Shaken and Stirred

moving back to: http://bondgirl.blogspot.com

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Mon, 10 May 04 17:44:00 UT

Christopher points out that it's just going to confuse the hell out of everyone if I try and do some kind of tandem site business. As much as I love JournalScape (especially Jenn and Kenny!), I think my web-challenged skillz and schizo gang-posting are better suited to Blogger and its format.

But I hope y'all will update your links to http://bondgirl.blogspot.com and keep reading and commenting.

And really, seriously, I promise I won't change again for awhile. A good long while.

new post

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Mon, 10 May 04 17:38:00 UT

Over here at Blogger. Text repeated below, full links at the other site (because I don't have time to do them right now).

-angelwonks-
In case you've missed Wonkette's previews of this week's Celebrity Jeopardy starring Washington Power players, you might want to look at this WaPo article.

Things learned while observing a day's worth of taping of "Celebrity Jeopardy!" with a bunch of wonks, talkers and other media types the show labels as Washington's "power players":

Al Franken should not be allowed to climb inanimate objects.

Maria Bartiromo has trouble differentiating between a golf club and a golf tee under pressure (but okay, okay, she did know that Tiger Woods makes the most money on the PGA Tour).

Tucker Carlson is disturbingly well versed in things related to "homemaking," like dust bunnies and Brillo pads.

Bob Woodward needs faster thumbs.

Now, even in the best of times Celebrity Jeopardy is pushing it with the use of the term celebrity, but I must admit to an impure thrill at the thought of Ari Fleischer's return to television. McClellan has just never delivered the same quiet shock of watching pure evil spin, spin, spin the wheel, never quite captured the same laconic disregard for that news-saint Helen Thomas (who could eat both of them for lunch and use their shin bones as toothpicks). Yes, I'll be tuning in for Ari. Bless us every one.

Also, Mary Gaitskill had a fascinating piece in the WP Magazine about what happens when you're nice to children -- "when a well-meaning but inexperienced couple volunteered to host two small children from the city, they got much more than they bargained for."

AND the Mumpsimus is right about Alan. (And is sort of responsible for me being here trying out Blogger's new toys. Throw your stones at him. Wait, I didn't mean for you to do that -- I wouldn't be so impolite as to suggest anyone throw stones at a stranger. You may throw them at Christopher instead. Kidding, kidding... Have you no sense of humor?)

(Now she remembers how the digressions went in the old Blogger days. They were many, and long, and wild as rivers with too much water in them. Yes.)

crisis of Blogger (new site/old site)

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Mon, 10 May 04 13:53:00 UT

Hey all --

I'm going to be mirroring this site over at the new, spiffy relaunched Blogger -- at my old site. For now, I'm going to mirror, rather than exclusively switch back. I seem to still have pro user perks, such as ad free, and I managed to set up a blogroll. Mostly, this is because I'm lazy and unable to graphicize my journalscape page due to severe HTML-challengedness.

The old site URL is http://bondgirl.blogspot.com.

If anyone wants to drop in over there or here and say which you prefer, appreciated.

not that I want to...

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Mon, 10 May 04 07:56:00 UT

...stir up all the used bookstore ranting that makes me sad again, but a short interview with Vincent McCaffrey on the subject of Avenue Victor Hugo Books closing in the Boston Globe.

I even wrote my senior thesis on "The Perfect Bookstore," which I claimed should reflect the individual bookseller's personal philosophy and love of books. After graduating, I sold books from a cart in front of the Boston Public Library for a couple of years before opening Avenue Victor Hugo with my wife Thais. Until recently, it was still possible to run the kind of place I originally had in mind -- but sadly, I no longer believe the independent bookstore is a viable business.

Again, he has interesting things to say that are worth thinking about, and it's very, very sad that AVH has left us.

(link via Project: UnButtercup)

worm: "Pavlov's Bell," Aimee Mann

thingy/s to check out: THE DREAMS OUR STUFF IS MADE OF, Thomas Disch

namecheck: Barb "Birthday Girl" Gilly

three strings of numbers

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Sat, 8 May 04 09:55:00 UT

Since Christopher's put up some info about one of the things we'll both be doing at Wiscon, I figured I'd put up my schedule. My scheduled schedule, I mean. All of my stuff turns out to be on Saturday, so the rest of my convention is blissfully schedule-free (with some must-attends, like the Annual Ratbastard Throwdown now with karaoke, the reading by Karen, Kessel and Richard and the reading by Mr. Rowe, Ms. Link and Mr. Grant, etc.). There doesn't appear to be a scary medical panel this year, which makes me sad.

