While we're at it, could we also agree to just forget that whole business with the pig? I'm afeared I may never live it down.

I miss Farley.

That said, it's the author's work and her characters and I guess she can do as she likes with them.

The fire? Given recent posts on safety, etc. the last few months it was somewhat distressing to see a family comic strip advocate leaving one's wife and small children in a bedroom filling up with smoke (they were getting dressed warmly before exiting through a fire escape) to race up, presumably through flames to the attic where his precious manuscript and laptop lay. A few days later we're told he needed to be rescued by firefighters (he passed out from smoke inhalation) and Mom made it to the escape after dressing and carrying two children, some blankets and the scrapbooks.

Is it me? We have taught our kids that you hear the alarm and you leave first, ask questions later and no the birds can't come. You certainly don't stop to get dressed, collect belongings etc when the house is in flames.

Should a comic strip teach people how to behave correctly?

Bill at 15--A comic strip shouldn't teach them how to die in a fire. It's realistic that the family wouldn't know how to react to such an emergency and that they'd do at least a few things wrong, but recent events in this strip have had the message that nothing this family does can be wrong.

I'm not sure what I think of the bigger issue of stories teaching people by example. It gets boring if all your characters are doing the right thing, especially if the author has only one right thing for every situation. It's infuriating when characters make boneheaded elementary mistakes, but real people would screw up anyway.
Hmm. Now I have something for my brain to chew on today. Many thanks, Bill at 15; I'll try to figure out how to say what I'm trying to say.

Your brain has teeth?

Yes, but when characters make boneheaded elementary mistakes they should pay the price for them. Preferably a big one.

Re FBoW: I could almost believe the book sale if it went to a small indie publisher in Canada, but not with that much of an advance. (And I agree with those who say Fie on all the recent melodrama. Too bad.)

Holy crapola, you just improved my life immeasurably.

Unrelatedlyish, I have a simple question that probably does not have a simple answer.

So I've been posting on here like I'm one of you and everything, but actually I'm an impostor: I've been pretty far away from the whole SF world for years and years and years and I'm having a great deal of trouble figuring out how to get back in. To those ends, if I were to, say, subscribe to one SF publication, which one should it be? Asimov's, which I subscribed to years ago? Something else?

You should subscribe to whatever magazine you enjoy reading. My mileage might not be your mileage, after all.

Serge, of course my brain has teeth. My instincts are mostly those of a gerbil-- nervous, easily startled, likes to chew on things. And most people here have brain teeth too-- haven't you noticed the biting wit?

A $2,500 advance I might believe (although that seems a bit steep to me). The strip is just so unreal -- the only characters I have any sympathy for are April and Shiimsa.

(starts getting sucked in by yet another comic strip, auuuugh!)

Obviously it's time to put those CDs in the work rotation again.

The production area will include helicopter activity during the hours of 3:00 p.m. through 11:00 p.m. (flying over 500ft, flying under 500ft and helicopter landing & taking-off at 831 Francisco Street), stunt driving, Molotov cocktail car on fire, auto crashes into prop newsstand and wetting down of streets. There will also be equipment on the sidewalk.

A what kind of car?

My brain will have teeth as soon as the zombies break down the door.

Err - hang on, that's just my co-workers after an all-staff meeting.

Don't forget molar authority.

To clear customs you must have your checked bags. Ergo, you could have taken something out of said bags that isn't allowed in carry-on baggage. Therefore, you must re-clear security.

Seattle has the same problem.

A friend of mine got a $30K advance for a first novel. She didn't have an agent when the novel was submitted, though she acquired one sometime before signing the contract, I believe. I don't know the details of the contract; it's possible it was for the next two novels as well (unwritten at the time).

The amount of money wasn't near as obnoxious to me as the fact that Michael just finished writing his draft in December. That and a drooling letter of adoration from his editor--- that manuscript could have been a lost book of the Bible wrapped up in the Arc of the Covenant, and it would still have to sit in a slush pile for months. It's misleading and contrived, and really I think I ought to just stop reading the damn strip because it just makes me froth a little more every day.

But then what would I have to gripe about with my wife?

..also, Elizabeth's lips really bug me.

But personally, I like Shortpacked's take on the FBoFW downturn best.

(I couldn't find it. Eventually I just had to ask Joy when she linked me to it.)

One thing you might do is check out recent Hugo and Nebula nominations for short stories, novelettes, and novelas; that will give you some hints as to which magazines are publishing good stories -- though of course that may or may not have anything to do with your own tastes!

Anyway, there's an author writing a book with a tentative tile of Where the Girls Aren't: What's Holding Women Back from Careers in Science? who is looking for interview subjects: both women who have left science-related disciplines and those who are still there.

More details at http://www.nasw.org/users/lhall/wtga.html

3.3.12: Best Fanzine. Any generally available non-professional publication devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects which by the close of the previous calendar year has published four (4) or more issues, at least one (1) of which appeared in the previous calendar year, and which does not qualify as a semiprozine.

Think about it. ML wins the Hugo at the Denver worldcon in 2008, so Teresa, Patrick and Jim come on stage... along with half of the audience. Then we each are allowed to make a brief acceptance speech.

And yes, "Brisco County Jr." is on DVD; Santa brought it to my family this Christmas, and since 25% of us had to go back to Missoula, we watched it all in the two weeks after Christmas. What a kick in the pants that show was!

And it had Bruce Campobell and John Astin.

If I were to mention that I'm connecting over a frequency-modulated coherent Gridley wave, people on other Jasoomian sites would look at me as if I'd said my calot had only four legs!

Useless rich toss-pots.

serge@55: ML is at least moderated, albeit very lightly. And regardless of the number of formal contributors (let alone letter-writers, which is closer to what we are), the person(s) at the top of the masthead are the ones who go up on stage; usually they thank a lot of other people, but not everyone who contributes....

I'm dumb. Advice (soon to be) taken.

(TO BE CLEAR: Any sarcasm is directed at myself.)

Jon @53:

sigh

I think that that article is going to trigger another rant, but I'll put that over on my own blog (short version: this woman doesn't have a job in the tech biz because no one will !@#$%^& hire me).

The InfoWorld thing includes a slide show presentation with the title "Why are women exiting IT careers?" Based on the answers, either women can't answer the question asked (which would indeed be a precipitating factor to their exits) or InfoWorld is massively unclear on the concept. (So the rest of you won't get brain rot, of the 11 slides, all but two were about why you should hire women, one was about one possible pitfall specific to women, and the final slide was a teaser for a totally different article.) Based on all that, I have no clue why women are leaving.

In the run-up to the expected sacking of everyone who had anything to do with the Lebanon war last summer, comments have been particularly angry and flame levels have been at "high", "max", and "higher than that".

And so, Oren reports, Peretz came up with a brilliant idea: he'd put together a battery of conscripted women soldiers, in their capacity as clerks, and set them to respond to negative comments about him with positive comments - on news sites and blogs.

The Haaretz piece claimed that cooler heads prevailed and no one forced young women dressed in olive green to pretend to support Peretz online. But that really does make me wonder what interns (the American equivalent) are doing at law firms, PACs, and political parties. Not to mention, advertising & PR agencies.

The word is that it is not actually ending at the end of this year, as had previously been reported; instead, Lynn Johnston will be scaling back the days per week of original strips. But most horrifying (to me, at least) is the news that the remaining days will be devoted to Michael and his family, and the characters will be frozen in time, i.e. no longer aging.

I think if I'm still for some reason reading the strip by year's end, that's gonna about do it for me.

(Although Elizabeth's ... most everything about her plot line ... annoys me.)

(And the publishing thing struck me as a little improbable. I confess I found myself wondering if there would be any reaction here.)

Serge at #47: Is Micheal's book about the evil!neighbors downstairs? Or was that something else he wrote?

I saw an exhibit at the IU art museum sometime between 1988 and 1992-ish. It was a series of sculptures of complex geometric forms, that were painted with really lovely matte colors, so that the overall color effect of the object was different depending on your angle of view. One angle would be all done in blues, and then another angle would be blue fading into green, that kind of thing.

I think the sculptures were made of painted metal. I also think the artist was a mathmetician.

If anyone recalls this and can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it...they were some of the most beautiful objects I've ever seen and I'd like to get my hands on a book or exhibition catalog.

I'm wondering what exactly they think the "IT Field" is ...

Do you think this was from another college? It seems unlikely that Texas A&M or their supporters would be putting it out. Or maybe there's something even more I'm missing.

Serge @ #28: the only dog I ever pulled for rescue that had to be put down had chewed on a plugged-in extension cord. The entire interior of his mouth was either 3rd degree burns or gaping holes. Get a bottle of Bitter Apple (it will also help with the shoe problem), or better yet crate-train the dog.

Speaking of things jumping sharks: does anyone else watch "House"? Anyone else think it's beginning to limber up for the dorsal fin vault?

I think the only reason that puppy Cagney didn't have to be renamed Zappo after biting into that extension cord is that it must not have been plugged in as tightly as it could have been. Which is just as well. As for using bitter apple, we'd have to spray it over most of the house.

And speaking of House... I too am not happy with what they're doing with the character. I tell myself that they're making him more and more mean for the sake of being mean because they're planning something major for him. I'm skeptical though. At least, the recent plotline had David Morse as the rather vindictive cop. (Morse is another of those actors I like a lot who've been around quite a bit, with Contact and 12 monkeys and, going back quite a while, Prototype.)

Yes! (Commences Snoopy dance.)

Just got back from the last dog walk of the night, a quick circuit of the apartment complex. It's cold out, low 30s at most.

At one point, we walked along a narrow lawn. Trotting along the inner edge of the lawn, where it meets a moat of bark dust that surrounds the building, was . . . a white mouse.

At least, a small white rodent. Not beige or light tan. White.

Fortunately, Kira was entranced enough with the day's pee-mail not to look up and notice.

The mouse explored the lower terminus of drainpipe, seemed to consider walking down the path toward us, then ambled around a post and out of site.

Lost pet? Albino wild mouse? Escapee from a germ warfare lab spreading a Pox from which I'll short expire?

Between the cold and copious local cats and coyotes, it probably won't last long.

What would you do with 80 lemonsworth of Meyer lemon peels? They're full of lemonoil goodness, but I'm not sure how or if to take advantage of that.

I'm having a party, for which I always make fresh lemonade. Unlike previous parties where I'm not quite ready = drafting early arrival guests into lemon picking, this time I'll be juicing the lemons well ahead of start time. Therefore lemon peels, and so...?

I was not at all impressed by the "You stuck a thermometer up my ho-ho and didn't even kiss me, so I'm going to ruin your life and your friends' too" arc on House, especially with the rushed and empty conclusion. I will be even more disappointed if Morse shows back up later with some dread condition that only House can diagnose.

I did like the new episode this week, though. There seemed to be the beginning of a break in the wall of cynicism he's built around himself. There's at least the possibility of an interesting spring there.

And since someone brought up comics page criticism, I just want to make sure everyone's seen Marmaduke Explained.

Another topic: Does anyone here know anything about dichloroacetate? Ulrika O'Brien in her LJ linked to a New Scientist article about it. It's a simple drug, cheap to make, already tested and used to treat certain rare metabolic disorders...
...and it just might be the cure for cancer.

Here's the New Scientist article: Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers.

