 'nay' to SF, or her most fanatical adherents...only to the constant, befuddling insistence on things like 'appropriation' and, less comprehensibly, 'reappropriation'. alors. i'm going to get screwballed for that comment, aren't i?

ah well. bees be. but what am i, in fact, doing, or, to be more honest, trying to do? i know you didn't ask that, but, this being my blog, let's pretend that you did. and to answer that question, i borrow something one of the above (guess who?) said:

'...to claim fiction as a kind of Bedlam in which the inmates communicate with partial success through temporary idiolects bricolaged from both cultures [i.e., 'Science' and 'The Arts' - c]; or a very large alphabet soup in which you could swim & play & act out & generally behave irresponsibly. What we can do now (& what we’ve been doing since Ballard & Burroughs & Gibson) is take advantage of all that potential symbology, all that spare poetry lying around & up for grabs. Why limit yourself ? I don’t neccessarily think of this as a big, clever or serious attitude–no more contributive to the Third Culture project than to any academic or purposive theory-based idea of fiction–but play is, well, releasing. I think keys to my attitude might be discovered in the short story “Science & the Arts” as well as in Light & Nova Swing.' (my ellipses)

Mr. Harrison (of course) said all that here:

http://uzwi.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/cheap-sunglasses/

in the comments section. i must have used that before; can't be helped, or, to be more precise, i can't help myself; i particularly like that bit about 'all that spare poetry lying around'. which i've found a useful thing to keep in mind while writing 'not SF'.

Frank Zappa is another usefully mad genius to listen to, times like these, and sums up what i've really been getting at all along: 'Shut up'n'play.'

currently reading: whatever i feel like reading in the moment.

on the spinner: Tom, Elvis and Camille. and rats.

The St. of Elsewhere

during the editing process of The Saint of Elsewhere, and quite a bit of the few discussions on the short that followed, Q used to reference the TV show St. Elsewhere. i never thought much of the comparison, though i never refuted it either--while i never paid attention to the show as a child, i couldn't deny that the show had filtered into my subconscious, and was, in fact, there in the back of my mind when i eventually settled on the title. while i don't remember actually waiting for the show and watching it when it came on, the show--its name and its theme music--are as comforting and familiar as anything i can dredge up out of what little i remember of being a kid.

after reading this from Time Magazine's The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME, i realized what a disservice i did the story by not actually following through on the cues of my subconscious.

just to be clear: no, the show does not actually explain the short. but it comes closer to the mark of what i'd been trying to do with the story than any interpretation of it i've heard so far. (though admittedly, there haven't been a lot.)

read more about the show and what the hell i'm talking about--where else?--on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elsewhere

it all makes me wonder, just how much of me--consciously and otherwise--is, to borrow a quote from the list, brought to you by the letters T and V?

note to self: the voice may seem crazy, but it knows things. yes in-diddly-deedy, it does.

Le Festin

http://skinnyblackcladdink.multiply.com/music/item/193/Le_Festin

(in an attempt to keep the Robots off my back, i've made the song available only to members of my network. apologies to non-multiplyers, or whatever they're [we're] called, or to those who are but aren't in my network. er, and were hoping to get a freebie.)

more Camille here:

http://www.camille-lefil.com/

and just to fill this post out, here are le liques:

Le Festin
Performed by Camille
Written and Produced by
Michael Giacchino

French lyrics:

Les rêves des amoureux sont comm’(e) le bon vin
Ils donn(ent) de la joie ou bien du chagrin
Affaibli par la faim je suis
malheureux
Volant en chemin tout ce que je peux
Car rien n’est gratuit
dans la vie

L’espoir est un plat bien trop vite consommé
A sauter
les repas je suis habitué
Un voleur solitaire est triste à nourrir
A un
jeu si amer je n’peux réussir
Car rien n’est gratuit dans…

La vie…
Jamais on ne me dira
Que la course aux étoiles; ça n’est pas pour moi
Laissez moi vous émerveiller et prendre mon en vol
Nous allons en fin
nous régaler

La fêt(e) va enfin commencer
Sortez les bouteilles;
finis les ennuis
Je dresse la table, de ma nouvell(e) vie
Je suis
heureux à l’idée de ce nouveau destin
Une vie à me cacher et puis libre
enfin
Le festin est sur mon chemin

Une vie à me cacher et puis libre
enfin
Le festin est sur mon chemin

English
lyrics:

Dreams are to lovers as wine is to friends
Carried through
lifetimes, (and) spilled now and then
I am driven by hunger, so saddened to
be
Thieving in darkness; I know you’re not pleased
But nothing worth
eating is free

My hope is a banquet impatiently downed
Impossibly
full, now I’ll probably drown
Many thieves’ lives are lonely with one mouth
to feed
If giving means taking, I’ll never succeed
For nothing worth
stealing is…

Free at last; won’t be undersold
Surviving isn’t
living; won’t eat what I’m told
Let me free, I’ll astonish you; I’m planning
to fly
I won’t let this party just pass me by

The banquet is now
underway, so…
Bring out the bottles; a new tale has spun
In clearing
this table, my new life’s begun
I am nervous, excited; (oh) just read the
marquee!
A lifetime of hiding; I’m suddenly free!
My dinner is waiting
for me

A lifetime of hiding; I’m suddenly free!
My dinner is waiting

for me

note to self: learn French before some epochal moment in your life.