Anyway, my programming items:

Journals and Blogs---threat or menace?

*Capitol B* Saturday, 2:30-3:45 p.m.

With the proliferation of on-line journals, are writers being "used up" by keeping their blog up to date? Is it a writing tool, or a way of avoiding working on your writing projects? Or are the networking and feedback possibilities worth the time?

M: Cheryl Myfanwy Morgan, Gwenda Bond, Tim Pratt, Susan Harris, Victoria D McManus, Susan Marie Groppi

I'm coming down on the phantom menace side at the moment. But should be fun, with panelmates Tim and Susan.

Cybernetic Magnolias: Southern Women Writing Genre Fiction

*Caucus Room* Saturday, 4:00-5:15 p.m.

This summer, Tor Books will publish Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic. As with American letters in general, genre fiction has a rich tradition of work with a Southern accent. Six of the contributors to Crossroads are women; are women more or less likely than men to use regional concerns in genre work? Women writing "Southern" outside the genre are easy to name--everyone from Flannery O'Connor to Lee Smith. But who are the women writing (or who have written) "Southern" science fiction and fantasy?

M: Christopher Rowe, Gwenda Bond, Richard Butner, Kelly D. Link

Help us, please!

And finally, and most exciting of all:

New Wave YA Reading

*Conference Room 2* Saturday, 10:30-11:45 p.m.

Hipster young adult writers trot their stuff.

Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, Gwenda Bond, Christopher Barzak

There will be drinking and I'm still trying to decide which chapter to read from (though I'll probably be obvious and do the first one).

So, there they are. The times and places I'm guaranteed to be over Memorial Day weekend. Other than that, look in the bar or for bicycles streaking around the lake.

worm: "Palmcorder Yajna," Mountain Goats

thingy/s to check out: "The Voluntary State" at Sci Fiction

namecheck: Christopher "Karaoke Maestro" Barzak

aquacoustic snackosphere

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Fri, 7 May 04 17:02:00 UT

Okay, so those are just random words that came up in a google search I did. But I like the pretty sound they make together.

Odds and ends from today and the week...

The Chicago Tribune profiles smaller magazines, calling some of them zines and maybe they are. Anyway, lots of good things mentioned here.

Slate thinks Survivor needs to shake up its rules, in a move that would surely cause people's heads to explode if it actually happened, and Sandra from the last Survivor completely thought Rupert was going home in her last column. I don't really know who I want to win this one, though I suppose it has to be Rupert by default. But it's sadly true that I didn't love Rupert as much this time around. My flaw or the show's? I'm not sure. I just wish Rich Hatch was still around, which must be proof of the aberration caused by this stupid show.

The grave housing D'Artagnan and the other Musketeers may have been found by Dutch explorers. (I love those books.)

Are the three musketeers and four swashbuckling chums buried under an unassuming Dutch garden in the town where legendary swordsman D'Artagnan was killed? Police plan to turn over an investigation into the discovery of the seven skeletons to archaeologists in the southern Dutch town of Maastricht, which has a history of battles going back to Roman times. "Specialists are determining how long the bodies have been there," a police spokesman said Tuesday.

This one's for you, Barth (a sort of follow-up by the local paper on the big WP story about this).

And in the best car theft story ever:

A band of cross-dressers has been stealing cars from dealerships around Alabama to drive throughout the Southeast to competitions for men who parade on stage in women's clothing, police said.

They don't send the cars to chop shops or sell them at too-good-to-be-true prices; they just cruise for a while in flash and style and then abandon the cars, often near gay nightclubs. "I guess they just wanted to look good when they got there," Birmingham auto theft Sgt. D.P. Smith said Monday.

(Via Syntax of Things.)

Lastly, Ted Conover weight in at the NYT on the Abu Ghraib abuses. Conover wrote the excellent book NEWJACK, about his year spent as a prison guard in Sing-Sing.

In the prison where I worked (and in most prisons, I suspect), there are two sets of rules. There are the official rules, which you learn during training and carry in a booklet in your pocket. And then there are the real rules the knowing what you can and cannot get away with.