(In the header, they say "New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers." Uh, yeah. I bet.)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,462782,00.html

"The rendition teams are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful. They are the men who went into Baghdad before the bombs and into Afghanistan before the army. If they didn't do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks."

and:

"... no president on my watch has had a spotless record when it comes to the CIA. But never before have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since Bush took office. As chief of Europe I had a front-row seat from which to observe the unprecedented drive for intelligence justifying the Iraq war."

Yes, her stuff is really cool; I gave one of her 3D-printed metal scultpures to a friend as a birthday present (it was greatly appreciated).

Also worth a look are some similar sculptures designed by an actual astronomer (Michael Merrifield at the University of Nottingham):

I prefer Grossman's Milky Way model, but Merrifield's "Sun with magnetic field lines" is pretty awesome.

> Here's the New Scientist article: Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers.
> (In the header, they say "New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers." Uh, yeah. I bet.)

I read the article a couple of days ago and it sounds interesting and exciting and I hope it's as good as it sounds - but it's got harder and harder to trust New Scientist, as they destroy their magazine for the sake of snappier headlines. It's got to the point where if they announce that they've found a new species of dinosuar, related to humans and made of antimatter, which disproves quantum physics, then you know it's a slow news week.

I'm pretty much immune to bad physics articles, having forgotten most of what I learnt at uni, but I do retain some small shreds of computing knowledge (probably because I use it five days a week, but that's just a guess). New Scientist jumped the shark for me when it published a small article noting that an unsung genius in the uk had written a program which would lurk in internet chatrooms, hanging out and acting human, while monitoring all of the other members of the chatroom and working out which ones were secret adult pedophiles pretending to be teenagers. This was printed without comment, as it were something as prosaic as a better antifreeze, or a slightly better solar cell.

And yet... this guy was effectively claiming to have written a program which not only passed the Turing test, but *conducted it* (well - a strange form of it) as well.

I tend to believe in at least the possibility of strong AI, and I guess it's at least conceivable that one previously unheard of genius could crack this problem wide open - not likely, but conceivable.

I could see only three possibilities:

i) fraud

ii) nutter

iii) unheard of scientific genius who has singlehandedly revolutionised the field of computing, and who is sure to go down in history as one of the greatest scientific minds of the last few centuries.

I don't think the right reaction to any of those possibilities is to basically print their press release without comment.

Ok. I'm done. I've been reading New Scientist for around 20 years now, and I've pretty much stopped bothering these days. If you want to read more angry fuming about New Scientist, there's always Greg Egan:

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/09/a_plea_to_save_new_scientist.html

Realms of Fantasy:
Single copies $4 plus $1 shipping to Sovereign Media Co., Inc., 453 Carlisle Drive, Herndon, VA 20170, (703) 964-0361. I decided to see Whisperado last night instead of look for either the back issue or my lute music, but the current issue was Right There for this information.

House:
I have zero degrees of separation with one of the actors, which accounts for many of my other actor connections. I saw my first episode at a friend's house last week and was highly annoyed that it turned out to be a to-be-continued, since I've no simple way to see the second half. This is always happening to me when I watch TV; the last time I saw a show in real time it got cancelled in mid-story arc.

Wait... that means you are one of the actors! Which one?

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Anyway, me->connect->actor. Not me=actor.

- anyone who thinks Alta Regina and the bleeding edge flowery euphemism dance are choreographically connected is either quite mad or hasn't seen enough cascarde to have perspective

- any time a dancing master starts off his description of a dance talking about how confusing it is, the main thing that's confusing is his written description

Still no sign of the lute music, which means another trip to the library to locate it and copy it again. Sigh. Must organize study.

This got discussed way, way, way down at the bottom of Open Thread 79, so it was easy to miss (here's my pedantic contribution, with links to relevant Wikipedia articles).

The basic idea is that each link (or "degree of separation") counts as one, so you're always at least one step/degree away from everyone else (except yourself). Of course, you can start the numbering anywhere, but the convention from both "Six Degrees of Separation" (and the Kevin Bacon game) and the "Erdos Number" tradition is to start at 1.

A white mouse? If I'm right, it doesn't have anything to fear from cats or coyotes.

(But I don't suppose I am. You'd have noticed the hamster.)

He's magnifique!

I once met Stephen King.
King appeared in the Langoliers miniseries, where David Morse played the pilot of the plane.
Morse was on House and 'butted' heads with Hugh Laurie's character.

And from Morse, I also get to Jodie Foster, from her to Martin Scorsese. (To Freaky Friday too, but I'll pass.)

I must confess that it never even occurred to me that there would be blogs and/or forums in which the degeneration of FBoW is the main discussion.

However, I came across several gems.

There has been (evidently) a huge amount of grumbling regarding the strip's preachy and condescending handling of Lizzie's time among the "First Nations" and (apparently) some grumblings over why her new adopted soul-family of gentle and wise spiritual aboriginals didn't warn her about Paul's screw-job, dumping lovable Lizzie for old girlfriend Susan - after reading several forums, I was lead to this post, which actually had me giggling for a few minutes -

"The part that was of interest to me was readers' reactions to the fact that no one in Mtigwaki told Liz about Paul and Susan in time for her to rush up there and intervene. After all, they had this ceremony adopting her into the tribe - what kind of friends were they?

It may always remain unspoken, but I'll let you in on the secret: the people of Mtigwaki were rooting for Susan."

Ha!

I also meandered into this remarkable blog, in which "Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke
in 500 words or less" - if you have wondered why Marmeduke is considered funny, Joe explains it to you.

For example -

I give you this one.

Or this one, my favorite:

Or perhaps just the overall tone of this one, on why he doesn't bother evaluating the Sunday editions.

Yes, this is how I spent the morning. I should have gone to the gym.

Salon.com posted the article "Software Is Hard"
(http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/02/03/leonard/)

The intro:

"...Salon's Scott Rosenberg explains why even small-scale programming projects can take years to complete, one programmer is often better than two, and the meaning of 'Rosenberg's Law'..."

Then the article begins:

"...One way to look at Salon co-founder Scott Rosenberg's new book, "Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software," is as an attempt to tell the story of a specific software development project -- the effort by industry legend Mitch Kapor and a band of ace programmers to create Chandler, a kind of turbo-powered personal information management program that would dazzle users with its ability to enhance their productivity. On that level alone, the book is successful, even though Chandler's development process has been bumpy, and some four years after the project began, it's still not finished..."

I'm not sure I'm ready to read the rest of it yet. It cuts a bit too close to my current situation.

For the lemons you couldn't zest (likely most) candy the peels and seal them in bittersweet chocolate.

Lemons are about to be superexpensive. Make good while you can.

http://tnaoqv.livejournal.com/

I connect to Robert Sean Leonard, who played the kid at the end of Camelot in the production I was chorus/wardrobe person in back in high school. I have adorably apple-cheeked pictures of a very young Bobby Leonard (okay, a year younger than me, but he seemed younger!) holding Pellinore's dog in the dressing room. He was in our summer stock production of Barnum that year too, right before he left school to go act full time.

That connection leads to most of the other actor ones (though not Paul Giamatti or Ed Norton).

Thanks!

I did my part to lower lemon demand elsewhere... during the freeze week /cold snap* my Meyer was well warmed with xmas lights, cloth covers and a 1500W space heater. For it, the fruit for this year and next winter are safe.

I would not generally recommend the decoration of lemon trees with long strings of lights, nor of any tree with springy branches and long, surprising thorns.

* as said before, it was a cold snap. $800M in lost crops cold. Understood that other places routinely get much colder in winter, but that's irrelevant. Just like our routinely going 5 months without rain doesn't make a 4 week drought elsewhere any less a drought.

Um, why impressed? He was the talented one - it was quite obvious even then. No one was shocked when he dropped out to act full time. I don't even get credit for any particular cleverness in my choice of high school - it was the local public school, which just happened to have a very good theater program.

I did so much theater (amateur to semi-pro to pro) as a teen and twentysomething that it's not surprising some of the people I knew then eventually made it. With Bobby it wasn't even an eventually - he made it before either of us were old enough to drink.

They were together in The Illusionist(*), which had Rufus Sewell as the bad guy (**).
Rufus played Fortinbra in Branagh's Hamlet.(***)
Branagh also did Much Ado About Nothing with Robert Sean Leonard in it. (****)
Robert Sean Leonard worked with you.

That's how it goes?

I once met Charlton Heston, who was the King of the play within the play in Branagh's Hamlet.
Branagh also did Much Ado About Nothing with Robert Sean Leonard in it.
Robert Sean Leonard worked with you.
I met you at LAcon.

(*) Great movie, by the way.
(**) What a concept.
(***) And who do I see but Brian Blessed?
(****) And there's Brian Blessed again.

I am impressed nonetheless. As for talent, I've never seen you act, so how would I know? Besides, you have other talents, don't you?

I'm 2 degrees from Yul Brynner.*
I met you at LAcon.

* My grandfather dated Yul's sister back when they were growing up in China.**

** as I didn't comment in the subthread on expectations about names, I sommetimes get funny reactions when I say that my mom was born in Hong Kong.

Some people will just stare for a while at me and then say 'OK, well, I guess you look Asian.' When I say no, they then ask 'so your grandparents were missionaries?' Seemingly zero knowledge of the great big revolution associated with Russian communities forming outside of Russia.

Norton and Giamatti are separated from me by only one and two degrees, respectively.

The incident — witnessed by Superman and other impersonators — is the latest clash outside the landmark cinema between visitors and performers dressed as movie and cartoon characters.

For instance, I met Chuck Schumer when I was a teenager and he was my Congressman. He's met the President. Two degrees? No. I could probably really count the degrees between me and the Shrub at about four or five, via a business school friend of mine who is active in Republican politics. (We agree to disagree.) Traversing this chain would be very hard, but easier than trying to ring up Chuck looking for an introduction.

Yes, your blond hair does give you away quickly, Kathryn.

You're going to make me work at this, eh, Susan?

Oh, and my great-grandparents were Pomeranians. And German shepherds.

I mean me to Cinder to Baby Spice to Queen Elizabeth is just irrelevant.

(*) Sigh...

(**) I'll spare you the Degrees of Separation between him and me.

I'm inclined to agree with you, though it's really a matter for definition before playing the game. (Thus, the original Kevin Bacon game for linking film actors specified "performed in a movie with" as the link, and the Erdos Number is based on "was a co-author on a math paper with" as the link.) Traditionally, I think it's been specified as either "friends or relatives with" or at least "acquainted with"; some versions have used "able to request a trivial favor from" as the minimum qualification for a link.

Good point. And there's a big gap between taking your call or email, and forwarding your call.

For example, I'm 2 strong degrees to an ex-president of Peru.* It'd be relatively easy to write to him about Peruvian matters, I'm sure. But I'm equally sure there's no way I could use that connection to get Da Silva or Kirchner on the phone.

* good friend of my family hosted him when he lived in California.

Fred Astaire in Irwin Allen's The Towering Inferno, where they build the tallest skyscraper ever on top of earthquake country, and where O.J.Simpson plays a security guard who rescues kittens.

On the strip's official site, you can read monthly letters from the characters. Michael's past few letters will give you a good idea of the drivel he's just gotten published.

Outside the actor front, I'm within two degrees of Einstein, and either one or two of Cesar Chavez, depending on what level of acquaintance you require. I know of at least two others who lurk (and occasionally post) here who can match two on Cesar, and one who can do two to Einstein...anyone have them in one?

