I have been sick with the stomach flu, but I have to say I went to see this movie over the weekend, not expecting much — and I left enchanted. It does a good job of bringing the book to the screen. It is REALLY good. Ignore any negative buzz you may have heard. If you like SFF, you will enjoy this movie.

I figure this is another of my posts on a subject that you all already know about. But, just in case you’re not as deep into computer-porn as are Rachael, me, and, most especially Unca Stevie, here’s the very hottest geek toy I’ve seen in the past ten years.

It’s the EeePC sub-sub-sub notebook computer, and it retails for $399. If you can find one.

She Who Is Awesome first pointed it out to me, because she’s been obsessing about finding a portable computer that will meet her cool, on-the-go-at-all-times-lifestyle need to be fully connected to the Interwebs and her loved ones, no matter where or when she might be. She got herself a Fujitsu LifeBook touch-screen tablet PC last year, but it just wasn’t cutting it in the speed and functionality department.

The EeePC is a joint venture between Intel and Asus. The damn things are vanishing off the shelves and from Net stores so quickly that I panicked and grabbed one for her from Costco at an above-retail price last week in fear that literally none would be available by now. There were NONE to be found in Austin.

It’s two pounds of svelte black perfection. It’s smaller and lighter than most trade paperback books. Has a 7″ screen with a resolution of 800 x 480. A customized distro of Xandros Linux pre-loaded and running gracefully on a 900 MHz Centrino CPU, 512 MB of RAM, 4 Gigs of Flash memory for storage instead of a hard drive, built-in high-speed WiFi, built in webcam with sound, preloaded with Skype. Boots in under 30 seconds. Has USB2 ports for additional storage or to plug in another keyboard or mouse. The included keyboard feels extremely good, though. Can drive a full sized monitor to 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution.

It feels quick and alive to use. It’s solidly built. There seem to be no compromises made in its execution that might leave its intended audience unsatisfied in any way.

And it’s fucking gorgeous. It makes Apple’s arty-farty design aesthetic look pretentious by comparison. It is perfectly the thing that it was meant to be.

Rach got hers this weekend as her big Yule present. It think it was love at first sight, but it also bodes to be a harmonious long-term relationship. It just flat ran out of the box into her hands. It picked up and attached to signals and surfed the Web at multiple in-crowd bistros, and at the Godddam Hippie Commune, and she and I and Unca Stevie have successfully committed video Skype using theirs.

Yes, the reason that I was having trouble finding any EeePCs last week is that Unca Stevie has bought almost all of them. I think he’s trying to corner the market.

She has no trouble with typing fast on it. The small screen doesn’t feel crowded or insufficient, as I’d feared it would. It’s bright and clear and detailed.

The software and hardware hackers have already descended on this thing like a pack of hungry werewolves. Windows loads on it, and people are already modifying the hardware that it comes with, as details about chipsets and other components are relentlessly ferreted out by people who were born holding a soldering iron in one hand and an oscilloscope in the other.

One of the most feverish forums I’ve ever seen is to be found at www.eeeuser.com, which Unca Stevie turned me on to. I highly encourage you to go there now and catch the fever. You might even be able to acquire one before Yule, if you’re willing to do a little kicking and biting to get to it.

Unca Rory says: Check It Out!

:

I’m back from a long and deeply satisfying weekend in Austin. Feeling a little slow and mellow. Here’s one of the sweeter, and one of the most competently-performed, acoustic takes on one of my favorite songs.

It’s Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing’, played by a gentleman named Carlos Vamos:

:

:

If you’d like something a little closer to home, here’s Austin guitar-slinger Monte Montgomery and his band in a high-energy live version of the same song.

Unlike Steve, I haven’t actually had anything to promote in the last year on EOB.  Happily that has changed.

Next month, Tor Books will be releasing INSIDE STRAIGHT, a new Wild Cards book.  I have a story in it.  It’s plunked down in the middle of the book and the title is METAGAMES.  As I am really not a short-story writer (I’m far too wordy for that), I was happy that this book is very tightly plotted and reads more like a novel than a collection of shorts.

