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Dec. 19th, 2009

  • 4:33 AM
Wish me luck in beating the storm. I had one flight back to NY cancelled on me, let's hope I don't

A) die
B) get stuck in bumblefuck on the way back.

Twitter: 2009-12-19

  • Dec. 19th, 2009 at 1:01 AM
  • Lord love a duck, I'm finding myself wanting to see that new movie with Hugh Grant and Jennifer Aniston. What is HAPPENING to me? #

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Originally published at M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave any comments there.

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Things I Tweeted Today

  • Dec. 19th, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Today I used my bandwidth to say:

  • 08:39 Book's off to two agents for a look, clearing away some e-mail, then taking the car in for an oil change. At some point I'll breathe. #
  • 08:41 $300 budget Youtube clip leads to million dollar movie deal - news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8417789.stm #
  • 09:22 #nowplaying The Decembrists, Hazards of Love. Makes me think of Lowell and Sherri, which makes me smile! #
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RIP Dan O'bannon

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 5:17 PM

Many people may remember Dan O'bannon as the writer of the original Alien movie, or the writer of Total Recall.  For me, he will always be most remembered as the writer and director of the seminal zombie movie Return of the Living Dead.

Tonight, I will be watching this this classic movie once more...  Thanks Dan, for all the memories. "Send more cops."

In The Bleak Early Winter

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 5:51 PM

Tiiiired. Sitting here listening to Pocahaunted and chugging coffee in order to stay lucid enough to do a GRAVEL phone conference set for 1.30am. This week’s been utterly buggered — you may have noticed the silence here — by a member of the family being rushed into hospital early in the week, which has turned everything into bubbling chaos and is necessitating runs to the hospital, rescheduling, etc. And then the snow hit, turned into two inches of white stuff sitting on three inches of ice, and Britain shut down because it is now a country of weaklings and jabbering genetic wreckage who shit themselves when the sky moves.

GRAVEL phone conference with my producers is to set the storyline. I’ve spent what little time I’ve had this week putting all my notes in order. Which is how I ended up writing the line "Bill, you’re kind of persona non fucker around here."

Also, at the top of the week, I wrapped the last few pages of ULTIMATE COMICS IRON MAN ARMOR WARS #4, which is one of the more ridiculous titles that I haven’t invented myself. Sadly, the Marvel office chose to ignore the alternate titles I wrote at the top of each script. I liked IRON MAN: HUMAN SEX JEEP the best.

Had a conversation with David Bogart at Marvel about the future of the NEWUNIVERSAL: STORMFRONT project there that got stalled when my computer and backups were destroyed. Should be sorted in a few months. I think Dave’s official title at Marvel is Grand Inquisitor or Witchfinder General or something, but I’ve known him pretty much since he started out in the business, and, frankly, it’s always nice to know that there’s a guy in that office who will never try to screw me over. Dave will look after me.

Or, of course, I will have him killed. I know lots of people in New York. I mean, trust is good, but insurance is better, right?

If I can just get a few more pages on other things out over the next two days, then from Monday I am done with 2009, and anyone who doesn’t like it can bite my muckpump.

More coffee.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

[photos] My hair, wavy for once

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 4:26 PM
Hair after French Braid

My hair, after being French braided for two days.

Photograph © 2009 Shannon Page, used with permission.

Fragments

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 6:00 PM
  • 20:06 Poll: Who's unfunnier: SNL's Gilly or Jeff Dunham's puppets? #
  • 11:39 Novel epiphany! Just figured out what to do with a character. #
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[Insert Name Here] Has Arrived!

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 5:56 PM
Just got texted by my mother: my sister had her baby. Healthy baby boy, 8 lbs, 8 oz.

And no, he doesn't have a name yet as far as I know. (I even asked my Mom. She didn't know!)

ETA: Just got first picture sent to my phone.

Untitled Nephew! Untitled Nephew!



Asked his grandmother when there's gonna be a NAME, got told not to fuss over it!

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# of queries read this week: 56
# of partials/manuscripts requested: 0

As I mentioned last week, I am currently closed to new queries until January 15th.

However, I am still continuing to review, albeit somewhat slowly with my sprained wrist and reduced typing speed, those that were already in the queue. I've appreciated people's support and will, no doubt, continue to be thankful for their patience.

I'm seeing many of my colleagues mention that today is their last day officially at work until the New Year. Our agency is closed from December 24th until January 4th to celebrate the holidays (and probably get in some reading). In January there will be the now-annual query stats of the year, among other things.

Happy holidays.... And in the spirit of the season.....



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So, The Young Victoria comes out today! I had the honor of seeing it early on a plane coming back from France. (I also had the honor of seeing it three times, because we sat for two hours on the tarmac and a bunch of other weird things happened. Maybe you guys want to have more than one watchable movie per flight, Air France? Cool.)



Anyway, after seeing it three times in a row, and realizing I always felt like I had dozed off for parts in the middle even though I hadn't, I had some problems. Then I realized if I watched it three times in a row and enjoyed it, then I had some OTHER problems, but we'll get to those some other time.

