Depressing Late-Nite Science!

Well, on the bright side, we get new islands. So what if all the polar bears are drowning. I'm sure President Asshole and Co. have paid some neocon think tank to demonstrate a link between polar bears, homosexuality, and Islamic terrorism.

Meanwhile, a diverse new marine fauna has been discovered off the coast of Indonesia, including a previously unknown species of shark that "walks on its fins and a shrimp that looks like a praying mantis." They may all be extinct by the time biologists can get around to naming and describing them, as their habitat is "under danger from fishermen who use dynamite and cyanide to net their catches." But that's okay, too. Remember. We get new Arctic real estate.

Closer to home, the "EPA plans to close labs, drop scientists and reduce oversight." Which is to say, if we do not pay scientists to point out how humans are frelling up the place, then we also won't have to pay anyone to enforce those pesky environmental protection laws, and we'll get even more new Arctic Real Estate, and there will be more money with which to bomb Iraq (and Iran) and those gay Islamic polar bears will never even know what hit 'em.

I'm going to bed now.

Talk Like A Pirate Day!

So, a very productive writing day yesterday, which is more than I can say for Sunday. Yesterday, I did 1,258 words on the collaboration with Sonya (sovay), being that piece of short fiction which you may soon read in the forthcoming Sirenia Digest 10, if you subscribe. The process of our collaboration is proving almost as organic as my usual solo writing. Very little conversation about "what happens next." Just a little. I love what's emerging, bit by bit. At the moment the piece (still untitled), is somewhat more than 4,000-words long. I begin to suspect it will go at least to 8,000. I want to allow it find its ending in the usual way, which is to say, we write until we "find" THE END.

For me, the hardest part about writing — the actual act of composition, not the production or business end of things — is usually getting ideas that I like enough to want to write. It's always been like this, since the very beginning, and I envy those writers who seem never at a loss for good ideas, good ideas they want to write. It's taken me several days to find the subject of the next vignette for Tales from the Woeful Platypus. But I have found it, and I like it a great deal. Now, I have to make it happen. There's a dragon, but more I will not say. That will be my work today, beginning that vignette, which I am currently calling "Daughter of Man, Mother of Wyrm" (the title is always subject to change; I just wasn't in the mood for "Untitled 24").

Harlan called yesterday, which was very nice, even though he was calling to tell me that I really shouldn't have included the name of my hamster in the author's biography for Alabaster. He also told me a very funny joke about a black bear and a bunny rabbit, which I would here repeat, but I think I've forgotten the middle of it.

There's Bailey's now, which makes everything a little better.

Someone else has put a Daughter of Hounds ARC up on eBay. Penguin is trying to figure out who these people are so that they will be eliminated from the reviewer lists. It is a damned tacky thing to do, scamming ARCs that should go the reviewers so you can make a few bucks on eBay.

I got an e-mail from Liz, my editor at Penguin, late yesterday. The cover conference for the mass-market paperback of Low Red Moon is coming up, and she wants me to put together a detailed description of Narcissa Snow. That's easy enough. She looks a lot like Scarlett Johansson, only with yellow eyes and a mane.

Late on Sunday night, Spooky and I happened to catch some sort of goth special on MTV2, which was mostly a promotional thing for the new Life Less Lived boxed set, but which also included a very amusing interview with Peter Murphy and that twerp who sings for My Chemical Romance. Gerard Way, that's his name. I just looked it up on Wikipedia. I mean, really, they got Peter Murphy, but the best they could come up with to represent current goth music is this inarticulate faux emo kid who wouldn't know goth if it bit him on the ass? Ah, well. Whatever. There were a few good videos. And I must admit I took a sort of cruel pleasure in watching Peter Murphy poking at Gerard Way with a pointy stick. As for the Life Less Lived box, well, it's pretty, and the song line-up is better than I expected (though I'm annoyed that people seem to think Alien Sex Fiend never produced anything but "Now I"m Feeling Zombiefied"), but I think the coolest thing about it is the inclusion of a DVD of videos. I shall likely pick it up, just for the DVD.

Let's see. What else. Sunday night, we continued the Shakespeare binge with Trevor Nunn's 1996 adaptation of Twelfth Night: Or What You Will, with Helena Bonham Carter, Imogen Stubbs, Ben Kingsley, Steven Mackintosh, and Richard E. Grant. I adore this adaptation. The chemistry between Stubbs and Carter is wonderful. I'm still playing Drakengard 2, and its still a good game, but I'm becoming very annoyed at the long intervals between save points, which result in an excessive amount of repetition. A corny script and so-so voice acting is all fine and good once, but only once. Last night, we read Liz William's (mevennen) story in Best New Horror 17, which was delightful. Spooky and I almost laughed ourselves sick when one character observed that "You can't be a vampire and eat beans." Indeed. We also read Ramsey Campbell's "The Winner," which brought back unwanted memories of the many nasty restrooms we encountered on our long trip to and from Rhode Island. The new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology arrived yesterday, filled with marvelous things — the primitive therizinosauroid Falcarius, the African diplodocine sauropod Tornieria, German ichthyosaurs, English thalattosuchians, and so forth. Also, I've been listening to lots and lots of Muse, and a little bit of She Wants Revenge.

Yesterday evening, there was a very fine thunderstorm. Lately, I've become somewhat obsessed with watching approaching storm fronts on Doppler radar. Here (behind the cut) is the moment yesterday's storm reached Atlanta:

( Yes I am a geek )

Okay. Gotta go see about that dragon. The platypus insists.