Just read the news of Andre Norton's death.
The AP article mentioned that Tor Books had done a special one-copy rush job of THREE HANDS TO SCORPIO, so Norton would be able to see a copy of her last book before she died.
Whoever's idea that was... give them a raise. Or a bonus. Or a fancy dinner. Or all three. They deserve something special for the thoughtfulness.
Wes wrote, in reply to my last post:
"If you mean Gregg's comments, I'm pretty certain he was not serious. I visit his blog regularly, and he has visited mine on a number of occasions. I've conversed with him on other blogs, as well. In short, I've been familiar with him for quite a while. What you deem "creepy," from him, I consider a joke. That's why I promptly forgot about his comment, because I didn't find it worth the attention & concern you've given it."
I sure called that one right. Just what I expected Wes to say. Acknowledge that there was personal information being sought from at least one woman here, and then say that it didn't count.
Here's that other post of mine I said I'd reply with:
[posted 03.06.05]
Step 1: Say, "Prove it!"
Step 2: Say, "THAT doesn't prove it!"
Step 3: Return to Step 1.
(Oh, and Wes is "pretty certain" that Gregg was joking in his comments to Gluon. Wow, that's reassuring. Especially since Gluon said he gave her "heebie-jeebies", and another woman, in e-mail, agreed Gregg was "seriously creepy". I think I'll let my opinion stand.)
Enough. There's no real discussion possible with people who accuse you, unendingly, of playing with loaded dice, while at the same time insisting on playing with their own loaded dice.
Will the last person out of the topic please remember to turn off the bullshit?
Wes wrote, at 5:16:
"Mr. Arthurs, can you cite an example? I suppose it's possible that I overlooked one such comment. If so, I'll retract what I said. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke."
Wes also wrote, at 8:35:
"I read every single comment in this long thread, before posting my first comment."
So, after making that first comment, you've only read randomly-chosen comments? Because I've already quoted one of Vox's supporters trolling for personal information from one of the women here, and stated how "creepy" it was.
And I already know what your response will be. And I know what my response will be, because I've already written and posted that, too.
"By the way, I don't recall any of VD's supporters expressing the slightest interest in your personal information--or anyone else's, for that matter."
How conveniently forgetful.
Gluon wrote:
"I merely found it interesting that someone claiming to possess the knowledge/higher education Gregory does and who is convinced of his own brilliance, and who seems set on flattering the pants off me, failed to pick up that and use it." (emphasis added)
Gluon, at first I thought he was pulling our legs with his "I'm-SO-brilliant" schtick, but then decided he really WAS serious. That's... creepy.
And my reaction to his comments towards you wasn't that he was "flattering" you, but that he was trolling you for personal information. ("Do you have children?")
That's not just creepy, it's skin-crawling online-stalker type creepy.
If I were holding a real-world party, and he showed up and started acting like that, I'd ask him to leave. If he wouldn't, I'd call the police.
Kat Allen wrote:
"Star Trek is one big hole - with some technobabble and hand-waving. And there is a lot of SF that hand-waves and babbles better."
Let me tell my Star Trek story.
I wrote one of the ST:TNG episodes ("Clues", 4th season).
One of the story elements was that the Enterprise came across a big empty (except for a mysterious star and planet) hole in a interstellar dust cloud.
Having written that in my first draft, I showed it to an astronomer friend and asked, "Pete, I'm not sure what I've described is actually possible. Is there some way I can fudge this up to make it seem a little more believable?"
Much to my surprise, Pete told me that there WAS such a phenomenon, a t-Tauri system, where the shockwave from an exploding star could blow an "empty" hole in a surrounding dust cloud.
So I incorporated that info into the submitted script, and ended up actually having a little bit of hard science in my ST:TNG episode.
But it was an ACCIDENT! I didn't mean to! I swear!
I was just trying to tell a good story.
The only way Star Trek can be described as "passable SF" if if you describe "SF" as...
...space opera.
Step 1: Say, "Prove it!"
Step 2: Say, "THAT doesn't prove it!"
Step 3: Return to Step 1.
Could this be Vox/Beale's ideal version of the Nebula Jury process? (mercilessly swiped from Jeremy Osner's comment over on Making Light):
And in order to demonstrate his worthiness, his testicles are felt by the junior present as testimony of his male sex. When this is found to be so, the person who feels them shouts out in a loud voice testiculos habet ("He has testicles") And all the clerics reply Deo Gratias ("Thanks be to God"). Then they proceed joyfully to the consecration of the pope-elect.
- Felix Hamerlin, De nobilitate et Rusticate Dialogus
For Cheney's matchup with a Marvel villain, I think you'd have to go over to Daredevil: The Kingpin.
re Alan Keyes' disowning of his own daughter:
A friend who acknowledged his sexual orientation in the mid-80's, then moved down to Tucson (more active gay community there), came back up to Phoenix and stopped by his parent's home.
They had moved away, and not told their gay son about it.
He managed to track them down through a sister. But I'm not sure why.
I spoke with him a few months ago, for the first time in several years, and he mentioned that his mother had told him, "I'm voting for President Bush. If he's reelected, he'll keep gay people from marrying each other."
When he told me this, I couldn't help replying, "Curt, somewhere out there--" [waving towards the horizon] "--are your REAL parents. You just haven't found them yet."
