Words!

10:43pm: Orange stripey dinosaurs!
http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/01/orange_stripey_dinosaurs_fossi.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist+%28Living+the+Scientific+Life%29?utm_source=readerspicks&utm_medium=link

Who'da thunk they'd figure out how to suss out dino plumage? At least dark, light, and orange...

12:59pm: I've been reading a bunch of Avatar related reviews and comments lately, more because they're all over the place than because I look for them. Ones which are clearly spoilery I've tried to avoid, but there are so damn many of them I think I've been spoiled anyway. Le sigh.

Anyway, I haven't seen the movie yet (hint, hint), so this post isn't going to be about Avatar.

There are people who come out of the movie depressed, because Pandora is a fantasy world, because it isn't real. They go to the movie and are so caught up in it that they can't disengage from it. They want so badly to be a part of that world, to live those lives, that their own lives pale in comparison. There are forums on the 'net where they go to discuss the movie, their reactions, and all things having to do with that 'meme'. One commentator described this as a man-child stomping his feet and declaring, "But I don't want to leave Never-Never Land!"

I don't know whether he's right, whether the infantilization of adults in our society encourages this, whether the attitudes of entitlement and narcissism and instant gratification are part of the problem. I do know that it brings to mind an attitude I read about lo, many moons ago, wherein a conservative faction in (I think) Kentucky was quoted as distrusting public secular schooling because it encouraged creativity, and these parents emphatically did not want their kids to be creative.

I was appalled, of course, as I believe anyone involved in the arts, even peripherally, would be. This was an attitude so alien that I couldn't grasp the motivation behind it at all. However, looking at this Avatar business, I think maybe I finally do have a handle on it, or at least found a knothole in the fence to peek through (to mix metaphors liberally.)

If creativity encourages the 'hankerin' after impossibles', then creativity is a bad thing to have, and not just in have-not areas like the backwoods of Kentucky, although that is an extreme that illustrates the problem most clearly. Some of the people described in the Avatar forums have come near complete emotional collapse due to their fixations: some have admitted to suicidal thoughts. If you mix that with a poverty-level existence, then you may be facing not just a crippling fantasy, but real physical hardship which conceivably could include death, and not just for the sufferer. In a very real way, people in such straits may sincerely believe that they cannot afford creativity, and they may very well be right.

I'm pro-creativity, even in extremis, because I believe that when at extremes, you have to be creative to find the way out. But 'brute force and ignorance' works too, in many cases, and that path is already clearly marked; you know it is steep, and that your heart may give out before you reach the top, but it is a path both tried and proven. If you have to pick between a maybe with a bright future and a certainty with a dimmer future, the certainty at least reassures.

Personally, the main difference I see between reassurance and wishful thinking is that reassurance is the kind of prognostication said with confidence.

YMMV.

12:20am: I had an epiphany the other night. One of my pieces was being critted; the critter was saying, "I want this and that and the other thing," and I was thinking, "So? I don't *care* what you want. If I gave you what you want--what you expect--you might as well have written the damn story yourself. What I want to give you is something you didn't know you could have."

I need to chew on this thought for a while.

12:53am: I hate the cold. It's -28C (with no wind chill, yay). I hate having to drag the heavy coat out just to dump the garbage and walk two blocks to the newspaper box. I hate having my cheeks freeze in that amount of time.

Not that this particular instance was without its rewards... sort of. The dumpster was full on the one side--unusual for a Sunday, because the truck comes on Fridays. I think the schedule is off because of what the weather has done to this hill (last weekend, a garbage truck was stuck a block away from my place from Friday morning to Monday morning--I could see it from my living room window. Don't know if it was the truck that normally services my building, though.) In any case, since the one side was full, I lifted the cover for the other side, and was lifting the bag when... flutter.

Flutter? I think, and then it came again. Flutter.

Me, thought balloon: Cthulumas!

Actually, it was a magpie, tucked down among the stuff. I guess on a night like this, a dumpster is a decent nap zone. However, inconsiderate human that I am, I disturbed the poor bird. When I opened the lid a bit more, he left. Exit stage right, toward the trees.

I hope he found a decent place to stay. Or that he was brave enough to come back and tuck in again. Either way, I hope he doesn't meet any early morning garbage trucks.

11:40pm: http://elfs.livejournal.com/1171919.html

This would explain so much about my life...

