back(?) for Roberto Bolaño's 2666

hello. how've you been? thought i'd drop by to invite you to this:

http://groups.google.com/group/bolano-l/web/2666-group-read-schedule-final

Roberto Bolaño is so amazingly good he makes me want to hang up my pen (metaphorically speaking, of course, i rarely write with a pen these days, but anyway Pam is much too useful for other things for me to 'hang her up' just like that, metaphorically or otherwise), like, he makes me think, 'he's done just about anything and everything good that i could (and quite a few things that i couldn't) imagine could be done with fiction, why bother when what you do will now more certainly then ever only be relegated to the "Sturgeon's 90%" bin,' which isn't, by itself, necessarily enough to make me choke on my own literary inadequacies, if it weren't for that he also makes it seem absolutely effortless.

anyway: this year, his second (and last) novel, 2666, has: been translated into English by Natasha Wimmer (who did an amazing job with The Savage Detectives, not that i've read the original Spanish, or that i can read Spanish at all, but still, if you've seen the book, if you've read it, you'll know what i mean); been published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in two lovely editions (hardcover and three-volume [paperback] boxed set); made a number of 'top books' lists, and been called Best Book of 2008 by Time Magazine, if that sort of thing means anything to you. i signed up to lead a discussion for the free copies but found copies already available at Kinokuniya just hours after, so although the free copies haven't arrived (one of which--we were promised two--i've had sent to Paul), i finished reading the Part About the Critics today and am settling into the Part About Amalfitano, meaning that i should be done with my pages by the time February comes round. hurrah! ...and, well, to be honest: ulp.

if you don't already have a copy, go out and find yourself one. steal a copy if you have to, i don't know if Bolaño would approve, i'm sure his heirs and publishers wouldn't, and this was written for their sakes after all, but he used to steal books, so, if your circumstances prevent acquiring a copy any other way, why not?, only i'm kidding, sort of, but anyway just get yourself a copy.

if you already have one, start reading, and i hope to see you at the reading group.

meanwhile, i'm going off on vacation. i'd meant to get in shape for the discussions by posting my thoughts on the book as i read it, but, bugrit, i'm going on vacation.

so, after all this time, it's good to see you, but i'm afraid this is hi and goodbye, just like that, though i hope to see you in Jan 09.

oh, and Happy Holidays!

fuck me

it worked.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7760592.stm

thus ensuring that the region's abusive relationship with democracy continues. somewhere (Northampton, probably), Alan Moore is laughing his socks off.

mind you, it was an interesting weekend, if only for what Spore Girl called "the absurdity of it all".

T.T

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/news/latest/081029_news_04

inattention

whoops. i should mention this before going back to my hidey-hole:

http://www.wildsidepress.com/Weird-Tales-351-SeptemberOctober-2008_p_33-192.html

multiple-good-natured-explitive-laden thanks to Ann and the rest of the Weird Folk! erm. or whatever they like to be called.

seriously, this is fucked-up fucking amazing. with Zoran Zivkovic, too.

Zoran Ziv--holy fuck. right. back to my creepy-crawlspace.

Zen in Darkness - hiatus

anyone looking for Zen in Darkness might be better off looking here, though i'm not entirely sure what there is to find, that there's anything to find. and, if it's me you're looking for (hello!), you won't, hopefully, find me there, either. that's the idea anyway. there's always this, but you know that, particularly if you're on multiply.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Noise to Signal

Pure signal is like Janet and John – yes, you can understand everything on the page, but there's nothing much there worth understanding. Noise – or something approaching noise – is like a page of James Joyce, a page of Ian [sic] Sinclair – where there is such a density of information that it almost becomes incoherent, but it is full of information.

-Alan Moore on The Craft (an interview with Alan Moore by Daniel Whiston)

read the entire interview at The Victorious Swarm of the Flies of the Water (water flies? thank you, Internets!), here:

http://mouches-d-eau.blogspot.com/2008/07/craft.html

love at first sight

Miss Want It All, Clara Belle



if you ask me, she can have it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaraBelleMusic
http://www.myspace.com/clarabellemusic

Mona, je t'aime

a few months ago i learned a few months too late that the Philippine Free Press had published a story i wrote called Screws. Sarge Lacuesta confirmed that, yes, he had published it, and asked, when will i send him another...? so i sent him a relatively fresh story called The Nameless.

you can read The Nameless in the Philippine Free Press, Vol. 99, No. 29, dated July 19, 2008. (the Free Press have a website, http://philippinesfreepress.wordpress.com/, but you won't find the story there.)

i'm tickled by the preponderance of 9s, without really knowing why. that may be a clue to the kind of silliness that gave birth to The Nameless, which, for all its unworthy seriousness and freakish self-importance, was really something of a joke i was playing on my inner misanthrope (which is discernibly if only slightly more misanthropic than the outer one).

it was meant to be funny. really it was. not ha-ha funny, but funny in its own, unnameable (har) way.

thanks to Paul for the heads-up.

Yahoo! Mail! Sucks!

yes it does, for these and so many other reasons:

 

http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&q=yahoo+mail+sucks&meta=

 

posted through gmail.

Pamela

hello. this is Pam:



Pam is a Panasonic CF-W7 Toughbook. one or two or none of you may remember that i have been lusting after her kind for quite some time now. here is another picture of her, looking at the mouse pointer as though it were a teeny tiny annoying little flying Jacques Roach getting on her nerves, though you can't really tell from the picture:



yes, that is the much lurved Pam Beesley-from-Dunder-Mifflin being Pam-from-Panasonic's face. over to one side of her not really partially obscured by an errant piece of plastic of not really obscure origin is Mabel's pink iPod. (shhh! it's a surprise.)

i will be here and there on the following dates:

27 June - 2 July - Hong Kong (alas, for beeswax.)
3 - 7 July - Philippines (hurrah!)

just thought i should let someone know.

and now the bits that are supposed to make me seem cleverer than for real:

reading: mainly Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day (woot!), David Thomson's Suspects

on the spinner: ScarJo's Anywhere I Lay My Head; She & Him's Volume One (yay Zooey!); Sigur Ros's med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust; My Bloody Valentine's Loveless; Punch-Drunk Love OST composed by Jon Brion; Yo La Tengo's May I Sing With Me; David Bowie's Hunky Dory

Be excellent to each other...