I could give them an earful, starting with, "what don't you understand about Pop Culture and the portrayal of scientists, the treatment of girls and women, and the values structures that get reinforced in the common culture?"

Nah. That was my brain having hit a sluggish moment, and thinking that the obvious was, well, too obvious.

Is it better to hone your skill on short stories first? Probably, but that depends on the person. Some people just aren't short-length writers, and it's the other way for others. Not very helpful,I guess, but there's no definite answer that can fit everybody.

@98: Oh yes. Good old NS and its credulous falling for the `chatnannies'. They did retract it, and later had a piece pointing out how the `chatnannies' were actually a free software eliza clone (it's known which one was used but I can't find it right now). The shadow identity of the `inventor' as `Deaths Head', a USENET Holocaust revisionist, didn't get mentioned... but others mentioned it instead. It's pretty pathetic that anyone in the modern world could imagine that AI was that easy to produce, or imagine that it was morally acceptable to have AIs posing as children (!) trying to entrap people, or imagine that this would be useful in a court of law...

@137: Depending on how you define it, I might be considered two degrees from the Queen of England. (I'm not sure if `great-granduncle played organ when queen was crowned' counts as two hops or many more.) A friend of mine is rather closer: if there was a horrible holocaust he might end up king (he's thirtysomethingth in line to the throne, and a City computer programmer turned EMT; he's been heard to jest that emergency medicine is less stressful than trying to fix bugs with hordes of angry beefy rugby-playing traders yelling at you.)

About time, if it's true.

Not only is he the only Democrat who does it for me so far, he's the one who should be in the White House right now.

And, in his college days, Gore and his Harvard roomate let nothing, not even their assiduous studies, stop them from watching Star Trek. True. Ask his roomate, Tommy Lee Jones.

...as if that mattered.

But I do hope he doesn't announce it at the Oscars. Neither the time nor the place. I mean, if Michael Moore's (I thought) perfectly reasonable speech created a mega-backlash, certainly announcing that you're running for President would be considered "too political" for the Oscars.

Also, if he runs, I hope he doesn't shave his beard.

Serge, #127, that's the only DVD I own.

Um, yes, she said shyly. I have a photograph of my grandfather and my aunt standing next to Albert Einstein.

Obviously, Mrs. Banks has to be Kristen Chenowith, and Mr. Banks is the guy who played Higgins in Magnum, P.I.. I like Jonathan Winters for Uncle Albert. Nicholas Cage could play Bert and Lucy Liu could play Mary Poppins. This would be good...

...but I think we should go for Bert and Mary considerably older: Tom Waits (I can hear it now) and Anjelica Huston.

You mean dark-haired men like this one? True, he has a lot of grey in there. Does that decrease his terrorisiveness?

When you have a story, you write. The story will defeat the facts two falls out of three every time, if it's powerful enough. How do you know if it's powerful enough? I can't tell. You just do, and here's the thing: if you're sure about it, really sure, you're always right.

A Reactionary's Shorter Catechism

There are a few laudable statements in there, but taken as a whole they're a recipe for a hidebound, repressive, sectarian hierarchy. It's the kind of thing apologists for the Confederacy will fawn over.

The angels are lovely. I'm also fond of Closet- about 9 pieces down on the A4 page. And the rivers. And the skeletons. All good.

* Plus glue, a molecularly sharp knife, and a nanosythetizer. (The latter is my belief. I used to work in paper- small 2D art pieces- and the nanoforge is the only way I can think of to get the results Callesen gets.)

On this, I still say there's no rule. Doing whatever works best for you, knowing that this precise course will not work the same way for anyone else, or in fact for any other story - that's not a rule. It's saying do what you want, or to put the same actual thing another way, follow your own judgement.

If something you experience, read, come across, are told about, hear from another, whatever, distills a narrative, then write the narrative you have. If not, don't. If that never happens, then probably your gift is not for narrative.

If you get multiple ideas from the same material, well, great. Pick the best one. But write the idea you have, not some idea that might come along later with more research.

On the other hand (and this is why none of the above is a rule) if, having had a story idea, you want to do more research, what you are saying is that the further research is more interesting to you than the story is. It can't be a very interesting story, then. But you are the sole judge of that. There is no rule.

The comments include a vehement defense of Cully Stimson's call to boycott law firms that pro bono defend accused terrorists on the basis that "they should just be strung up." Scary stuff.

I think it's a worthwhile project. It's not going to solve the problem, but to me the issue has all the hallmarks of something that needs some serious descriptive work. I think Hall's book is going to contribute to that in a useful way. Of course, if you're offended by someone even posing the question, that's your prerogative. You don't have to contribute your experiences to the data that she's gathering.

Whether Norton would remember me personally is doubtful - I didn't actually remember him until the same friend (who was also in that production) reminded me. (The main thing I remembered after that was what a jerk he was.) He'd probably remember the production. I remember it mostly for the insta-change Elizabethan-to-fairy costume I made for the double-cast Hippolyta/Titania and all my nearly-nekkid fairy girls. I still have the Elizabethan corset fitted out with a giant zipper somewhere in my sewing room.

My friend would certainly take my call; I've no idea if Giamatti would take his.

Another college friend who would certainly take my call connects me in some degree to Baywatch, Quantum Leap, Beverly Hills 90210, Beastmaster, Xena, Andromeda, Highlander, and Forever Knight. (Number of those shows I have actually seen: two.) Anyone who went to the 1983 worldcon might have a connection with this person as well, if one could remember back that far. (And people say writing fanfic never leads to pro writing...) I've no idea how many degrees of separation this leads to, since I don't know how much (if any) contact the writers and actors have. But presumably one could link through the production/directing staff somehow.

Dr. Evil clutched his heart as though it had been pierced by an arrow. Trembling, he fell to his knees on the floor of the crowded stuffy room, all eyes watching him. The Mexican Multiplier threw up his hands in victory, smiling, as Dr. Evil whispered, “I’ve been crushed.” The battle was finally over.

The poster for the contest can be seen here (about halfway down the page).

Another college friend who would certainly take my call connects me in some degree to Baywatch, Quantum Leap, Beverly Hills 90210, Beastmaster, Xena, Andromeda, Highlander, and Forever Knight. (Number of those shows I have actually seen: two.)

Highlander and Forever Knight?

Anyone who went to the 1983 worldcon might have a connection with this person as well, if one could remember back that far. (And people say writing fanfic never leads to pro writing...)

I remember it. I even participated in its Masquerade. Did you too?

(Oddly enough, you look an awful lot like my brother.)

On another topic entirely, I can't get to the 1000 last posts page; it comes up blank. Is anyone else having this problem?

(And yes, I have noticed that the 1000-comment thingie is acting up.)

Apart from resenting that I don't have such a good publicist, I'm depressed at the scientific innaccuracy of the write-up. And at the damaging misrepresentation of how intellectual property and the pharmaceutical industry actually work.

In all seriousness, I can tell you as an insider that we are likely to see a lot of genuine breakthroughs in cancer drugs in the next few years. This DCA might even be one of them. But what they've got at the moment, while promising, is a long way off being a miracle drug yet.

Scott Rosenberg sent me a copy of Dreaming in Code, which I'm about 2/3 of the way through. It's very good; it really gives you a sense of how amazing it is that complicated software ever gets built at all. I'll have more to say when I'm done.

"...it turns out to be a software disaster, a classic death march situation in which everything went wrong and nothing worked as planned and when we deployed it everything broke..."

I saw an interview with P.D.James, where she gave an example of the limitations of research. She was having her character Adam Dalgliesh climb a hill. She had researched climbing, she researched the particular hill. She described his ascent, concluding when he reached the top of the hill and "rolled over on his back, exhausted."

She gave the passage to her son-in-law, who was a recreational climber, to read and review. When he read it, he started whooping: "I'll say he's exhausted; he just did a two hour climb in five minutes flat."

Oh, and in 1987, Teresa and I were on a flight from San Francisco to New York that wound up delayed for five hours, and two seats behind us, Jesse Jackson was being interviewed at length by a newspaper reporter. When we finally disembarked at JFK at 4 AM, Jackson obligingly posed for pictures with bunches of passengers. I'd never realized what a tall man he is.

I'm sure there are others, but they're escaping me at the moment. I haven't met many famous actors or musicians. I'm almost certainly just two degrees from a ton of 1960s rock figures, because I'm friends with Paul Williams, who founded Crawdaddy; indeed, Paul is one of the people in John and Yoko's Montreal hotel room singing background vocals on the record of "Give Peace a Chance." And I'm definitely just two degrees from Bill Clinton, as is anyone in the SF world who's met British critic Roz Kaveney, because she knew him slightly at Oxford. Likewise, my old friend Avedon Carol has met a pile of British political and journalistic figures in connection with her work with Feminists Against Censorship.

I can't even begin to start totting up the famous and almost-famous writers I've met. Nobody would be impressed anyway. But I did once see William S. Burroughs emerge from a Baskin-Robbins in Seattle. Everybody always asks what kind of ice cream he was getting. The answer, I'm afraid, is vanilla.

I once narrowly avoided running into Marshall McLuhan with my bicycle. This really happened.

Sigh...I come to ML to escape thinking about what's going on at work.

Back to figuring out how to make my letter of resignation fit into sonnet form, I think...

Combining the two, I once knocked down former NY Governor Hugh Carey as he was coming out of Harry's at Hanover Square and I was hurrying down the street to meet someone for lunch outside the Chemical Bank building at 55 Water. Neither of us was looking, and he was probably a little tipsy. I helped him up, apologized and went (quickly!) on my way.

It's a good thing he was already out of office, or otherwise I'm sure that I would have had a significant conversation with the police.

How about sending this to your boss?

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
The project's dead
And so are you.

I like my boss, though he is presently a stress bunny. I'm going to need to buy him a nice cup of tea from the coffee cart and make sure he's sitting down before I tell him.

(I'm also going to see the project out, or stress out trying.)

(As an aside, in grad school, I toyed with writing my dissertation abstract as either a sonnet or an "e"-less lipogram. However, the desire just to finish the stupid thing, defend, then get out was much stronger.)

The Paul Williams I'm talking about showed up in SF fandom as a teenage prodigy in the early 1960s, then went on to a career as a journalist, impresario, and countercultural entrepeneur. He founded Crawdaddy!, emitted the book Outlaw Blues (possibly the first book-length work of serious rock criticism), helped organize the Central Park Be-In, got involved with various back-to-nature schemes (chronicled in the memoir Apple Bay), wrote an aphoristic book of hippie mysticism, and wound up in the 1980s as Philip K. Dick's literary executor, the single person most responsible for masterminding Dick's posthumous revival. In 1986 he published a book, The Map, about the experience of redicovering modern pop from the perspective of a sixties moldy fig; I wrote the introduction. These days Paul is still recovering from a serious head injury sustained in a bicycle accident. I saw him briefly at LACon last year and I'm very sorry we didn't manage the time to talk longer. He's one of my favorite people and, although the story's too long to get into in detail, he's probably the single person most responsible for getting Teresa and me onto the path toward working in New York book publishing.

My professor is also "descended" from Prausnitz, so I will be too. (This, I am sure, means nothing to those of you who are not in thermodynamics.)

My friend Keith Henson faces extradition to California from Arizona. His hearing is tomorrow. His "crime" is a misdemeanor offense: interfering with a religion.

Keith was convicted in 2001 after picketing Scientology's compound in Riverside, California. There were numerous improprieties at his trial. He was not permitted to appeal.