*

i'd been meaning to post this, from Q:

Hi! I'd just like to let you know that Issue 3 of The Digest of Philippine Genre
Stories is out now at The Manila Book Fair at the World Trade Center Manila, Gil
Puyat Ave. cor. D. Macapagal Blvd., Aug. 29 to Sep. 2 at the Anvil Booth. It'll
be available at the regular distributors' outlets by late next week. Thanks!

Kenneth Yu
www.philippinegenrestories.blogspot.com

but now it's too late for that, ennit? so i'll just put this on and pretend i haven't been a lazy little blogger:

Hi guys.

Just wanted to update you about some stuff:

Met with Jade Bernas, publisher of Story Philippines, earlier today. He told me that Story Philippines has a new policy of not accepting reprints. In other words, if you guys plan to submit to Story Philippines as I've encouraged you to do, make sure that it's original, unpublished, and not a multiple or a simultaneous submission. They've become a bit stricter with their submission guidelines.

Secondly, Fully Booked has launched the 2nd Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards. I'm also encouraging you to join. Check out the PGS blog (http://www.philippinegenrestories.blogspot.com/) for the link to the site with the application form and contest rules/guidelines.

Thanks!

Kenneth Yu
http://www.philippinegenrestories.blogspot.com/.

right. now that's sorted.

rats, Bird and the city of lights

Ratatouille (2007) - how could i not love this movie?

i think it wouldn't be too far off the mark to trace my affection for rats all the way back to Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH (and Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH)--or maybe his An American Tail (technically not about rats, but, anyway, rodents); Brad Bird had previously pitched two-for-two in my book (with The Iron Giant and The Incredibles) making this, duh, three-for-three; i'm no foodie, but i've enjoyed cooking shows all my life (remember Wok with Yan? then there's Keith Floyd, and now Jamie Oliver and Anthony Bourdain and, of course, Nigella Lawson, among others--nevermind that they are personality-driven as much as food-oriented shows for the moment); the romantic in me still romanticizes Paris and i've been thinking of learning French lately; the music is simply lovely, and i think listening to Elvis Costello's My Flame Burns Blue these past few days may have primed me for the soundtrack; anyway, the point of all that is, yeah, this movie seems practically tailor-made--specially prepared--to suit my tastes.

i envy people who can write for children like that; i try (with rather questionable results, as with Troll's Doll), but i simply can't seem to do it properly; or, at least, not in a way that i find personally satisfying, nevermind what other people may think. now i've got half a mind to drop my current project in 'studied incomprehensibility' (about 13k+ words in) and go for something a little less pretentious and self-involved; something more fanciful, less deliberately, carefully 'adult'. maybe something with rats.

i think it would do me good. can't help but loathe myself for having allowed myself to progressively transmogrify into an utter tool these past couple years, ever since i 'gave it all up for art' and 'seriously' began writing (flashes of--gasp--Keanu Reeves hanging up 'Ted' Theodore Logan--or was it Ted 'Theodore' Logan?--for Don John and the Off-Broadway Prince of Denmark); maybe the change of pace will complete what i'd hoped to get started by going on blogger-hiatus ('a-ha! so that's why, was it?'): namely a kind of 'spiritual restoration'--as cheezy as that may sound--an attempt to shed all the accumulated fluff and bring it all back to zen in darkness.

anyhoo, where was i? ah, yes: i was going to upload Camille's vocal performance of the lovely Michael Giacchino theme for Ratatouille, "Le Festin", then link to it here, but multiply seems to have gone wonky at the moment. i haven't received any word from the Goodly Law-abiding Administrators of Multiply, so i doubt the Robots have dismantled the site for good. will try again later.

on that note (my, this post certainly is riddled with sequential puns, ennit?), this seems an opportune moment to plug E. Cross Saltire's brandspanking new blog, The Theoretical Chef:

http://bangusbelly.blogspot.com/

*

and now, something for Mabel:

(lifted from creative loafing, here:

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=261051)

i haven't worn 'dress white'--or my hair, come to think of it, it's actually gotten much worse, not to mention salt-and-peppery--like that in a while, and, really, i'd rather be Remy the rat...but (SPOILER ALERT!!!) the dweeb gets the girl (SPOILER ENDS), so why complain?

just finished: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin; The Heart of the Dog, Mikhail Bulgakov (an earlier translation, i think, of The Dog's Heart, which, comparing the two in the library, i found more to my taste).

currently reading: The Problem with Physics, Lee Smolin; The Character of Physical Law, Richard Feynman; Balthazar, Lawrence Durrell (peppered with a second reading of Justine); On the Road, Jack Kerouac (not the scroll, fyi). i also borrowed Gun, with Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem, from the library, and i've read one chapter, but i don't think i'll be going back to it soon. immensely enjoyed excerpts of Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer at a bookstore this afternoon (now why hadn't I given that a go before?), and will most likely pull a copy out of the library next time i swing by.

on the spinner: Picaresque and The Crane Wife, The Decemberists (thanks to Brottish, over on multiply, which i still can't seem to link to at the moment); What's Cooking? A Musical Tour of Tasty Tunes (New and Classic Food Favorites inspired by Ratatouille), Fred Mollin and the Blue Sea Band. and some older stuff: Elvis Costello's My Flame Burns Blue; select tracks from the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels soundtrack; It Won't Be Soon Before Long, Maroon 5.

on the spinner, video: Moonlighting, Season 3.