...party on, dude.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/international-carlin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

ID9

i never quite got the hang of holiday economics. not that i don't understand the pragmatism of it. just that the demarcation of time being an artificial construct anyway--a fact that i'm fully aware can be used to argue either way, just so you know--it's the *specificity* of holidays--that *particular* combination of day/month/year especially in terms of documented historical events that actually took place on said particular day/month/year--that keeps them from being arbitrary excuses to have a day off work. in that sense, holiday economics undercuts both the letter and the spirit of the 'law' of holidays; all right for holidays that don't really commemorate an 'exact location' in our artificially demarcated timeline, but it subverts the essential orderliness of history. might as well say, oh i don't know when it happen, just that it did; might as well have your holiday on any old day; might as well take all the holidays, lump them together, have One Grand Uberholiday instead of several little ones, do away with the lot all in one day, one week, one month (which, as we've seen in the Office, is never as good an idea as you might think); might as well not have holidays at all. anyway, who says holidays need to be celebrated as holidays?

the way i see it, the Inquirer has got it exactly right.

edit to add: see the Philippine Declaration of Independence here, as posted by E. Cross Saltire on his wonderfully informative (when he's in the mood) Nontrivial Pursuit. (find him on multiply here.)

It's all in our heads

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7442233.stm

no to age banding

http://www.notoagebanding.org/

WOO-WHO!!!

great news for whovians:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/20/bbc.television2

for lazy clickers, here's what matters:

Scriptwriter Steven Moffat was today named lead writer and executive producer on hit BBC1 drama Doctor Who.

and for the uninitiated:

As well as Blink, his previous work on Doctor Who includes The Girl in the Fireplace for series two which earned him his second Hugo Award. His first was for the series one two-parter The Empty Child.

Mr Moffat's script for Blink was nominated for a Nebula, but lost to Guillermo del Toro and Pan's Labyrinth; here's hoping he wins another Hugo with Blink. he doesn't need it, but Blink certainly deserves it not only for being *the* best New Who episode so far, imho, but one of the best things i've seen on TV in recent years.

speaking of 'best on TV', i am hereby making a public declaration that i am very much Spaced-out.

i cap this post off with some unrelated John Hodgman brilliance:



(from youtube, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1JIa5r5nkE)

this post owes most of its existence to Neil Gaiman's Journal. (everything, in fact, except the bit about Spaced.) you'll find more interesting things there, as Mr Gaiman is a much more accomplished--not to mention industrious--blogger than i will ever be.

popping by for a review

i don't know why, but i've gone and done this.

(apologies to anyone reading this on multiply; i realize this post is unnecessary for you, but there you go.)

reading: The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall, which i'd been waiting months for, with dips into Suspects by David Thomson.

on the spinner: whatever + 2046 soundtrack.

i want to believe

the Tangent Universe has collapsed, leaving us stranded in William Gibson territory.

(Magi / Frank)

how cool would that be?

2,008 English Pounds to...

Black Man by Richard Morgan.

huzzah!

http://www.clarkeaward.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=1&Itemid=50

2008 Clarke Award roundups:
http://evesalexandria.typepad.com/eves_alexandria/2008/04/arthur-c-clarke.html
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2008/04/the_2008_arthur.shtml (part one)
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2008/04/the_arthur_c_cl-comments.shtml (part two)
http://futurismic.com/2008/04/28/arthur-c-clarke-science-fiction-award-shortlist-review/

or just go to Eve's Alexandria and proceed from there.

most recently amazed by: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano and Iron Man.

yes, you heard me. Iron Man. go see it. Robert Downey Jr being Robert Downey Jr, but with cool tech that gives him superpowers. and it's IRON MAN. how cool is that?

currently being amazed by: Painkillers by Simon Ings and by, wouldn't you know it?, Simon Ings himself.

download Painkillers for free here:

http://www.fisheye.demon.co.uk/homepages/simoningsdownloa.html

Simon Ings needs to be more widely recognized. right now. he has shorts hidden behind marbles over at fisheye and, elsewhere online, you can read Simon Ings's Open Veins, also free (published some years back in OMNI):

http://www.astralgia.com/webportfolio/omnimoment/archives/fiction/openvein/index.html

Mr Ings's fiction, in brief, is reminiscent of M. John Harrison's, if not quite as opaque and, also, entirely different.

i keep telling people to pick up a copy of his Weight of Numbers, but do they listen...?

hey diddle

fiddling around with blogger to see what i can and can't put up. while i was mucking about in back, i thought i'd pop in to say that Sarge Lacuesta published a story i wrote a couple years ago--'Screws'--in the Philippine Free Press a while back. no idea how far back 'a while back' goes (actually, Mr Lacuesta's words were 'matagal na.' i really should get back to him on that), other than that it was most probably any issue between Christmas '07 and about two weeks ago. possibly three. anyway, i just found out about 12 days ago. i remember because that was also the night i started and finished the one thing i'm most proud of at the moment, writing-wise.

thank you, Mr Lacuesta and Philippine Free Press!

and that is all i came to say. i still haven't got my--sexy back? sorry. for some reason i just couldn't resist. i also couldn't quite decide whether to go with that video or this video, but finally decided the SPOILER ALERTteletubbiesEND SPOILER were more appropriately silly. besides, my favorite SPOILER ALERTpeanuts parodyEND SPOILER remains this one, dubbed by the cast of Scrubs, still the most true-to-life portrayal of life in med you'll find on TV. as i was saying, i still haven't got my taste for blogging back, whatever you might have thought from the last couple or so posts.

[edit to add: i forgot invis-o-text doesn't work on multiply. my apologies to anyone reading this via multiply if the above spoilers ruined your viewing pleasure in any way.]

oh, and i may move to wordpress sometime in the near-to-distant future as i see they let you put .pdfs and whatnots up on blogposts over yonder. (for the blissfully unaware, yes, i do have a wordpress blog, it is called, for some reason i have not yet figured out, korzybskian autopsy, and can be found by clicking, against anyone's better judgement, this.)

Somewhere Isobel Avens is Waiting

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn13562

(thanks New Scientist and M. John Harrison for Signs of Life and "Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring".)