He's received several death threats, and he fears that he will not survive if he has to serve his one year sentence.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a statement after his conviction that his right to free speech had been violated. They urged the California Courts to set aside the decision.

I've set up a page urging respectful letters to the governors of California and Arizona.

Keith is a founding member of the L5 Society.

(attempt to link back in to at least some part of the Open Thread:) I guess knowing Keith gives me two degrees of separation from Douglas Hofstadter?

Thanks for your indulgence.

Have you written to Jeralyn at TalkLeft? It sounds like it should be right up her alley. Linky's in the sidebar on the front page.

Also, Serge at #156, as dedicated as I am to Claudia Black, I'm not sure about her singing voice. Lucy Lawless would make a very scary Mary and could handle the high notes.

JESR... I have no idea what Claudia Black's voice is like, but I just love the idea of her as Mary Poppins, As for Lucy Lawless...

"I said that the medicine was going to go down, and I mean it."

Winners get fancy new collars, losers get neutered.

"...Adapted from Philip Pullman's first novel about Sally Lockhart, a feisty, orphaned Victorian teen (Billie Piper), “The Ruby in the Smoke” finds her ferreting out information about her father's death; discovering cursed jewels..."

Billie Piper? Hurrah.

Me mum read us kiddies several Mary Poppins book. As I recall, the literary Mary was (to put it in SF&F terms) from a sort of coexisting fantastic world litle noticed by grown-ups. A teeny bit like the parallel underground magic world of Neverwhere, but of course much less sinister.

I think a mini-series might called for.

Celebrity meetings: I met George Wendt last week. He was in town doing a revival of Twelve Angry Men, and stopped into this bar I happened to be in, which is a well-known actors' hangout. Several other Angry Men had come by earlier in the week, and he was expected to drop in before the end of the show's run.

He walked in by himself, sat at the bar, and ordered a beer. It was so surreally familiar that the whole bar, who are quite accustomed to actors and celebrities, fell silent. It would be like having Micheal Richards fling open your door and slide into your living room, or bumping into Christopher Lambert in a parking garage, just as he's cutting off someone's head.

He made perfunctory conversation, finished his beer, and left.

Politicians: My rep Rosa DeLauro (typical shake'n'chat at a campaign stop at my then-job). Joe Lieberman, unfortunately documented for posterity in the archives of the local rag. My hero Ned Lamont. My mayor John DeStefano. My current alderwoman. My state attorney general Blumenthal, who embodies the word "oily". I saw Bill Clinton speak, but that was in a bowl setting when we were running the Special Olympics. Dubya, two or three degrees via the vomiting in the shrubbery thing. I sat two rows behind Margaret Thatcher at Phantom in London in 1987 when I was wandering around aimlessly in London before a worldcon and queueing for a show every morning. That was annoying; we couldn't wander around during intermission due to security. (I will never forget the Giant Holographic Head of Olivier from that trip, either.)

In honor of today's game, which I haven't yet seen results for as I've been dancing and/or on a train all day, I have two degrees with Tom Landry via two different routes - my mother (who used to meet him out walking), and Charlie Waters, who was the Cowboy designated to meet the girl who won the most-books-read contest at my elementary school.

Implausible artist under embarrassing circumstances: Robert Natkin, who wouldn't remember me specifically but might recognize my name.

This article in the NYT Magazine today describes (among other things) how humans have bred pug dogs so that they are incapable of normal sex and have to be bred using human intervention in ways that would not be printable in that paper if they were describing human activity. (The "right hand" assistance comes into it, as does "feathering" the female dog, which means imitating what the male dog should've inserted, but can't due to breed characteristics.) It also casually mentions that most breeders don't go to the hassle of human-assisted "sex", they just - brace yourself - cut open the female dog's uterus and insert the sperm surgically.

This. Is. Sick.

And the breeders are downright proud of it and the fact that there will, quote, never be feral pugs.

My kittens were rescued at a very young age, but they still don't seem entirely overjoyed at the prospect of being loved by a human. I came in tonight, saw one curled up in their basket, said a cheerful hello, and watched as she stared at me briefly in appalled terror and then fled the room. She's here by me now, but sitting at this computer is one of the Approved Positions.

It's entertaining when I accidentally corner one in the bathroom in the morning. She wails in terror and leaps and dodges madly in an effort to get around me to the door and escape. I leap and dodge madly trying to get out of her way without stepping on her.

This reminds me of dealing with someone I know, actually. Hmm.

Claudia Black, on the other hand, has that not-quite-normal celebrity look going on. If she walked into a room that I happened to be in, I would probably be unable to speak to anyone, let alone to her. Not that I'd mind.

http://pics.livejournal.com/serge_lj/gallery/00001ayb

Wow, someone saw Dave Clark's Time. I've always wondered.

But that's for a good cause. Pug fanciers have to resort to wanking and diddling because their vanity breed can't manage it on their own? I'm not a breed-snob -- I have a mutt -- but that's really pushing it.

So - apparently pugs can breed "naturally", but it ain't easy.

She's also the person I got my kittens from 12 years ago - she took in a pregnant teenager cat, raised the kittens, and placed them with her friends and co-workers.

My cat Murphy was like that. Her brain's operating system seemed to have two settings: a) "The universe is out to get me!", which was most of the time, and b) "The universe exists to serve me", usually at dinner time, or at night, when she'd jump on the bed, whether or not our canines were already there, and then unsubtly demand a chin rub.

"...They also seem clearly oriented toward the small, tight group of friends; there's much more of the in group/out group difference..."

He then goes on to this:

"...if you're going to sell to people under 30, don't stress 'You are an individual, you are unique' too much, because to a lot of people that registers as, 'You don't have any friends,' which is to say, 'You're a loser'..."

I'd make jokes about "Logan's Run" at this point, except that, if this is true, I'm more glad than ever that I am not that age any more.

Hearing this story, I went to the shop the next day and to look at and also not buy the revolting jumper.

Since Ollie didn't talk to him and I assume I can't claim Me -> Revolting Jumper in Charity Shop -> Jarvis, my Jarvis number is 4.

The muse of entropy, (in heliotrope,
Strained at the seams across her heaving chest,)
Snatches at posts she thinks might be the best
And smiles because she gave sufficient rope.
All things decay, disorder, cool and die,
This thread became a clawing back from time
Order from chaos, boasting into rhyme,
Laughter and joy and truth from one vain lie.
We're missing Mike, but still, it's quite a cast.
Haikus and sonnets, pantoums, jokes as well,
Limericks, literary names, and villanelle.
The muse selects, reads on, a thousand past,
Raises one eyebrow, waits, unfolds her wings,
There's no such thing as over till she sings.

Someone else besides me remembers Time? How "Dave Clark's"? I don't remember much about it except the head, which made quite an impression on me. Not necessarily a good impression.

I hope the column's problem was deadline stress and the massive distraction of fighting to get favorites on the Recommended List, not encroaching senility. And as for that phantom post, someone in the blogosphere must be uttering a manic "Bwa ha ha!"

Of course it did. And did I tell you about how our puppy almost ate my cell phone? Really. Honest.

Faren @231:
I think that comment was sergically extracted from your computer's brain.

Jo @227:
Well done. I do wonder what Patrick did to get her to sing. The mind boggles, shies away, peeps through its fingers, and boggles again.

Also: Serge is entirely innocent of impersonating your computer. Bwa ha ha.

http://cuteoverload.com/

it had to be lipstick. and a white doggie.

That's IT. To quote Dresden's Bob the Ghost, "I'll be going back into my skull now."

I only know it from the double LP. Based on the logo on the cover, the name of the show ought to be the unwieldy Dave Clark's Time: the Musical.

I figured it was that way due to some copyright issue with titles. Both Tommy and Shogun showed up on Broadway as The Who's Tommy and James Clavell's Shogun: the Musical respectively.

(On a related tangent, I'm catching up on my short fiction reading. I didn't realized that Harlan Ellison(tm) is a registered trademark.)

On The Pitch Bitch people were talking about the idea of a "David Cronenberg's Cinderella," and what they forgot to mention was that, rather than seeing if the glass slipper fits on various women's feet, the prince would be seeing if they had the weird stomach orifice that his mystery woman had produced it from.

*bows head, ready to be stoned*

Cut to scene of Brian of Nazareth going to the stoning with his mom.

Oh! Oh! Serge, you reminded me of my "in" to the degrees of separation game! James Woods is from RI, and when I used to work at a bank (shudder), he would come in every once in a while and my boss was invited to his mother's birthday party and he would pretty definitely recognize me on sight. So! I've got Cronenberg: 2 and Debbie Harry: 2 just from Videodrome.

And hot damn, he was in The Virgin Suicides, which gives me Sofia Coppola: 2, which gives me Everybody Else in the Entire World: 3.

But - and I don't think this has been released anywhere else yet - we've signed James Spader as Cinderella. We're all very excited about that.

Next week: ML goes behind the scenes for a look at "Paul Verhoeven's Aladdin".

And the week after next, Guillermo del Toro's remake of Love Story.

FROM DIRECTOR DAVID LYNCH

THIS SUMMER

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE.

JUNE 2007.

Ruby is a shlemazel, no doubt about it. She gets anxiety attacks about having me out of sight, which means I trip over her a lot, which means she gets cursed frequently, which makes her more anxious. She also has conflicted feelings about cows, and especially bulls, and this lead to her getting her ulna broken and her hock displaced when she was not quite fully grown, so she walks like Festus even after a couple of thousand dollars worth of surgery and casts. In addition, coyotes make her crazy, and are not to be tolerated. She was chasing one off the place two years ago and got hit by a 15 passenger van: chipped tooth, two broken ribs, and the van's radiator gone.

She moves slowly, with that damage and the fact she's just on nine, advanced age for the Chesepeake part of her genetics.

Griz, on the other hand: Griz is a fine gentleman of his middle years, at ten. He's a long-haired black tricolor, and has the personality of someone running for congress the first time. He's entire, a violation of policy and procedure, because I would do anything to have another like him, and farmers are hinky about castrating the best male animal of its type anyone's ever seen.

He has one, very serious, flaw: he takes off any time the impulse hits him, if the door is opened just long enough. Ruby's gimpiness gave him the opportunity last night, and my husband letting her in the front door instead of making her go to the laundry room, which is an airlock-style exit, contributed to the problem.

He came back at 5:51am, by which time I'd rewritten his obituary and started considering the necessity of doggie antidepressants for Ruby, who takes these things badly.

Stupid dog.

Drag Cinderella reminds me: a few months back I was watching TV with a friend and a commercial for the ridiculous Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning nonsense came on, and I, as usual, was grumbling about how I couldn't believe they had made a remake prequel. Then my friend cracked me up for the next few hours when she piped up with "I know! If they're going to remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it has to be with an all-drag queen cast!"

When I was done laughing, I realized what a good idea it actually was. Especially if it were a stage musical.

I thought I was bad
When I sliced my Aunt Polly
In two.
It turned out to be mad
And terrible folly
to do.
I'll get my count of dead up,
But how can I hold my head up?
I've lost a lot of face—
Because my chainsaw's jammed with lace!

*music swells*

CHORUS: Yes, it's jaaaammed with lace!
And I'm feeling more than a little
Brokenhearted...
Oh, it's jaaaammed with lace!
The motor will burn out if I try
To start it!

