Clarion West just announced their author/teacher lineup for 2013: Elizabeth Hand, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Justina Robson, Ellen Datlow, and Samuel R. Delany. Four are among my favorite writers EVER, the fifth I'd never heard of but her blog cracks me up, and as for the sixth, well, y'all know who Joe Hill is, right? Heart-Shaped Box and all that. In short, major star power all around that spans the last fifty years of speculative fiction.

(Mr Psmith wants me to go just so I can ask Neil Gaiman what Terry Pratchett is like as a writing partner, heh heh heh...)

So yes, this is the year I apply. Next month is my online writing group's SSIAW (Short Story in a Week; it's like NaNoWriMo only, well, shorter) which is a great chance to crank out four stories, giving me a respectable number to choose from for submission. I used to be all about the novel writing, but I'm gradually being seduced by the short story format: it's like the difference between a giant canvas and a page from a medieval Book of Hours, where every brushstroke matters.

One of the ones I think I'll submit is the one that Big Name Magazine unofficially accepted back in October. They still haven't contacted me about a contract. *iz annoyed* I don't want to give up on them because, well, they're Big Name Magazine. And not just Big Name now but Big Name in the history of sci fi as well. So, I guess I keep waiting to find out if I've really been invited to the big dance or if it's just a shoddy trick being played on me by the Popular People and there's a bucket of pig blood poised over my head. Not that there will be Carrie-level vengeance or anything if you jilt me, Big Name Magazine. Really. Honest. Take your time. It's not like I'm ANXIOUS or anything.

Meanwhile I have two fests coming up in October, not to mention the incredibly, horrifyingly, beyond embarrassingly late custom fic that was purchased on the loveforlily auction. (I suck, I really do. I deserve to be flayed or shunned or deprived of wine. Wait, forget that last one...)

'Nuff said. Clarion applications open in December. Eyes on the prize, baby, eyes on the prize...

Curiosity has landed -- woohoo!! Mr Spock, assemble an away team...

See http://www.nasa.gov/mars.

Edit: Link fixed!

A woman hasn’t run a presidential debate in twenty years.

This boggles my mind. With all the women in business, journalism, politics, etc., NOT ONE has been named to moderate a presidential debate??? Other adjectives I can think of besides "surprising" include annoying, vexing, inappropriate, strange, or even (if I were of the paranoid persuasion) Highly Suspicious.

Well, three teenage girls from New Jersey apparently agree. Rather than spending their summer listening to Justin Bieber or hanging out at the pool, they amassed an astonishing 170,000 signatures on a petition to have one of the upcoming 2012 debates moderated by a woman. They then took their packet of signatures to the office of the Commission on Presidential Debates (the Commission will be selecting the moderators in the next couple of weeks)...

...and they were turned away, and told that they would not be permitted to leave the packages of signatures in case they contained dangerous substances.

WTF? Epic governmental fail.

Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel and Elena Tsemberis were interviewed about their experience on NPR today, where they spoke like mature, thoughtful, engaged young citizens about their disappointment with the way they were treated. (I applaud their self-control; I believe I might have thrown something large and heavy...)

Rather than give up, however, (quoting from themarysue.com): "[w]orking with Change.org, the girls have put together two petitions asking for female moderators–one targeted at the commission, and one targeting the Obama and Romney campaigns, who can also have a sizable influence over who is chosen to moderate the political showdowns. The former has 116,000 signatures, the latter 53,000."

These girls rock. If you agree, you can sign their petition and add your support. You go, girls!!!

The town of Corigliano d'Otranto has gone all brainy. They've put up ceramic plaques around town with quotes from the likes of Augustine, hand out conversation-starter postcards with questions like "Why were you born?" and even hired a Municipal Philosopher.

Does this not astonish you, in this age of tweets and sound bites, knee-jerk ideologues and their blind followers? It does me..

Graziella Lupo, the first person to hold the position, actually trained as a philosophical consultant at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice. I didn't even know such a degree existed!! Had I known, I might have made different choices as an undergrad ;)

So, the Philosopher is available for consultation on Friday afternoons to help you clarify your thoughts and puzzle over Deep Junk. Is this not a wonderful creative fascinating thing? Are not amazed at the intellectual fire of this tiny (pop. 5900) town?? Of course it is and you are! (I wish MY town had a Municipal Philosopher.)

But guess who thinks it isn't? The local branch of the psychologists' professional organization. They say that the use of a consulting philosopher is "not only misleading and confusing, but utterly perilous" and state that they will take "all the most appropriate actions to combat any offence that may be identified".

Well, thinking has always been a little perilous (all those highly volatile IDEAS, you know?). But somebody whose job is helping people's minds work better objects to...somebody whose job is helping people's minds work better? (This bit of course is not surprising at all. Rather depressing, but not surprising.) It's almost enough to make you question their dedication.