Huysmans on his sleeve?

a few (more or less) quick 'uns, just because i actually feel like it right now:

finished reading: Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. i never thought i'd get into memoirs, but dammit if this isn't an amazing book, and dammit if i didn't wish more *fiction* was written like this. if i had more cash and could find more copies (i've only seen it in one bookstore here and, as far as i can tell, they only have one copy left), i'd buy one for all my friends, that's right, every frickin' one of 'em, and give 'em away for free, the only condition being that they drop whatever the hell they're reading now and read this instead...

serendipitously: the day i finished Suck City was also the day i finally found a copy of Alexander Masters's Stuart: A Life Backwards. can't wait to crack that open, but in the meantime...

started reading: Julio Cortazar's Blow-Up and Other Stories (thanks Paul! for pointing this out) which, apart from being utterly lovely, inspired me to soldier on so that i finally...

finished reading: part one of Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives. i honestly can't pin down the reason why so many people think this book is so great; much less why i absolutely cannot disagree with them, which isn't just because i wouldn't know how i'd begin, though that's certainly true as well, but because i honestly, absolutely agree with them, despite hitting a bump or two that made me abandon it for months at a time (never completely; i always enjoyed the attempt enough to know i'd be back eventually. i finally got through on my third attempt to read the frickin' thing, and i am sooo glad i did). maybe i really *have* lost my ability to bullshit my way through life because i can not for the life of me give you a good, smartish sounding reason why you should go out and read this book yourself. the first part reads to me like JK Huysmans' A Rebours getting it on hot and heavy with every Mexican Stand-off film you've ever seen, but with poets instead of gunslingers and yes i know that sounds horrible but it just plain isn't, dammit it isn't!

and yes i am reading the rest of it now.

congratulations to: The Rooster for another fun, illuminating, fun tourney! i haven't read Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and have no idea what you're supposed to do with a thingummy, zafa, but let's hope it doesn't involve too many sharp objects.

early on i found myself rooting for Then We Came to the End (even though it was slain in the Zombie Round by a rampaging resurrected Remainder--which was in turn slain by the ostensibly pure-hearted{?} Oscar Wao), three funny bits of which can be heard being read by Joshua Ferris himself over at the Times Online.

incidentally, Tom McCarthy's Remainder fills me with dread not just because it slaughtered (though gently) Joshua Ferris but also because it sounds like he's more or less successfully done what i'd been trying to do decidedly less than successfully with the book i'm writing...ah well. eyes on the ball, kid.

i'm building up a real hankering for some relatively straight-up SF, though, and today at the office i started flirting with Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods. i'd been avoiding the book hoping to either score it of the lib or pick-up a cheaper edition later on but now i might just go ahead and get it...

quietly contemplating: Neil Gaiman's Odd and the Frost Giants. i know, it's short, i could probably read it in a day or two, no matter how slow a reader i am, but part of me really really REALLY just wants the first time i read this to be out loud to a kid...

on the spinner: Putumayo Presents Paris. there was a sale, all Putumayo Presents CDs going at 20% off at Borders and anyway i'm a real sucker for being sung to in French. they were playing Amelie-Les-Crayons's Ta P'tite Flamme when i walked into the store and i fell immediately in love.

phew. i was quit when i walked in, i'm twice as quit now.

i think i might have said that last time though, so i may be back.

OOH! BANNER!

shiny...

(for those reading this on multiply, clicky the linky:

http://skinnyblogcladdink2-0.blogspot.com)

i tried to get it to say 'i am a weird' but alas, i couldn't, it wouldn't. so it doesn't.

Nova Swing takes PKD!

or 'sends', according to Uncle Zip:

http://uzwi.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/nova-swing-sends-pkd/

(as of this posting, the PKD awards site still has the 2007 winners up front.)

meanwhile, the Hugo nominees are up:

http://www.thehugoawards.org/?p=142

and the nominees for the Arthur C Clarke:

http://www.clarkeaward.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=1&Itemid=50

i dunno, there's just been this rash of lists lately, so i thought, what the hell.

also, i strongly encourage anyone and everyone interested in books to get into the Tournament of Books:

http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/

To be clear, the point of the Rooster is not to eliminate bias from book awards. If we’re doing anything (and I’m not sure we are), it’s showing how these biases are not only epidemic, they are unavoidable. Appreciation of literature is all about subjective bias. But when most book awards are announced, you don’t have any idea what standards are being applied or what books are taught in what classes by the individuals forging the crown. The only thing we do differently is tell you who these people are.

- Kevin Guilfoile, from the Booth

fun fun stuff.

on the spinner: Kismet, Jesca Hoop

i wish i had time to say more, but, as it's already too late, this will have to do:

RIP:
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Arthur C Clarke
Anthony Minghella

(although i did put something up a couple hours ago on Anthony Minghella here, over at the other life. those reading this on Multiply may be baffled by the necessity for this parenthetical statement.)

i'm sure i've forgotten something, but that will do for now. good night.

Arvin & Claire got married

twice now, i expect.

yes, i'm horrible. i still owe them the second part of their story. (you can read the first part here.)

admittedly, part two isn't coming along very well and it helps not at all that it's already much too late. on the plus side, it makes it easier to not be there right now, as it would just be plain embarrassing for me not having delivered.

(edit to add: this is why i don't make promises. i might say i'll go do something, but i will never promise i will.)

anyway, congratulations again, Arvin & Claire. sorry about your story.

Arvin & Claire are getting married

actually, they're already married. they exchanged vows in June 2006 in their Boston, Massachusetts home wearing their 'pambahay slippers'. they candidly admit they had both forgotten to put shoes on for the civil ceremonies.

they'll be having the big church wedding on 9 March 2008.

i've known them a good 20 years now but, except for the occasional reunion, blog update and chat conversation, i'd pretty much lost touch with them since high school. writing their story has been a great way to catch up on their lives. the experience so far has been the most challenging, rewarding and personally satisfying writing i've yet done.

you can read the first part of their story in the About Us section of their wedding website, here:

http://arvinandclairetake2.weddingannouncer.com/

the first part of the story stands on its own but is grossly, criminally incomplete. i hope to rectify the matter in the second part. check back regularly for updates. there's so much left to tell; it's a story worth telling, though the writing itself hasn't been nearly as much fun as learning about the lives of my friends has been.

as Claire says in her rather generous introduction, this story is meant to be told as a tryptych: the current installment narrates the first part of their story with a bias towards Claire's prespective; the next will continue with a slant towards Arvin's; both parts i have decided to inform with my own, not entirely detached but just close enough to provide a (hopefully) noninvasive intermediary between the intimacy of their personal stories and the reader--ie, a way for the reader to access their story, to engage with it in a way that will speak intimately to them without desecrating the ultimately personal nature of the material.

that i will not be present to witness the conclusion of the tryptych, the Church Wedding, is regrettable for me, but seems nonetheless entirely appropriate: i was not there to witness the first two parts unfold either. these installments, the one you'll find through the link above and the one i'm currently working on, are meant to be mere preparation for that conclusion and readers fortunate enough to attend the wedding will ideally be able to engage with the story of Arvin & Claire without the need for my imagined intermediary.

right. enough of my hamhackery. congratulations, Arvin & Claire, and i don't just mean next week's wedding; as these things go, the life you've led so far has been inspired.