(spoken over choir singing "oo, oo")

How was I to know Aunt Polly wore so many layers? Sure, the chainsaw made funny sounds, but I thought that was just her whalebone corset! Still, that full-circle lace petticoat never would have gotten caught in the chain if she hadn't started trying to kick me—her own niece!

CHORUS (arranged with brass)
(then quietly)

I'll have to unjam my chainsaw,
And that's why I remain saw
Very sad!

walks dejectedly off stage

The toll in shoes was also costly.

Do you know what happens when really long hair meets a power drill?

Let's just say that now I put my hair up in a tight bun before using my drill.

Now, the whole really long hair and the lit stove issue, that I had to try out for myself.

And what, in this context, is really long? I can't sit on mine, but I do tuck it into my trousers when I'm still sleepy in the morning. The fashion for low-slung trousers was not a cure for the problem, either.

you?

WWaD
Blame it on her muse, probably, or barring that, the boogie.

My favourite?
"Let's blow this popsicle stand, boys"
"Kaboom?"
"Yes, Rico, kaboom."

(You must, of course, see it in context).

-----
* Patrick did say this was a continuation of that thread.

Well, it's not drag. It's pantomime! Fine old British tradition! Nothing, you know, strange about it.
Jennifer Jason Leigh, I think, as Buttons.

(pauses to imagine Jennifer Jason Leigh in well-fitting pageboy outfit; eyes unfocus; mouth hangs open; brain suffers slight hiccup similar to Faren Miller's computer digesting review by John Clute; brain recovers)

Well, it's not drag. It's pantomime! Fine old British tradition! Nothing, you know, strange about it.
Jennifer Jason Leigh, I think, as Buttons.

(pauses to imagine Jennifer Jason Leigh in well-fitting pageboy outfit; eyes unfocus; mouth hangs open; brain suffers slight hiccup similar to Faren Miller's computer digesting review by John Clute; brain recovers)

christmas with penguins.

ajay: Ahh, pantomime. My mistake...

At the time, long hair meant around hip length. At the moment, mid-back. (I chopped off most of it for Locks of Love and haven't fully recovered yet.)

And yes, I know about the drill thing from personal experience. It was scary.

David Lynch's The Sound of Music

Texas Chokechain Massacre

It's been done. I give you Takeshi "Audition" Miike's The Happiness of the Katakuris: "the cinema of endurance" as karaoke video.

When I was done laughing, I realized what a good idea it actually was. Especially if it were a stage musical.

It's been done, sort of. Blood Orgy of the Chain Saw Chorus Line, a real play. I only saw the sequel Blood Orgy of the Bemuda Triangle Zombie Assassins, which was hilarious.

Howard Pierce #274: Did you see The Happiness of the Katakuris? I ended up being a little underwhelmed. Too much silly, not enough gore. Great concept, though, and some of the frames from it would make awesome, awesome posters.

What may not be so obvious in the West is that Miike makes a lot of movies -- like four to six every year. So, for every Ichi the Killer there's a dozen or more Full Metal Yakuzas.

(In his interview for Showtime's Masters of Horror, Miike said [paraphrasing], "I never wanted to become an international film director. I just wanted to make cheap videos for 14-year-old boys in rural prefectures to rent from the local convenience store.")

So, it's still on my list of movies I want to see someday, but I'm in no great hurry.

Mary Aileen #281: Oh well. I got excited for a second, but I didn't have much hope of it being the same thing, anyway. Still, Bermuda Triangle Zombie Assassins still sounds pretty great.

Speaking of zombies, has anyone seen the underwater Nazi zombie movie Shock Waves? That's about #1 on my list of movies that I would remake if I were a director who made remakes.

abi, #233, LOL Excellent word spelling!

Former White House Chef Roland Mesnier has put a book out on his time in the White House kitchen, and yesterday the WashPost excerpted some juicy bits.

It had a bogus-looking attachment, vvvvvvvvvv.bmp.

It's size was only 4k.

Now, this might be a real appreciation, but I strongly suspect that there's some spam/trojan mail bot at work, mining addresses from round here for nefarious purposes.

Beware!

On the other hand I do not watch horror movies except perhaps when a family member is playing the DVD and then I come and go so I can get the gist without having nightmares for weeks.

Cheesy horror movies, whatever. I don't watch those unless I'm deliberately in the mood for trash. One of the channels here (TCM, I think) played an incredibly cheesy newish horror movie called Lake Placid. I think that pretty Jersey cow they had in it (to try and bait the monster, but they got all worried about the cow getting 'hurt.') was probably embarassed so her name wasn't listed in the credits.

That was today's public service message.

Man, I hate seeing fandom become something the 16-year-old me couldn't have joined.

::Exits humming Political Science*::

*well, we don't want to hurt no kangaroos

(characters are examining the bisected body of one of the croc's early victims)
- Maybe he was attacked by a bear.
- No, bears don't attack in the water.
- Oh, well, maybe it was a beaver.

(they discover the remains of another victim - a single severed toe.)
- Was this the missing man?
- He seemed taller.

So said old Professor Broom in Guillermo del Toro's HellBoy, who has HellBoy - Sword of Storms coming out today on DVD. This animation feature probably won't be as squamous and rugose as the live-action one, but, hey, this is del Toro. And it'll tide me over until he has completed his sequel to HellBoy.

Oh, Lord, I am a comics nitpicker. Can a man fall lower?

Probably not, ajay, probably not. That being said, I've never read Mike Mignola's comic-book itself. I took a look at my usual store and it looks like other people are nowdoing stories about his characters. There probably are trade-paperback reprints.

And now my computer limps onstage, muttering and scratching at its graying, thinning wires, to declare (belligerantly): "Hey there, rich kids -- I guess none of *you* have to make do with dial-up. Fancy-shmancy instantaneous downloads? Well, screw that! I make her *work* (make that *wait*) to amuse herself every morning on the bleepin' Net." A sinister grin flits across its narrow monitor, to be replaced by an expression of phony enthusiasm [don't ask me how it manages that!], as it adds: "Windows, Windows '98/ That's what we appreciate!"

Exit computer, sputtering.

PS: It gets on well with Clute, but can freeze in the presence of the NY Times online.

I'm surprised, Faren. I thought that being a reviewer for Locus would permit you to live in high style.

Now it seems like we're supposed to be afraid.
It's patriotic in fact.
color coded.

Yep. That about sums up America right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3sLE-Jk0rw

America's Crappiest Senators

PNH might enjoy it too.

Can any of our hosts tell me if there will be a Tor party?

Contra (Contraception) was started as an end of season/before winter relaxacon for people who often ran our local convention and helped on others. (end October/early November) It is a privately funded / self supporting party and the person who started it wanted it to be 21+, id checked, so we wouldn't have to worry about underage drinking or getting in trouble in other ways.

It has a theme every year, this last year was disco. BUT we always have the 21st Century Vaudeville and Century Camp Show, it's the Main Feature of programming, The acts range from the really pretty damn good to the silly.

Literature is probably discussed, we always have a writer, toastmaster and artist guest. There's a dealer room. We lost our beauiful atrium hotel (it was condemned last summer. all-wood construction turned dangerous due to fungus) and the hotel it was held at this fall was, urm, not it. So we continue looking.

There's always a theme. People get crazy. We have fun.

But...I got into fandom at 16. I immediately got involved in helping with the local con. By the time I was 21 I'd been to over thirty conventions, including a Worldcon at which I ran a department. None of those conventions had an age restriction, or special "teenage" memberships, or any of the other modern appurtenances of second-class citizenship for younger fans.

In this, my experience was very similar to that of decades of earlier newcomers who'd also entered fandom in their teens and found it welcoming -- teenagers like Bob Silverberg, Terry Carr, and the young Harlan Ellison, just to name a few.

I understand the legal issues. I just hate what our culture has become, and what it's done to fandom. I look at even the smartest and savviest friends of mine who have teenaged kids, and I look at the short leash those kids are on, and I cannot begin to say how grateful I am that my teenage years were then and not now.

Moreover, as Howard Peirce points out, what's at issue isn't anyone's "viewpoint," it's Broder telling out-and-out lies about what happened at a DNC meeting.

(*) And, in an extremely convoluted way, led to my meeting the woman who'd become my significant other.

almost as much as the shows i saw stand out in my memory, i remember the shows i couldn't get into. moxy fruvous played mostly in bars, & while some bars had a policy of xes-on-the-hands for minors, many others wouldn't allow minors under any circumstances.

my little sister & i decided to bus it from coulmbus, ohio to toronto for fruhead convention one year. (we were 14 & 17, respectively.) the border guard called our parents at 2 am to ask "did you know your daughters are at the canadian border?...." luckily, they did.

It's bizarre to be children of a golden age, isn't it? And it really was; when they write the histories, I'm pretty sure that the USA from 1960-1980 or so will be accounted that.

U.S. sent pallets of cash to Baghdad

"Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve."

Says John Rogers:

"Most people are outraged at the blinding mismanagement that's finally coming out after all these years. Finally, oversight, which is Congress' goddam job.

We screenwriters, however, are all in a dead heat to turn in our competing heist pitches to the studios by Friday."

I don't know; I'll tell you when I get there. (the "comic of the movie of the comic"* which just came out spelled it "Broom" at one point in the intro and I nitpicked RIGHT THERE.)

Do pick up the Mignola stuff- it's wonderful.

*Their phrase. It's a separate chronology, and they're referring to it as "Hellboy Animated", I think.

"They're really on to me," he said. "I was hoping to pick up a few minions."

(How old is Sasha anyway?)

Should really be 44/50 as they are totally wrong about the origin of "Okay."

Along with worrying how she'd made it out of the house and all the way to New York, I was thinking "No wonder she's so heavy when we pick her up--she's using Clever Feline Visual Tricks* to look smaller, but she can't do anything about her actual mass!"

*They all have these--but some tricks are cleverer than others

"I'm still not getting this, Ted. Could you run through it one more time?"

Can anyone give me enough rundown on Minicon to determine whether I ought to try to convince my job to send me there? (It'll be a hard sell since I'm going to Texas on their nickel in March - I only officially get one conference per year.)

I wonder if they do this in MN every Easter.

Minicon is a very, very nice con they do every Easter in the Minneapolis area. Many correspondents here have attended, and some do regularly. I'm hoping to attend again this year myself.

It is notable for music parties, a general tilt toward ink-&-paper SF, and a laid-back attitude toward the universe.

It's not huge (what? maybe 600 people?) but it attracts the right kind of people, in my humble opinion. I recommend it.

My cover identity has a limited budget. It's a problem.

The makers seem to be based in Minneapolis, so maybe they'll do a conference there every year - this seems to be the first one.

it attracts the right kind of people

Whenever this sort of thing comes up, it generally gets made clear to me that I'm not the right kind of people.

For some reason, this reminds me of the tidbit I recently read on Wikipedia that Inuit languages' morphology/syntax includes a fourth-person verb form (slightly past halfway down the page) to clarify statements of the type "So then he (walrus #1) tells him (walrus #2), 'Just fix the damn thing and keep my private life out of it, okay?'"

Was it in 1986 that Robert Silverberg wrote an editorial in Amazing where he decried the presence of all those costuming people? A few of 'them' got peeved, which is why the Atlanta worldcon's masquerade made it a point to tell the audience that winners would be given books.

"Costumers don't read." Yup, that was that "nice" guy Bob Silverberg. It was actually in late 1987 or early 1988, I believe.