Perhaps I shall institute the habit of starting each day with a little Marcus Aurelius or Socrates :)

Paul McCartney and the Boss are playing their warbles, and the millicents cut them off in the middle of their finale?? Tsk, tsk, tsk. And one of them a Sir, too! Turning the lights and zvook off on a Knight seems right oozhassny. Somebody owes somebody an appy polly loggy.

Ed.: If you've never read A Clockwork Orange you might need this...

It's not my fault. It's circulating. irishredlass gave it to me. Or rather, she posted it and I can't say no to anything involving books, so I had to do it, so if I look like a showoff who's read, like, everything (or at least 70% of the list), blame her, heh heh heh...

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2.) Italicize those you intend to read.
3.) Underline those you LOVE.
4.) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read.

( The list, it be here )

Wow, how much fun is this?? http://www.dolldivine.com/deluxe-pin-up-maker.php
Thank you, droxy (I think -- although if I waste another hour playing with it the word "thank" may mutate into something else LOL!)

Now if I could just find where to buy all the pieces:

rivertempest recently posted her contribution to an interesting meme, so I commented on it in order to be able to play along.

The rules are thus: Comment to this post and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

She gave me seven very interesting word-prompts to play with: Books, Writing, Editing, Philosophy, Libraries, Wine, and Travel. So let's dive right in, shall we?

1. Books: Books are such a core part of my life and always have been that talking about them is sort of like talking about breathing. I started reading at a pretty young age, before preschool, and just never stopped -- since my mom has been both an English teacher and a librarian, I suppose there wasn't ever any question that this was my fate! Books go with me everywhere and have colonized almost every room in the house (I think the bathroom is the last holdout). I feel nervous if I don't have something to read within reach. Books have been companions, teachers, entertainers, mentors, guides and tools, both defense and weapon. Some people have comfort food; I have comfort books. Some people pack a book or two for a trip; I have to bring at least six, because what if I brought only two and it turned out I wasn't in the mood for reading either of them?? Calamity!!! When I visit someone's house, the first thing I do is troll their bookshelves. When I used to go visit my dad for two weeks in the summers, I brought two suitcases; one was full of clothes, the other was packed with books. My list of books read (which is incomplete) shows what a glutton I am for the written word. My to-read list demonstrates why I will never die, because I refuse to do so until I've read everything on that list. And yeah, I own a Kindle, but give me a proper book every time, complete with pages to turn and that great book-y smell :)

2. Writing: I love putting words together almost as much as -- and occasionally more than -- I love reading them. There's something magical about translating a story in your head into a form that other people can read and share. My plan as a kid was to be a writer. My goal as a much much older kid is still to be a writer, though I need to be more industrious about working at it. I belong to a very good online writing workshop, but need to carve out more time in my day for BIC HOK TAM. Not counting technical/non-fiction, I've had exactly one very short piece published and one unofficially accepted by Big Name Magazine (which operates on a Big Name Schedule, meaning it may be Big Name Years before it ever sees the light of day...). My goal for 2013 is to apply to the Clarion West writers workshop; it's pretty much the gold standard of FSF/speculative fiction workshops and counts among its alumni literally dozens of award-winning authors. All you do for six weeks is write, write, write, which is my idea of bliss. "That is one reason I write: as a kind of spiritual practice, to force truth to emerge from my habitual state of lazy dishonesty." (George Saunders)

3. Editing: In addition to my day job, I have a side business doing editing, proofreading and indexing. The most satisfying thing about editing, and why I love to beta, is helping someone say what they have to say, assisting in the birth of a piece of writing. That might mean finding exactly the right word the author was searching for, or spotting a plot hole so they can plug it, or simply tightening a phrase so that a sentence is honed to a point. (Or, occasionally, identifying anatomically impossible sexual positions LOL!) Much of my freelance editing is non-fiction -- dissertations, theses, papers to be submitted to journals -- which has its own limitations of form and function, but many of my authors are not native English speakers; if I can untangle a syntactical or grammatical knot so that their argument runs free and clear, I feel as though I have brought a tiny bit more order in the world.

4. Philosophy: The closest match for me is Stoicism. I believe that reason is the most important tool we have for understanding ourselves and the world, and that our highest purpose is to use that reason to improve ourselves as ethical and moral beings. As Marcus Aurelius says, "Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." We need more philosophy in our daily lives, because it makes you think about why you do the things you do; too many people, personally and socially and professionally, act on the whim of the moment, without ever knowing (or caring) why. The book that best explained to me why that matters -- why a moral code isn't an abstract theory but a matter of great practical importance -- is Atlas Shrugged. "Isn't it odd? When a politician or a movie star retires, we read front page stories about it. But when a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it." "They do, eventually..."

