I read Randall Munroe’s amazing comic XKCD on a regular basis but Teresa NH at Making Light pointed this one out today.

I gotta see this movie.

Interview with Tiptree-Award-short-listed author Sandra McDonald.

This is not my Tuesday post, for the simple reason that it isn’t Tuesday yet. That will come in the fullness of time. Meanwhile…

Remember the homeless person sleeping across the street? I had decided to live, let live, and give the person his/her space. Apparently someone else felt differently. In the last week or so I had not seen him there, and thought perhaps he had moved on to some other place. But on Friday the following note was taped to every front door on the block on:

Hello (and for the purposes of this letter, goodbye). In case you’d never noticed me previously, I was the younger gentleman who was, on a near-nightly basis, sleeping on the northern end of the grassy area across the street.

Needless to say, I am a person who is homeless. While there are many reasons that I ended up in this situation (both as a result of my own actions & of circumstances beyond my control). it doesn’t negate from the fact that, like every other living being…I have a need to sleep. For many reasons, I chose this parcel of land to do such, in PART out of my belief that your block was safe.

In regards to my treatment of this land (which is, in fact public) & my behavior while there, I can honestly state that I was nothing less than considerate. In fact, I even went beyond my responsibilities as an occupant by picking up garbage (including the bodily waste of OTHER creatures non-human and human alike) & otherwise ensuring the area as as good or better when I left as it was when I arrived. And, I made a point not to dwell in the area all day, giving you (the residents) “alone time.”

In short, I was in ever way the ideal neighbor.

So, with that having been said, I must ask this one poignant question.

WHY DID ONE OR MORE OF YOU STEAL MY GEAR?

“Gear” meaning a hiking pack containing clothes, hygiene items & most importantly (especially the wet cold NIGHT I had to endure this)………my SLEEPING BAG!!

Yes, there’s a remote chance another homeless person took it or the DPW swiped it while cleaning. However…most OTHER homeless aren’t that detail-oriented (neither are most DPW street-clearners). It wouldn’ve taken someone who knew EXACTLY where to look to find my bag where IT was. Unfortunately, the demeanor & vibes I interpreted from a share of your community during the few encounters we DID have weren’t those that’d make me feel that my belongings or ME were welcome.

Bogus police reports resulting in (illegal harassment w/equally bogus pretenses (”these homeless people sexually polest the kids” was the funniest) were bad enough. At least all I had to do THEN was gather my BELONGINGS and go elsewhere.

However, to take the possessions that are for survival SOLELY to send a vindictive message of “you’re not welcome” is CRIMINAL. I had NOWHERE to go that night & had to endure the elements. I actually began to experience hypothermia & had to go to the ER just to warm-up. That one mindless act could have KILLED ME, for real!!

This petty act was, at the very LEAST, THEFT, although if the worst had happened, it could’ve become tantamount to INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER.

I could have been ANYONE. Your spouse; child; relative; friend; even YOU.

I was ALL of those things to many once ago; and STILL am to some.

He left an email address, but I’m not sure if it’s a real one, or if what sort of response he expects.

I feel awful for the guy. To have so little and then have it taken away from you–it’s such a lousy, low blow. Even if (as I suspect) it wasn’t theft but clean up. I’d seen DPW workers cutting the lawn and clearing out stuff across the street, and they may have turned up the fellow’s belongings wherever he’d hidden them and cleared them away. Whatever disgruntlement the neighborhood might have felt (and I never spoke to any of the neighbors about him), I can’t believe anyone would have stolen this guy’s stuff.

I feel like writing him a note, or responding to his email. I suspect that’s not a great idea, as I’m not sure that it wouldn’t destabilize an already unstable character; and I don’t feel up to engaging in what might be a long-term conversation with him right now (that’s pure self-protection; I know how much I’ve got on my plate and how scrabbly I feel about handling it all). I feel guilty. And like a lot of these situations–hell, like the initial situation itself–there’s not a whole lot I can do.

Hmph. I’m conflicted tonight.

I pulled out an old story with the intention of publishing it here, as I did with ‘Do Me Good’. I got to reading it, and then I got to editing it. It tightened up nicely. I think I could in good conscience send it out for another round of submissions. Especially since a lot of editors have died or retired since last it made the rounds.

It’s from my Dark Period, but isn’t nearly as gothically melodramatic as ‘Do Me Good’.

Even though there’s a chance I could still sell it somewhere out in the paper world, I had a specific intention in pulling it out, and I think I’m gonna honor that intention.

Martha Wells’s LJ is the first post I saw regarding the recent letter, reproduced on Will Shetterly’sSFWA’s LJ, from Howard Hendrix, regarding his decision to not run for SFWA President this year.