ScarJo does Tom Waits

everytime i think i would like nothing better than to shut down the ol' blog, i think up/find/come across/discover/get hit on the head by/run over something i'd like to put up or share, no matter how uninteresting it might be to anyone else.

take this: it seems like forever since i first heard about this. well, ok, maybe just a year or so. but i can't wait to hear it. i've always dug Tom Waits and, hey, ScarJo's hot and judging from this, it might not be half bad:



(from youtube)

for those who have a less than ideal connection to the internets, or who are just plain impatient, that be a video of scenes from the loverly Lost in Translation, scored with ScarJo channeling Stacy Kent by way of singin' Gershwin's (have i got that right?) Summertime.

here's the man hisself (ie, Mr Waits) mentioning ScarJo singin' his songs in an interview over at Stereogum a few months back:

http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/tom-waits-talks-scarjo_004029.html

What counted...

A new form will always seem more or less an absence of any form at all, since it is unconsciously judged by reference to the consecrated forms.

-Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008).

and

...the time had passed for novels to be about characters and individuals. ...What counted was creation... (my ellipses)

http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2257878,00.html

i'd say more, but my copy of The Eraser sits in a box back home, beyond my reach, as yet unread.

and if this was late, my apologies. would it be any comfort to consider that it was almost never?

True Weird

i should be out getting my thousand words for the day done but looking up brought me to this:

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/02/10/contest-tell-us-your-new-weird-story-win-tons-of-cool-stuff/

(with an update here:

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/02/15/new-weird-contest-deadline-sunday/

over at www.jeffvandermeer.com)

i got mine in a few minutes ago, about two hours before deadline (i think). there might be time. check it out.

hot potato

just dropping by to spread the word: Neil Gaiman's blog just turned 7 and, to celebrate, Harper Collins will be offering one of Neil's books available 'online, free, gratis and for nothing.'

Mr Gaiman has kindly laid it all out for us here:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/free%20book

now all we have to do is choose.

(i thought of rigging the link but i haven't really decided which book i want online, so you'll just have to decide for yourselves.)

and so...HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEIL GAIMAN's BLOG!

Brother Felix

it's confirmed. Brother Felix died this morning:

Our dear Br. Felix Masson FSC has fulfilled his promise to pass on. He was reunited with our Creator early morning of February 6, 2008.

We treasure the years he animated our Lasallian communities in the Philippines and genuinely touched the hearts of many of our employees and students.

Let us pause for a moment of silence and say a short prayer for the repose of his soul.

Eternal rest grant unto the soul of Br. Felix Masson, Oh Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon him.

May he rest in peace. Amen.

(from the De La Salle Santiago Zobel website)

it's hard for me to think of anything appropriate to say about him. if you knew him, i don't think i could add to what he left you with; if you didn't, and i hope you don't think i'm being smug or self-important or just plain full-of-myself, you'll probably never fathom what it is we've lost. Brother Felix was never the sort of man you'd sum up with words; he was the kind of man you had to meet for yourself. and you only had to meet him once, usually as he stood on the sidewalk on campus beside the yellow patintero, step-no and piko lines on the pavement, shaking everybody's hands with a smile as though he were running for congress but without the icky smarminess that implies...

Brother Felix was the one person who made having a birthday in Zobel seem worthwhile to me. that probably sounds like such an inadequate summary of who he was, but you can't imagine what a big deal that was then.

while the impulse to grieve may be strong, i'm pretty sure he'd want us to pick ourselves up from this, give the world our brightest smiles and have ourselves a fine day. wasn't that what he always wanted, all he ever really asked of us, standing reliably out in the sun the way he did?

Willesden Herald 2008 and the Energy of Delusion

this has to be the most painful rejection letter i've ever read.

it's one thing to be judged wanting against writing that is obviously superior, or even against writing that isn't. Ms Smith's way, there's simply no way to rationalize, to rework your inadequacy into something even remotely conciliatory; no compromise can be made with yourself to inject even a modicum of consolation for your ego, your sense of self-worth; bereft of all the defense mechanisms you've grown accustomed to employing against such assaults on your self-esteem, you are left exposed, naked against the raw force of the truth: you've been contributing to mediocrity all along.

when did i start operating on the energy of delusion? i want the old me back, the hack from two and a half years ago who only wanted to join the fun, who only wanted an excuse to play with the one skill he had any confidence in having.

anyway, and i say this without irony, hooray Willesden Herald for showing such integrity. not something we seem to be seeing much of these days.

*

i've just heard a rumor concerning Zobel's beloved Brother Felix. i'll wait for confirmation before i say any more, but if there's anyone out there who thinks they have the kind of information i'm looking for, please do drop a line.

if you're from Zobel, you'll likely know what i'm talking about.

(thanks to Mendozaria for the news.)

*

this, just in from E.Cross Saltire, lends credence to the rumor:

Last week, Br. Felix started getting very weak and could not get out of bed. His vital signs started to fail; he stopped drinking milk and water and slept for most of the week. He has been under constant care for almost two weeks now and has not left his room even in his wheel chair. He received the Sacrament of Anointing and Viaticum. However, his condition improved and his vital signs are back to normal. He has begun to take nourishment again although he is still weak and not speaking. His cancer wound on the lower lip has not healed and morphine is administered to him every two hours. According to Br. Ronald, “he is an amazing person, he has never
complained about, has always been cheerful and always says thank you”.