I wasn't at the 1986 worldcon, but I've seen that masquerade video numerous times, and the absolute most memorable costume in it for me is Phil Mercier's "Repent, Harlequin". Absolutely stunning. And of course not from a book...right?

Were you in the "Snow Queen" group? That one wasn't from a book either....um.

The best in show in 1986 was the Pettingers' unspellable group of gods from the Tekumel...books.

Hmm, we seem to have a little problem here.

(They gave the Pettingers BOOKS as a prize? Talk about coals to Newcastle...)

(Not to read, of course, being a costumer. I just like to have shelves full of books for, um, decoration. Yeah, that's it.)

(*) Based on some revelations you made a few days ago about schoolmate Robert Sean Leonard, you were, what? Fourteen years old?

I was 14 at Chicon IV, having started congoing that spring at age 13. I was theoretically being chaperoned by a friend's mother, whose definition of chaperonage involved getting all the teenagers a room in one tower while she got a room in the other tower and said "see you Monday for our flight back."

The guy who played Jherek in that 1982 entry later ended up married to or at least living with the ex-wife of the guy who did the Harlequin entry in 1986. Just by way of weird gossip.

He's pushing to outlaw all use of portable music players, cell phones, and video game devices while crossing streets in NY state.

Not that I don't sympathize -- I've noticed the glassy-eyed, zombie-like aspect that many people take on while talking on cell phones. But as a practical matter, this would be a massive mess, as well as an imposition on our rights.

Enquiring minds want to know....

I'd have more chance of supporting a bill like that, if it wasn't so clearly an invasion of rights. People who are wearing headphones (or earbuds), especially with the sound up a little loud, tend to be oblivious to all around them, to the point where it would be just so easy to run into them in a parking lot or wherever. (I remember one guy who was jogging on the railroad track one morning, with his soundmachine, and didn't notice the train approaching him from behind. I believe the engineer finally (having slowed to a crawl) blew the horn. It put a small crimp in the commute.)

Corrupted at such a tender age...

You might be interested in a sequel to that Moorcock entry:

The Return of the Iron Orchid. Same costumer as at Chicon.

Would that be in Austin?

The Fan History Project has a pictures from many worldcons, including masq. photos from Chicon.

joann @ #349:

San Antonio.

I had thought their 'OK' origin explanation was the correct one, but I see now Wikipedia references a definitive academic explanation which sounds reliable. On the other hand, they're definitely wrong about LSD. I got credit for the right answer because I correctly reasoned which answer they would think was correct, but it's wrong.

Explanation: Retbg pbagnvaf ylfretvp npvq, ohg abg ylfretvp npvq qvrgulynzvqr juvpu vf zhpu zber cbjreshy naq bayl znqr flagurgvpnyyl. Fbzr zbeavat tybevrf pbagnva ylfretvp npvq nzvqrf, ohg fgvyy abg ylfretvp npvq qvrgulynzvqr.

Teresa will be pleased to know I got the Flatiron building right, despite not being a New Yorker. I missed one question because I confused the nicknames of the first two computers, and one because I just didn't notice the correct answer in the list. The other 5 I screwed up fair and square.

My view is that any quiz that gets geeks arguing seriously about history, biochemistry, etymology, et al. is a good quiz.

P.S. Several of their parenthetic comments in presenting the answers are also wrong, viz the folk etymology for software "bug". Edison used the term bug in referring to errors or problems in his inventions 50 years before Grace Hopper's famous moth logbook entry.

Foo. That's just too far away for a casual visit during a conference.

You'd want to visit me? I'm flattered. (Suppressing: um, why?)

I've only been to San Antonio a couple of times (school field trip, LoneStarCon); it should be interesting to actually have time to sightsee like a tourist once I manage to lose my co-attendees.

Man oh man.

I'd debate that point.

Oh goodness... I remember that photo from 1982's Chicon. You can probably guess where I am in there, based on the group's average verticality.

The investigator never interviewed alleged victims.

I had been pleased with myself with getting 42/50 on the Alchemists challenge but now I see that 43 is the score needed to comment on it.

Is this the Tim Powers principle that when you look at the cards the cards can see you?

It's also true that many people will look at a web page without reading the terms of use. So is this an instance of the other Tim Powers principle that if you play the game you're selling your soul without knowing it (if some terms-of-use page somewhere says so)

Wikipedia disputes their Flatiron answer, claiming the Park Row Building is both taller (and thus presumably a skyscraper if the Flatiron is) and older.

Me, I got that one wrong anyway -- I guessed it was the first to make noticable changes in weather. I think I ended up at just 38/50, but I knew the maybe-real OK answer they didn't have listed as a choice, and guessed wrong which they believed. I think the others, I just didn't know.

She was making a joke: "First actual bug": hey, folks, this bug is a real insect!

I can't entirely blame the concom, given that Sasha is a self-proclaimed evil mage.

I'm proud that I missed the "Philadelphia Experiment" question. And I once had a roommate who was a neighbor of Martin van Buren (...well, of his house, not actually a contemporary...), so I'm totally with DaveL at #324: I was obligated to give the "Old Kinderhook" answer for "OK".

The NHS needs knitters!

Well, I think it's a cool link, considering my views on both breastfeeding and knitting...

Susan, #328, yes, Minicon is always on Easter and you should definitely come! There isn't a masquerade but people do wear costumes.

Anyone want to start a new hobby?

other writerly nocturnalia bored to shreds with the mundane and banal bestseller dreck that amuses the simian throng that goes to bed every night at 11 within the cloisters of "art" and "literature" that will not clash with the soft, homogeneous pastel-hued decor of gibbering bourgeois life

I don't think I've ever seen anyone use such a number of "that" clauses in a sentence by accident.

Is it a lyrical post-Beat vision of America, or the deployment of self-distancing tactics and imagery in the growing knowledge of the illusion of such a notion? Both.

Better still:

includes logostiary/glossary of Calembourist neologisms. Codex Obscura weaves theory terms, pop culture, ebonics, glam facades, polemic and the like to depict the impossibility of mad authors turned stable, and an anagogical dystopolis in a terror-stricken Roman-America where cocaine-addled inventors attempt to put forth their war machine proposals within a space that is perpetually an ethereal 3:33 am.

I think someone asked to write a blurb for a site peddling such absurd nonsense might well try to stretch the boundaries and see just how much bollocks the editors will approve.

For a moment General Cameron and the commander of the battery sat in their saddles, looking at each other in silence. There was no more to say; apparently too much had already been said. Then the superior officer nodded coldly and turned his horse to ride away. The artillerist saluted slowly, gravely, and with extreme formality. One acquainted with the niceties of military etiquette would have said that by his manner he attested a sense of the rebuke that he had incurred. It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment. [emph. added]

--A.G. Bierce, One Kind of Officer

I stopped reading after that. Every time I hear conservatives (or anyone else for that matter) bemoaning the lack of civility, that passage rings in my ears. It's been ringing a lot lately.

Actually, that is the correct answer, though I admit it's odd that his first name got used. Blame the German mapmaker who first did it.

(Oh, and I got 45/50... but I got very lucky with some of my random guesses.)

Firesign Theater: "Welcome to Vespucciland!"

BTW, the question is presented so as to make the correct answer sound silly. In reality, major "merchants" in the Middle Ages and Renaissance functioned much like venture capitalists and technology CEOs today - they gambled tremendous sums of their own and other people's money on extremely risky ventures, with big payoffs resulting only if they knew better than anyone else.

Thus merchant Amerigo Vespucci was himself a cartographer and navigator, and ended up leading an expedition of ships to the New World, only a few years after Columbus. Unlike Columbus, he knew the geography of India and Southeast Asia well enough to recognize that the coast of Central and South America they mapped out could not possibly be part of the "Indies." Letters he wrote at the time - which were translated into Latin and widely circulated - show that he was almost certainly the first European to recognize it as a new continent. In other words, Columbus (as he was Latinized) may have stumbled on the New World for Europe, but Americus (as he was Latinized) was the first to realize just what had been discovered.

This stuff is exciting, and it's a pity most schools don't manage to make it so.

Libby is sooo busted. And it looks like Fitz may have gotten enough from this one to go after Libby's boss, with an order of journalists on the side...

It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment.

Indeed. This is one of the reasons I advocate its use in the political discourse. It's much more nuanced, much more telling, and much more fun than incivility. Any competent wordsmith can deliver a deadly insult in words I could use in front of my granny.

I think that shouting, swearing, and namecalling are best left to the incompetent, schoolchildren, and those of us who can't keep the hammer on the nail rather than the thumbnail.

I don't resent conservatives. In order to resent them, I would have to acknowledge that they have some authority over me, or over the public discourse. But I recognize no such authority. This is why conservatives get so upset when the rest of us are incivil. Our incivility shows that we don't acknowledge their sense of entitlement. Conservatives make such a big deal about civility because it's the only way they have of preserving the illusion of authority.

Once you start talking back -- or better yet, talking down -- the game isn't fun for them anymore.

But I don't think there's a single way to read that passage. Bierce is one of those authors who, like Borges, can write simple sentences that mean many, often contradictory, things simultaneously. And I love sentences like that.

as long as we're about inspirational quotes, my favourite one from that piece:

“You can't steal a gift.” Dizzy Gillespie, defending another player who'd been accused of poaching Charlie Parker's style: “You can't steal a gift. Bird gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.''

True. When I was a kid my dad had a flyer on the wall of his office with the classic line

Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker

I can find copies of his Devil's Dictionary online, but I hadn't been able to find copies his adaptations of Aesop's Fables (I have copies of the Dover editions, in a box).

One of them (paraphrasing vaguely) told of the Treasury that felt Hands delving into it. The Hands apologized, the Treasury responds "That's quite alright. I am familiar with the Hauls of Congress".

leaving me with one question: Treason?

(Anna Nicole Smith: Damn shame.)

Minicon is a very, very nice con they do every Easter in the Minneapolis area...it attracts the right kind of people.

The right kind of people being those who don't celebrate Easter? Is the corollary that people who do celebrate Easter are the wrong kind of people?

I also know that his family, and all the administration's families and trust funds or whatever they put their money into while they "serve in office' (that is so foolish, if their monies are so tied up in the public weal, they should make that money the public's to use... just my two cents..._) are making profit hand over fist because of the war.

Just saying. He's going to be farking rich when his term is up, despite his supidity as a businessman.

Unless he goes to Leavenworth as a war profiteering criminal.

...which will be when pigs can fly, or, to use equivalent expressions from the French language, when chicken grow teeth, or on the week of the four Thursdays.

If that's all I can get, I'll settle with never having to see his smirky face on TV anymore.

Anyway. The technical term was, I think, day-for-night.

In French, the equivalent term was American night.

in hebrew, multiple-choice questions are called american questions.

Juli, #403, some folks celebrate Easter. Some don't. In general, people who like this kind of conversation will like Minicon.

The right kind of people that Minicon attracts are the kind of people who hang out here. (C'mon, this is Bill's definition of the right kind of people, not some MSM definition.) OK, so it's kind of hard to celebrate Easter at your home church if you go to Minicon, but there -are- churches in Minneapolis.

I don't go to Minicon anymore because it's too far to drive and I really don't want to fly (not because of security theater, but because it's a pain to fly with kids, and I'm not sure how well my surgically repaired back would handle the airplane seats). If I lived closer, I'd still be going every year. When the eldest urchin was 7 she'd been to 8 Minicons.

