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greygirlbeastI'm glad Lindsay Lohan's community service gig at the LA County Morgue is working out so well, because it doesn't seem like jail's willing to keep her even five hours. But, really, here's my thing: who gives a shit? Everywhere I go on the goddamn internet this morning, there's Lindsay Lohan skulking about, and it's not like I felt so fucking great when I woke up. I have to get Lindsay "I don't want to classify myself" Lohan, too?
Hell in a handbasket.
Yesterday, I sat here and tried to think of an idea for a 10k-plus word short story/novelette/novella sort of a thing (requests welcome), and....nothing. People think writers are bottomless wells of Ideas. And maybe some writers are. But speaking as an insanely productive author, occasionally you go to the well and there's nothing down there but dust and old spiderwebs. So, I sat and I stared at the screen, and I typed in a title, stolen from Milton, that I almost certainly won't use. It just sounded good. And there is not a single spare day this month (those so-called weekends) included for me to be not writing. Today, though it's in the list of the Last Ten Things I Want To Be Doing, I'll sit here and stare at this fucking screen again. How hard can it be? It's not like real work, right?
Speaking of which, I finally gave up about 5:30 p.m. (CaST) and loaded the van with about a hundred pounds (no, really; I checked) of books, mostly my comp copies of Two Worlds and In Between and carted them away to Pawtucket, to our second, and supposedly temporary, storage unit. The place was like a fucking icebox.
Please, I know it's hard to believe...
And I'm not even going to get started on how I couldn't get my fountain pen to work.
Last night, we read more of House of Leaves, to that wonderful line where Karen Navidson screams. I read more of The Log From the Sea of Cortez. I might have slept, because I might have dreamt. And fuck you, LJ, for not knowing how to spell dreamt.
Also, please, if you pre-ordered your copy of Two Worlds and In Between and you've not yet received your book, understand that telling me won't help. The book will come. I can't speak for Amazon.com, a company that's making a mint ripping people off (authors included), but I can speak for Subterranean Press. You will get your book. Be patient. Pre-ordering doesn't mean you get a book early, or at the same time as everyone (or anyone) else; it means you'll get a book.
Not Daring To Hope For a Better Day,
Aunt Beast
Hell in a handbasket.
Yesterday, I sat here and tried to think of an idea for a 10k-plus word short story/novelette/novella sort of a thing (requests welcome), and....nothing. People think writers are bottomless wells of Ideas. And maybe some writers are. But speaking as an insanely productive author, occasionally you go to the well and there's nothing down there but dust and old spiderwebs. So, I sat and I stared at the screen, and I typed in a title, stolen from Milton, that I almost certainly won't use. It just sounded good. And there is not a single spare day this month (those so-called weekends) included for me to be not writing. Today, though it's in the list of the Last Ten Things I Want To Be Doing, I'll sit here and stare at this fucking screen again. How hard can it be? It's not like real work, right?
Speaking of which, I finally gave up about 5:30 p.m. (CaST) and loaded the van with about a hundred pounds (no, really; I checked) of books, mostly my comp copies of Two Worlds and In Between and carted them away to Pawtucket, to our second, and supposedly temporary, storage unit. The place was like a fucking icebox.
Please, I know it's hard to believe...
And I'm not even going to get started on how I couldn't get my fountain pen to work.
Last night, we read more of House of Leaves, to that wonderful line where Karen Navidson screams. I read more of The Log From the Sea of Cortez. I might have slept, because I might have dreamt. And fuck you, LJ, for not knowing how to spell dreamt.
Also, please, if you pre-ordered your copy of Two Worlds and In Between and you've not yet received your book, understand that telling me won't help. The book will come. I can't speak for Amazon.com, a company that's making a mint ripping people off (authors included), but I can speak for Subterranean Press. You will get your book. Be patient. Pre-ordering doesn't mean you get a book early, or at the same time as everyone (or anyone) else; it means you'll get a book.
Not Daring To Hope For a Better Day,
Aunt Beast
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 06:07 pm (UTC)I just got my note from SubPress that my copy of Two Worlds shipped today.
And so it does.
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Date: 2011-11-07 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 07:07 pm (UTC)The idea of celebrities working in morgues appeals to me.
Zombie silliness aside, yes.
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Date: 2011-11-08 01:38 am (UTC)Oh yes, me too :D
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Date: 2011-11-07 07:23 pm (UTC)Topic: I've always wanted to hear your take on the bleeding Taylor Glacier in Antarctica. We've heard the scientific explanation, but really - how hard would it be to cover up the actual cause, given the rather inaccessible location and required expertise to make a true evaluation? So... an entombed ancient god/monster/alien/Thing? A wound in the world? A breach into another dimension? Something even more esoteric?
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Date: 2011-11-07 08:08 pm (UTC)I've always wanted to hear your take on the bleeding Taylor Glacier in Antarctica. We've heard the scientific explanation, but really - how hard would it be to cover up the actual cause, given the rather inaccessible location and required expertise to make a true evaluation? So... an entombed ancient god/monster/alien/Thing? A wound in the world? A breach into another dimension? Something even more esoteric?
Good one. It may make an appearance, or at least get a mention.