Let us keep Br. Felix in our prayers

(from here: http://www.zobel.dlsu.edu.ph/reflections/2008_-_03_(4_February_2008).pdf)

Brother Felix retired to Napa in November 2006.

emo

first off, i should let you know: The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories can now be bought online.

right.

after the realization attending my last post and incidentally stumbling across the fact that i arrived here one non-leap year ago, i thought i might take my cue from Jim Halpert, buy myself a minibottle of champagne and celebrate by myself tonight. sadly, 7-11 doesn't carry champagne, at least not the one i'm most comfortable visiting, the one where they know me well enough by face to sell me one thing when i've asked for something else with a friendly if somewhat self-satisfied smile and no malice whatsoever as far as i can tell, and i walked away with a seven dollar bottle of Jacob's Creek Chardonnay, Vintage 2005 instead. which, i've come to agree with the universe, is fine: what, after all, have i got to be all self-congratulatory about?

i've chucked the first complete draft of Spooky into the fuhgedaboutit part of my brain, where it will almost certainly be cannibalized for spare parts, vital organs and light, unhealthy yet vile-tasting snacks. hopefully, starting fresh will give the story the life i'd always wanted for it. maybe this time Kip and Ana will actually have room to breathe.

currently reading: Robert Baldick's translation of A Rebours by J-K Huysmans.

humming along to: whatever pops into my head which, lately, has been mostly this:

Don't know how else to say it
I don't want to see my parents go
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train
I want to get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly, won't someone stop this train.

and i keep waiting to get to this part:

Once in a while, when it's good
It'll feel like it should
And they're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing
Till you cry when you're driving away in the dark...

i suspect i might only have missed the first part--they go by so quickly, don't they? the good bits of your life?--and skipped right on to the end cause now i see quite plainly that, yes, i'll never stop this train.

(apologies to John Mayer, to his fans, and to John Mayer-haters who've somehow stumbled onto this blog. and to anyone who's actually read this far. honestly, haven't you got better things to do? well, thanks for dropping by anyway.)

remember: un long dimanche fiancailles 2

neither Mabel nor i have been very good with dates. i suppose it may be because we aren't very sentimental about them: what matters is what 'special occasions' celebrate, not the special occasions themselves. these occasions are just markers, signposts, excuses to make a fuss about what you are and from the beginning i suppose Mabel and i have never been about that.

but really, we just forget, that's all.

the fact is, i'm a little uncomfortable even mentioning this now. owing to our situation at the moment, i won't be flying home til late May at the soonest, 'special occasions' are less reasons to be cheerful than reminders of exactly where we each are right now. still, all that said, now that i've remembered, it seems inappropriate for me not to say anything.

soon i'll have been here a year, Mabel, and the desire to come home and be with you is as strong now as it was when i first left; no, stronger.

on 20 January 2007, we were engaged.



and, as i've never had any qualms about repeating myself and it is as true now as it was then:

Out of the chaos of my doubt
And the chaos of my art
I turn to you inevitably
As the needle to the pole
Turns . . . as the cold brain to the soul
Turns in its uncertainty;

So I turn and long for you;
So I long for you, and turn
To the love that through my chaos
Burns a truth,
And lights my path.

-Mervyn Peake, Out of the chaos of my doubt

and, again:

The vastest things are those we may not learn.
We are not taught to die, nor to be born,
Nor how to burn
With love.
How pitiful is our enforced return
To those small things we are the masters of.

-M. Peake, The vastest things are those we may not learn

synchronicity

today i finished J-K Huysmans's The Damned and tonight's episode of Two and a Half Men featured Charlie shacking up with, you guessed it, a Satanist.

yes. i need a life here in Spore City.

whoops. excuse me, Punch Drunk Love is on.

later.




back.

i have no idea why i posted this, but i suppose i should say more to kinda sorta make up for it.

i absolutely love Punch Drunk Love, but i'm put-off that MediaCorp TV (Channel 5) decided to cut some scenes out. no these were *not* unnecessary scenes and there was nothing in them to warrant censorship. well, ok, i can sorta imagine why Barry telling Lena he wants to smash her face in before they make love might make some people a little uncomfortable, but cutting the brilliant comedic turn at the end of the confrontation with Dean Trumbell? i suspect it has something to do with fitting the movie into the time slot and still get all the ads in, but it isn't something they'd do for a sure box office hit like last week's X2. i suppose i should be thankful they even bothered to put PDL on the air in the first place and this is probably unfair and judgmental and much too generalizing a statement for me to make, but i'm a little too put off right now to let my internal editor censor my thoughts, so: this reinforces the image i've built around this place in my head: that of an artificial, deliberately constructed, utterly soulless society where everything is commodified.

er. maybe i shouldn't have said anything else after all.

to divert your attention, i post this:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/35/pt_anderson.html

right. i see Sideways is coming up now and, seeing as it's a movie i haven't seen enough to know if i'm being shortchanged, i'll probably have nothing else to say tonight.

good night.

Destiny

i haven't really felt like being a blogger lately (though i have been spending almost as much time over at the other life as i do here, which is more time than i have in a while, which i suppose is something--utterly meaningless if you're reading this on multiply but, ah well, it's probably meaningless anyway, and there you go), and i haven't been into anime in a long time (think Gunbuster and Akira, if that tells you anything, though i did see the Appleseed movie reviewed on the AICN page i'm about to link to) but this found here on AICN made me smile and, i felt, needed to be shared:



right. as Dwight would say: That is all.

(Creed has a blog too. and, as part of my friend E.Cross Saltire's "Creed for Governor" campaign, i post this link:

http://blog.nbc.com/CreedThoughts/2007/07/creed_thoughts_10.php#more)

er. ok. now that i've started writing, no, i guess that isn't all.

i know this is late, but The Daily Show is back. (hurrah!) if you click the link, you might catch a T-Mobile ad featuring Of Montreal i'm really digging right now.

oh, hey, whaddayaknow, it's on youtube, here:



(please note this is in no way to be construed an endorsement for T-Mobile. unless they send me money. it may, however, be construed as an endorsement for Of Montreal. from whom, in lieu of money, i will accept lots and lots and lots of free music.)

The Mars Volta's The Bedlam in Goliath is still on the spinner. closer listens have given me more to say about it than i apparently did here.

still reading J-K Huysman's The Damned, though Tariq Ali's review of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time over at Guardian Books has me wanting to return to it soon:

I was travelling with Perry Anderson from London to Mexico (an 11-hour hop) to attend a conference. He was sitting next to me rereading Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, the fifth book in the series. At one point his laughter became so infectious that an American passenger came up and said: "Hey, guy, what's that you're reading? It must be really funny." My friend held up the book and said, "It certainly is", then carried on.

(here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2247086,00.html)

much hilarity indeed.