6:47pm: Clearly, I'm being masochistic lately. I looked up some reviews of my published stories while I was on lunch.

I found one I hadn't seen before, and ... ow. The reviewer called it promising, until it got confusing, and then he wondered if something got lost in the printing. Um... yes. And he wasn't the only one to notice.

That piece is missing three lines from the beginning... three lines which introduce a character, change the place of action, and set a motif. I don't know why it was printed without those lines, whether it was an editorial decision or a printing mistake or something else entirely. If it was an editorial decision, I really wish someone had said, "Shorten it by 50 words, please," because I would have (after having private conniptions first, but hey, we're talking major market and me as the no-name writer. Do the math.) I just wouldn't have shortened it in a way that left people lost.

Grumble.

I sometimes wonder if I should set up an 'official author site' and do things like put up that story in its uncut form, just so I can point to it and say, "That's what I really wrote." Of course, given my privacy issues, I doubt it would be a good website. You know, the kind of site with bells and whistles and an actual person chatting back ...!

7:44pm: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886
Peter Watts in full cry. Awfully funny. Awfully interesting. Awfully blunt in all the ways I love blunt.

I actually met him at Montreal WorldCon; I was walking and chatting with tL&Hs when H veered off and started a conversation with him of the 'hi, how are you, good to see you again' variety. I tagged along and H turned around and said, "Of course you've met Peter Watts."

Me: "No, but I read his books. They're good."

Big grin from Watts, the obligatory variation on 'aw, shucks' and a bit more passing-in-the-halls conversation, and gone again. Now I'm wishing I had the chance to sit down with a real conversation with him. Some folks are anti-mental rust just by *being*.

8:44pm: I was walking down Seventh Avenue looking at the trees the other day. We had a nasty cold snap a couple weeks back, and all the leaves are dead--but still on the trees. They're grey-green, instead of the usual yellow and orange, which is odd, because I keep thinking, "Water them and they'll turn green again."

I was also wondering about fall. With the leaves stuck to the trees, will 'Fall' actually arrive...?

Then a bus went by and its wake blasted freeze-dried tree dandruff in my face. *ptuf*

Ahem. Yes. Yes, it will.

4:08pm: Collective nouns -- the supernatural edition
I really like 'a lunacy of werewolves', but I do think it should be 'a rattle of skeletons'. YMMV.

http://wondermark.com/566/

H/t to Jay Lake.

8:15pm:
Earth was struck by a meteor October 8, and this is the first I've heard of it. Considering the number of cheesy news sites I skim over in the course of a day, I'm a bit surprised by the utter lack of tabloid interest. The thing blew up over Indonesia with the force of about 50 atomic bombs, scaring the hell out of the locals (they thought it was an earthquake) and setting off nuclear test detectors all over the place. The event was noted 10,000 miles away--which, given that the circumference of the planet is around 24,000 miles, really means 'all over the place'.

What was happening October 8 that kept the newsies away? Let's see... the wedding episode of "The Office"... A bus crash... The President's Cup matches...

Oy.

I feel even more badly informed than usual.

Check out www.spaceweather.com for more details.

8:31pm: Saw a bald eagle today. He was flying along the river from St. George's Island west toward Prince's Island; he went by directly over my head, maybe twenty feet away.

I've heard that the range of bald eagles goes this far north, and that they can be seen in Shouldice Park (where 'the only stand of virgin Douglas fir forest east of the Rockies' exists.) I've been down to Shouldice a few times, but I've never seen a bald eagle there--and yes, I've looked. But today, I was watching the female goldeneye in the middle of the river, and the flock of seagulls whirling up from the point of St. George's. And then this dark bird comes flying along the river, and after running through the usual silhouettes--duck, goose, crow--I realize, "Raptor." And then, "Is that a white head?" And, "Yes. It is."

The last time I saw a bald eagle in the wild was last spring, on the coast of the Quinault penninsula. The time before that, Glacier National Park. But in the middle of Calgary...? Only at the zoo.

I hear the zoo lets their raptors out to fly, sometimes. I don't know that I believe that, but... maybe. Just maybe....

9:44pm: (Put Cool Title Here)
I hate coming up with titles.

A title, IMNSHO, should sum up the story on some level--theme, plot, motif, etc. BUT... if I could do that, I wouldn't have written the bloody story in the first place...!

Grr.

