strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Jan 31 06: dear virus gods
It’s the end of January, so I guess your visitation is right on schedule. Hail. You are mighty indeed.
Please let this be some kind of eensy weensy 24-hour flu, because I have a million things to do on Thursday and Friday. Furthermore, please let it not be a stomach flu but something more sedate. There is a queasy quality to whatever’s going on that can’t seem to decide what it’s all about, and I’d like it to go away.
Amen.
Jan 29 06: dancing in paris
The Gemini sisters weren’t much to look at. They’d all been constructed on the same body plan, and Isuzu was rarely cited as a paragon of æsthetic sensitivity. The only way to tell them apart was by color, and even then you couldn’t be sure. There were at least eight or nine red ones, for instance. Gloria? Alice? Viola? You could never really know which one you were looking at.
Not that it made much difference, anyway. Something about them just wasn’t right. Perhaps the mass-production process was at fault; perhaps it was no accident but something intentional. If you dealt with them one at a time you could tell that you were in the presence of five-eighths of an entity. Not that she wasn’t all there, but that she was all there and it wasn’t quite the whole sandwich.
If you got more than one of them together, though. Something happened. They became vivacious, exciting, thrilling; their missing pieces appeared in the narrow spaces between them. You were suddenly in company that was breathtaking, enthralling, even dangerous. You’d become certain that their mad existence would end in their own glamorous destruction (as well as that of bystanders, boats, trains, fountains, and the Pont Neuf) and you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off them.
And then they would start to dance.
[no, really. just go.]
Jan 25 06: the first word is “Ed.”
Wow, okay. The Optimistic Story is in a draft, all 7400 words of it. With luck, it’ll be in an even tighter draft by end of tomorrow, when it goes to the crit group. Those who have requested beta copies, they’re on their way; those who would like them are welcome to sing out.
I am happy.
“Take a deep breath, and squeeze for a count of two,” Mark said.
All has been revealed to Ed, and the gift accepted. He’s about to take a long, numb walk through the Village. Eventually, he’ll join up with the last three sentences, which wait patiently at the bottom of the document.
I want to be finished with this draft by the end of my lunch break tomorrow. But I have to be out of bed in five hours, and I’m not in it yet, so this is where I’ll stop.
Word count (by the SFWA formula): 7,000.
Jan 22 06: onward (and upward)
The clever plan went awry—although the meal was quite fine—and even that didn’t get Ed an explanation of what the hell this was all about. Instead, the explanation was waiting on his doorstep the following morning. The cab ride to the lab was tense, and silent. I’m only clear on what happens next to a certain point, but I want a finished draft by Wednesday at the latest.
4,300 words and counting.
Jan 20 06: [choirs of angels]
My husband gave me some fab Gothic Cabinet Craft bookshelves for Christmas. Yes! He is that wonderful! And today I am suffused with joy, because today they arrived. They are big and shelfy and not made of sawdust. Oh, thou monolith of unshelved books next to my desk, your days are numbered. And n < 2.
Meanwhile, another reason for joy—only this time for New Yorkers in general, and especially those who have immigrated from the West Coast. The rumors have been true: Trader Joe’s is coming to NYC. Cheap wine and frozen gyoza for everybody!
Jan 19 06: vrooommmmmmm.
Choir geeks! Recovering a capella singers! Fans of The Bobs! Types who make goofy brum brum noises while playing with toy cars in the privacy of your offices!
You really should check out this groovy Honda commercial. I’ll say no more. (Via BoingBoing, of course.)
xyzzy
From Matthew Baldwin’s fabulous blog Defective Yeti:
Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure
Revision 88 / Serial number 54892Oval Office
You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.
What do you want to do now?
> INVADE IRAQ
You are not able to do that, yet.> LOOK MIRROR
Self-reflection is not your strong suit.> PET SEAL
It’s not that kind of seal.
Just go read the whole thing.
Jan 15 06: yak, yak, yak
Okay, so I’m finally working on the Optimistic Science Fiction Short Story I promised somebody. It’s showing alarming signs of being another story that’s basically a series of conversations. Nothing is going to go boom, that’s for sure.
At least these folks aren’t sitting around talking in a bar, like in at least two other stories of mine. Oh, no, wait, that’s not true. There is a bit in a bar, but it’s a restaurant bar, and I’m hoping to get the protagonist and his Friend With A Mysterious Agenda out of it straightaway. They’re waiting for the friend’s boss to show up, so they can go have a schmancy dinner.
Of course, they’ll never get out of the bar if I don’t stop looking for distractions. Suck it up, Andrew, and write the goddamn story already.
Jan 13 06: empty; tank!
It would be an understatement to describe the gang at the office today as unmotivated, given yesterday’s announcement. I think I managed to get about 5 pages of stuff edited, and two of them were blank. Next week we’ll probably start wrapping things up prior to turning out the lights, but today, not so much.