I'm personally unhappy with constant use of profanity because it devalues swearwords. By not swearing usually, when my boss came up to me and asked how things are going, the time I answered "It's a complete fucking nightmare" was suprising and forcefully showed that this was an extraordinarily bad situation that I really wasn't happy with.

With some of the people I know, there's only one English swearword left. If that comes into common use, how will I show extreme annoyance or stress? We need words that are shocking and extreme, for use in shocking and extreme situations.

YMMV etc.

(I use more swearwords in things I write, but I can justify this to myself as

1. hardly anyone gets to read it and;
2. (in my stories in general) story arises from conflict; conflict leads to stress; stress leads to profanity*)

* The path to the darkside that is

The right kind of people being those who don't celebrate Easter? Is the corollary that people who do celebrate Easter are the wrong kind of people?

Not at all. I myself slip away from the Minicon hotel and attend Easter Mass. You're welcome to come with me.

As for the astronaut affair and the death of Anna Nicole Smith making the headlines in such quick succession, it's almost enough to make me wonder if God has been spending too much time lately perusing tabloids at supermarket check-out counters.

A lot of cursing might indicate someone who can't manage their own anger, or it might indicate someone who is trying to project false bravado. No cursing might indicate someone who thinks they're better than the people who curse, or someone who has trouble dealing with anger so pushes anger away.

The way I look at it, the healthy approach is when your physical and emotional states line up with your speech. If you're f**king mad, then you should say you're f**king mad.

'Zounds,' said the Admiral - he was the only serving officer known to Jack who still said zounds - 'it goes on forever.'

A friend of mine managed to accidentally teach a daycare of kids to mildly swear in French. She always said 'zoot' when others might say 'drat', which I gather is something the same.

Must... resist... Must not show off... knowledge of... French swearing... must not!!!
(That was supposed to sound like Captain Kirk trying not to be taken over by an alien entity.)

Meanwhile, a lot of Quebec swearing involved Catholicism and the objects of the cult. My hypothesis is that one swears according to what is important in one's culture.

Faren@421 -- I was on a panel about swearing in fiction at Duckon, with the impressively foul mouthed Sarah Monette and Keith di Candido, whereupon I had to own up to being unable to pronounce the word "fuck" without the quotation marks, and to having used unlikely letters and dashes to represent words to bad to use in polite text in _Tooth and Claw_. (Every so often I get email from someone asking what v- stands for. Heh. It stands for "Trollope might be expecting me to read 'harlot' for the dash in _Is he Popinjoy?_, but there's something gone wrong somewhere.") My general feeling is that I'm with T.S. Eliot on this, every word has to be there for a reason.

Swearing in Quebec is fun. When I worked at a small office in Quebec City, in which everyone was english-speaking, *everyone* cursed in french.

As to profanity in writing -- am I the only person who finds it more impactful when characters swear in a book? I barely notice spoken profanity, but when I read it, it always stands out (and most often I find it unnecessarily jarring, though not always).

Meanwhile, when people swore, in Firefly, what were they saying?

I thought 'v---' was something very vulgar in whatever language the dragons normally use. (I don't think they're English-speaking normally, going on the context you gave us.)

One other approach was the Jose Chung episode of X-files. One of the characters was a cop, rather foul-mouthed, but they got away with it by having him actually say 'bleep' or call someone a 'blankhole'.

Ahem. Sorry.

And Serge @ 442, the nice folks at Farscape came up with a dizzying array of alien swear-word equivalents, and at least one or two of them have attained general use in certain corners of fandom. Love that.

It's years since I lived there and spoke it regularly, but I seem to remember Swiss German profanity having a similar set of swearwords to English. Dutch uses some diseases as swearwords; I remember cancer and TB being two of the more popular.

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Bob Dylan
Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Seems as appropriate now as it did then.

Foyle's War is a detective show set in Britain in 1940-1941, and is very reminiscent of Farthing, although without the alternate history angle (so far).

In the Ash books (Mary Gentle), the framing story is an archaeologist translating old documents and emailing them to his colleagues. In addition to translating 15th-century versions of various European languages to modern English, he translated 15th-century Soldier to 20th-century Soldier. "I'm afraid she does say 'fuck' rather a lot." But it worked pretty well, possibly because Mary Gentle is a mad genius and her brain is on the Menu.

About profanity: I am a logger's daughter from Yelm, my husband is a preacher's kid from Texas. We have entirely different approaches to the stuff. However, since I knew there was no way I'd be able to control my impulses well enough to keep my father's mantra of "God damned son of a bitching bastard" away when I dropped a full bowl of mashed potatoes on my foot, I came up with a little lie.

I told my kids there was a profanity license, and they couldn't swear until they were eighteen and passed the test. They figured out it was a lie soon enough, but by then they'd managed to develop some clean interjections. So I'm the only one in the family who holds to the old lumber camp dialect. Probably just as well.

Andrew 444: And Farscape had a slightly more sophisticated method about it than BSG, where it's simply a global search-and-replace: "Frak you" and "You were too busy frakking with Baltar" and "How many guys have you frakked since we got married" and "It's all frakked up." Farscape talked about things being frelled, and said "frell you" occasionally, but actual sex was called "recreating" by the Peacekeepers and "having sex" by everyone else; IIRC 'frell' was never used in that context.

I like that a lot. Let's not act like sex is the worst thing we can think of, huh?

I also like the word 'jackhole'. It's a conflation of two words, leaving out the part of each that's considered offensive, yet everyone who hears it knows exactly which two words you intend to convey!

Like Neil, when I use a profanity "in the clear", it has more effect because people know that I don't swear in the ordinary course of events.

It's also a handy habit for life with small children.

The word "hirsute" is what makes that phrase work.

I don't use it myself*, but I think it's a charming expression, unlike most euphemisms.

I used to work with a woman who used a truly amazing variety of obscenities, many of which were part of our regional dialect (although I had never before heard them all in one place, as it were.)

One of her favorite expressions was "son of a whore," which sounds rather Shakespearian.

*because I doubt that people around me would understand it. It was popularized for me by a character on "Thin Blue Line."

Again?

They just can't stay away from him.

that's very hirstute fracking weather.

zoot!

Chiana also uses that word to mean have sex more than once, in "Wired" and, uh, "Out of Their Minds" if memory serves.

(message board geeks are so identifiable)

I like the convergence in Making Light discussions.

Now I have to go and work on something that will necessitate the use of all creative insults, Shakespearean swearing, and wordless growling I can muster. Grrrrrrr.

The folk in my (relatively poor) area have worn the corners well off of the commonest obscenity (which I tend to refer to as "swive", though I see we're euphemising with "frak" here)

I recall one example, after catastrophic equipment failure (a chainsaw). I will not utter it here. But in the uncommon tongue it can be rendered as "Swive the swiving swiver! The swiving swiver's swiven! Queynte!"

As my Dutch teacher says, it's a nation of people who are rarely embarrassed.

Considering that my manager recently took me to task for referring to my current assignment as that Darn Project, I think I'll keep the swiving to a minimum.

Well, maybe behind banana leaves.

On swearing and the Lesser Antilles: I rather like the St Lucian insult 'ti lang maman-ou' (petite langue de ton maman/your mother's clitoris).

Come on, you know you want to. Give in to the swear side. (Please ?)

One my favorite way to insult someone, from Jules Renard. Upon hearing someone being called a cunt, he just added "I don't know that you can call him that. After all he's neither as deep nor pleasant" ("Il n'en a ni la profondeur, ni l'agrément").

Talk about class.

Swearing in Icelandic tends to be all about the devil and hell etc. which is somewhat strange because the country isn't hugely religious (as an example it's pretty much the norm that a couple will get married once their child is old enough to hold the rings for them in the wedding ceremony).

Although since most people speak English as well a fair bit of English swear words are used. However they are all less serious than they are in English. Probably because you need to be pretty immersed in a language for the swearwords to have the same emotional impact.

They're also often said with an intentionally really thick Icelandic accent and bent to fit in with Icelandic grammar

So shit -> sjitturinn (-ur is a common ending for male nouns, and -inn is the definate article)

The most amusing run I've heard though was someone going: "Helvítis, andskotans, helvítis andskotans, helvítis andskotans djöfulsins FOKK!" with a nice crescendo

mostly they are pretty straightforward, often they refer to your mother's reproductive organ. but there was one my roommates used, applying to a female person, sounding like pustemma.

when pressed, they didn't actually know what it meant (several modern arabic phrases have leaked into modern hebrew, but most israelis don't speak arabic). i decided that that it meant postmistress.

It's interesting to see how sex or blasphemy can make stronger dirty words, depending on the time or place. Personal background figures into it as well. I can tell there's some time lag between changing beliefs and changes in how people use strong language. Many people who don't actually believe in damnation still refer to it when slamming their fingers in doors. Likewise, people who don't really object to sex will still refer to it, rather than something they *do* object to (say, bigotry) while shaking their fists at uncooperative inanimate objects.

I've suggested the term 'spay' to substitute for that usage. "Spay the Bush Administration" is much more like what we mean. We want to stop it from producing another administration, at a minimum! (It's a pity there isn't an unambiguous monosyllabic word for 'castrate'.) I've sometimes gone so far as to suggest using the phrase 'toxic waste' instead of 'shit', but that's even less likely to catch on, for reasons obvious and not.

Or maybe they're all obvious. Whatev, as the kids say nowadays. And they should get offa my lawn.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that using X as a swearword means that we think it's a bad thing. If it did, what would we be left to deduce from the large number of people who swear by saying the name of God?

"Geld"?

Oook.

Although there was an episode in the first season set in a country house full of people from the pro-appeasement crowd, which is still one of my favourites.

(The most recent season was set in 1942, by the way, with a consequent increase in the number of supporting characters with American accents.)

*dances up and down*

GELD THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!

Paul 485: It's not what they hate, it's what they're AFRAID OF.

2. My mother, who grew up in a poor/working class/small town setting, tells me she never heard swearing on a regular basis until the 70s. She remembers her father getting very, very angry at another man in town, and publicly calling him a "son of a b---". This was hugely scandalous, and served to indicate the seriousness of the situation to all concerned. She told me she thinks that things were much less violent then, because words could express a level of anger that they don't any more. I have also been told by several different WWII vets that they don't like war movies because of the language. Swearing, meant to indicate realism, was very uncommon, and makes them uncomfortable and makes the movie unrealistic to them. Mom and the vets may be romanticising the past, I don't know, but what they say makes some sense, I think.

I suspect rather than "menstrual pad" it is probably a more pungent vernacular like (pardon me) "c*** rag."

#489: I bought a copy of "An Inconvenient Truth," but I've put off watching it in part because the What Might Have Been factor is just so fucking depressing. Wouldn't it have been great to have a president who could think without Karl Rove's lips moving?

Just saw this at the Guardian Unlimited. Has completely brought my down from my excitement over finishing my second ever pillowcase tonight. *sigh* I would really like to believe that this isn't already decided. It seems there's no mistake so big that Bush can't make it twice.

That's why we lost Iraq; the damn reality based community wouldn't get on board.

You might as well say you should never compliment a group of people at an event, because, I dunno, it coincided with the World Cup final, and you were implying that football fans are the wrong sort of people.

Or it was the day of the Grand National. Or the Superbowl. Or the Tri Nations Final. Or the FA Cup Final. Or the Uefa Cup Final. Or the final of the Copa Libertadores. Whatever.

And those are only sporting events.