Prison officers, in charge of people who are usually not nice, are bound to overstep the rules occasionally. The infractions may be relatively minor, like forgetting to unlock the cell of a difficult inmate when it's recreation time, or more serious, like participating in an "adjustment" of an abusive inmate. And when and if the incidents are made public, the test is always: will your superiors back you up? Is the boss a good guy or a jerk? Which rule book does he follow?

In a prison, of course, the boss is the superintendent or warden. He's the one who, in ways that are sometimes unspoken, sets the tone for the institution, making clear what's acceptable and what is not.

In a military prison during a time of war, it may be little harder to divine exactly who is in charge, and what's likely to happen if something goes wrong if a prisoner dies during interrogation, for example. The discredited former commander of Abu Ghraib, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has said that while the soldiers in the photos were technically under her command, military intelligence effectively ran the unit where the abuse took place.

Every time I'm alone in the car and start thinking about those pictures the last few days, I also start crying. NPR did a feature on the U.S. Marshals who made desegregation possible, in a lot of ways, yesterday afternoon and I was a basket case. Because they wore uniforms too. I'm thinking about this a lot, but I'm not going to talk about it here beyond this. I don't look forward to what's still to come and I don't trust the people in charge to even make good faith efforts to fix this. (Not that it is fixable, but things must be done anyway.)

And on that note, happy weekend. I guess I'll close with the lyrics to Johnny Cash's classic "Ragged Old Flag," almost a rap, and definitely appropriate at least to me. Just put extra emphasis on the scandalized nation line.

Ragged Old Flag

I walked through a county courthouse square
On a park bench, an old man was sittin' there.
I said, "Your old court house is kinda run down,
He said, "Naw, it'll do for our little town".
I said, "Your old flag pole is leaned a little bit,
And thats a ragged old flag you got hangin' on it".
He said, "Have a seat", and I sat down,
"Is this the first time you've been to our little town"
I said, "I think it is"
He said "I dont like to brag, but were kinda proud of
That Ragged Old Flag

"You see, we got a little hole in that flag there,
When Washington took it across the Delaware.
and It got powder burned the night Francis Scott Key sat watching it,
writing "Say Can You See"
It got a rip in New Orleans, with Packingham & Jackson
tugging at its seams.
and It almost fell at the Alamo
beside the Texas flag,
But she waved on though.
She got cut with a sword at Chancellorsville,
And she got cut again at Shiloh Hill.
There was Robert E. Lee and Beauregard and Bragg,
And the south wind blew hard on
That Ragged Old Flag

"On Flanders Field in World War I,
She got a big hole from a Bertha Gun,
She turned blood red in World War II
She hung limp, and low, a time or two,
She was in Korea, Vietnam, She went where she was sent
by her Uncle Sam.
She waved from our ships upon the briny foam
and now they've about quit wavin' back here at home
in her own good land here Shes been abused,
She's been burned, dishonored, denied an' refused,
And the government for which she stands
Has been scandalized throughout out the land.
And shes getting thread bare, and shes wearin' thin,
But shes in good shape, for the shape shes in.
Cause shes been through the fire before
and i believe she can take a whole lot more.

"So we raise her up every morning
And we bring her down slow every night,
We dont let her touch the ground,
And we fold her up right.
On second thought
I *do* like to brag
Cause Im mighty proud of
That Ragged Old Flag"

worm: "Ragged Old Flag," Johnny Cash

thingy/s to check out: Paula Guran's new blog, which makes us wonder what Locus review she's talking about

namecheck: Joan "Taking Names" Philo

The Return of Stephen Hunter!

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Fri, 7 May 04 05:04:00 UT

This eases the Elvis Mitchell pain a tad bit. He reviews VAN HELSING.

It features a fair number of diversions for us dull-normals. I was entranced by the flickery quality of Kate Beckinsale's Transylvanian accent, which came and went more mysteriously than Dracula. He can turn into a giant muscular bat, but she turns from an Eastern European Gypsy princess to a graduate of some tony Oxbridge finishing school in a trice! That's a much better trick! Next, there's the issue of Hugh Jackman's hair extenders. Smashing jolly good work, chaps! His locks are thicker than 10W-40 in subzero weather.

Then there are the landscapes and the architecture. More convincing than the many digitized monsters that mash through it, the landscapes of "Van Helsing" have a kind of existential pictorialism, all the colors taken from the palette of Edvard Munch, dim greens, lusterless grays, parched ochers. Allen Daviau, the cinematographer, has worked with Steven Spielberg and knows what he's doing. Meanwhile, the castles, with their unlikely catwalks and jiggling drawbridges and sheets of stained glass, conjure Escher at his most whimsical, aided by Gorey at his most depressed.