The Damned isn't without its own rather dark, occasionally slightly rancid sense of humor, but it has me wanting fresher air soon. and so to bed and book.

blah blah &c

typical of my Sundays, i forgot to set an alarm and i'm up and out of bed later than i would've liked to have been, but now i'm up i don't really feel like going anywhere or doing anything useful. so here i am instead.

i'm in the process of doing rewrites for a few things which mostly means i haven't done anything new in a while. rewrites are things i don't particularly relish doing, at least not once i've reached the end of something and i feel like i've put in almost all the things i wanted to put in at the beginning which means going over mostly the same thing and only occasionally adding anything new, or when i've reached the end of something and i feel like i haven't put in the things i wanted to put in it which means basically doing everything over from scratch and not moving on to something else, something different, exciting and new. but rewrites are also things i have to do, for some stories more than others, and they're particularly necessary for the few things i'm working on at the mo.

so i should probably wrap this up and get on with it.

here's something interesting from Neil Gaiman's journal:

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

2008 marks Weird Tales magazine's 85th anniversary and they want your help celebrating the weirdest:

http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/the-85-weirdest/

they're accepting submissions through 31 December 2007, which ordinarily means it's too late and it probably is. still, it's something to look forward to if you like lists. and who doesn't in January?

speaking of lists, i keep forgetting to put this up:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece

...a list which has Mervyn Peake, Michael Moorcock and J.G.Ballard on it, which lets me lead into this contest to redesign the cover of the Harper Collins edition of Crash:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3078743.ece

also a tad late, but not too late.

currently reading: La-Bas (The Damned), by J-K Huysmans, which took several false starts in the months since i got a copy but is now going rather well. fingers crossed i actually finish reading this one (this month, i've already picked up and dropped Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by Mervyn Peake, James Salter's Solo Faces, Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, Alan Moore's The Voice of the Fire, Russell Hoban's Kleinzeit and Alan Wall's China. all of which i plan on finishing eventually, but probably not before January ends. i've been rather finicky lately.)

on the spinner (literally now, as the CD does seem to sound better than the mp3s and i've recently dug up the old discman): The Bedlam in Goliath, The Mars Volta, which i talked about yesterday here.

right. rewrites. sigh.

Cloverfield

i have seen it, and i blog about it here on the other life.

yes, i liked it.

that is all.

i hate Sundays

i'd meant to put something longish up on the subject (as i'd alluded to at the end of last night's post), ie: how dreading Mondays has, in fact, made *Sundays* far worse for an anxiety-ridden neurotic such as i am. but then i ended up looking for music on the grand old interweb instead, which pretty much gobbled my entire evening whole, leaving me little time for anything else.

so, on the Spinner:
Holiday and Distortion, The Magnetic Fields
In Rainbows, disc 2 (er, or bonus disc, whichever you prefer), Radiohead
Spitting Feathers EP, Thom Yorke

let's see, that knocks Ed Champion's interviews off the autism-inducer for a while, which means i'm back to listening to music for a while.

much thanks to Brottishluv and Mattgetsit.

and just because:



(the devastatingly adorable Vanessa Paradis, here, on youtube.)

right. to bed.

simply have to work on that follow-through

i cheated a bit on the plan. today i took Liv out and reworked the last story i wrote, one i've been chipping away at since i finished it the day before i left for Manila. (er, yeah, that was Christmas day, wasn't it?) today i rearranged things, mostly, tried to cut it down to a more reasonable short story word count (ie, one i can at least get through some publisher's guidelines) and did, for a while. but then i added a few things i suddenly felt were necessary, ending up with more or less a hundred or two words away from the count i started with. sigh.

but mostly this weekend i caught up on a few things i'd missed recently and, well, less recently:

Neil Gaiman's A Short Film About John Bolton, on DVD, which i came away from very happy after seeing it once through without and once with the commentary track.

Millennium, Pilot, DVD, just as happy with that, can't wait to get on to the next ep (finally caved and got the season one DVD box).

Psych, Pilot (second half), on TV, so *not* thrilled, i can't for the life of me imagine what i might have seen in it last week. but then, pilots can be shaky, can't they? i'll give it a few more chances to find its legs before i actually break off and make a run for it, if only because the show reminds me of Probe. though decidedly less-smart (though it might think itself so), it at least offers the possibility of being more-funny.

Doctor Who, Voyage of the Damned. right. this one's a bit painful for me. even compared to the other Christmas episodes (which i've always thought very weak, though the last one did have Catherine Tate, the TARDIS in a chase scene and a big sense of humor to make it all worthwhile) this one, well, i thought it was pretty bad. Russell T. Davies seems to be relying more and more on 'high production values', draping them over a shoddily-built frame of repeated themes and cheap sentimentality. sadly missable. (Time Crash, on the other hand, the special Doctor Who scene written by the utterly brilliant Steven Moffatt for BBC's Children in Need i thought utterly brilliant. Moffatt is about all that's keeping me from signing off on the whole thing. him and the promise of the return of Catherine Tate.)

finally, it's been a while since i checked with The Bat Segundo Show, so i went over at the start of the weekend. i now have Will Self and David Rakoff on the autism-induction device, and i've been listening to their interviews on the train going to and from wherever. that's right, more than once. i like listening to these people talk, so sue me.

and say what you want, but Gilmore Girls is now the only show on the telly that i watch more or less regularly and, yes, purposely catch whenever i can. ever since Moonlighting, i've been fascinated with television characters spouting a thousand words a minute and, man, does this show deliver.

and no, it doesn't hurt that Alexis Bledel's on it doing a lot of the delivering, no sir, not at all. i only wish they did the simultaneous dialogue bit as well.

more than halfway through Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire now, page-count-wise, though i've also started Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren (again).

on the spinner/autism-inducer: apart from Self and Rakoff, interviews with Mark Danielewsky, Daniel Handler, William Gibson. i'm still debating whether to put Danica McKellar's rather painful interview on there as well, but probably not.

i spent some time thinking about it being Sunday and tomorrow being Monday and thought i had something to say, but i think i'll wait to see how Monday turns out before i say anything.

right. i'm off to try to squeeze either a) another ep of Millennium, b) a bit of Voice in the Fire or c) a bit of Dhalgren before i go to bed, or just go to bed.

dreamwell.

crazy hair

it never ceases to amaze me how at the hands of barbers or stylists or hair doctors or specialists or whatever they're called my hair is always so docile and obedient and, well, tame. but the moment i get home or wherever it is i happen to be headed that day, it rearranges itself as it sees fit, and i can never get it to do what the barber/stylist/hair doctor/specialist/whatever had it do just half an hour ago.

it looked good at the hair salon. honest.

since this is the first haircut i've ever had done here in Spore City, the first haircut i've ever had done outside the Philippines, in fact, i'm actually putting up a pic in which you can actually see my ugly mug, c/o an el cheapo Genius webcam:



sort of.

and this is me noticing that the creepy pink clock is looming ominously in the background:



since i got here, just about the only things i've done (aside from work) are accumulate books i may never read and write crap no one will ever publish (and therefore, in the true spirit of universal justice, with the blessings of all the lords of karma and whatnot, chances are no one will ever read either. even if they *do* get published). i've decided, for this weekend, that i will consciously not do any writing for a change.

later tonight: ironing.

