She wants me to adopt Little Tex, so today she took some pictures and posted them on her LJ, then called me to make me look at them. Here’s one:

:

I fear that her evil plan is working.

:

I’m quite incapable of being clever for this post today, so I’ve decided to talk about someone else’s cleverness – our very own Bradley Denton.

Because Brad is annoyingly modest, he hasn’t made a big deal out of the fact that Picador is re-releasing a trade edition of Blackburn. Blackburn is a book you just can’t get out of your head. Brad doesn’t preach. Rather, he just puts you in Blackburn’s head and lets you sort everything out from there.

After I pre-ordered this new edition from Amazon.com, I grabbed my loaner copy and flipped through the pages re-reading some of my favorite passages. I am particularly smitten with Brad’s ability to marry humor and horror together. If you haven’t read Blackburn before, here’s your opportunity to get a copy of the book. If you’re not morally troubled by it, you’re a sociopath — and isn’t that handy to know?

Now in the non sequitur section, I’ve been thinking about last meals lately. Don’t know why, but I’m fascinated by what people want for their last meal. (For an impressive list of last meals…) Admittedly, I can’t imagine having much of an appetite knowing that you’re going to be dead in an hour or so, but it got me to thinking: What would I eat for my Last Meal?

Read More »

Updated: Death and Destruction at (4)!

(1) The Santa Machine

As I posted about back in the mists of antiquity, researchers are making serious headway on 3D printers and other forms of rapid prototyping. 3D printers for plastics are now nearing affordability. This model costs a mere $40k—within shouting range of affordability (OK, that’s if you yell REALLY loud).

(I also like how friendly it looks in this picture. I expect it to start be-booping at me like R2D2 or something.)

The business/ manufacturing design implications of this technology are obvious, and already in use. But consumer applications will eventually become viable, too, when the price drops another 1.5 orders of magnitude or so.

Imagine you purchase one of those home and garden programs that lets you figure out how you want to remodel or landscape your home. You do everything up in your 3D modelling program, just the way you want it. Then you press the button and out comes a real scaled, color model of your design, that you could hold in your hands. You could take it outside and refer to it as you work.

Or let’s say you have a kid whose favorite activity is Sims, which lets them design 3D models of people and things. Or they use a new 3D modelling software that lets them design and print out their own toys! Is that cool, or what?

I want one right now. With the requisite software to let me model things, of course. And it’s just what I need right now: another technological distraction. Sheesh.

Read More »

This past Tuesday was Medical Maintenance Day here at Eat Our Brains – for two of us, at least. Madeleine underwent a Required Procedure and received de Good Drugs as a reward . . . while I had my first head-to-toe, no-stone-left-unturned physical exam in a decade. My physician, Dr. K., had been nagging me to have one for two years, and I finally caved.

Those of you who know me well know that I don’t like to be known well. So for me to submit to a physical is roughly equivalent to a normal, well-adjusted person stripping naked and rolling in cactus. Then showering with rubbing alcohol. Then rolling in cactus again.

You might think that this bad attitude would put a strain on my poor, hapless physician, but you’d be wrong. Dr. K. – or, as I often refer to him, the Evil Dr. K. – is unflappable. Grumbles, whines, baleful glares, and brandished Bowie knives do not deter him. He does his job, and he does it thoroughly. Damn the torpedoes. Now cough.

He and his Evil Assistant hammered my knees, shone bright lights in my face, stuck needles in my arm, drained my blood, asked rudely personal questions, and taped hundreds of sensors all over my chest only to rip them off (along with similar-sized patches of skin and hair) ten seconds later.

Then Dr. K. banished his assistant from the exam room and gave me a thin smile.

“Everyone always wishes I’d forget this next part,” he said, putting on his batting gloves. “But I have to do it. I’m sorry. Turn around, please. You can brace yourself against the table.”

Read More »

As a thought experiment, pretend for a moment that cars are alive.

In science fiction there is a technique called ‘extrapolation’ which can be easily described as ‘if this goes on.’ Take an idea, say rockets, and extrapolate into the future. One thing you might get is Star Trek. A future in which rockets have evolved into interstellar space ships and we go from planet to planet like nineteenth century sailing ships.