The plot, alas, calls up less exalted sources: It could have been constructed by a 17th-tier hack working in a cracker-box office on La Brea behind a chili-dog stand in 1946, at the end of the classic monster-movie run when the genre had resorted to the creakiest gimcrackery. It decodes to nothing less than "Van Helsing & Frankenstein vs. Dracula & the Wolfman" and therefore fits in nicely with that lost oeuvre of "vs." pictures, such as the dazzling "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" and the whack job "Santa vs. Jesus." (The Internet Movie Database yields more than 3,200 movies with "vs." in the title.)

Oh, Stephen, how I've missed you these Fridays!

Let's just hope he's really back.

worm: "Virginia, No One Can Warn You," Tift Merritt

thingy/s to check out: Probably Van Helsing, despite the review

namecheck: I hate it when I blank out on names. No, name check today friends!

you know something?

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Thu, 6 May 04 21:10:00 UT

I fucking hate Friends.

(Flame away, but I just tried to watch the first five minutes of the finale and could. not. do. it.)

Have you read Christopher's story yet?

There's more but, long week, and I'll try and do a more substantial post tomorrow.

p.s. If you have the Outdoor Life Network, you should be watching "The Lance Chronicles" -- a docu-series following Lance Armstrong's progress toward this year's Tour de France... if for no other reason than to see how they skate around The Yoko Factor (aka Sheryl Crow, nine-time Grammy winner).

p.p.s. Someone please tell me Boston Rob doesn't win?

worm: "Ring of Fire," Johnny Cash

Oops, low battery!

"The Voluntary State"

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Wed, 5 May 04 07:20:00 UT

"The Voluntary State" may be my favorite of Christopher's stories. It's now up on Sci-Fiction. Go forth and read. (You may want to print it out, as it's a fairly long story. But so, so good.) The opening paragraph:

Soma had parked his car in the trailhead lot above Governor's Beach. A safe place, usually, checked regularly by the Tennessee Highway Patrol and surrounded on three sides by the limestone cliffs that plunged down into the Gulf of Mexico.

worm: "Gasoline," Catherine Wheel

thingy/s to check out: Christopher's story!

namecheck: Soma-With-The-Paintbox-In-Printer's-Alley

three odd things

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Tue, 4 May 04 22:23:00 UT

They're not all that odd, but I had to counteract the caffeine from the coffee house writer's group initial meeting with something that would allow me to sleep and, well, wine was handy. So, ignore the wrong things and look at these three (which have probably been covered excellently elsewhere but I've not had time to keep up today). Presenting the Just-in-Case Brigade...

A forgotten, and sadly never seen by me, Stanley Kramer screwball, SO THIS IS NEW YORK,is finally playing its titular city. (You feel dirty cause I used the word titular, don't you?)

The moviemaker Stanley Kramer was always known as an astute businessman. But in 1948 when he produced his first movie, "So This Is New York," a screwball satire of city life, previewing it in the Midwest was probably not the best idea.

Critics there hated it. Audiences generally stayed away. And so the movie quickly dropped from sight, never opening except for a brief appearance in a theater in Far Rockaway, Queens in the city for which it was named.

I hope this doesn't mean we can blame Kramer for Bible belt previews.

Item the Second: The Sloan Foundation has named the recipients of its science in film project fellowships, both to very interesting sounding projects. Though I long for the moral certitude to focus on the DNA project, I instead focus on the exciting Hedy Lammar script. (Note to Sloan Foundation: I will work for stipend and I love science.)

At any rate, you can't argue with this:

In 1933, at age 19, she swam in the nude in the notorious Czech film "Ecstasy." Often called the most beautiful woman in the world, she married badly to a domineering Austrian munitions manufacturer and escaped by drugging the maid and climbing out a window. She made her way to Hollywood, where she starred in movies with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart.

Then there is the less known chapter of her life. In World War II, she offered her services as an inventor of weapons, coming up with a brainstorm that helped lead to wireless Internet and cellphones.

The Hedy Lamarr story: does it sound like the plot of a movie?

Let us just hope it's a good movie. (But could she have met James Bond? I'm just asking...)