*goes off to beat head against wall for a while*

7:36pm: Dove
I have a headache. Ergo, I am going to distract myself with silly memeage. Be forewarned!

Stolen from that 'Pryde person, of course.

1. Put Your iTunes on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.
5. Tag at least 10 friends <-- This one ain't happenin'. Do or do not, there is no tag.

( Spam behind cut )

7:19pm: This one's for 'Pryde.
She knows why (and probably already knows the link, but hey. This way *I'm* sure she knows the link.)


www.glutenfreepasta.ca

5:10pm: Marking Time
There are a half dozen things which I should be doing, but I've already done (pieces) of them all today, so... I am now trying to figure out how to create rose applique blocks for quilting.

I can't point a finger and say, "That's why I'm doing this, right now." It is just the thing that has seized control of my attention, and I'm amused enough at the idea that I'm not willing to wrest control back from it. Such is my life.

( Beware: design and sewing instructions past cut )

7:30pm: Yesterday I walked to the grocery after work, and then back home, and both ways I saw the ants. The flying ones were out, swooping dizzily or marching along the sidewalk, or across the road. Wings... and those without wings, and those too small for wings. One wingless one carried another wingless one, the second still wiggling.

Today, I saw no wings. A few scuttlers. One marched uphill with me, before I left it behind. It bore something small and white and round.

I have to wonder if there is a smell in the air, a pheromone, that tells all of the ants, "Today, you fly." They're gone now, like the gophers. The crows are gathering in increasing flocks... any morning now, I expect to see them pass overhead by dozens and hundreds, and then be gone in their own turn.

The white rabbit is gone. He used to lie under the privet on the edge of Edmonton Trail, or feed on the green grass of the traffic island two lanes away. One day, I found his flattened body on that island, spreadeagled. Within a few more days, he became a tatter of hide, feet still attached, though all else was gone. A scatter of white fur marks his dying, like someone had a rabbit-fur pillow fight there, and one of the weapons burst.

I wonder how much of him the ants got?

11:23pm: Asked a question at ConVersion of one of the guests and GR, who was hovering behind my shoulder, said, "That's easy!" Whereupon I said, "Probably, but my math isn't good enough to both develop the data and check it for errors."

He said, "Ah," went home, and emailed me a spreadsheet... then another, and another. In the third, I *did* spot an error (Epsilon Eridani is only 0.5 ly from Sol? Uh...) which GR corrected. So... many thanks to him! I now have a spreadsheet full of data of the distances between the 100 nearest stars to Earth, and I have been analyzing it ever since (and thus amusing the hell out of myself, as well as gathering notes for the story that started this whole thing off with the need for the answer to the aforementioned question.)

Result: yes, I do need two separate means of FTL star travel. I could get by with improvements to one means, but I think it might be more useful to the plot for those improvements to arrive within the story and to the side which uses that method, as a reaction to the side that uses the other method.

More research. Oy.

7:47pm:
'Cause Troutkitty wants more posts... have a link!

This is one of the funniest webcomics I've seen--even considering my rather stunted sense of humor. And it updates regularly!

http://www.daniellecorsetto.com/gws.html

Read from the beginning... it does explain why 'Girls With Slingshots'. Which is its own bundle o' rah-rah!

4:11pm: Meme thingie
I like the idea of this one, although I'm not much of a joiner, so I'm going to shamelessly mangle it. The original is on the livejournal community 'glompalicious', for those who want the real and true and original.

Snitched from bentarc


1: Post a comment with your username
2: Post the link to your thread on your journal

(I'm skipping the above two steps, and counting this post as my thread.)

3: Your friends/random people/I can comment on your thread with what they think you should write next.
4: Anything goes. This is mainly a fanfic meme, but other things like poetry and original fiction are okay to suggest too.
5: PIMP THIS THING.


I don't do fanfic, so if you suggest it? I will probably blink at you in a blank fashion. If you know what I'm currently working on, I'll probably post a paragraph or two of new text. And if you suggest something new, I'll... um... try to get it done. (Yes, Andrew, I know I still owe you something from lo, many moons ago...)

8:10pm: They're digging up the pathway along the south side of the river on both sides of the Langevin bridge. Recently, they've cut all the trees down for a couple of hundred meters of riverbank, and man, does that make the place look bald. I've seen some artists' renditions of what the stretch is supposed to look like when the developers finish playing in the dirt, and extra-wide sidewalks, benches, lamp posts, plantings, and pavers on paths and walls seems to be a lot of it. I'm hoping a decent set of replacement trees is part of it, too.