The sf writer Robert Heinlein said that there were three orders of extrapolation in story telling. Take the idea of the invention of a the car. In the first order, the simplest, the hero is in love, his girl gets kidnapped by the bad guy and he invents and builds a car, leaps into it, chases them down and saves her.

In the second order of extrapolation, the hero invents the car, and the writer invents highways and thinks of the world needed to support cars.

In the third order, and this is the hard one, the writer invents cars and highways, but he also invents drive in movies, and a world in which the line of shops in a town disappear and are replaced by the shopping mall surrounded by its vast expanse of parking lot, a parking lot far larger than the mall itself. And maybe even 1/10th scale radio controlled cars for kids, and street racing, and homeless people who live in their cars.

Of course, cars aren’t alive because they can’t reproduce without us.Then again, viruses can’t reproduce without host cells and screwflies can’t reproduce without sheep. Maybe cars are parasites that we created.

I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine why a virus gets to be in the same category as trees and people and a car doesn’t.

But I think its pretty clear that rather than us designing cars, cars are redesigning our environment. I can only assume that over a sufficient amount of time, they will re-design us—that is, shape us through natural selection into people who do better with cars.

First order extrapolation—we get to be better drivers.

Somewhere in the second and third orders of extrapolation there’s a whopping good sf story.

I can’t wait to read it.

Jennifer Pelland is interviewed.  Here.

Today I underwent one of those splendid post-50 rights of passage: the colonoscopy. Contrary to Younger Girl’s horrified assertions, the procedure itself is not particularly unpleasant; it’s the prep that gets you. Yesterday I consumed only clear liquids (no coffee, for God’s sake!) and, in the evening, got to take many pills washed down with literal gallons of Gatorade, in hopes of cleaning my colon to sparkly brightness. Then had to get up at 5am and take more pills and more Gatorade, all so I could report at 9am for a 10am procedure.
But once I got there, the whole thing was remarkably pleasant; I was settled in under heated blankets on a gurney in a darkened room, and drowsed (without sedation) for about 45 minutes while the doctor got done doing another procedure. The only discomfort was the automatic pressure cuff on my left arm, which would occasionally expand in search of my numbers. Finally the doctor came in, exchanged a few bright words, and opened the drip on the sedation.
“From here to your brain takes about 30 seconds,” she said, pointing to my elbow.
Next thing I know it’s an hour or so later and I am deliciously languorous and remember nothing. My colon, they inform me, is nice and tidy and polyp-free. I get dressed slowly, in hopes of not falling off the gurney. Once dressed (I remember putting on my shirt but not my shoes or jacket) I am guided out into the hall and into the hands of my friend Ellen, who had come to take me home. I remember riding home and perhaps even conversing (though I don’t remember taking the elevator downstairs). I got home. I went to bed. At 2:30 YG showed up with Dark Chocolate M&Ms and Milano cookies, apparently her idea of convalescent food. I went back to sleep. I have been pretty useless today, and it’s been embarrassingly enjoyable.
Apparently the stuff they piped into my arm was Verced, a kissing cousin of Valium, and one with “mild amnesiac qualities” which allows one to forget the procedure. They may also have dripped in a little Fentanyl, an opiate with, according to Wikipedia, a greater half-life than heroin. All this is supposed to put one out and make one forget what happened. And it works. It’s 12 hours later and I still have that groggy-around-the-eyelids feeling, as if I could fall asleep at once if I lay down. I feel rather as if I spent the morning at an eccentric spa.

Released another episode of Podible Paradise. This time I talk with Greg Van Eekhout, Neb Nom in 2004, about his experience at Viable Paradise and afterwards. He’s a really a nice guy. I’d never met or talked to him before the phone interview. Have to fix that. Interview here.

“Allergies are a bitch!”

Posting about Roky Erickson got me to thinking again about the nature of creative individuals.

I’ll probably write more on the subject in the future, since it’s fascinated me for years, but for tonight, a quick hit-and-run. I’ll just toss some stuff out and see if any of it sticks to your inner walls.

We had a discussion here at EOB, following Maureen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark‘, which I took off into the ditch, about what alienated little monsters some of us were (and are), and this post is a follow-up to that, too.

Yes, there are some very bright people who are happy, well-adjusted, and comfortable in their surroundings.

But they’re less-likely to be highly creative, according to the research.