Tor has launched a wonderful website to promote the book and there have been some very nice reviews on the web, including a review at Publishers’ Weekly.  (Scroll down for the review at PW.  No further.  No further.  Keep going…)  There are glowing reviews at Genre Go Round Reviews  and Fantasy Book Spot.  There’s also an “interview” with all the authors at Pat’s Fantasy Book List.  

I’m also happy to say I have a story in BUSTED FLUSH, the next book in the new Wild Cards trilogy. 

Read More »

Pati Nagle pointed this out on the VSA list.

Make sure you listen to the whole thing.

Barb returned from another trip to Japan last weekend, and she brought back something wondrous for me:

BlackBlack Chewing Gum.

Now, if you’re like me (and I know I am), you’ll be asking, “What’s so wondrous about BlackBlack Chewing Gum? Does it have a unique, delicious flavor? Does that flavor last a long, long time? Do the packages contain decoder rings that enable one to discover Jessica Alba’s phone number hidden within the text of her Wikipedia entry?”

The answer to all of the above is “No, who needs that stuff? If I want a unique, delicious flavor, I’ll eat a nectarine. [Rory: A nectarine is a kind of fruit.] If I want flavor that lasts a long, long time, I’ll consume a clove of garlic. And if I want Jessica Alba’s phone number, I’ll look for it in my kitchen trash, which is where I threw it after hearing that she’s having a baby with another man.”

“So what’s the attraction?” you’ll ask. “If BlackBlack’s flavor isn’t especially unique, delicious, or long-lasting, and it’s no help in stalking starlets, then why all the BlackBlack love?”

One word, my poor, deprived Brainiacs:

Read More »

Apparently, these were driving around during Comics Con back in July.

Evelyn McHugh (1915-2007)

Maureen’s mom died yesterday.  She talks about it at her blog here.

Every year the New York Times Magazine does an issue on the best ideas of the year: this year’s issue is a peach.  From the biodegradable coffin, above (customizable–you can have your coffin lined with feathers, and have designs silk screened on the exterior) to pollution-eating cement, there are inventions that gave me the same frisson that reading SF did when I was a yout’.  And then there are the ideas: a rationale for the much-maligned appendix;  a plan for defending Earth against killer asteroids; a biological explanation for “cat lady syndrome.”  Many of the objects and ideas in the issue are pie-in-the-sky, but they’re all fun to read about, and some of them (wireless energy, anyone?) are distinctly cool.  Go look.  Have fun.

I foolishly signed up for the upcoming Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, to be held next Saturday in Austin. I need to finish a story by then, and I’m only about a third done at the moment.

The TC people are a bunch of cruel, inhuman monsters. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Jayme and Chris and Jessica and Lawrence. You’re monsters, don’t think we don’t know it. Monsters.

I therefore need to finish the best story I know how to, in order to keep them from sucking the marrow from my bones.

For those of you unfamiliar with Turkey City, it’s a day-long writer’s workshop that’s been held in Austin since the mid-70’s. It’s infamous in our little frog-pond. There’s a Wiki about it here.

Close examination of the Wiki will reveal that I’m not cool enough to be listed as one of its alumni. However, someone has kindly inserted my name on the Turkey City Home Page that Lawrence Person maintains.

Everyone brings one new short story, in the sf-fantasy-horror genre, which is read at a maniacal pace, along with all others throughout the morning. (The advent of e-mail has changed this dynamic a bit, but many of us are still finishing our stories on Friday night. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.) Pause for lunch. Then the savagery begins. Your story is disassembled in front of you, as it passes around the circle, by some of the sharper minds in the craft. No holds barred. Every flaw is exposed ruthlessly. Your shiny prose is scuffed and farted upon. You sit silently and absorb it all, whether you agree with the comments or not, until you are allowed to reply at the end of the critique. It’s not for beginners who still take critique personally, and I know pros who find this sort of system wounding for them. Sometimes the critiques are on-target and useful to you, sometimes not. Them’s the breaks.

