Damn. I have a new favorite song today.

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You can watch it full-screen in high-def if you click the link for that. Hardened old radical that I am, not much makes me cry any more. But this one did.

Saw it on Booman Tribune a few minutes ago. Click the pic.

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Tor.Com has just published my post-Reflex Millie and Davy story, “Shade” with this incredible Eric Fortune illustration.

Besides being able to read the story at the site, various DRM-free download formats are available:  PDF, Mobi-Pocket, HTML, and Sony, as well as an MP3 of me reading it.

Thanks, Tor!

…did anyone notice?

I’ve been a baaaaaad blogger.  That is, to say, a non-existent blogger.  It started when mySQL problems at Digitalnoir.com caused me blog to become intermittant and then got worse when one of my efforts to fix the thing caused it to break further.  The outcome on this is still pending but I’ll try to get it up and going.  I will post further news as it comes.

It’s a bit like this door mat available online.

I’m not sure where I saw this one a couple of weeks ago; probably some damn poliblog. Yes, I’ve slipped. A bit. Trying to quit again….

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Click the pic.

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My fondness for medical dramas, medical mysteries, medical documentaries, plague thrillers and the like doubtless has its genesis in shows like Doctor Kildare and Ben Casey (I liked Kildare better because Casey’s arms were too hairy.  I was very young).

These days as a consumer of Modern Medicine(tm), I’m frequently awed by all the cool stuff they can do, the extraordinary leaps medical science has made in my lifetime.  But I was reminded of another leap while reading a TV Guide that Sarcasm Girl brought me back from her vacation.  It had Illya Kuryakin on the cover (I was young, okay?) and listings of television shows from 1965 that I barely remember (and others I remember embarrassingly well). There was also a bound-in ad for medical insurance.  It notes in tones of alarm that the average cost of an overnight stay in the hospital had doubled in ten years.  From $18.35 to $36.83.

So I got curious: what’s the average cost of an overnight stay nowadays?  Granted, it’s forty years later, and nothing I know of has gotten less expensive.  But I googled about, and the best estimate I could find was around $1000 a night.  I assume that is not including tests, medication, surgical and medical services and soap in the shower: just the room with all its cool technology, and the nurses and orderlies and support staff.

I do understand the concept of overhead, of the hospital having to pay electricity and water bills and the salaries of everyone from the CEO to the janitor.  To keep the paint fresh and make sure the rooms are dust-free and the linens changed.  And I know that the new, cool technology comes with large price tags.  But holy hats.  27 times the 1965 cost, just for a night in the hospital.

Jane Eyre had it right: “I must keep very well and not die.”

People don’t like bad news. They get irritated with environmental scientists and advocates who hit them with warnings. “Alarmists!” is a favorite pejorative.

I don’t like upsetting my friends, either, so I have been cowardly, and stopped posting on the ongoing march of destruction of the planet’s species. But this table, posted at Deep-Sea News by science blogger Peter Etnoyer, was pulled from his colleague Jeremy B. C. Jackson’s recent publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The table really says it all, and people do need to know. Even if we don’t want to.

Kate Wilhelm has a short story called “The Chosen.” It depicts the forests of the future, which have fallen silent. And still we mine them. This table is a glimpse at the reality that story predicted.

We are devouring our world. We are devouring our children’s future. Just thought you should know.

So, I finished* the revisions to the book last night**, and then I went to sleep. In my dream I had planted trees in my front yard–one or two saplings. I was trying to make sure they got enough water and was very worried about whether they would survive. It was all also very muddy and messy. (This may have something to do with the fact that we were having sewer problems yesterday. Ugh.)

Then I looked around and realized I had several trees in my front yard. And they were big! I had these big beautiful trees and I hadn’t known how quickly they’d grow! But then I got mad because:

1. I hadn’t planted them the right distance apart (they were in this really haphazard configuration–some crowding each other);
2. They STILL weren’t getting enough water; and
3. When I looked more closely I saw they were actually weird looking and kind of ugly, because I had chopped off all these limbs from them. I remember looking at them and thinking, what the hell was I thinking??

*Sigh*

Shaddup, Subconscious, sez I. I got the damn thing finished. Are you ever satisfied?

(really cool tree picture, “Weird Tree,” by RJA Digital, published under a Creative Commons copyright 2.5 – non-commercial use only, share-alike.)

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*FINALLY

**Thank God!

I’m finishing the denouement of my book and expect to be done tomorrow. What a long, hard trip it’s been.

Meanwhile, something delectable for your enjoyment — sent to me by our own LDA. Ferrous sculptures, created by Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama:

Here is more on the artist and her work.

But I can make flowers! I’ve been taking a cake-decorating class this summer, with a view to gaining skills so that I can subvert, as they say, the dominant paradigm. Granted, I’m unlikely to do that with frosting pansies and sweet peas and forget-me-nots. But in the larger scheme of things I can see a day when, instead of a basket full of flowers like this (last night’s class project)–

I could turn out a basket full of skulls. Or worms. Or zombies.

And that’s where I need your help, Brainiacs. I’m looking for candy molds–the weirder the better. Zombies, skulls, skeletons, eyeballs…anything ookie or weird. The lovely woman who teaches my class leans toward moles of ballerina shoes and puppies and doves in flight; I won’t find what I want there. And since I’ve also learned how to do sugar molding, if you find me a cool mold I’ll send you a set of molded sugar what-ever-you-finds, as a thank you.

Act now! Before the flowers completely take over! (They’ve already taken over the dog…)

You know how I am… It’s all a blur to me. I kinda almost remember stuff. Sometimes.

Lessee… what did I do this weekend? I remember riding into Austin on my Shadow on Friday evening. She Who Is Awesome and Jesse and I ended up eating dinner at the all-you-can-eat place, because the upscale places were all overloaded with those people who are about three cuts above my normal social class and prefer the restaurant music to be so GODDAM LOUD that you can’t hear your own intestines explode when the salmonella kicks in.

I normally don’t like the all-you-can-eat food places, but this one was quieter than usual and the food was extremely tasty, and apparently did not contain any salmonella. Jesse was taking us out to celebrate because he just got a new job installing cutting-edge solar technology to power laser-beam death rays on people’s roofs. I spilled ice cream on my shirt and licked it off, but it didn’t get really clean, actually.

Jesse had to go to bed early because he had to go in the next morning to start collimating the death rays. Me and Rach rode over to the nearest movie plex and saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I kinda remember it being pretty good. It was long, but didn’t seem that way at the time. I didn’t have to get up to go to the bathroom even once during the movie, which was nice.

Slept very late Saturday morning. Washed clothes, as I had forgotten to bring any clean underwear with me. Took a shower, and got back into the sweaty underwear, as the clean underwear wasn’t dry yet. Yeah, I know – gross.

Got to band rehearsal after the scheduled begin time that afternoon, as usual. We jammed out until about nine. We were mind-blastingly great, as usual, and everybody even seemed to enjoy it, despite the mandatory bitching and whining. I got to play loud, some. Caroline’s cello solo on the not-quite-last song (which is a secret song for the wedding gig, so shush!) was sublime.

Jesse was out shooting pool with friends when I got back to the apartment, so me and Rach wandered off and had TexMex at this quiet place tucked away in the wilderness that is Pflugerville. It was late, so we were the last customers to leave before they closed. I left a larger than usual tip, because I felt guilty about that.

We weren’t tired yet, so we rode off down I-35 looking for trouble, and… What did we do then?..

Oh, yeah, now I remember.

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