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.
“Which was more likely to happen first: the spontaneously generated idea of an afterlife in which the disembodied soul, liberated from the restrictions of time and space, experiences eternal bliss, or the accidental discovery of hallucinogenic plants that give a sense of euphoria, dislocate the center of consciousness, and distort time and space, making them balloon outward in greatly expanded vistas? … the latter experience might have had an almost explosive effect on the largely dormant minds of men, causing them to think of think of things they had never thought of before. This, if you like, is direct revelation.” –Mary Barnard, as quoted by Huston Smith
…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. 
Just got back from Armadillocon. It was good to see some people I already knew there and make some new contacts. I didn’t make it to many of the panels but Reesa got good notes from some. Had a great breakfast with Maureen McHugh. It’s always wonderful to be able to meet someone whose writing I’ve admired for so long, and tell her so to her face.
I just started a discussion of Golden Books over on Words Words Words. Golden books are the ones which break your brain or change your life. Let me know some of yours.
…cooked up some delicious tomato sauce and a ton of eggplant, much of which went into the deep freezer.
…whined about my broken computer while our visiting friend Rufus tried to fix it. At least he gave me some things to try and gave me hope the files are still there.
…cleaned a lot of dishes.
…managed to have a discussion about something that upset me without anyone losing their top, and felt better after.
…was informed by OKCupid that someone I rated 1 star (out of 5) on personality also rated me 1-star. The person in queston had the words ‘I HATE reading’ in their profile.
…did not write.
Wondrous:
Terrible:
No that’s not repetitive. It died twice.
I’ve been having graphics card issues so I installed new drivers. As usual, the computer needed to reboot at the end. I clicked ‘yes’ to reboot and then lay down for a nap. When I woke up the computer would not boot — a bluescreen o’ death with an unmountable boot drive.
No problem — I’ll run checkdisk. Except now suddenly not only is the hard drive acting up, but the computer itself won’t run for more than 10 minutes without spontaneously shutting off, regardless of whether its plugged in or not. Even with the hard drive taken out.
I call up Dell, wait 10 minutes to speak to a tech, get disconnected. On the second call I spend 40 minutes with a very helpful technician. The result — I’m sending it back to them, sans hard drive.
We’ll be taking the hard drive down to our favorite local computer shop tomorrow for data recovery. If they can hook it up to one of their computers and run checkdisk I have high hopes for it. I also have my fingers crossed — Kit’s awesome backup habits have fallen to shit in the recent stressful times. Losing files right now would make Kit a very, very sad panda.
Even if I can recover files I get to spend ‘4-5 business days+ shipping time’ without my laptop. In the middle of ramping up toward late September launch of a very important project.
This blows.