: Read More »

Roky Erickson was the genius behind the 13th Floor Elevators, the band that damn near single-handedly invented psychedelic rock.

They were a Texas band, of course, and had regional radio hits with ‘Splash1′, ‘Reverberation’, ‘Levitation’, ‘Slip Inside This House, and, nationally, ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’:

This clip looks like it’s from some pre-psychedelic-era tv show. Those kids had no idea what was coming at them. But I bet Roky did.

If I may use the high-culture critical lexicon for describing the Elevators — they were fuckin’ brilliant. Their music was trippy and intense and dark and evocative and way over the edge in so many ways. They had a guy who played the electric jug on just about every song. It rocked.

: Read More »

Dear Hillary,

We don’t know each other, so it may seem a bit presumptuous for me to be writing to you. But after your eight years in the White House, and your seven years as Senator, I feel as if I know you just a little. And that’s why I’m writing now, because, girl, you need some talking to.

I know you’ve spent a lifetime in politics. You’ve been a tireless advocate for children’s rights. You were a Republican who became a Democrat after the assassination of Martin Luther King. You also worked for the committee that was investigating Richard Nixon during the Watergate Scandal. As First Lady, you tried to implement universal healthcare, but were stymied by your political adversaries. Your life has been one primarily of service.

Sadly, this is not what people know you for. And that’s the problem. While I think you’d do quite well as President — and Bill as the first First Man would be a thing to behold — I think the baggage that you’re bringing to the table may far outweigh your positives. And given the absolute shambles the country is in right now, we can’t afford another Republican in the White House.

You’ve got an image problem that no amount of nifty TV ads is going to cure. And sadly, the first hit to your image is one you inflicted yourself. It’s the ridiculous and infamous “cookie” remark. You managed to piss off about half of the women in the country with that. And those women won’t forget it. Smart women I know are still pissed at you about that. Look, it’s moronic. But it’s the truth. You showed contempt for women who chose a different career path than you, and they will never forgive that. (We could have a nice long chat over tea about the whole “Mommy Wars” thing. But suffice it to say, you lobbed a whopping, big-ass grenade into the middle of that – and in such situations, there is always blowback.)

The second problem is tied to the first problem: Bill.

Read More »

I just spent two and a half hours on a post and Word Press destroyed it.  I am pissed.

I’ll maybe post again later, once I’ve calmed down.

I almost never post except on Thursdays — but I couldn’t let today’s news that Harry Houdini’s body will be exhumed go unremarked.

After all, last week I posted about the exhumation of the Big Bopper, and yesterday I wrote a few words about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Both are relevant to the news about Houdini because 1) like the Bopper, Houdini will be exhumed so his relatives can try to determine whether he was murdered; and 2) Conan Doyle is a potential suspect (or perhaps instigator) in said murder.

You see, Houdini, in addition to being the quintessential magician and escape artist, was a fierce anti-Spiritualist — exposing mediums, seances, and other “paranormal phenomena” for the tricks and nonsense they were. 

But Conan Doyle, desperately wishing to believe in “scientific proof” of life-after-death, became an ardent Spiritualist in his later years — and a bitter enemy of Houdini, writing in 1924 that Houdini would “get his just desserts very exactly meted out … I think there is a general payday coming soon.”

Yikes.

Which only goes to show that no matter how brilliant or creative some human beings may be, they’ll still buy into any imaginary crap that makes them feel better about their place in the Universe.  And they’ll hate anyone who points out that it is crap.

So while we’re digging up Houdini, maybe we should dig up Conan Doyle, too.  My guess is that, despite his belief in Spiritualism, we’ll find that (like Generalissimo Francisco Franco) he’s Still Dead.

Not that it takes a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that.

Okay, I’ve got another podcast going. I’ll be doing this one fairly regularly, at least until the application deadline for Viable Paradise, June 15th. It’s purpose is to give people an idea of what the workshop experience is. I’ll be talking to current instructors and previous instructors (Maureen, I’m comin’ fer ya!) and previous students.

(For those who don’t know, Viable Paradise is a residential, week-long SF and Fantasy Writing workshop held on Martha’s Vineyard every fall. Lots of details at Podible Paradise or at Viable Paradise.)

During the first episode I talk with Mur Lafferty, writer and podcaster, a student at the most recent VP. You can visit the site here or subsribe.