Item the Third, though not in importance. Small Beer Press has put up info on its Richard Butner chapbook, to debut I believe in the not too distant future. Order now, cool kids, for everyone on your block will want one.

worm: Oh, I really don't have one. Since the most earsticky thing of my day was radio Nirvana.

thingy/s to check out: Jincy Willet's JENNY AND THE JAWS OF LIFE

namecheck: Joe "You'd Think He's A Teacher or Some Shit" Sutliff Sanders

microwaves dream of poodles

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Mon, 3 May 04 21:29:00 UT

The thing I will recommend to you today, that you should seek out immediately (well, right after you help Karen vanquish Dan Brown by ordering THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB from Amazon -- that would be a right besting, oh yes) is Imad Rahman's I DREAM OF MICROWAVES story collection. All the stories in the collection, from what I understand (only read two so far), revolve around Pakistani-American b-movie actor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. There is soft porn in his wife's house, costumed alcohol promotional character drama, a battle of wills against another b-movie actor famous for playing cannibals. And that's _just_ in the first two stories and most of the action happens in Ohio. Reminds me of Stacey Richter only in how funny, in addition to clever, the writer's voice is. Highly enjoyable. He lives in Madison; and you should check out the wonderful One Story interview with him about his collection and "Eating, Ohio," which was originally a One Story.

Other than that, I've a headache, am finally drinking the glass of wine I've been craving all afternoon, still haven't answered any damn email, watched a depressing movie (VERONICA GUERIN, only because Cate Blanchett is some sort of god creature walking among us), went to the gym and abused my body and well, that's pretty much it. Since Christopher was off riding a bajillion miles on his bicycle (and then updating his journal!), I didn't ride my bike at all today and more's the pity.

Tomorrow night we meet with our new in-person writing group to establish ground rules and such. This sort of thing always promises to be interesting.

Oh, and I have a freaking book to finish, by the way, so there may be less from me here for the next little bit. Or my head may explode. Even odds at the moment, but we're having a blast, really? See how we use we? That's how you know we're going mad in here.

Night, night.

(Oh and by the by, Mr. McLaren allowed me to see a wonderful interview of Buck 65. Ladies, he's cute and apparently nice too. Rowr.)

worm: "Vibrate," Rufus Wainwright

thingy/s to check out: I DREAM OF MICROWAVES

namecheck: Scott "Also Yay and Aussie Bastard (meant in nicest possible way)" Westerfeld

this rock on tiptoe

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Sun, 2 May 04 17:30:00 UT

It's another month already. Where the hell do these things come from?

I still owe most of you email. I seem to be in that dreaded cycle where anything that requires any thought at all for response or anything it isn't entirely rude to not respond to right away is waiting patiently and accusingly in my inbox while I get into the proper frame for email answering. Yes, yes, this is a vicious disease, I know. I should just answer the damn email. And I will. But not today.

Not today because it's bleak and COLD outside, that's right COLD, despite the fact that a new month has arrived and it is called May and is not supposed to be cold at all. We got up this morning and baked cookies (chocolate chip) for the post-Derby cycling club picnic and meeting, canceled now for inclement weather. We've been trying to unload this mountain of cookies all day, it seems, even forcing them on our neighbors. We took some over to the Sutliff Sanders' and got to see the new person they made. (Very cute and charming for a nonverbal sleepy person.)

Home, gym, library, watched another episode of Firefly. We only saw a few eps of Firefly when it was on and we _liked_ it, don't get me wrong. But we didn't love it. We love it now. Not a bad episode yet. Stupid, evil Fox eats its fine, strong young and we stop blinking when it happens.

Yesterday we saw MEAN GIRLS, which was mostly what I expected but not quite as nasty. Possibly more on this later when I'm not feeling cranky and headachey. Also, maybe I'll say something about THE SLEEPING FATHER, which I enjoyed but not as much as I'd hoped to.

Oh, and from the parade of Things That Happen Just As They Should, there's a lovely review of THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB (possibly the best yet) in today's New York Review of Books and it's sitting pretty at NUMBER FREAKING 10 on Amazon. Yay, Karen!

I think I've bored you enough. Go buy Karen's book or something. Then we can have a real Jane Austen book club after you've read it. Or not.

OH, OH, OH -- Christopher posted the TOC for the next issue of Say... last night. I'm really excited about everything we've got. This is going to be a kick-ass issue. So, follow the link to Project Pulp and order already.

