marlowe1

CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/18/mass-author-signing-including-me-at-hyatt-regency-crystal-city-530-to-730-today/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18618

If you’re in the DC area today, and you love science fiction and fantasy, you have a fantastic opportunity: Dozens of science fiction and fantasy authors are signing their works today at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, from 5:30 to 7:30, in the hotel’s Independence Center. Writers signing books include this year’s newly-minted Grandmaster Connie Willis, Joe Haldeman, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jo Walton, Myke Cole, James Patrick Kelly, Rachel Swirsky, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Jack McDevitt, Diana Peterfreund, Geneveive Valentine, and many others, including yours truly. Need books? We’re selling them here. You have no reason not to come. At all!

See you there.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/18/the-big-idea-michelle-sagara/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18615

This Big Idea post made me tear up a little. It’s partly because I’m a parent. But it’s mostly because of how Michelle Sagara explains how the understanding and kindness of the very young informed her new book Silence.

MICHELLE SAGARA:

This book is about its dedication:

This is for the girls:

Callie
Katie
Caroline
Molly
Alexandra
Rada

With thanks, with gratitude, although admittedly they might not understand why.

I am, as I often do, getting ahead of myself.

When I set out to write my first YA novel, I wrote it on spec. This came about because my Luna editor asked if I happened to have a finished YA novel just lying around (this is almost an exact quote). As I had two books due that calendar year, I emphatically did not have any finished novels, mostly finished novels, or even partially finished novels on my figurative desk.

But I had an idea for one that I’d been mulling over for some time. It was even a contemporary, which meant I had some hope of writing a novel that was short (for me). I’ve always been drawn to stories about grief, loss, and the ways in which people deal with both. I wanted to write a ghost story, from the point of view of a young woman who had just lost the first love of her life.

So I sat down to write Silence. I had some idea of who the protagonist was, but I often discover nuances of character while writing. The prologue and the first chapter were exactly what I envisioned. The second chapter started in the same smooth vein.

And then chapter two took an abrupt detour, veering in a direction that I hadn’t planned. I wrote:

At 8:10, at precisely 8:10, the doorbell rang.

“That’ll be Michael,” her mother said.

You could set clocks by Michael. In the Hall household, they did; if Michael rang the doorbell and the clock didn’t say 8:10, someone changed it quickly, and only partly because Michael always looked at clocks, and began his quiet fidget if they didn’t show the time he expected them to show.

Books have tone. They have voice. And I realized, as I paused at the end of that last paragraph, that I was about to veer wildly off-tone if I continued; that my careful, little paranormal would have an entirely different feel.

But I also suddenly understood where this new book was going. I understood, at that moment, who Emma was, and what had kept her moving during the almost crippling months of grief.

I knew that if I wrote this unexpected book, I was no longer writing a book that would be guaranteed to speak to the market – if any book can be said to do that with certainty – but I wanted to write this book. Because I could see the dedication, from that point on.

Let me explain why. I’ve had some experience with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) as a parent. I’ve experienced the difficulties school can cause – even an incredibly supportive school, which we were lucky to have. I witnessed firsthand my oldest son’s inability to parse social cues, and to miss simple things like people saying “hi!” with enthusiasm – an enthusiasm that waned when he all but ignored them. He didn’t hear; they didn’t know he couldn’t.

We are terrified, as parents, for our children; we are terrified that they won’t fit in, they won’t find friends, they’ll be made fun of, they’ll be isolated. Because my oldest son was diagnosed ASD (Aspergers at the time) I was prepared for this, but not less terrified, and it broke my heart to know that my son was terribly lonely when I could see the children in his class trying very hard to make connections with him. If I was present, I could point them out – but I wasn’t going to be present for most of his school day.

He struggled through two years of kindergarten with some limited success, and then came the full day of grade one. And in grade one, he met the girls. Yes, those girls – the ones to whom the book is dedicated. The teacher treated my son as if his behaviour was normal for my son, and at six, children’s ideas of normative behaviour are very flexible. The girls took their cues from his teacher that year, and perhaps with a different teacher they would have picked up different cues. I don’t know.

What I do know is this: My son hated the noise of the stairwell and his class was on the third floor, so he was required to use the stairs. He almost always entered dead last, when the stairwell would be mostly empty. On this day, (half-way through the year) he was trudging up the stairs, and the stair monitor, a woman of middling years, shouted at him.

He failed to hear her, so she marched up the stairs and shouted in his ear. And he still failed to hear her; he pretty much tuned out all the noise until he left the stairwell. I started to approach the stair monitor to tell her as much, and stopped as a young girl with platinum blond hair caught her by the elbow.

“He can’t hear you, you know,” she told the woman. “He’s daydreaming. He always daydreams when he walks up the stairs.”

She was six years old. She was six years old and entirely fearless when it came to correcting a much older and much larger authority figure. And she had done so without prompting from anyone. My son, of course, didn’t even notice. But I did.

She was part of a group of friends, and they kept an eye out for my son. They also came to his birthday parties from grade one through grade six, although by that time three of them were no longer in the same school.

When my son was in grade three, we took karate together. Karate made us late, and one night there was a school open house, so we went directly from the dojo, in our gis, to the school. We entered his classroom and found two girls there, and my son approached one of them – in his karate outfit – and started to talk.

