Caitlín R. Kiernan

Yesterday was spent tweaking "Little Conversations" (a.k.a. "Salammbô Redux"), trying to get the words more perfect than I'll ever get them. My thanks to the first readers, without whom I'd be even more lost than I am. I'm mostly happy with it now. And yes, the title is a nod to the Concrete Blonde song (from Free, 1989). And this is, indeed, as I have already mentioned, possibly my most blatantly autobiographical story to date. Not on purpose. It just came out that way.

The rest of the day was spent laying out Sirenia Digest #21, writing its prolegomena, and suchlike. Today, Spooky and I will be proofing the issue, all 54 pages, and hopefully it'll go out to subscribers late tonight or early tomorrow. If you haven' subscribed yet, well, now would be a good time.

We did walk last night, and saw an absolutely enormous bat. Eptesicus fucus, I assume. They can live up to 19 years, and I guessing this was an old one. Anyway, yes, now that the heat wave has passed, I am determined to get back into the habit of walking. We did Freedom Park last night.

It's rare that I revisit a film and discover that my initial reaction changes radically. But night before last, we watched Stephen Norrington's 2003 adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. There is proof, in the form of Blogger entry for 12 July 2003, that I very much enjoyed the film when I saw it in the theatre. However, Sunday night's viewing left me with an entirely different impression. Perhaps I viewed it differently because I've only recently read (and loved) the first two volumes of Alan Moore's comic, and now I can see how completely and wrongheadedly the film diverges from the original story. For one, I was astounded at the sexism inherent in making the League's leader Allan Quatermain instead of Mina Murray (and never mind that in the film, Mina is Mina Harker, not Mina Murray). I suppose it all comes down to Sean Connery being a much bigger box-office draw than Peta Wilson. At any rate, this time through, four years after I first saw the film, I found it little more than a clumsy action flick filled with badly filmed fight scenes. Only Nemo and Hyde come out anything like they should. Certainly, in comparison to Moore's book, it's a condescending and dim-witted film. And the whole thing with the addition of Tom Sawyer was just dumb. Think about it. Sawyer was born in or about 1833. And the film is set in 1899. So Sawyer would have been something like 66 years old! Anyway, yes, very disappointing, and I hate retractions, though it makes me all the more eager for The Black Dossier.

Okay, there's a museum by a New England harbour waiting for me, and then on to Mars...