Also, according to Penn and Teller we're all chumps for recycling. Just do the cans, man. Next week's episode is about the Bible. I can't wait.

worm: "That's Something I Do," Apples in Stereo

thingy/s to check out: I'm glad to see more women in important roles in the SF world. I hope the trend continues. While there are points in the past when women have been in charge of major editorial duties--I was reminded about 1994 where Ellen Datlow was still editing for Omni, Shawna McCarthy was launching Realms of Fantasy, and Kris Rusch was editing F&SF--I think things are different this time. John Klima expands his discussion on female editors in SF

namecheck: Sage "Sleepy" Sutliff Sanders

the great and terrible things of beautimous friday

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Fri, 30 Apr 04 17:38:00 UT

It's Bob Edwards' last day on Morning Edition, because the corporate hacks who have apparently taken over NPR ate brain tumors for breakfast awhile back. (Reference inspired by the opening of Mean Girls.) There's a depressing page of tributes by his fellow doomed NPRers up at that link. At least the poor man no longer has to rise at one a.m. every morning.

In The Tennessean we find a variation on the old saw that I'm making up right now that goes, "Don't unsheath the claws if you can't take a scratch." Apparently, Dollywood has asked some people organizing a gay day event there to not use their logo in promoting the event, leading to my favorite paragraph in any news story of the day.

''What are we supposed to say, 'I'm going to the theme park run by the woman with the big breasts?' '' asked Belle Meade resident Michael Romanello, 56. Romanello says he sent out about 200 e-mails to friends on the East Coast yesterday urging them to head to Pigeon Forge for the May 22 event in a gesture of defiance.

There's a lovely review of THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB in this morning's New York Times. A taste:

As Falstaff was not only witty in himself but the cause that there was wit in others, the silvery percipience of Jane Austen causes other writers to shine responding to it.

Sir Walter Scott, romantic and clangorously popular: "The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going" but not "the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting." G. K. Chesterton defending Austen's sheltered life and small palette: "Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her."

Best and most daring, Virginia Woolf in a link to Shakespeare: "The minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word she wrote, and so does Shakespeare."

Such quotations (and cavils from the dislikes of Mark Twain, Henry James and Joseph Conrad) cluster ingeniously in an afterword to "The Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler. Ms. Fowler, an original and unexpectedly voiced novelist ("Sarah Canary," "The Sweetheart Season"), takes her own place among the shining responders. Not just with comments of her own, though there are some excellent ones, but with the entire playful structure of her new novel.

I find myself really, really hoping that readers of Jane Austen BC take the Entertainment Weekly reviewer's advice and go hunt down Karen's other books, which I love just as much. My favorite sentence from any Jane Austen BC review so far has to be this one, from the Christian Science Monitor: I'm instinctively wary of genetic engineering, but Karen Fowler may have produced a literary equivalent of the elusive Super Tomato.

Make sure you check out Karen's reading schedule and head out to hear her if you can.

Ruby's not a sad tomato or a busted valentine -- she's a sad elephant.

The WP gives us some Derby advice, which fools as we are we'll probably take. But at least we'll take it in a nice smoke-free bar.

Play nice. We'll be seeing MEAN GIRLS this weekend, because it's the kind of movie I just can't resist. So weak. I'll report back.

worm: "Gyoza," Shonen Knife

thingy/s to check out: There's something terrible about watching a beautiful woman fall apart. But we can't look away. It's the essence of cinema. Sometimes the cinetrix suspects that filmmakers could do away with the second part of Godard's maxim about needing only a girl and a gun to make a movie. A girl about to go off is much scarier than gunplay any day. The Cinetrix

namecheck: Justine "Yay!!!" Larbalestier

questions of southern origin

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Thu, 29 Apr 04 17:34:00 UT

Let's talk about Southern things, shall we? Southern or southern? (Big S or small s; I'm never sure and tend to do it by feel.)

Christopher, Richard, Kelly and I are on the following panel at Wiscon and I'd certainly welcome any suggestions as to things we might read or discuss.

Cybernetic Magnolias: Southern Women Writing Genre Fiction

This summer, Tor Books will publish Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic. As with American letters in general, genre fiction has a rich tradition of work with a Southern accent. Six of the contributors to CROSSROADS are women; are women more or less likely than men to use regional concerns in genre work? Women writing "Southern" outside the genre are easy to name--everyone from Flannery O'Connor to Lee Smith. But who are the women writing (or who have written) "Southern" science fiction and fantasy?