5. Libraries: Given my response to Item 1, you'd have to be pretty slow on the uptake not to realize that in my world, libraries = win. Mom took me to libraries from a very early age; in fact the first time she took me to a bookstore, apparently I was still operating under the library mentality and picked out two dozen books :) I got my MS/LIS in 2004 and I currently work at an academic library in the rare books and manuscripts department (kind of like the restricted section at Hogwarts) which is BLISS. As you can imagine, I love stories about libraries and archives and mysterious manuscripts and letters and diaries and so on and so forth. Libraries rock -- we need more of them, and more money for them, and everyone should visit/support them, frequently and generously.

6. Wine: Wine is A Good Thing. I like the way it looks in the glass. I like the way it smells. I like the way it tastes. I like the way it inspires my fics -- as Hemingway famously said, "Write drunk; edit sober." (I don't like the calories, however, so I recently gave it up for a month to see if that would allow me to lose weight while still consuming all my other favorite stuff -- i.e., garlic, chocolate, cheese, etc. Sadly, it did not.) I am a down-to-earth oenophile, so I enjoy laughing at pompous and pretentious descriptions ("Historic almost overcooked Chardonnay. Throws out raspberry, focused lemon and atomic traces of smoked bacon. Drink now through Friday." HAHAHAAA!) Favorite white: Mud Pie Chardonnay. Favorite red: Rosemont Shiraz. Favorite bubbly: Veuve Clicquot (New Year's tradition at our house!). Favorite fictional wine: Benden red, beloved of the Masterharper of Pern.

7. Travel: I don't do so much now, but I traveled quite a bit in and just after college. I've been to most of Western Europe, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, France, England and Scotland. On one memorable trip we mistakenly bought tickets for the slow boat down the Rhine rather than the fast one which, while highly picturesque, meant three days on a boat and two nights sleeping in the shrubbery ashore, since you couldn't stay on the boat overnight. (We did meet some very nice young Brits who were on vacation from medical school, and assisted them valiantly in building up a very large tower of empty bottles at a wine bar in Cologne the first night. This probably explains why we were able to sleep so soundly in the shrubbery.) Switzerland was memorable for vividly illustrating how out-of-shape I was, when we hiked from Interlaken up to Gimmelwald (GORGEOUS place, complete with the cleanest cows I've ever seen wearing big clonking cowbells). Immediately upon leaving Interlaken there was a sign that said "Gimmelwald 40 minutes." An hour later, after panting our way up perpendicular hillsides, we passed another sign: "Gimmelwald 20 minutes." Gimmelwald was also notable for the curious hot-water arrangement at the hostel: the shower was down the end of the garden, but the meter for hot water was in the kitchen. So you dropped your francs into the meter and then had to sprint down the path in order to get there before the timer ran out :D

Thank you, rivertempest, for seven highly useful words!

I love LZ Granderson :)

"I'm sure you've heard a lot about the gay agenda, but may not know what's in it. Here's what you do: Download a copy of the United States Constitution, read it. Everything the LGBT community wants is in there. Sounds like an oversimplification? It's not..."

Read the rest of the article here.

When you consider the only currently available alternative to aging is, well, being dead, getting older suddenly looks much more appealing. But there are times when what seems like a simple, gradual process that you have plenty of time to get used to suddenly throws up a mile marker that startles you.  This one happened to me last summer.

Like many (many many many) people, there is a Starbucks near where I work. Like man (many many many) people, I stop in there frequently. There's a young guy who works there, a graduate student in architecture. Based on my interactions with him there, and more so at the library where he helped us out over a semester with some of our architecture collections, I knew he was intelligent, quick-witted, reliable, nice, funny. Last summer he joined this group that bikes across the US, stopping to help work on affordable housing projects at various places along the way. His colleagues at Starbucks put up a flier about it so people could donate, with a link to his blog, where I learned more about him: that he was an Americorps volunteer, worked with Habitat for Humanity, has a lovely philosophy about making people's lives better, likes to draw, and a number of other very appealing things, all of which summed up to his being a genuinely remarkable young man.

Oh, and did I mention he's also very cute? Shaggy brown hair, nice eyes, sweet smile, etc.

Now, for the last several many decades (exactly how many, modesty prohibits me from disclosing), all of this would immediately have spawned the thought, "Wow, I would love to go out with this guy."

This time? The very first thought that crossed my mind was, "Wow, how amazing would it be to have a son like that? I would be so proud..."

This was quite a shock, let me tell you. I mean, I knew I'd reached the point where my boss is younger than I am, but I had no idea I had crossed the Rubicon from having men in the world that were too old to date, to having men in the world that were too young to date. And it came upon me so unexpectedly and so fully-formed -- it wasn't like I had some sort of internal debate about it, it was just a done deal.

The aftershocks still haven't quite settled out in my mind nearly a year later. Even writing it down makes me feel rather odd. So I think a cup of tea and some chocolate is in order.  And perhaps some voting on English men :)