May 22 09: Putting My Left Foot Forward
I have a gig! I’ve just finished my first week working for the UN Trust Fund for Human Security, doing a writing project that is scheduled to keep me busy until the end of the year. Which is a great thing, especially as copy-editing work at Major Publication is getting harder and harder to come by. But knowing-where-my-rent-check-is-coming-from considerations aside, it’s a great thing to be working for an organization that is engaged in such boots-on-the-ground humanitarianism. It really does help make the world a safer, healthier, happier place for people who need the help — via the sorts of projects that you read about and think, Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing I want the United Nations doing. Science fiction fans believe in better worlds.
So that’s done a great deal to keep my mood buoyant lately. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out which market to send “Nightbird” to (aka the Stevie Nicks Death Androids Story, although it contains no androids. Or Stevie Nicks, really. Well, sort of). I figure I should strike while the iron is still warmish from the success of Daisy, which I recently found out was brought to a meeting of fiction-read-out-loud afficionados called NYC Storyreading. Having random strangers enjoying my story in public still kind of freaks me out. Even if it was sort of the point. Thank you, random strangers; I am flattered beyond words.
And finally, I do a lot of walking with the new job — from Grand Central to the UN in the mornings, and as often as not from 1st Avenue all the way to the West Side in the evenings, if the weather is good. There is much headphone-listening, and I’ve been reminded once again that the scars of Band Geekitude run deep. I keep catching myself adjusting my stride so that my left foot comes down on the downbeat; the only reason I notice it at all is that sometimes the tempo speeds up and I’m wondering why I’m going so fast….
Anyway, I’m off to the theatre now: a preview of the new Coraline musical, which looks like it’s going to be a blast. And then an overnight in Philly tomorrow with the swimmers. Enjoy your weekend.
May 5 09: Today’s Thing That Is Crazy
Hokey smokes! Some total stranger in — Scotland? Ireland? Suddenly I can’t tell, how embarassing — took my story “Daisy” and produced a free audio version of it, because he liked it. (And because its Creative Commons license encouraged him to do so.)
I am agog. And flattered. Thanks, Ian McMillan!
May 1 09: Who is Better Than Stephen Fry? Nobody.
It’s the first of May, and I’ve been going around the office of Major Publication all day reminding myself over and over not to sing the Jonathan Coulton song out loud; it’s as brilliant and catchy and hilarious as his work is wont to be, but it’s also seriously NSFW. (So if you’ve never heard it before and you’re downloading it now at the office or in front of easily horrified grannies or whatnot be sure to put your headphones on. [And if you enjoy the song, show JoCo some donation love.])
But that’s not why I’m here just now. No, sir. I wanted to direct people’s attention to this letter from Stephen Fry to his 16-year-old self, which I found pretty moving. God knows most of us would love to go back and give a message from the future to our awkward and dopey younger selves, or at least give them big hugs and tell them it’ll be okay. I’m not sure anyone else would be able to do so with such intelligence, humanity, and general awesomeness. It’s also a look at gay history and a meditation on love, which is of paramount importance to all people. It’s good stuff.
Apr 30 09: Julie & Julia (& Nora) (& You)
I was going to post something about the Weimar cabaret orchestra that’s doing drop-dead fabulous covers of New Wave tunes, but this is even better.
Julia Child started cooking classes at Le Cordon Bleu in the late 1940s. She published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, her first, revolutionary cookbook, in 1961, and began her equally revolutionary television program not long thereafter. In 2002, a woman in Brooklyn named Julie Powell started a blog, The Julie/Julia Project, in which she cooked a different meal from MAFC every night in her teeny tiny NYC-style kitchen in a neighborhood with no decent grocery store, gradually working her way through the entire book. In 2004, Julia died; I found Julie’s blog through the lovely essay she wrote reflecting upon the yearlong experience and how Julia had transformed both Julie’s life and her own. In 2005 the blog became a book, as they were wont to do at the time. In August 2009 the cookbook that became a blog that became a book will become a movie, staring Amy Adams as Julie and Meryl freaking Streep as Julia Child. Written and directed by Nora Ephron, of course, because who else could it have been?
Come on, how can you not see this? With a group of dear friends who like to eat. And then you go out for a fabulous meal afterwards. Or — even better! — cook one together.
That’s all for tonight. For my part, I have completed the laundry and am going to bed.
Apr 28 09: Culture time!
I’m presently singing with the Dessoff Symphonic Choir, which is the giant economy-size version of the Dessoff Choirs, a long-running NYC amateur chorus. We’re preparing for a pretty spectacular series of June performances with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.