Now that that's out of the way, the real subject of this post is three questions originally from largehearted boy, by way of Jeff at Syntax of Things (which you should be reading and you can start with his answers). These are fine questions and so I'm gonna answer them too.

1) What three (3) Southern places, towns, or regions (aside from your own, if you currently reside in the South) do you think you would enjoy living in?

I'd have to say the whole Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle of smartness region, because Barb and Richard live there, among other lovely folks, it's within a fairly easy drive of the beach and has a great music scene. Plus, I remember there being great bookshops. (And lately, they get snow. I like a good completely-snowed-in once in awhile.)

Next, I'd have to say Louisville, because it's the hometown of Christopher's heart and I have to say it. I'm a pretty big Lexington fan, but I can see certain advantages to living in Louisville. Also: El Mundo, where they keep the food of the gods.

The third one gets hard, because I'm just pulling it out of nowhere. So I'm going to cheat and name some places I think I'd like to live, maybe. Athens, Georgia. New Orleans. Virginia Beach (does this count?). Nashville. Possibly Atlanta, though Traffic of Doom reputation doesn't help. There are lots of great southern cities, and huge revitalization efforts in many of them. Oh, and Asheville, I forgot Asheville, which is lovely.

2) What 3 (three) Southern places, towns, or regions have you ever visited and would never want to set foot in again? (I make the special note that you must have actually visited there, mainly because some people have irrational negative opinions about places based entirely upon what they have heard from others. Nothing like first-hand experience.)

This is tougher, because I tend to enjoy bad, hellish or kitsch-to-death experiences on a certain level. And I feel guilty about all the ones I've typed so far. It's too bad Gary, Indiana, isn't in the south -- it's the only place I've ever been that fully seemed to have earned its reputation.

Gainesville, Georgia. It just gave me the creeps.

Little Rock, Arkansas. Because if you get two feet outside the nice downtown, it's all depressing landscape and poverty. (In my experience.)

Daytona, Florida. Went there for Spring Break once upon a time and will never feel the need to return. That was _not_ a trattoria.

3) Finally, what are the three most distinctly Southern tourist traps you have ever visited?

I'd definitely say the whole Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area in Tennesee has to qualify. In the "Great Smoky Mountains," no less. Dollywood and its "You Are Too Large For These Rides We Just Know It, Oh Whew Look A Skinny Person" signs must be experienced to be believed (peace, love, dollywood!). This is one of those places where you can get those monkey puppets that fasten around your neck and waist in every single store. Plus, hillbilly figurines. And did I mention the haunted houses?

Dog Patch, Kentucky. The sad thing about this one is it's nothing BUT a tourist trap. It's just a shop that somehow thinks it's famous for having lots of cement yard art. Ahem.

Much of New Orleans. Yeah, it's fun, but I think we all must face the music that most of the area around Bourbon Street in New Orleans is a hopeless tourist trap for anyone except Christopher's sensible grandmother, who can't be drawn in by it. Hurricanes = Hangovers.

I'd like to note here that there's a certain existential sadness that can only be experienced by observing the day-to-dayness of tourist traps. By watching the people who work in it day after day, and how they react to the same old reactions. Life study? Yes. Study life.

How about you, ex-pats and dixiecats?

worm: "Ghost of Stephen Foster," Squirrel Nut Zippers

thingy/s to check out: Midnight, Mass. (comic book) and also Paradigm (another comic book)

namecheck: KJF World Tour

long days, or something like them

Gwenda007@earthlink.net — Wed, 28 Apr 04 22:09:00 UT

Really not much to say, except I was gone all day doing some "I Pretend I Know Stuff You Don't" type things and didn't get a chance to look in on or answer any email. So... don't be offended if I owe you a response.

Home and a few miles on the bike, to the grocery store (for wine, natch), just to feel movement. It was a lovely day for a bike (and a drive actually). We set up shop on the couch and watched Whedonville. The pilot of Firefly -- insert Fox executive crazy, crazy you should be ashamed and unable to look at your children rant -- and then one of the last Angel eps. Thinking about how little TV I'm addicted to right now makes me sad.

Tomorrow, we return to something approximating regular scheduling and programming?

Maybe.

This is my new bicycle. Isn't it pretty?

Sadly, they don't put pictures of my helmet online. But it's spiffy.