Here are the nut grafs, toward the end of his letter, which have pissed some folks off:

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I interview David Thompson, David Barr Kirtley, Lisa Moore (not shown), Sharon Mock, and Zach Jarvis and more. Eight people in a hotel room. No video. Use your imagination.

We should’ve take a group shot but then the mystery would be diminished.

I had planned on an entirely different post this week. I was going to be ensconced in my freshly-painted, freshly-floored office with all my bits and pieces sorted out and neatly arranged, calmly typing out my pithy post.

The best laid plans and all that . . .

Somehow, despite the fact The Dude, who has done yeoman work boxing up his effluvia that was in the office, the stuff I had in the office has expanded exponentially since I moved it out of the office.

I’m at a loss to explain the rapidly multiplying crap. It’s like “The Trouble with Tribbles.” I leave the room where the stuff is temporarily housed and when I return, there’s more stuff. Is the stuff having wild rumpy pumpy while I’m out of the room? Is being freed from its confinement in the office making it multiply like crazed weasels? And is the stuff doing this via single-celled division or is it getting it on Barry White style?

I’ve been standing in my office with a glazed look on my face trying to figure out where the burgeoning stuff is going to live now. And every time I’m in the office debating placement, the stuff is screwing like bunnies and popping out new stuff with alacrity. Is there a stuff contraceptive foam? I could just give it a good hosing down and maybe get a couple of hours jump on it.

So, I have nothing wonderful or even marginally clever for this week. And now I’m going to go back to figuring out where the stuff is going to be placed. And how it has managed to quadruple since I started this post.

Rachael (Who is Awesome) attended her first Eeyore’s Birthday Party yesterday. She and about forty co-habitants paraded from the Goddam Hippie Commune to Pease Park, their GDHC banner proudly unfurled in the warm Austin breeze. Other GDH’s joined them on the way.

The Birthday Party was begun in the 1960’s as a small gathering to help de-stress UT students. It has grown to be one of the defining annual events in Austin, family friendly and sweet, but also unabashedly psychedelic. A couple of thousand people show up. Lots of drum circles and live music and costumery and community warmth. All free.

Rach says she didn’t spot any Eeyores, but there were lots of Tiggers to be had. There was a costume contest for the littles, and she remembers a particularly heart-melting two-year-old girl dressed as a Hershey’s Kiss.

It was a good day.

I’m alarmed to realize that I’ve never been to one. I promise to go to next year’s. Here’s a pic that Rach took:

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“I have found for you cheap airfare to Europa!”

Our comment spam filter has now screened out 6,572 spam comments. We scan through them before deleting because we don’t want to accidentally kill a legitimate comment but the number of times we’ve found false positives is less than 10.

Spammers have no imagination except, as above, accidentally. (I added the picture.)

I’m travelling today.  Got up early and dropped Noble Girl off for her high school math classes before driving to beautiful and scenic Portales, New Mexico, home of Eastern New Mexico University, to attend the 31rst Jack Williamson Lectureship.

The Lectureship was created when Jack retired from the university but this is the first one that he hasn’t attended and, as Connie Willis said (as the first speaker) we remeber the face the smile the voice but much is lost.  I’m not going to repeat what was said earlier but  here are links to previous posts about Jack:

 Memorial Service

A Sky Thick With Stars

And these are just the novels 

I’m staying the night and tomorrow, along with Walter Jon Williams, Ed Bryant, Connie Willis, Rick Hauptman, and others, I’m caravanning out to the ranch, the homestead where Jack was raised, to see the shack where Jack wrote his first stories.

When Jack sold his first story, Isaac Asimov was eight years old.  I want to touch that shack.  I’m a rationalist but if there was any magic in the world, if we can absorb any bit of another’s talent and imagination, then I want his.

And even without touching his shack I can still pick up his work.

Thanks, Jack.

I have had enough of The Real World. The Real World is suffused with Ugliness.

I want beauty. I want magic.

So I wish that Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, weren’t so far away from where I’m sitting right now.  I saw genuine, beautiful magic there.

It was in October 2005 at a place called the Image Theatre.

The Image Theatre is a “Black Light Theatre.” Black Light Theatre combines illusion, dance, pantomime, comedy, and eroticism in a mixture found only in Prague. Some have compared it to Cirque du Soleil — but I found both shows (”Black Box” and “Cabinet“) that Barb and I saw at the Image to be far more earthy and intimate than the Cirque shows I’ve seen.

Cirque du Soleil seems to say, “These are things beyond your experience that you could never do.” But Black Light Theatre says, “This experience is yours. This magic depends on you.”

Besides, the Czech Republic has other things to attract me as well. After four centuries of religious oppression under the Hapsburgs and four decades of secular oppression under the Communists (not to mention the horrors of the Nazi occupation), the Czechs have pretty much had it with authoritarian jerks of all stripes. They clearly disapprove of any people who shoot, blow up, torture, or otherwise hassle any other people.

