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.