At the moment, I think they're laying pipe of various sorts. They've dug a trench along the line of the path and different colors of PVC piping are strewn about. I imagine some are water (drinking, sewer, storm) and some are other things: laying pipe so that you can pass electric and other cabling through it seems smart, yes.  But... in the process of digging, they've exposed a number of concrete ... things, and now I'm wondering what those things are.

They appear to parallel the river. Retaining walls, maybe? The footings of them, anyway? Put there to keep the river where it is? Or are they the remnants of old buildings, long since knocked down to make way for the green strip along the river?

Probably the latter. There are two different types currently visible: a smooth wall, not unlike the concrete walls of basements I have seen, and a more complex wall, with foot-wide 'posts' every ten feet or so. The first looks recent to me; the latter does not. And I can well imagine someone building right there at the edge of the river, way back when. I don't think the Bow has ever been considered a navigable waterway, but it is a world-class trout-fishing stream, and between that and the convenience (and sheer purty-ness) of having water just feet away from your door...

And yes, there are fish there. I was walking across the Langevin bridge a week or so ago when I heard Ploop! I looked, and caught a glimpse of silver splashing back into the water just ahead of the rocks beneath the south pier. I raised both eyebrows, put my hand on the rail, and Ploop! Another one, ten feet or so away. Then, Ploop! A third one, jumping into the air, curving to splash down again.

It was raining a bit, just dots on the pavement, really. I wonder if the fish were striking at raindrops, mistaking them for insects landing?

4:21pm: Kneejerking
Yesterday I finished reading Charles Stross' GLASSHOUSE. Decent book; a variation of 'The Prisoner' done in Stross' inimitable SF style. I did have one heck of a 'BWAH?!' moment in the last third of the book, though...

( Spoilers! )

9:02pm: I did a long road trip on Wednesday and thoroughly messed up the body, due mostly (I think) to me forgetting to drink any water for the entire first half. On a day that was sunny and cloudless and varying between 13 and 22 degrees C, this was dumb.

It was a remarkably disastrous day, too, for critters and people around me. I hit a bird on my way out of Calgary. Didn't mean to, but the thing veered out of the path of the car beside me and WHAM! It bounced off the top of the windshield and landed on the road behind me, where a truck avoiding running over it. But since I was going about 110 km at the time...

Hit a gopher between Shelby and Great Falls. Sigh. Dude? Running across the road with your tail sticking straight up does not count as flagging down traffic.

Then, in Great Falls, I was watching this gold car. He seemed to be in a hurry, so I got out of his lane. I'm pulling up beside the truck in front of him when CRUNCH. I'll admit, it was a stop-and-go part of of a busy day, but I think his little more go meant a lot more stop in the end.

Hit rain and hail going through Claresholm on the way back. I slowed down for that; the idea of driving through fresh ice and water on new pavement struck me as a time to be careful. I will admit that the combination worked very well for cleaning bugs off the windshield. And I feel no guilt whatsoever for those tiny disasters, and especially no guilt about the one that ended up as a bloody smear.

Some brighter notes: lots of hawks--Swainson's and redtails, a couple of kestrels. Saw a weasel (!) cross the road north of Fort MacLeod--it held its tail straight up in the air, like the above-mentioned gopher, but it was a lot longer. I was thinking 'furry snake' watching it cross in front of me.

And I saw a pronghorn antelope south of Sunburst. I don't recall ever seeing a pronghorn out wild before.

An interesting day. Exhausting, though, which is why this comment is two days late.

10:18pm: The Vorpal Bunny of Bridgeland
Seriously.

No shit, there I was, ambling along Fourth, enjoying Saturday afternoon and wondering if I'd get to the bakery in time to get a ciabatta (I was! It was cheese. It was GOOD.) Anyway, on the way there, I'm looking at people's yards, looking down the streets... and I see a rabbit cross one of those streets. I make that mental check mark: tick! Saw a bunny today.

I might have walked on, but there was a moving truck on Fourth, taking up a driveway and all of the sidewalk and part of the street, too, and I figured I didn't want to walk around it, but maybe I could get another look at that rabbit...