First, Britten’s “War Requiem,” his spectacular antiwar piece from 1962. Composed for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral in England (destroyed in a World War II bombing raid), the piece sets two soloists singing English-language poems by Wilfred Owen about the experiences of soldiers during World War I in juxtaposition to a massive choral performance of the traditional Latin Mass for the dead. It is harrowing and fabulous, sometimes angry, sometimes achingly sad, sometimes transcendently gorgeous. June 11, 12, 13.
Then, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, which will feature about a skillion singers and instrumentalists packed so densely on the stage that frame-dragging phenomena will be measurable in local spacetime. Big, bombastic, wonderful. Probably the more listener-friendly to those arriving unfamiliar with the music. June 24, 25, 26, 27.
For tickets to either performance — going fast! — or more details, see the Dessoff website. (You may need to scroll down to get to the actual text; there’s something wonky in their stylesheet.)
Apr 27 09: Huh. Well, look at that.
It appears I am now a Published Author Person. My short story “Daisy” is now online as part of the CC-licensed anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments. My first sale!
In other news, would the person who left the dial cranked way up to “August” please look after that? Because dude, seriously, 90 degrees? It’s not even May yet.
Apr 1 09: Poetry Corner
My friend Elise makes jewelry. And writes stuff. Each piece of jewelry gets an interesting name. This one is called “Nine Things About Oracles.” It inspired one poem, and then another, and suddenly there are well over eighty-one poems and counting. My contribution is kind of dopey, but I had fun, anyway.
Nine Things the Oracles Told Our Interviewers
This seat is not as comfortable as it looks.
At the end of the day,
We cannot feel our buttocks.
Once I lost the stone we call the Eagle’s Tear.
It was missing for three days.
I used a jellybean instead, and
Nobody noticed.
The gods tell me the future
Because they know it will change nothing.
It takes twenty-two days
To wear out a deck of cards,
Usually.
In spring, seventeen.
I have an answer for your dog.
Tell her I said
Yes.
I miss my nephew.
If you leave right now, you will meet —
Oh. Too late. Never mind.
This happens all the time.
Sometimes I have a dream of my very own:
I cast the bones.
They say,
YOU ARE NOT WEARING PANTS.
Once I told the fortune
Of a man’s socks
By mistake.
He never knew the difference.
Mar 27 09: Fixed(?)
If you’ve been having trouble leaving comments here over the past few days, try again; I think I fixed it. Of course, it always worked fine for me, and for at least a few others, so it hasn’t been easy to test for fixedness. Consider this an invitation — one even more blatant than the existence of the comment function — to speak up. (And if you get an error, can you shoot me an email and let me know? Thanks.)
Mar 19 09: Frak me. (Sir.)
Huh. How did I let this get permanently relegated to the “Drafts” queue? In honor of the Battlestar Galactica finale tomorrow night, for which Hugh and I are bouncing up and down like overcaffeinated eight-year-olds in anticipation, I give you this flashback to August of last year, which those unfamiliar with BSG may not get much out of:
Yeah, so I finally knuckled under and opened the shiny box of heroin labeled BSG, and now Hugh and I are obsessed. We’re somewhere in Season 2 at this point, burning through it as fast as Netflix will let us, and wow, it really is all that. Stress TV though it may be.
Anyway, that somehow led to my finally seeing the below, which in turn led to me trying to stifle the Snorty Laugh™ at my desk. It’s yours now. Yeah, it’s another mashup.1 Just click PLAY already.
1 See also this one, which is genius.
Mar 17 09: Tagged
Got my new Tom Bihn Smart Alec today, to replace my old one, which was mauled by a ferocious beast. Am quite pleased, although the redistribution of pen slots et cetera will take a day or two to get used to.
I initially learned about Bihn’s bags in 2004, when BoingBoing pointed out their care-instructions label. At the time, the last two lines of the label’s French text read:
We are sorry that our president is an idiot.
We didn’t vote for him.
(Much as I found the sentiments laudable, that only got me as far as the website; it’s the excellent laptops/backpacks/messenger bags that got me to make the buy. Highly recommended, honest.) Anyway, I checked the tag in the new pack. Reflecting the changing times, the new tag’s French text is merely a translation of the English care instructions. But at the bottom it says:
Siquid mantica non capit, domi relinquendum est.
Is there a classicist in the house?
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WHAT? WHO?
Strange Radiation is the website of Andrew Willett. If you've never heard of me, well, you're hardly alone in that.
I am a writer and editor and athlete and musician and uncle and knitter and homo and geek in New York City.