Category: Uncategorized

Well, this is nice.  Not quite nice enough to make up for the broken water pipe in my kitchen and the daylong (fruitless) wait for plumbers to arrive.  But I’ll take what I can get.

Today’s mail contained a copy of the brand-new The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 5, which contains my story, Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale).

I should have known better than to feel smug about my ability to bundle up for cold weather.  But I didn’t, and the gods always punish hubris.

Which in this case means I came home this afternoon to find an inch of water on my kitchen floor, courtesy of a broken pipe.

This morning, the temperature at my bus stop was 1°F (-17°C), according to the thermometer in my car.  The wind chill, according to local weather radio, was -21°F (-29°C). 

The bus was 20 minutes late.

I thought I was being smart by catching the later bus, which is to say the bus that comes after the sun has risen.  Ha.

I’d be damn interesting.  Hell, I’d be happy if I were one tenth as cool as Brian May.  (But maybe I’d also be a little full of myself, knowing I was so awesome.)

I listened to this interview with Dr. May several months ago, and it only served to make me respect the man even more than I already did.  He just seems like a really smart, really talented, down-to-earth guy.  And he’s accomplished in both the arts and the sciences to an extent that’s quite rare these days.   A modern day Renaissance Man, is Brian May.

The thing I like most about the latest Wondermark comic, aside from the fact that it’s a spot-on description of internet fame, is the sly callout to Garfunkel and Oates. 

The parody of internet fame—which is almost the same as internet meme-ification (that’s my word but feel free to use it)—works all the more because it references a real-world internet meme at the same time.  It makes me imagine internet memery (that’s mine, too, but go ahead and use it; I’m a generous soul) is like some kind of vast, virtual ecology.