"You may have a point," he said, shaking his head.
And one hopes that one of Patrick's New Year Resolutions is to post more often on Electrolite.
Current books: The Scar,by China Mieville. Samurai Cat Goes To Hell, by Mark Rogers.
Yep, I'm one of those people who tend to jump from book to book.
Graham Joyce, at World Fantasy Con, turned out to be another. During one panel, he told about reading, as a young teenager, WUTHERING HEIGHTS and DIARY OF A HOLLYWOOD MADAM near-simultaneously; unfortunately, this now means that when he tries to re-read WUTHER, he keeps envisioning Cathy dipped in chocolate.
(This is an amusing story even when I re-tell it here. If you'd been there, though, you'd have been close to falling out of your chair laughing. Best deadpan humorist I've seen since Roger Zelazny.)
Related question: What's the book that's sat in your TBR stack the longest, unread? My own is HUMANITY PRIME, by Bruce McAllister, which I packed along to read during any spare time I might have (yeh, right) after reporting for Army basic training... in *koff* January, 1972. (And it just occurred to me that some of the people posting here weren't even born then!)
Greg London wrote:
If the core republican value is "Strength" and the core democrat value is "Fairness", you can either have them go through an experience where Strength failed them (They were abused or raped or they lost control and assaulted someone they loved) and get them to abandon Strength, or you can show them how Fairness works in addition to Strength, and how they don't have to abandon it, they simply need to upgrade.
"Upgrade Your Government" would make a catchy slogan for the Democrats in the next election cycle. Particularly considering how "buggy" the dominant Republicans seem to be making it. (The special dispensation for DeLay, the attempt to access anyone and everyone's tax returns, etc.)
Perhaps my sensibilities have been coarsened by the recent election campaign, but "hypocritical scum" barely registers as "Peevish" on my Rage-O-Meter.
Why, when I was a young hothead, if we thought someone was a fugghead, we didn't call them names. We hunted them down with DOGS! When we had a flame war, we used flamethrowers! REAL flamethrowers, none of this namby-pamby metaphorical crap! When all fandom was plunged into war, it didn't mean mean-spirited fanzines, it meant midnight bombing runs on the Ozark love camps!
And if there weren't any fuggheads handy, well, hell, we'd just turn on EACH OTHER! And when there was finally only one person left standing, they'd burn down their own slan shack, devour their own young, and RAPE themselves! Man, those were the days!
Actually, come to think of it, those days pretty much sucked. Especially that last part.
I had a snarky post on my blog about a Republican to-do list for 11/2/04: 1) Vote for Bush, and 2) marry my rapist.
That's sort of what it feels like. America has married its rapist.
I'm unhappy and I'm disappointed and I can think of far too many things that are likely to happen in the months and years ahead that will make the last four years seem like the Good Old Days.
But there are beautiful roses out in the garden. I think I'll bring some inside tomorrow.
(And, Patrick, if you've been feeling sick for weeks, see your doctor. It'll be easier to be hopeful again if you don't feel like a stepped-on-twice dog turd.)
Thanks, David. Seems to work.
On another subject entirely, I was just perusing the list of program participants for this coming weekend's World Fantasy Con, and saw one "Patrick Nielson Hayden" [sic] listed.
In the "H"'s.
Has anyone else had trouble viewing comments over on Making Light? Haven't been able to get a full loading on any topic over there, and on some where Teresa's opening material is lengthy, going to the comments page doesn't even load all of that opening material.
I'm haven't been using my regular machine for the past few days -- the router for the highspeed connection got fried by a power outage, and the new router I bought not only also doesn't work, but gets hot enough I think I could put a pan of water on top of it and get the water up to a simmer fairly quickly -- so that may have something to do with the problem. But it's only Making Light that seems to have the problem.
Applicable techno-geekitude would certainly be appreciated. Thanks.
Back on 9/14, Arthur Hlavaty noted that he was "tired of political debate."
(Yeh, it's been a while since I caught up with this thread.)
In recent weeks, I've been finding myself less inclined to peruse or comment on political threads, a habit I'd been moderately prolific at the last several years.
I think I've entered the "waiting-room" phase of political interest. It's as if your loved one (in this case, your country) has been battling a life-threatening disease for several years. You've tried to understand the cause of the disease, tried to mitigate its symptoms and progress, tried to live as normal a life as possible under its everpresence, and now the high-risk surgery has been scheduled.
And you're in the surgical waiting room as your loved one is going thru all the pre-surgical preparation, and it's out of your hands, and you can't do anything, and you WAIT, and WAIT, with hope and dread cycling and cycling through your mind, and you WAIT some more not knowing if your loved one will be returned to you whole again, or still alive but crippled and handicapped by the past ravages of the disease, or if you'll be approached by a surgeon who will tell you "We could not save her. I'm sorry."
(There are still five weeks until the election, and I could still take some [minor] actions to try and influence other people's votes. But it's hard, very hard, to feel that, at this point, anything I could do would make a difference. If there are actually any "undecided" voters out there, I sure don't know any. It feels, in essence, that except for the actual vote-casting and vote-counting, everything about the election except the results has already been decided.)
I hope the new photo doesn't come from one of the Viable Paradise workshops.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 12 |
| 2004 | 23 |
| 2003 | 12 |
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