So, I’m at Armadillocon this past weekend, and I’m on the “Group Blogging” panel with fellow Brainiacs Steve Gould, Maureen McHugh, and Brad Denton.  (Rory Harper and Madeleine Robins were in the audience and refused to come up and sit on the panel.  Ya damn cowards!) 

Also on the panel were three of the contributors to the No Fear of the Future group blog.  I knew I was seriously boned because not only was I surrounded by my far smarter EOB wankers (Okay, they’re all smarter than me.  Happy now?), but the guys from NFotF were Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Chris Nakashima-Brown, and Jess Nivens.

Ye gods.  Chris is one of the funniest people on the planet.  Really.  I’ve involuntarily horked up god-only-knows-what while reading him.  Jayme has a freakish and encyclopedic knowledge of The Green Arrow.  He’s done loads of other work, but after that Green Arrow thing, I think y’all should be plenty impressed.  And then there’s Jess, who wrote The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana.  And if you don’t know why that’s intimidating, well, harrumph.

So there I am surrounded by talent and intellect like Custer at Little Big Horn.  And I’m supposed to write my blog post the next day.  How the hell am I supposed to write anything after that?  I couldn’t even raise up a good snark. Hence the lateness of this week’s post.

So I’m going to write about getting my landscaping done this week and seal my fate as lamest group blogger evah… 

*    *   *

The Dude and I finally broke down and did some landscaping at The Gecko House this past week.  We didn’t do it because we love the outdoors and felt a burning need to be out there all the time.  No, we did it for the dog. 

Maggie came up lame a few weeks ago, and at first, the vet thought she had torn her ACL.  After the x-ray showed no tear, she spent a week on pain meds.  That and short walks cleared the problem up.  But the vet said the rocky nature of our back yard probably wasn’t helping things.  So I did what I said I would never do: I replaced the river rock in the backyard with grass.   Read More »

Yes, I know it’s actually Wednesday.

The photo above (which Caroline took) is of Maureen and myself at Ritual Breakfast trying to explain the photo below (which I took at the EOB Board Meeting.)

It doesn’t help that when I took this picture with a zoom lens, I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

With all of our hands in the air, I’m just glad we all use deodorant.

Eat Our Brains Board Meeting Minutes for August 9, 2007

Prepared for the EoB Board Chairman, Steve Gould

(recording Secretary, Maureen McHugh)

Present at meeting:

Brad Denton
Steve Gould
Rory Harper
Maureen McHugh
Caroline Spector
Madeleine Robins

Unable to Attend:

Morgan Locke

Meeting Adjourned at 8:00 pm

Item 1: Mission Statement

Chairman Steve Gould suggested we compose a Mission Statement about the purpose of EoB.

This was met by puzzled silence. Caroline Spector stated, ‘Steve, do you notice we are all looking at you like dogs being shown a card trick?’ We were. I even had my head cocked. (Note to self, steal that line.)

Steve explained that he had established EoB as a forum of interesting people and perhaps as a way to establish a presence on the web.

After a couple of people started to say something and then quit, Rory Harper said that EoB had done a number of things for him. It had gotten him writing regularly again. It had also connected him to a community of like minded people. In fact, he got quite passionate and gave what turned into a really nice little speech that sounded as if it would make a good post. I felt really envious of him because he had his post basically done and I was worrying already about what the hell I was going to post on Wednesday after the lame poem the week before—but then it occurred to me that he hadn’t written any of this down so he was just as screwed as all the rest of us.

Brad Denton growled, ‘I don’t like the internet. I don’t even like people. My goal is to just get something goddamn posted each week.’

The motion to write a Mission Statement was quietly tabled.

Item 2: Inappropriate Behavior of the Chairman

Caroline Spector observed that although Steve has been posting regularly, as required, lately, a lot of his posts had been updates about Jumper, the movie adaptation of his book. These tended to be short, pictorial, and (although this was not actually said) a lot less work and far cooler than the stuff the rest of us post. What was said was that he ‘didn’t have to write very much.’ (Okay, I said that.) Madeleine pointed out that if we were to be entertaining and informative, this probably didn’t matter so much. She was ignored. Several people suggested that Steve ought to have to worry about what to write just as much as the rest of us.

Movement to Censure the Chairman was proposed. Unfortunately, Steve pointed out that he was willing to resign and let someone else be chairman. In the panicked retreat from the initial censure, it was decided that it would be really nice if Steve would post real stuff from time to time, but he should continue to post about Jumper AND continue to post Caption Monday and also, was he going to the premier of the movie and he could he accidentally drop novels by several of us off with the producer of the movie?

Item 3: What to be done about No Fear of The Future

No Fear of the Future is a lot smarter than we are, but we were first by about five minutes, those copycats.

A lively discussion ensued, with Madeleine Robins trying desperately to suggest that there was room for all of us in the blog-o-sphere and being shouted down. Someone called Morgan to find out whether Morgan had any ideas what to do about these guys. There was a speaker phone, but I personally couldn’t hear anything. I was in the kitchen finishing the gnocchi, and I accidentally set these notes down in a puddle of pasta sauce, so I can’t quite make out what was discussed, but I think I can read ‘email attack on their servers’ although as I remember, none of us actually had the skill to do such a thing except Rory and he was on Madeleine’s side.

Item 4: Scheduling the next Board Meeting

Austin seems to be the best location since so many of the Brainiacs reside here. Next year there is both Armadillicon and the Nebulas.

There had been a lot of wine by that point, though, and I don’t remember if we decided anything. Part of the problem was that I had a terrible earworm—“Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” by Warren Zevon has been stuck in my head for days. Brad Denton thoughtfully offered to remove it and started singing “Billy Don’t Be a Hero”. I know where you live, Denton.

Respectfully submitted for board review on August 15, 2007