The point is, review and picspam below! Be warned, there's vague spoilery talk, though nothing that happens in the movie should come as a surprise, since it happened a hundred years ago and we've all had plenty of time to catch up.

In which there are more puffed sleeves than you can handle. )
So here's the thing. One of the hardest things to deal with about being a science fiction writer is the scope of the material. Almost all of us cheat, because the universe is so... inconceivably vast that it's almost impossible to work with. So we work around it.

I keep hoping someday I'll write something that captures how that universe really looks and feels to me. I imagine if I ever swing it, it will be excoriated, but I still think it's a worthy goal. It's awfully neat out there, even if we don't, in the face of it, matter. (Am I unique in not finding that particularly bleak prospect? Sometimes, I think I am. The vast indifference of heaven feels rather inevitable, to me.)

Recently, I've been exposed to two pieces of art that capture that scale, in some regard.

One is here. It's called The Known Universe. 



It's a planetarium show from the American Museum of Natural History.

Another is a spoken-word piece by Peter Mulvey, entitled Vlad the Astrophysicist. You can listen to a live recording here. Right-click to download, and crank the volume: it's soft.

I wonder, sometimes, if that is why so many people cling to what they cling to, even when it's patently cruel or ridiculous. Because we are so small, and the universe is so very large, and we matter so little to it. And we are not adapted to deal with that. We are very, inherently, biologically, solipsistic.

But I kind of think all that emptiness is beautiful.

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dental update.

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 3:19 PM
the implants are finished! i went to the dentist today and he cemented in the replacement numbers 19 and 20. it is awesome to have occlusion again! i am going to have to re-learn how to chew on the left side.

thank you for your support through this torturous process. two implants to go.

Dec. 18th, 2009

  • 11:01 AM
  • 16:37 @paolobacigalupi avatar is a movie that leaves me cold. A couple billion on fx tech... written by james "dark angel" cameron. Ill pass. #
  • 10:01 twitpic.com/u1iyi. Livetwitting the opening day of the borderlands cafe. 870 valencia. Come down and say hi. #

One half of the master plan, accomplished!

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 11:00 AM

The infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland has been stolen.


Now all that need happen is for the sign to be replaced with one reading "EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON" and people will stop saying that!

870 Valencia: Borderlands Cafe

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 10:28 AM
If you are in San Francisco, be sure to come by only cafe attached to a Science Fiction book store in the United States:  Borderlands Cafe:  Opening Today.



body language

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 10:19 AM
One of the people to leave some of the most remarkable comments on my blog Tribal Writer is Dan Owens, who was referring to my 'body language' posts just when I am thinking about writing an essay called "Body Language for Writers" for my next date with Storytellers Unplugged (I post a piece there on the 20th of every month).

We betray ourselves with body language in a myriad of subtle ways because it stems from a part of our brain that is beyond our control. It gives emphasis to the phrase "the truth will out"; it's as if we're so wired into the human network that we need to communicate even when we don't want to or are attempting not to.

Every now and then I'll notice something that I'm doing -- revealing the inside of my wrist (a classic female flirtation move) when I'm talking to a man I find attractive -- or feeling myself shake my head 'no' when I once lied, "Yeah, I think he's a great guy."

An incident with Dude stands out in my mind.

We were at a party talking with a guy we'd just met who had some things in common with Dude. They started talking about financial and business-related things, which lost me (I do not speak that language) and so to amuse myself I started paying attention to how the three of us were standing.

Dude was standing beside me, casually, to my right. Even though the guy was talking to Dude, I noticed that his body was oriented towards me and he had fallen into the 'cowboy stance' which is one of the signs that a guy finds a girl attractive and is signaling his sexual prowess to her. As they continued to talk, Dude began subtly shifting his own body so that instead of standing beside me he was starting to wall me off, finally extending his hand to a place on the wall beside my head, his body angled so that he formed a bit of a barrier between me and the other guy.

It was as if they were talking about one thing (financial stuff) while their bodies were having a different conversation entirely, the guy finding me kind of cute and Dude signaling that I was not available and he should look elsewhere.

I mentioned this to Dude a couple of hours later and he looked blank and bemused. "I had no idea that was happening," he said.

Which brought home to me just how unconscious the process is -- how our bodies have a mind of their own.

It's kind of cool.

Dec. 18th, 2009

  • 1:13 PM
New season of I-Spy on Hulu? Hot dog! I know what I'll be doing on my lunch break for the next few weeks.

My column this week looks at the films of Roald Dahl.

There are few authors who have had as profound an influence on the fantasy movie genre as Roald Dahl. It's not just that so many of his stories have been adapted for the screen, but also that he was himself a fantasy screenwriter. You might think you know a Roald Dahl movie when you see one, but I'm willing to bet that a couple of his masterpieces will surprise you.

via AMC – Blogs – SciFi Scanner – Mary Robinette Kowal – The Many Fantastic Flicks of Mr. Roald Dahl.

Comments? -- Link.

All The Single Writers Out There....

  • Dec. 18th, 2009 at 11:58 AM
...are you working on a novel? 
What is your process?
What's your schedule?

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

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