(oh yeah, one more thing, in case you haven't heard, M. John Harrison's Nova Swing is on the PKD award shortlist. that is all.)

even more weird thinginess

chiles,

Your 3rd blog post is now live. You can find it here:

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/01/09/weird-tales-chiles-samaniego-on-being-left-behind/
Thanks!

Ann

those of you who've still been reading this blog (really? i'm flattered.) will remember this post from here:

http://skinnyblogcladdink2-0.blogspot.com/2007/12/on-being-left-behind-also-brief-thank.html

i hadn't expected Ann would actually put it up since i'd already put it up myself, but, well, there you go.

i doubt any of that will make me the most popular weirdo-with-a-hat around, so why don't i just throw this in for good measure?

http://www.vonnegutweb.com/archives/arc_scifi.html

...there are those who love life in this fulsome drawer, who are alarmed by the thought that they might some day be evicted, might some day be known for what they really are: plain, old, short-story writers and novelists who mention the fruits of engineering and research. They are happy in the drawer because most of the people in it love each other as members of old-fashioned families are supposed to do. They meet often, comfort and praise one another, exchange single-spaced letters of 20 pages and more, booze it up affectionately and one way or another have a million heart-throbs and laughs.

...they are generous and amusing souls, but I must now make a true statement that will put them through the roof: They are joiners. They are a lodge. If they didn't enjoy having a gang of their own so much, there would be no such category as science-fiction.

[my ellipses]

yes, i know everyone's sick of this. which is why this, if i have my way, will be the last time i say anything about it. (riiiiiight...)

(edit to add: i'm not denying that every now and then i write SF as it is currently 'defined', but well, there you go. make of that what you will.)

incidentally, Kurt Vonnegut has got to be my favorite author i've never read. i know that sounds weird and dishonest and disgusting and poserish, but, thanks to Paul, i'm no longer afraid to admit it. as he pointed out, love *is* irrational, ennit?

meanwhile, i just gave Rant a few words over on the other life:

http://onanotherlife.blogspot.com/2008/01/chuck-palahniuks-rant.html

in case it isn't clear, yes, i totally loved it, thank you very much.

Big big Thanks to Ann and Jeff VanderMeer for accommodating my cranky, crack-potty hackery.

how shaking hands save Europe's sanity

i don't care what anybody else says about it: so far, Chuck Palahniuk's Rant is absolutely brilliant. i say 'so far' because i'm only about two-thirds of the way through. will report back when i'm done, possibly on the other life (no promises. i've been particularly unreliable about updating that side of things lately). so far, it's messy and digressive and progressive and regressive and messy and smart and funny and dirty and messy and ugly and gross and beautiful and messy and, like i said before, absolutely brilliant in a rubberneck sort of way. i'm almost convinced it's true: Chuck Palahniuk *does* know why you rubberneck.

right. break over. back to Rant.

i'm coming out

yes, it's true. i have always been, and always will be, a JAMmer:



(here, from youtube.)

about a month or two ago, a friend asked me what i wanted for Christmas. i told her, and she got me season 3 of The Office (US), for which i will love her forever. i was only able to watch it as far as *spoiler and, no, invis-O-text does not work on multiply, so just skip on to the next paragraph if you haven't seen S03* the one where Dwight after having quit to protect Angela works in a paper store and then Michael goes out to get him back after Andy proves to be such an asshole it's not even funny.

then i left the dvd set with Mabel because she has never seen the show and, while she says she'd rather see the first two seasons before getting to S03, EVERYONE should see the show.

i admit Karen's cute. especially when we first meet her *potential spoiler as well, but if you don't know this yet then you're really too far out of touch to be helped so i won't even bother with invis-O-text* sitting behind Jim at the Stamford branch.

Karen definitely has her moments, and i've had mine. you know: those moments when you're at your weakest and you find yourself wavering in your most heartfelt beliefs...but Pam is, well, Pam. so there.

omfg, is there something Schrutey about those last few paragraphs?

a few hours ago, i saw the first half of the pilot ep of Psych and thought i'd found something new on the tube worth following as closely as, say The Office. but the more time i've had to think of it, the less certain i am of the show's merits.

ah well. i guess i'll find out next week. if i catch it again.

Happy Birthday, kids! you're ONE! and...Varjak Paw!

today was fairly eventful as days go for me here in Spore City. Jayjay, the landlord's grandson, and his cousin Delfin both turned ONE today, possibly the biggest most important event in anyone's life no one ever remembers for themselves. they had a big old gathering at the HDB (housing-slash-apt-slash-condo-slash-house, depending on who you ask, the definition you choose) with lots of food and three different cakes, one of them sitting on a styrofoam tray filled with dry ice the kids were blowing on, causing magical little clouds to crawl over the table and spill over the edge, and lots of kids to do the blowing. i didn't meet a lot of people who came for the party; the folks here are friendly enough but they don't seem big on making introductions. but that's all right. comfortable, in fact, for a self-proclaimed mild autist wallflower type such as myself.

i'm still astonished by my ability to pacify Jayjay. whenever the ruckus and attention seemed to start to get a bit much for him and he seemed about to break out in a fit of crying, i'd just walk over and wave at him and he'd look up and his face would smooth over. at times he even smiled.

whenever i come home from work or anywhere i've been and he's out in the living room he'd watch me walk by to my room and follow me in his walker to my door and watch me with a big bare-toothed smile as i wave at him closing the door. i wonder how long *that* will last?

i also learned that i'd missed Chervelle's birthday, which happened last week. i was either away on my vacation or out on my usual hermetic routine, writing at some coffeeshop in town. i'm not entirely clear on when it happened; she can be really shy when we talk. she didn't seem to mind, though. for Christmas i gave her The Cat in the Hat Pops Up!, which she seemed to enjoy rather more than i expected she would. she made a big show of reading it aloud one time while i was talking to her mum.

kids are amazing. when they aren't being annoying, of course. and i haven't ever seen these ones being that at all. of course, that could only be because i'm a bit of a hermit when i'm around.

to top off, i went out for dinner and spent the rest of the evening at a coffee shop reading Varjak Paw, chuckling softly to myself at what i hope were all the right bits, even letting out a truncated 'aww' *spoilerish bit here, so i'll put it in invis-o-text, not sure if it'll work for those reading this on multiply* when Varjak finally meets Cludge.