Over the decades, some remarkably good stories have emerged from this crucible.

: Read More »

I’ve just gotten back from washing clothes. I much enjoyed rolling the Shadow through this gorgeous clear 80-degree mid-December Spring afternoon in Bryan.

Here’s some orchestral techno from Sarah Brightman’s album ‘Harem’. It’s called ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’. The whole album rocks, incidentally, with a middle-Eastern flavor permeating it.

:

:

Despite all the advances in technology, though, I respond more strongly to this old song by a band named, of course, ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’. The song is named ‘White Bird’, and was their big hit.

:

:

Their eponymously titled album came out in 1969. I owned it and played it a lot. Admittedly, some of my fondness for it may have to do with lysergamides frothing along my brain-stem during many of the listening sessions. But I think it holds up pretty good. The violin lines still send a chill up my spine. And the soaring harmonies are transcendant.

From that album, we have also ‘Hot Summer Day’.

:

Meme: Post the first line of your first blog entry of each month for 2007 (via Greg Van Eekhout) (And not one is about zombies.)

December 1, Steve: From Oni Press: For centuries Jumpers have lived among us — special individuals with the ability to teleport or “jump” nearly anywhere in the world.

November 1, Madeleine: In honor of the first of November I invite you to check out Lupo the Butcher.

October 1, Morgan: NASA launched a probe last Thursday to study Ceres and Vesta, the two largest asteroids in the asteroid belt.

September 1, Caroline: How am I not Madeleine?

August 1, Maureen: I’m making dinner for Bob’s band tomorrow.

July 1, Rory: I don’t know shit about this guy, except what’s on the Wiki, and this article in my favorite music magazine, Paste.

June 2, Caroline: By now, everyone and their dog has heard the story about the American TB patient who ignored his doctor’s advice and traipsed off to Europe to get married.

May 1, Morgan: Update: Corrected carbon dioxide levels to reflect latest research.

April 1, Steve: On this day in 1957 8 million television viewers . . . watched a program on Spaghetti Trees.

March 1, Morgan: Katrina survivors rebuke President Bush, who is going to New Orleans for a series of photo ops.

February 1, Brad: It’s been said that Kansas, where I was raised, is the Buckle of the Bible Belt – which can only mean that I now live in the Zipper.*

January 2, Steve: Yesterday was Sunday, today is Monday.

The heavens tumble, Darling, and I’m… Eliza . . .

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;

“Show Me” from My Fair Lady, Music by Frederick Loewe, Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.

###

Unlike Eliza Doolittle, I have no problem with words.  In fact, I frickin’ adore words.  I’m so enamored of words that The Dude calls me a “Jargon Monkey.” 

I am not at all offended by this.  However, if he started calling me “Monkey Face” like Cary Grant does to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion, I might be less than thrilled.  (On the other hand, if he said it using a Cary Grant accent… but I digress.)

What got me started on the whole, “I love words,” thing, was catching a promo for some movie the other day and one of the characters used the word “shenanigans.”  I was gob-smacked with delight. (Gob-smacked is another word I like.  Okay, maybe it’s more of a phrase, but work with me here, people.)

How often do you hear “shenanigans” used?  Not very.  But it’s a fantastic word.  It rolls off the tongue — rich, full, polysyllabic, completely evocative of what it’s describing.  Damn, that’s some fine word there.  

Later that same day, I was in the pharmacy waiting for a prescription.  At the end of one aisle was an entire end-cap full of “curatives.”  “When did y’all start carrying nostrums?” I asked the pharmacist.  “What are nostrums?” he replied.  I pointed at the end-cap and said, “Palliatives. Potions of questionable efficacy.  Nostrums.”  He nodded.  “Good word.”

Read More »