Caitlín R. Kiernan

I absolutely refuse to believe that the Forsaken undead of Undercity celebrate Xmas. The Halloween thing, while annoying as hell, at least sort of made some cockeyed sense. But I draw the line at Xmas. I can only imagine what Silvermoon City must look like right now. Maybe I can force myself to avoid WoW until after the "holidays."

So...the tooth is not being pulled today. My cough, which I've had since early November, has become a complication. What if I cough during the extraction? What if I cough out the blood clot? Etc. The dentist prefers to postpone. So, I'm having to wait and hope the cough clears up before the pain does me in, or the pills for the pain. And I have to get back to work, because this weekend was an utter loss. Sorry to dump health shit into the blog. Right now, it's hard to get around it.

Yeah, anyway. Nothing to say about writing, because I haven't been working.

I did want to mention that, this weekend, we saw Peter Berg's Hancock. The previews caught my eye, but it came and went in theatres with little fanfare, and I forgot the film. Then it wound up on our Netflix cue, and so we saw it. And wow. What starts out as a comedy with the potential to very quickly lose its momentum manages, instead, to go unexpected and delightful places. Indeed, I would even say this is one of my favourite films of the year. It's not perfect, but it's a damn interesting take on "superheroes" (and "gods") and delivers much more than what the trailers promise. Will Smith and Charlize Theron both give great performances. It's not the film I thought it would be, and that's a good thing. I'm also intrigued that Berg is directing a remake of Dune, scheduled for 2010. Maybe someone will finally do it right.

Last night, we watched the last four episodes of Series Four of Doctor Who. Again, wow. "Midnight" joins "Blink" as one of my all-time favorite stand-alone episodes. Marvelously chilling and unresolved. And what a geekfest of a series conclusion. I won't say much more, because I expect a lot of people out there who want to see the episodes haven't yet. "Turn Left" was great. But, as for my Donna Noble/Catherine Tate problem, what I will say is that the conclusion manages to transform her into someone I could care about, but, unfortunately (for the character, not the story), those alterations are revoked, and, in the end, she's that same shrill, annoying person she starts out as. I'm pleased with how the character was employed, but I'll also be glad to see her go.

It's warmer here in Providence, but more cold is on the way.

Today, I'll try to get through my edits on "The Colliers' Venus (1893)", and begin looking towards Sirenia Digest #37. I hope to write two new vignettes for this issue. Also, I need to talk to my agent. So, there's my day, the day I will have instead of the dentist and the removal of this blasted, rotten tooth. Right now, though, I need to go write a "thank you" note that the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Asshole, and ask why he didn't throw stones, instead.

Also, "World's oldest spider web found." Well, the oldest until an older one is found, which is inevitable.

No entry yesterday morning, because Wednesday was the sort of not-writing day I hate to have to write about. Hours in front of the keyboard, trying to find my way into the story to accompany Vince's illustration, and all to no avail. But yesterday went much, much better, and the solution at last presented itself, and I wrote 1,124 words on a piece that I'm currently calling "Untitled 33." With luck, I'll be able to finish it tomorrow or Sunday. Oh, and here's the image again. It's behind a cut, because like everything in Sirenia Digest (subscribe today!), it is, obviously, "mature" and "not work-safe" and likely to offend (or at least confuse) anyone who doesn't think swamp ooze is sexy (I am told such people exist, though I myself doubt it can be true):

( Last warning )

Here in Providence, we have a steady, cold rain. Spooky spent all day yesterday trying to get the wipers on the car fixed. Wasn't the motor that drives them. Wasn't the wiring. Turns out it's a switch, and they're having the find the part from a junkyard, so we're sort of grounded until the rain stops.

Also yesterday, I read "A new Pleistocene tree-kangaroo (Dirpotodontia; Macropodidae) from the Nullarbor Plain of south-central Australia."

At least one Harvard professor believes that as much as 40% of World of Warcraft players are "addicted" to the game. Actually, that story is two years old. Anyway, me, I'm just an obsessive dork stuck in a massive leveling crunch after my dubious decision to move over to an RP server (where no RP actually seems to take place). As of last night (well, this ayem about two), since the switch from Merricat to Mithwen on Monday night, the game tells me I've logged 1 day, 2 hours, 13 minutes, and 13 seconds inworld. And I've made it halfway through Lvl 17. I hope that tonight I will regain Lvl 19, and I can back off again and just do this for, you know, fun. Really, I was fine until I "had" to start over. No more playing until my eyes cross and my ears bleed. Oh, and my thanks to Sopphi for the goodies. Also, last night —— for the first time —— I reported a player over a stupid name —— "Flippasaurus." Yes, I am both the spelling and the name police. So, there. But...I am loving the game, truly.