Varjak Paw deservedly won SF Said the Smartie Prize, at the awards of which, shockingly, we learn here at the Guardian from the man himself, they don't actually give Smarties away to the winners.

read it before the movie comes out. the book i mean. nevermind the Guardian thing.

right. i'm off to read this interview with SF Said at the BBC, then it's probably on to The Wild Road and, later, to bed.

i leave you with this trailer, made for the stage version of the book:



(from youtube.)

still waiting for lunch; and cats

i'm not doing the kittenwar website any good. i keep finding myself on the fence, mostly because they're all just cute in different ways.

i will, however, automatically vote against kittens dressed as people.

i've been clicking away waiting for some of the losingest kittens to join the fray. none of them have made an appearance on the field just yet.

also while waiting, i've settled back into SF Said's Varjak Paw. it's still as lovely and cool as ever, and i'm still wondering why i've never actually finished reading it. and, while they do make appearances in some of my stories (none of the published ones, though, which i find immensely depressing), why i've never written specifically about cats.

i suppose it may have to do with me feeling like i'd never do them justice, not the way one can tell immediately SF Said does in the Varjak Paw books, or Gabriel King (M. John Harrison) does in The Wild Road.

*

someone said surrealism in a context i wasn't sure i agreed with and i looked up the wiki, and found Breton's own definition:

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

which, among other things, i thought a nice lofty way to describe what my stories mostly endup doing. there was some strange sense of satisfaction somewhere in there, but then wikipedia reminded me that this, too, is surrealism:

"The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd."

mostly harmless

i think.

http://kittenwar.com/

Just how powerful is Kittenwar?

681 times more powerful than the Apollo lunar module. Want proof? Well, on May 23rd 2005 Kittenwar used 90399.24 CPU seconds on a 2.8GHz machine. That's 28000000 * 90399.24 or 2531178720000 clock cycles, and it would take the Lunar Module's computer (which only ran at 43 kHz) 58864621.39 seconds, or ~681 days, to process the same amount of data, give or take a few technical details. So there.

(from the FAQ, here: http://kittenwar.com/faq.html)

why do i have a mental image of Mr Burns saying 'EEExcellent...'?

Dave McKean's Amazing Clockwork Courtiers; and one in which i hint at things you already know are coming

i'd meant to say reasonably nice things about Mishka Adams' Space, Johnny Alegre Affinity's Eastern Skies and Parokya ni Edgar's Solid, but while i was home i also dug John Mayer's Continuum, David Sylvian's Secrets of the Beehive and Camphor and a couple other CDs out of The Boxes in which my collections of books and CDs and things are currently stored from when i moved out of my Manila apt (which, by the by, is sorely missed) and brought them back with me here to Spore City. (erm. i'm sure you can figure that sentence out for yourself.)

among those 'couple other CDs' is Iain Ballamy's soundtrack from Mirrormask, which prompted me, for no better reason than because i haven't done so in a while, to put music up on me multiply. here:

http://skinnyblackcladdink.multiply.com/music/item/195/Dave_McKeans_Amazing_Clockwork_Courtiers...

here's hoping the robots don't come after me again.

the old CDs i brought with me which i'd missed almost as much as the old Manila Apt with its fashionably minimalist men's room sign on the door have effectively taken me out of the headspace for saying anything reasonably nice about Mishka Adams' Space, Johnny Alegre Affinity's Eastern Skies and Parokya ni Edgar's Solid, though I assure you I would still say reasonably nice things about them if only i were in the proper headspace. maybe even nicer than reasonable, only it doesn't quite sound appropriate to be saying unreasonably nice things about them.

you should probably get copies of those CDs yourself if you in any way like laid-back beach-y breezy non-bossa jazz, relatively hardcore instrumental old Miles Davis-y movie soundtrackish orchestral jazz and/or kooky gag rock of the unabashedly pop variety. are they better than their previous albums? i can't seem to decide right now.

i'm also currently finding it impossible to explain why it is i've fallen for CocoRosie. a few years ago, i would probably have said they sound horrible, but now it may just be that fragile grasp of 'musical sensibility' that's making them so irresistible. that and plain being utterly strange in a Little Nicky I-will-eat-your-heart sort of way.

i'd also meant to say something about ironing my own shirts, which i think i must have mentioned before, but really i just dropped by to put up that multiply link and because i felt like i hadn't had a good ramblerantrave on this blog in a while. or have i?

the spinner's currently spinning the abovementioned music and then some; i'm not sure what i'm reading, as i've just emerged from the tail end of another burst of writing, and you know how i am when i'm actually getting things written.

have i forgotten anything? oh yes. remind me to tell you about the significance of David Sylvian one of these days. in particular, Mark Isham's lovely little flugelhorn solo in 'Orpheus' from Secrets of the Beehive.

a world built on Coke(TM)

i prefer Pepsi myself, though i'll drink either one if it's available. and, from a strictly fictionistic, apolitical standpoint, i rather 'like' the idea.

i know, i'm meant to be getting myself back into work mode, but i just had to drop by to link to this:

http://uzwi.wordpress.com/worldbuilding-further-notes/

(sadly, Uncle Zip's Window is more or less 'definitely' closing down:

http://uzwi.wordpress.com/)

right. i'm definitely off for the night now. good night.

grumble grumble

i'm really glad i got to see everyone i got to see, and i'm really sorry i didn't get to see everyone i didn't get to see.

back in Spore City. it's never going to get any easier, is it?



on the spinner: Solid, Parokya ni Edgar; Eastern Skies, Johnny Alegre Affinity; Space, Mishka Adams

i'll say more on everything i feel like saying more about some other night. right now i need to get myself to accept that yes-tomorrow-it'll-be-time-to-go-back-to-the-office.