Halfway down the block, an older gentleman and a beagle on a leash were both looking toward the place where I figured the rabbit was. The man was grinning; the beagle was pointing. I swear, I've seen pictures, but I've never seen a real live dog point before. His target, of course, was the rabbit, which was sitting on the grass being... well, a rabbit.

The man and I struck up a conversation, marveling over the oddness of the rabbit sitting there, in the presence of two humans and a beagle. He told me a story about a rabbit in the neighborhood that chased dogs---including the bull up the street. (Bull? Bull terrier? Bull mastiff? Pit bull? I think bull terrier...) I hadn't heard of it before, and he wasn't sure this rabbit was that rabbit, but it was a really interesting story, wasn't it?

Then the rabbit started chasing the beagle...!

The beagle was thoroughly discombobulated. The rabbit would head for his tail, and he'd duck behind his human, and the rabbit would stop, and the man would laugh, and the rabbit would head for that tail again, and the beagle would run away, and we'd both laugh, and the rabbit would stop...

Brown rabbit. Looked like the mommy rabbit from about four blocks west of that street; how big are rabbit 'territories'? Do they have territories?

When I walked away a couple of minutes later, the gentleman and his poor, beleaguered dog were going the other way, and the rabbit was still chasing that tail...!

Beware, Bridgeland! Especially if you're a beagle.

10:03am: Cliches and Mary Sues and sheer laziness, oh my.
A while back, tor.com had an article on Mary Sues which I found less than enthralling, although it was informative enough. I guess. It's just that it didn't say anything new, or at least, didn't say it newly enough, and I went blah, and thought about commenting, then about posting, and then about whether another dozen rounds of computer Solitaire was a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing that feeds my inner obsessive compulsive.

Well, of course, the Solitaire won. Meanwhile, all that stuff about Mary Sues sank to the bottom of the mind and composted.

I was thinking about cliches again the other day and how they're shortcuts, and how some writers use them as cheats. Cheats are okay, once in a while, if they're clever cheats, but face it, cliches are cliches not because they're clever, but because they're colorless. Clever and colorless aren't words that go together too often.

And then today the compost burped and I said to myself, "Hey. Mary Sues are a form of cliche. They're cheats, too--character cheats, whereas a lot of cliches are descriptive cheats. A cliche is a descriptive phrase (the burly detective, the silken-maned stallion, the (adjective/noun buzzword cluster)...) which is supposed to write the story for the author, so all he/she has to do is enjoy the praise. Ditto the Mary Sue: she's supposed to enthrall the reader for the author, so that all he/she has to do is enjoy the praise.

I don't really have any objections to Mary Sues or cliches--I use them in my own stuff on a regular basis, and I see them all the time in the work of various people, including published writers, many of whom I enjoy tremendously. The thing is, the ones I enjoy aren't cheating--the phrase or character is there for a good reason: it is pulling its weight. It might be a short-cut, but it doesn't have a spear-carrier following it around with a banner saying, "Pay No Attention To The Plot Hole Behind The Curtain."

I think I'll go back to compos(t)ing now.

2:59am: Time wastage
I'm trying to get words onto a screen, so of course I'm reading LJ instead. I think it's traditional.

Snagged from infintepryde, a meme (one I've never done before, because during its last go-round, I didn't have music on the computer): Randomise your playlist. Write the artist and title of the first 15 songs that come up (no editing, no cheating).

1. Rattle and Burn - Jesse Cook
2. Fallen Angel - Robbie Robertson
3. No Education - Apocalyptica
4. Rocks of Merasheen - Great Big Sea
5. Wanted Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi
6. Saor/Free/News from Nowhere - Afro Celt Sound System
7. Don't Stop - Fleetwood Mac
8. Feeling Good - Colin James
9. Blues Piano - Blue Rodeo
10. Out of a Deeper Hunger - Gowan
11. Strathspey/Reel Set - Slainte Mhath
12. Chafe's Celidh - Great Big Sea
13. Fare Thee Well Northumberland - Mark Knopfler
14. Casual Conversations - Supertramp
15. Brio - Jesse Cook

Hmm... that almost looks like the outline to a story: A problem, the complications that arise thereof, a major obstacle, things go to hell, Get Out Now!, scraping up info, more running, got a clue?, realize it's still going to hell, decision to Do Something, busy preparations, first tries, lose a friend, the opposition gloats, pull a win out with luck and cleverness.

Double hmm...