As for the SL Howard's End sim, well, it's been a bit ignored in this wave of WoW, but I will be taking steps this evening to remedy that. I'm going to send out a notice with a list of all the approved characters so far (which is pretty much everyone). The deadline for character submission was midnight last night. Our cemetery (modeled loosely after Stonington Cemetery in Connecticut and River Bend Cemetery in Rhode Island) is taking shape, as are some of the primary buildings. But yes, we are behind. This is what happens when one (finally) becomes utterly disillusioned with SL and discovers WoW at exactly the same time.

As for the financial crisis and President Asshole's bailout proposal, I'm trying my best not to think on any of that. Near as I can tell, fretting over this great bloody mess does me about as much good as fretting over continental drift. Or watching the debates tonight.

And though it is hardly the much-praised "high road," I would like to take one small moment to gloat over the demise of DC Comics' Minx line of mangaesque/"alternative young adult" graphic novels. Back in the autumn of 2005, Peter Gross and I wasted four months rewriting proposals for what would have been a comic titled Bullet Girl, when it was clear that all Vertigo was interested in was launching Minx, and the "focus group" meetings for Minx, and making our comic as much like the forthcoming Minx books as possible. I finally walked out on the whole mess in December of that year, sick of rewriting and idiotic suggestions in the interest of capturing the attention of the TokyoPop crowd (and never mind that TokyoPop's not doing so well these days, either) and having realized that the comic no longer bore any resemblance to the story I wanted to tell. I have nothing against manga. It's fun stuff. But the whole Minx undertaking was a cynical attempt to pander and second guess, and the mess it was making of Vertigo left me disinterested in ever working with them again. I do, of course, worry for the creators who were suckered into this fiasco.

Oh...look. The platypus is getting out hisherit's pointy boots.

Also, note that on this day in 1945 the U.S. Army Air Force dropped an atomic bomb, named "Little Boy," on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 80,000 people.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,048 words on the sf story/dream cycle that is still, for the time being, called "In View of Nothing." At this point, I'm so far into the thing, having already spent three days on it, that I may as well see it through to The End. Spooky likes it. To me, it just seems like I'm working extra-extra hard and coming nowhere close to what I'm trying to say. I will be amused, in a sad, sick sort of way, if I finish this literal "telling" of the dream, only to discover that the metaphorical approach of "A Season of Broken Dolls" worked better. Imagine that you have met someone who has been blind since birth, and they were also born without the ability to taste or smell, and yet you must explain to them all the subtle colours and flavours and aromas of a lime. That's what this feels like, exactly. Also, I have done something which I never do — I have gone so far as to produce an outline for this short story. It will be divided into nine sections. Anyway, it will appear in Sirenia Digest #16.

I should have had a walk yesterday, but I didn't. The weather is beautiful. All the way up to 70F today, and it's all I can do to make myself sit at this frelling chair and frelling type when I could be out there.

But I will at least have a walk.

Not much else to yesterday. Spooky and I played Scrabble. We watched Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946), which I love despite the almost unfathomable convolutions of the plot. Then bed and reading until about 3 a.m., when I finally laid the book down and faced the ugly necessity of sleep. Oh, TCM is airing four of the Basil Rathbone Holmes films tonight, beginning, I think, at 9 PM (Eastern). If you're into that sort of thing. I used to carry such a torch for Basil Rathbone.

Meanwhile, More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach
President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. While it seems extraordinarily unlikely this will ever have much effect on President Asshole, it's still some shade of heartening. Then again, Sauron never worried himself too much about the Shire...

Also, because I apparently needed something else to piss me off today, we have further proof here that the editorial standards at WitchVox remain as low as ever, and that witches and pagans can be just as hateful and prejudicial and wrongheaded as Xtians. My thanks to morganxpage for the link. Frankly, I stopped reading WitchVox many months ago, as, more often than not, I find the "articles" are barely literate, rarely thoughtful or well researched, and frequently serve only to illustrate the many ills of Neopaganism. I think I'm actually less annoyed by this idiot's crypto-heterosexism, transphobia, and fear of androgyny than by his insistence that some murky idea of "spirit" must be the focus of paganism, his belief that he is anything more than carnal, anything grander than a meatbag held back by too much wishful thinking. Mind and body are one; "mind" is a function of brain. I see no evidence that there exists anywhere a "spirit" or "soul" or "lifeforce" divided from the flesh. And if the Divine Androgyne exists, then I say it exists most genuinely in temporary corporeal incarnations, not some sterile, intangible abstraction. Okay. Enough ranting for now. Time to stroke the platypus, that fine old androgynous whore.