After all, such bullying behavior stymies not only life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but also art, literature, science, sex, food, and beer – all areas in which the citizens of the Czech Republic strive for excellence.

I mean, damn. Let’s go.

And I’m telling you:  That girl in the white leotard at the Image Theatre really was flying.

I’m feeling all hermitish and uncommunicative this week, so haven’t posted or commented much. Sorry about that.

And I went to the doc today and he told me I had to stay off my leg for another two to three weeks, which really bummed me out.

But I couldn’t let this one go by:

The Spinal Tap Reunion

Click the pic above to check out the 15-minute reunion film that details what the Tap have been doing since last we saw them.

They’ll be playing in support of the worldwide Live Earth concerts to raise awareness of global warming issues.

Quote from Director Rob Reiner: “They’re not that environmentally conscious, but they’ve heard of global warming. Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing — that if he just took his jacket off it would be cooler.”

This made my day a lot better than it has been. There’s a video link on the page.

No word yet on who the new drummer might be…..

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And you can visit LiveEarth to learn more about the concerts and get environmental info.

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Roy Zimmerman

Click on the pic.

(If you haven’t seen it check out his virtuoso performance “What If the Beatles Were Irish.” )

Crispy Black Bass with Endive Marmellata and Saffron Vinaigrette from the Babbo Cookbook by Mario Batali

(The third of three too long posts about food.)

A friend of mine is a supertaster. Supertasters are often like people with normal hearing who have been plunked in the first row of a heavy metal concert for the rest of their lives. Even if you like the music, it can get to be punishing really fast. She eats to live. I live to eat. She asked me, what is food like for me, a foodie?

4 heads of endive, cored and halved
2 cups of orange juice, strained and pulp reserved separately
¼ cup honey
½ cup raisins

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Interview with Cory Doctorow. Transformative experiences and some really cool Young Adult novels.

I’ve talked about the ancestral manse. As you can see from above (pay no attention to the stray urchins clowning around) it is a barn. It is, in fact, The Barn, the third child and major player of my childhood, my father’s very largest art project. I always rather took it for granted; I knew that no one else of my acquaintance had a rope hammock, rope ladder, and trapeze in their front hallways, and that very few people I knew had a problem with bats in the house (contrary to folklore, bats do not require belfries; a nice 40 foot ceiling will do just fine). But it wasn’t until I owned the place and was responsible for its care and upkeep that I began to understand how eccentric it really is.

Like that stone wall? That’s the chimney. When I was a small kid and the Barn still had chancy floors and a high rodent population, an ancient, wizened Italian stonemason laid out all those stones (three floors’ worth, ten feet deep) in the meadow, and would send one of his burly assistants down to bring them up one by one (”Bruno. Go down, get that nice beige stone, fourth row up, third in”) and built the damned thing by hand. Four fireplaces. My father used to keep the place heated largely by woodfire, but given that the livingroom is essentially a cube 45 feet by 45 feet by 45 feet, it wasn’t until the room was finally insulated (by which time I was in college) that you didn’t have to wear a winter coat in the room for about five months of the year.

This is the front hall. The hammock used to hang right across it (the rugs and chairs are additions by my former tenants), with the trapeze only a few feet away, hanging from the ridgepole. The boards of the floor are the originals–kicked and trod on by generations of cattle and horses. It’s a beautiful floor, perfect for stubbing your toe in the middle of the night. That window at the end of the hall used to go all the way to the floor, and could actually slide to the left into the garage, making the whole hallway open onto the terrace. Perfect for parties and mosquitos.

The windows in the background are the same windows you saw in that first photo (same damned urchin, too. Place is lousy with them). All sorts of odd artsy bits and pieces of stuff. Just above the scythe hanging on the wall there’s a stained glass window–an abstract made up of 12″ squares of pastel glass, designed by my father. The lovely hardwood floors are a death trap for scampering dogs; we’re lucky no dog ever shot straight out that second-floor window onto an apple tree.

When I was in college, my father added the greenhouse to one side of the house. It’s got passive solar heating columns (essentially 12 foot tall plastic cylinders filled with by-dyed water) which, over the years, began to collect fascinating fungal glorp. One of the more hazardous home-maintenance things I’ve ever had to do was to tip each of the columns over so I could scrub out the grunge and refill the things with water. If you look at the upper row of windows on the right side, that is where my room was. The Barn is actually two barns built at right-angles to each other; the one on the right is about 200 years old; the one on the left is about 125 years old. The differences in construction are marked: the older barn has posts and beams fixed in with big wooden pegs; the newer barn uses long hand-made nails.
It’s a wonderful house. I hated living there as a teenager, but I never lost sight of how cool it was as a structure. Even with the bats.