Time is a limited resource. There will be clashes.

As a secondary point, I do not like the phrase `the right kind of people' at all, because it implies that there is a wrong kind of people, and that is not a way of thinking I'm comfortable with.

Or something they respect.

I think some things that were not originally swearing have become swearing. "Jesus Christ!" was a cry to that entity to witness the speaker's injuries or save hir from them. I guess that's not a fear-based exclamation.

Hmm, I started this thinking you were wrong, but you might be right. The other day, I was feeling frustrated to the point of despair; I said "Osiris, Anubis, and Thoth!" (These are three Egyptian gods of death/the dead.) I don't fear these entities (though I admit I'd be somewhat intimidated should I meet any of them face to face). I was hyperbolically inviting them to come and take me. It also has a pretty good cussin' rhythm!

Now you've reached the age you are
Your demise cannot be far;
Happy Birthday! (thud!) Happy Birthday! (thud!)

Cities burning in your wake
Like the candles on your cake;
Happy Birthday! (thud!) Happy Birthday! (thud!)

Even though you're still in your right mind,
My god, the decades have been quite unkind.
Shame, if your saga
Ends "He went ga-ga,
Died in a diaper" - Happy Birthday!

Etcetera, too long and depressing to quote.

Today is my birthday. Rejoice, rejoice. I think.

A version of that birthday song was what we sang on birthdays in the Michigan State University Tolkien Fellowship, back in the 1970s. We didn't really sing the Mongol Horde version, but we did have

Misery is in the air
People dying everywhere

And

When you open your surprise
You will find it's your demise

We even improvised on the spot occasionally. When the Shogun miniseries was taking the country by storm, I jumped in with

You are here at MSU
Contemplating seppuku

So, Dave, Happy Birthday (Unh!) Happy Birthday!

I wonder if Bush expects Iran to forgive us for the 1953 CIA overthrow of their government and, say, the 1988 shooting down of an Iranian airliner by an american warship.

Selective memory is so damn convenient.

I've sometimes gone so far as to suggest using the phrase 'toxic waste' instead of 'shit', but that's even less likely to catch on, for reasons obvious and not.

I'm not sure whether it was Wilson or Shea who came up with it, but I loved it when Hagbard Celine used to cuss with, "Shit, piss, and industrial waste." I picked up the affectation myself, and sure enough, no one gets it.

I also occasionally say Jesus H. Kennedy, which is less well-understood but better received than Jesus Fucking Kennedy.

Hey, new idea for "clean" cussing! Pronounce the rot13 of the word you mean: your maiden aunt won't be upset by hearing you say "shpx" (pronounced shpicks) or "fuvg" (fuvvig). Interesting...the sounds of those suggest each other's originals. Rot13 reciprocals?

Why was that considered an insult?

"You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag." (Patton)

Also, I doubt very much the expression "swear like a trooper" would have arisen had there not been a fair amount of cursing among soldiers. I remember my grandmother using it to say why she didn't want to see Paper Moon, "...with that young girl swearing like a trooper."

All 4 of my dogs are rescues, and I used to volunteer with Dachshund Rescue of North America (and will again, when time permits--they do great work).

My dachshund mix Lola was turned in to the pound after having miscarried a litter while nursing the previous litter. She was only 18 months old. Before. After.

I'd not really thought about it as respect or fear, but I had thought most people swear on things they consider powerful in some way.

(My outburst at work had impact because a normal conversation about something going wrong went like this:

Me - I think we have a problem
Boss - You mean an "opportunity"
Me - Actually, I think this may be more of a "challenge" )

I'm a problem solver. I'm not going to pretend I'm an "opportunity exploiter." My job is to take things that don't work and make them work. For, you know, the user? What kind of swiving, frelling, frakking "opportunity" is that? One user (usually) will be pleased with me. And forget me two minutes later, as s/he goes back to what s/he was trying to do in the first place.

I've never had much patience for management bullshit. That's probably why promotion is not in my future. This current kind of bullshit involves "correcting" me from the right word to a stupid, unworkable euphemism. I want to punch people whenever they come out with this dren, the more because it's said in such a smug tone.

Next time some jackhole tells me "there are no problems, only opportunities," I'm going to be sorely tempted to say "OK, no problems. Are there fucking disasters?"

(*) as in TRON's "Do you believe in users?", not as in users of illegal drugs.

We got told the other day that "We don't have users. Users are people who take drugs. We have customers."

Fortunately, this was on a phone conference, with everyone on mute, so the high mucky-mucks didn't hear the snorts and chortles.

I do wonder what I will do with the section on usability testing in my test completion report.

I guess I've finally turned into an internet crank, because I took the opportunity to email Goldberg to point out to him that a gentleman pays his wagers.

To my surprise, Goldberg emailed me back; his note was testy and juvenile, but I guess he gets credit for responding to a calculated insult from some random stranger.

However, until I heard from him, I had thought that his Internet sobriquet "The Doughy Pantload" was unfair; but now, having been the target of his whining, I now think it fits him.

Anyway, I thought I'd report back, and thank Patrick for reminding me to tell Goldberg what I think of him ('him' = Goldberg). (You know what I mean.)

It was surprisingly satisfying: I recommend it.

Just get it back to Fragano in time for him to go back and save his grandfather's life. And my husband needs it in May of 1988, to win a bet.

So any time in March, really. Or last January.

The discussion of swearword substitutes in SF/fantasy/comics reminds me of the scene with John Constantine swearing particularly foully in Gaiman's original Books of Magic. I never tried to verify this, but I suspect Gaiman originally had him saying "F**king hell", which sounds like the kind of thing Constantine would say, and had it vetoed by the label's censor. As a result, Constantine is printed as saying (ROT-13 for original) "Srypuvat urpx!", which is a lot more obscene - but evidently the censor was unfamiliar with the term.

Abi @ 468: Your example reminds me of the canonical sample of US Marine swearing, in which the F-word plays the role of virtually every major part of speech (interjection, noun, adjective, adverb, and verbal gerund. "Shpx! Gur shpxvat shpxre'f shpxvat shpxrq!", glossed as, "Drat! This aggravating M-60 machine gun is badly broken!"

Fragano @ 483, 512: Thanks for the fascinating notes on Jamaican swearing! I remember having read something once - can't place it now - where a lot of the swearing was done with the word "Bloodclot!" That makes sense now in light of your explanation of "claat" as "rag" (from older English "clout", probably?)

Serge @ 505, Xopher @ 506: Also heard, more creatively, "Your mother swims after troopships!"

I used to wake up in the morning
I used to feel so bad
I got so sick of missing my quotas
I went and told my comrade

He said, 'Tovarish take this little something'
And stuck them on my wall
And now my nights ain't quite so lonely
In fact I, I don't feel bad at all

Pictures of Lenin made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lenin helped me sleep at night
Pitcures of Lenin solved my childhood problems
Pictures of Lenin helped me feel alright

Lila, #516, good job on the dog!

Run it through again, with the religion taken out. "Our group meets every year in [apartheid era] Johannesburg. Not many people come, but those who do are the right kind of people." That's racial prejudice. Substitute the religous words back in, and you have the original comment. That's the point I was making.

In other words, my concern wasn't the date of the convention, but the idea that "the right kind of people" don't have conflicts on that (religiously defined) date.

They get them from management seminars. There's a little industry of management training (or whatever it's called) that involves teaching managers such phrases. It's supposed to motivate the drones, er, workers, er human resources.

* He really did. The old fellow drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney (rope tobacco at that), and managed to raise two families simultaneously, and raise racehorses, all while avoiding work as much as possible.

I think you meant to say "those who do share your religious prejudices" -- otherwise it's a rather odd psychology.

In other words, my concern wasn't the date of the convention, but the idea that "the right kind of people" don't have conflicts on that (religiously defined) date.

But that's not what Bill Higgins said. I think it's significant that when you quoted him, you removed everything in his post between "Easter" and "right kind of people" -- evidently, that's how you interpreted his post.

But what he said was that there was a con (which happens to be on Easter weekend, and which also happens to take place in Minneapolis). And then he described the con, noting that people who post here attend, and that it had a certain atmosphere.

A much more reasonable interpretation is that "the right kind of people" includes "many correspondents from here," those who tend to like "ink-&-paper SF," those who put on or enjoy music parties, and those who have "a laid-back attitude toward the universe." And is probably not limited to just those qualities.

Your interpretation is as valid as arguing that "the right kind of people" = "people who live in or are able to travel to Minneapolis." [That is, after all, what he said right after mentioning that it was on Easter weekend.] Which is to say, it's not a valid interpretation. At least, I don't automatically assume Bill Higgins thinks I'm the wrong sort of person just because I can't easily travel to Minnesota these days.

I've long liked the imprecation 'Nuh mek mi tell yu bout yu paats' (Don't let me tell you about your parts) used in rural Jamaica. I wonder what information would be conveyed if the threat were carried out.

Xopher & Fragano re: Opportunities
My favorite former boss used to use this line on me, but her delivery was laden with irony. It became our code phrase for when something was seriously messed up.

"Palestine in 4 BCE, Sherman."

"Jesus Christ, Mr. Peabody!"

"Precisely, Sherman."

I would like to endure some leisure time myself...

Serge - I have the Despair Pessimist's Mug, and I find it particularly suited to a bitter cup of tea.

*Fish!, Who moved my cheese?, Servant Leadership, etc.

Tania (and Serge) I have the Pessimist's Mug but I love the shipwreck (Mistakes) poster. I think my favorite Despair poster is Meetings (None of Us is as Dumb as All of Us) followed closely by Consulting (If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.)

Of all the books that I've seen get handed around for "career/management devlopment" guidance, the Patrick Lencioni books (The Five Disfunctions of a Team and Death by Meeting - gotta love it!) were the only ones I really thought were worthwhile and when I put the advice into practice, worked.

I'm reminded of a description I used for a particularly unfortunate business continuity excercise:

"It was a disaster - we recovered"

Xopher mentioned ROT13-inverses somewhere above (I can't find it again just now); I know of one -- "terra" and "green".

vex / irk -- synonyms, or close
tang / gnat -- anagrams of one another, and together a palindrome
nowhere / abjurer -- the longest ones (but being a Scrabble wordlist, this only goes up to 15 letters, so there potentially are longer ones not included here)
sent / frag -- could be worked into a tasteless war joke, I think
terra / green -- as you mentioned

If the proprietors mind, I'll write a grovelling sonnet of apology. (Thus adding further to the thread size, but what can you do?)

One of our Finance Director used to swear all the time, using 'swive'. After he left I was told that his company mobile phone had been used to call sex chat lines a lot. Fear, respect, or something else that made it powerful - anyway, it figured strongly in his life.

If I didn't know any better, I'd think we're being challenged to beat our latest thread-length record. Naaaah... Then again, abi, you had offered to our Host to be on hand to provide support, should the rumors of size limits be true. Looking for opportunities?

(And religion is not an issue for me personally w/r/t Minicon - I used to spend every Easter weekend at Balticon and would still be doing so if they hadn't rescheduled the convention to Memorial Day.)

From Keir @ #497:
I do not like the phrase `the right kind of people' at all, because it implies that there is a wrong kind of people, and that is not a way of thinking I'm comfortable with.

That's more what was bothering me. I don't see this sort of sentiment come up in fandom all that often. I really don't care for it when I do. And I suspect that if someone is making that sort of division, I end up on the wrong side of it. I don't reall