Just some news items and links, because, you know, it just keeps getting more absurd. I think it's healthier, for me, to say absurd, when I mean worse. And it is. Absurd. Worse and absurd.

The thing about Charles Rangel repeatedly calling for a reinstatement of the draft is more than slightly old news, but I believe that Congress was supposed to convene to debate the bill today. There's no chance of it passing, of course, if only because it calls for mandatory service for men and women ages 18 to 42. Part of me thinks, yeah, maybe this wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe a draft would finally galvanize a serious resistance against President Asshole and Co. Especially if all those good Republican and "Democrat" moms were to suddenly find themselves having to pack their daughters off to Iraq.

Likewise, we'll not the see the anti-gay marriage amendment passed. Now, is it odd that I find no comfort in this? Whether it passes or not, whether there's a draft or not, the men and women running this nation would have things that way if they could. And consider this CNN poll on the question of an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. 50% of those who responded support such an amendment. 50%. I live in a country where perhaps half the populace would deny me the right to marry the person I love because we're of the same gender. I live in a country where, perhaps, half the nation so loathes who and what I am that they will openly and freely admit that I should be denied simple civil rights. Because, they say, I'm a threat to cisgendered heterosexual marriage, which we apparently need, because their god said so and, hey, there are only 6.5 billion people in the world.

Sometimes, the anger gets out. It's unseemly. But there you go.

How about a tiny and more or less irrelevant bit of "good" news to put things in perspective? The Santa Marta Harlequin frog and the San Lorenzo Harlequin frog, both native to Colombia, aren't extinct after all. Well, aren't extinct yet. I think the thing that always astounds me most about what humans have done to amphibians is that these guys have been around since the goddamn Palaeozoic. They've survived megavolcanoes and ice ages and global droughts and cometary/asteroid impacts. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. But they probably won't survive Homo sapiens very much longer. I mean, isn't that genuinely fucking astounding? Too bad no one's keeping score out there...

The words came back yesterday. I did 1,058 words on "The Black Alphabet." That would be T-V. With luck, I'll finish it today. Then it'll be time to figure out what the next Sirenia Digest vignette will be. Perhaps it will feature Paris Hilton and a big pink house and a few thousand hungry mutant leeches. Hmmm. Anyway, I also have an alarming number of things that I need to get done for subpress, some of which are things that should have been done weeks ago. Illustrations for "Night" (to appear in a future issue of Subterranean magazine), a cover for the "Highway 97" chapbook, & etc. Oh, and the galleys for "Highway 97" arrived yesterday and need proofing. Meanwhile, the CEM for Daughter of Hounds should be falling on my head any damn day now.

Argh.

My thanks to Chris Seggerman (elmocho) for putting me wise to The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists (behind the cut). Now, I must track that book down.

( Platypus of Doom )

My platypus says that itshehe isn't a nihilist, only a keen observer of the inevitable.

Yesterday, Spooky discovered Swedish Fish AquaLife, which includes not only the usual fish, but blue raspberry dolphins, grape pufferfish, lemon starfish, and orange sea horses. This made for the perfect unhealthy snack while we spent the evening watching all four episodes of Dr. Who: The Horror of Fang Rock (1977). Oh, and I've been at the Wikipedia again the past couple of days. An article on the Patagonian theropod Quilmesaurus, as well as work on a number of other articles — Ichthyornis, Plioplatecarpinae, Claosaurus, & etc. It helps to pass the time.

Meanwhile, President Asshole has called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The last time I checked on his approval rating, back in May, it was scraping bottom at 31%, with a 65% disapproval rating. I don't know what it's at now, but I suppose he thinks that picking on queers can't hurt. Wasn't the object of the Constitution to make us more free, not allow fascist Xtian bigots to make us less so? Nar'eth says the lot of them can kiss her big grey dyke ass. I'm inclined to agree. Wasn't stealing the 2004 election enough for these sorry sons of bitches? Just checking.

Now, W is for...