On the other hand, the day wasn’t a total waste. My copy of Yoko Kano’s Cowboy Bebop CD-Box arrived today, so I’ve been rocking out on that as I watch day D minus 59 tick past.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about—Cowboy Bebop, n.: a seriously fun animated series from Japan, seedy noirish bounty-hunter adventures all over the solar system, often broadcast late at night on the Cartoon Network. The music is by Yoko Kano, who seems to be a one-woman industry, providing fabulous scores for any number of Japanese shows. She can do it all: harmonica-and-guitar blues, rock ballads, glistening synthy dance numbers, atmospheric electronica, and (best of all) this bone-crunching, horn-driven jazz. “Inner Universe,” the opening tune for the first season of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, is a techno earworm of ferocious power. Bebop’s opening tune, called “Tank!”, is… is… is the guys from The Jetsons’ big band out on a bender in a smoky bar somewhere, long after the studios in Burbank have locked their doors for the night. Or, as one fan described it, like being hit over the head with a sock full of Jonny Quest.
So today may have been unproductive, but at least I wasn’t bored.
Jan 12 06: terminus est
Huh.
Well, in all fairness, my employer the Corporate Behemoth is handling the mass layoff better than my former employer the Wacky Dotcom did. But the result is the same: our business group is being dissolved, effective 60 days from today.
There are likely to be opportunities to take other positions with Corporate Behemoth, and probably to follow my old boss into her new Small and Nimble Consulting Group as well. I’ve been wondering lately if this is really the career path I want, though; I mean, the pay is pretty good, and I’m good at it, but I’ve also been bored with educational publishing. I’ve been trying to decide if there are alternatives that appeal, and whether I could develop the skill sets required quickly enough to follow them, and if I’d be able to pay my share of the rent if I did. I guess now I’ll have some time to think about it.
Anybody who has an idea for Andy’s Hitherto Unrecognized Dream Career is welcomed to share it.
Jan 8 06: cowboys
Finally saw Brokeback Mountain on Friday night, and it was pretty fabulous. Gyllenhall and Ledger were wonderful; Michelle Williams, as Ledger’s wife, was really superb as well. It showed all the qualities that make Ang Lee one of my favorite directors: it was beautiful and sensitive and subtle, with gorgeous photography and long silences that spoke volumes. And we got to see a couple of men fall in love, in a movie that treated them and their relationship with dignity.
A happier ending would have been nice. Maybe America needed this movie first, though, to open the way. Next time.
Meanwhile, in other Big ‘Mo News, today saw the first meeting of a gay men’s knitting circle in our living room. Attendance held at 5, with a sixth member preparing to join us next time. Future meetings are likely to be held—can you believe the audacity?—in public. Front-runners among the group’s proposed names are “Knitting Nancies” and “The Needle Exchange.”
Watch this space for further announcements.
Jan 4 06: factoids du jour
Because I am presently bored out of my mind here at my desk, I was just taking a little Internet break, reading an article about macaroni and cheese in today’s NY Times. It even comes with recipes (creamy and crusty)! And who doesn’t love macaroni and cheese? Aside from those who also hate freedom?
Anyway, along the way I learned the answers to a constellation of questions that have long plagued me:
American cheese is simply cheddar or colby that is ground and emulsified with water, said Bonnie Chlebecek, a test kitchen manager at Land O’Lakes in Arden Hills, Minn.
Plain American cheese, labeled pasteurized process cheese, contains the most natural cheese and is the best for cooking. American cheese derivatives are made from cheese and additives like sodium phosphates (acids that promote melting), nonfat dry milk and carrageenan. In descending order of their relationship to natural cheese, they are cheese food, cheese spread (such as Velveeta) and cheese product. [emphases mine]
Wow. Mysteries of the ages, revealed unto us all. Not even the absence of the serial comma from the final two sentences could dampen my joy at such a discovery. Doubtless, all of you will agree.
the whole wide world
Just got my hands on the leaked beta of Google Earth for Macintosh.
Ohhh boy. Is this ever going to be a dangerous timesuck. Bedtime now, though.
Jan 1 06: day one (again)
Had a few people over last night, as we often do. There was eating and drinking; there was laughter. At a few minutes before midnight we took the surviving champagne up to the roof. We live far enough from Times Square not to have been awash in tourists, but still close enough so that at midnight we could hear the roar, and watch the silver glass of its surrounding buildings gleam with reflected fireworks. Because, through some bizarre turn of events, we had a good-sized quorum of a capella singers, we did a couple of numbers for the ‘entertainment’ of the other guests and our own amusement. Then we went back downstairs, because it was cold.
We also engaged in our own weird little homegrown New Year’s tradition last night: the Shredding of the Regrets. It started the year the party was at Cesar’s house. Somebody had given him a dinky little paper shredder, and somebody got an idea. Now we do it at our own party. Each of us took a moment to scribble our regrets for 2005 on a sheet of paper. You don’t have to share them with anybody. You don’t have to meet a minimum number of things. This is just a chance to put onto paper any of those gray rags that may be draped across your mental furniture. Then you put them through the paper shredder. Adios, 2005. Perhaps we didn’t make all of you that we could have; perhaps we wish we had spent you otherwhere, or otherhow. But that doesn’t matter, because we are free of you now.
Eventually everybody went home. It was 4:30 before the glassware was washed and we got our sorry asses to bed, very tired but very happy.
Hope you and yours are safe and warm, and that you can step forward into 2006 with renewed vigor and a fresh batch of optimism.