I wrote a mini-update on Arse Elektronika over on Words Words Words. It even includes links to an mp3 of our presentation.
Reesa and I are in San Francisco, safe and sound. How close we came to being otherwise is anyone’s guess.
The first leg of our flight was on a US Airways flight. Not only was it the single most cramped and uncomfortable plane I’ve ever been on, but the flight was altogether too eventful. First we were delayed for electrical problems. On arrival in Phoenix, we evidently circled the runway multiple times (I was asleep through most of this) and then had one of the roughest landings I’ve experienced. Reesa said she saw the flight attendant crying while she did her post-flight intercom speech. Yikes!
Here’s a tip for the traveller — never, ever, switch planes to another airline in Phoenix. You inevitably end up running all over the airport, taking a shuttle to at least one other terminal, and getting bad directions from at least one airport employee. We barely made our second flight.
Happily on arrival our hotel let us check in early, because we’re exhausted. We’re going to get some sleep for a few hours and then get up in time to get ready for the opening night of Arse Elektronika. Tonight includes the presentation of the proceedings of last year, and more exciting, a fucking machine competition. If it’s anything like last year’s demonstration by Fuckzilla and an eager audience volunteer, we’re in for an entertaining show.
“But there’s another reason that these new media tell stories in different ways from their old media predecessors: They’re telling different stories. TV sitcoms, novels, feature films, and other traditional forms are cages as well as frames. The reason that every sitcom lasts 22 minutes is that no one tries to make sitcoms about stories that take five minutes to tell. The reason movies last 90 minutes is that no one tries to make feature films about subjects that take 30 seconds to elucidate — or 30 days.
“The critics of new media often point to its failure to live up to the standards of old media. Some scientists and science journalists wring their hands at the idea that the Mars landers and the Large Hadron Collider emanate information in the form of anthropomorphized Twitter messages, arguing that these messages lack the formal virtues of science reporting and papers.
“It’s true. They do. They don’t succeed at being better in-depth science articles than the science articles. They succeed at being better Twitter messages than science articles; they succeed at producing and sustaining a different kind of interest and understanding than a long article in the weekend paper.
“The low cost of deploying new media online is revealing a heretofore unsuspected appetite for stories in different boxes than we’ve heretofore used — and a universe of stories waiting to be told.” -Cory Doctorow, “Don’t Judge New Media by Old Rules“
This week Reesa Brown and I will be attending Arse Elektronika 2008. This year’s theme is “Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?” and we’ll be presenting our paper “What is the 21st-Century Novel?” on Friday. For more details, see our post on Words Words Words.
We’re currently looking for a place to stay in San Francisco. Offers welcome, as are suggestions of cheap motels/hotels near Cellspace.
…helped Steve celebrate finishing another book.
…learned to play 5 card draw and seven card stud poker.
…wrote about six pages of a new story about a character who has been lurking in my head for a long time now.
…talked with Kiki about making progress on Honeycutt Tales
…read Touched By Wonder: A Symphony of Fantastic Tales and was not impressed.
…have been reading Omaha: The Cat Dancer from Steve’s bookshelf. I encountered this when I was in my mid-teens and my reaction was ‘look, sex!’ But now I am impressed at the quality of the writing, too.
…got my computer back from Dell in working order, and discovered the hard drive is mountable again.
This weekend I am off to Orfunner, the local Burning Man event for those not attending Burning Man.
Recently read:
Black and White by Lewis Shiner. I am hoping to write a review of this for sfsite. An interesting book that uses the tropes of horror — a creative type (not a writer for once) returns to his childhood home to uncover the dark secrets of his past. However, the story itself is without supernatural elements, being based extensively on the history of race relations in the Hayti region of Durham, NC.
The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale. Lansdale is the master of living master of southern horror, and this book is no exception. One part idyllic story of childhood in Depressian-era east Texas, one part loss of innocence, one part serial killer story. Reading this book, it occurs to me that much of horror is based on the collision of differing realities — in this book, that of black and white, child and killer, even child and grownup.
Deep Inside: Extreme Erotic Fantasies by Polly Frost. Another one I want to review. This is great stuff. I think it is really cool that this book was published by Tor — although the stories are thought-provoking and have genuine, meaningful fantasy or genre elements, they are also true erotica — not the tasteful, suggestive stuff, but actual one-handed reading. I hope the divisions between erotica and genre really are blurring as M. Christian has suggested.
In other news, my partner-in-crime Reesa Brown just made an exciting announcement about one of her stories appearing in print. She will also have a story in the upcoming Unspeakable Horror anthology from Dark Scribe Press.
And my computer is still broken. We recovered all my files from it, thanks to our local computer repair place, Micro Age. Dell sent me a box to return the computer to them last week. Only it didn’t have a return label in it for me to use to mail it back. In response, they told me they’d send me another box (that’s right, not just another mailing label) but that didn’t arrive. Now they are sending me yet another, third shipment of an empty box, hopefully with a mailing label. With luck I might have my computer back by… wel, probably around September 1st. 