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Date: 2011-11-07 10:04 pm (UTC)I had to google this. I'm stunned I never heard about it before. How utterly marvelous ^_^
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Date: 2011-11-07 10:59 pm (UTC)It's really nothing particularly bizarre. Just fun to pretend it is.
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Date: 2011-11-08 12:31 am (UTC)ideas...
Date: 2011-11-07 07:30 pm (UTC)The Helike, Greece tsunamis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historic_tsunamis#373_BC:_Helike.2C_Greece
Cherokee Water Cannibals http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TheWaterCannibals-Cherokee.html
Re: ideas...
Date: 2011-11-07 08:09 pm (UTC)Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 07:49 pm (UTC)Alternatively, maybe something that expands on Stephen Hawking's "fundamental paradox":
"Now, if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe. But there is a fundamental paradox in the search for such a complete unified theory. The ideas about scientific theories outlined above assume we are rational beings who are free to observe the universe as we want and to draw logical deductions from what we see. In such a scheme it is reasonable to suppose that we might progress ever closer toward the laws that govern the universe. Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?"
no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 08:09 pm (UTC)How about a story that highlights the implications of infinite space or time? Poincare recurrence. Loschmidt's paradox. Boltzmann brain weirdness...
Alternatively, maybe something that expands on Stephen Hawking's "fundamental paradox":
There may be something here, at least bits and pieces. Thank you.
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Date: 2011-11-08 03:34 am (UTC)In an infinite universe, everything that is possible (no matter how vastly improbable) must occur an infinite number of times. Somewhere out there very, very strange things are happening.
But how do we know that the seeming solidity and order of our own world isn't entirely due to an incredible run of luck, which could give out at any moment? What if reality's only true law is that everything is contingent? After all, what necessitates necessity? What could cause causality?
Setting all that aside, we're still left with Hawking's paradox - if there is causal structure that underlies our experience, then we don’t make or believe arguments because they’re logical...instead we make and believe the arguments that are entailed by the underlying causal structure.
If we present and believe logical arguments, that can only be because “the machine” *makes* us do so.
Which means that our beliefs are only rational and right if that rationality and rightness is built into the causal substructure that gave rise to those beliefs.
Similarly, our experiences will make sense to us only if the underlying causal structure entails that we feel that they make sense.
It seems to me that everything we have discovered about the universe tells us in no uncertain terms that reality must be full of lies. Even tiny glimmers of truth should be incredibly few and far between.
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Date: 2011-11-07 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 08:26 pm (UTC)Honestly, I don't know.
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Date: 2011-11-08 06:05 am (UTC)so sad
Date: 2011-11-07 08:56 pm (UTC)Re: so sad
Date: 2011-11-07 10:55 pm (UTC)I am sorry, truly.
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Date: 2011-11-07 09:05 pm (UTC)Here's my request: I've had a recurrent fantasy that you would someday write about more of the "survivors" in Zoroba's group, particularly Janice's story about losing her friend Nadine in that Trenton, NJ crypt. The blue light at the bottom and something else that sounded like a dog panting still intrigues & terrifies the living shit out of me everytime I re-read "Onion".
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Date: 2011-11-07 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 10:56 pm (UTC)Nah. I pulled out of a film project, because the producer insisted I'd only "told half the story."
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Date: 2011-11-08 01:31 am (UTC)That producer was ridiculous, "Onion" is quite perfect. Im just intrigued about the other members of Zaroba's group.
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Date: 2011-11-07 09:57 pm (UTC)It's so seldom ideas I'm stuck for, though, it's stories. There was one, the other day, out of a conversation with you about the darkness, about people who, no matter where they are, cause the back door to lead to an endless, shapeless, fairly unpleasant abyss. And how, this is a contagious condition, and as feared and misunderstood as HIV. And I couldn't figure out how to get that into a story. I thought maybe a Real Estate agent showing a woman a house gets a little overzealous about showing her the back garden, and...I don't know, maybe they could save the world or fall in love. It never got any further.
I couldn't get it to turn into a story, even with that much to go on (it's more than I usually start with). I have buckets of these promising miscarriages. Sometimes if I leave them long enough they grow or they get jammed into something else. Mostly they just sit and rot into forgetfulness. If its any use to you, you're welcome to this one in part or full (bold of me, perhaps, who the hells am I to tell you what to write?). I'm not likely to shake anything out of it, especially with A Seed Catalogue Of Extinct Animals locking up my brain the way it is.
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Date: 2011-11-07 10:59 pm (UTC)If it's ideas I'm short of, I wikisurf for a while.
I especially employ this method for the digest. It has made me a pornologist.
The hardest part is conception.
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Date: 2011-11-08 02:25 am (UTC)I think that not having someone around to thresh out ideas with (or at, more like it) is problematic. I tell stories, I write poetry. I can have all the ideas in the universe, but it seems at present I can't turn them into stories without telling them, I just make pretty word-pictures, all static and uneventful. Pretty word-pictures are nice, but they don't change my world and they won't buy the kitty a collar.
She's naked again. Slipped her collar sometime in the night, sneaky little pixiething.
Yes, I think conception may indeed be the hard part. I'm not so good at parthenogenesis. Which has been recently confirmed in vipers, if I recall correctly. Oh, to be a snake...
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Date: 2011-11-08 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 11:21 pm (UTC)