The other girl said, with a sneer, “As if we care about your stupid karate.” This is the type of reaction I feared, as a parent, especially given that ASD children can go on for an hour about any topic that engages their interest.

But the first girl turned to her friend and said, “Well, I do care.” And proceeded to talk with my son about his karate progress. She was, of course, one of the six.

Did they spend their whole days doing nothing but babysitting my son? No, of course not. They spent most of their time socializing with each other. But they continued to keep an eye out in all the little ways that made my son’s life easier. I’m not even certain, these many years later, that they would remember the incidents that I remember so clearly and so gratefully.

Michael appeared at Emma’s door at exactly 8:10 in the morning.

And I thought: Why not these girls? Books are written about shy outsiders or social outcasts all the time; books are written about mean girls just as frequently, and often books are a combination of these two extremes. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But why not these girls? Girls who were best friends and who supported each other (often by phone even in the early years) and who, while having lives entirely of their own also had the compassion to keep an eye on an awkward ASD child? It’s a paranormal, it’s contemporary, but why can’t the story be about girls like these?

Silence is that book.

—-

Silence: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt (pdf link). Visit the author’s blog. Follow her on Twitter.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/18/because-it-is-about-to-be-forwarded-to-me-a-million-times/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18613

Yes, I’ve seen this. And while my own position isn’t as extreme, I certainly sympathize.

From xkcd, of course.

For those who need it or haven’t seen it, my own position on Klout.

vylar_kaftan

Originally published at Vylar Kaftan. You can comment here or there.

Hey folks! If you’re reading this, I could use a hand. I need to know something for a story.

If you read the following lyrics, which ones do you immediately know the tune for, without thinking about it?

1) I went to California with a washpan on my knee…
2) Yippie-ki-yi yippie-yippie yay, yippie yay!
3) Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?

Let me know which ones in comments. It’s okay if you know them all, or none of them. I need to know how recognizable these lyrics are. Thanks!

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=11461

Earlier this week, THE DAMNED HIGHWAY (a novel I co-wrote with Nick Mamatas) became available for the Nook (as well as in paperback).

Now, THE CAGE — already available for the Kindle and in paperback – is available for the Nook, as well.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CAGE TO YOUR NOOK

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE DAMNED HIGHWAY TO YOUR NOOK

jwz

My favorite so far:

Yo, why do people say it's hard to explain gay marriage to kids? I didn't realize it was actually illegal until High School because of Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

calendula_witch

[	Tags	|	family, food, mark, travel	]
[	Current Location	|	Room with a View	]
[	Current Mood	|	cheerful	]

Wow, being tourists is exhausting! Fun, but whew.

Tuesday, as noted, we did the Portland underground tour, then had a lovely late lunch and then spent some time at Powells, then went back home and crashed a while, eating leftovers instead of going out for yet another huge meal.

Wednesday, we drove to Seattle, where my folks finally got to see markferrari’s apartment. We hung out a bit, went to Agua Verde for a drink, then Tilth for dinner. That was…an adventure. Tilth is still scrumptious, but the portion size seems to be creeping ever downward. Even so, we left with full bellies (and empty pockets).

This morning we had coffee and a bite at their hotel, before heading down to Seattle Center and lunch at the Space Needle.

From there, back on the monorail to Pike’s Market and surrounds (Fluevog!), for a bit of shopping, and ice cream…then, utterly exhausted, we’ve collapsed in our separate chambers till dinnertime…oh, very soon here.

Gee, I wonder why I can’t lose any of this weight.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

jwz

"The elves will travel in a basket lined with sheep skin so that they can be comfortable on the journey."

MP for the Independence Party Árni Johnsen arranged for the relocation of a 30-ton boulder, which he believes is home to three generations of elves, from Sandskeið on Hellisheiði in southwest Iceland to his home Höfðaból in the Westman Islands today.

Árni first encountered the elves’ dwelling when he was in a serious car accident in January 2010. His car overturned and landed beside the boulder 40 meters away from the highway, Morgunblaðið reports.

His SUV was damaged beyond repair but Árni escaped the accident unharmed. He considered whether the boulder might be a dwelling for hidden people and had it saved from landing underneath the south Iceland Ring Road when the highway was widened.

“I had Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, a specialist in the affairs of elves from Álfagarðurinn in Hellisgerði, Hafnarfjörður, to come look at the boulder with me,” recollected Árni. “She said it was incredible, that she had never met three generations of elves in the same boulder before.”

“She said an elderly couple lives on the upper floor but a young couple with three children on the lower floor,” the MP described.

The specialist concluded that the boulder’s inhabitants were content with the move. “But they asked whether the boulder could stand on grass. I said that was no problem but asked why they wanted grass. ‘It’s because they want to have sheep,’ Ragnhildur replied,” Árni continued.

The specialist also said that the elves wish for the boulder’s “window side” to face the view. “I promised to do so,” Árni stated.

The boulder will be moved on the ferry Herjólfur and the elves will travel in a basket lined with sheep skin so that they can be comfortable on the journey.

Ragnhildur explained to Árni that when he was in the accident everything went crazy on Hellisheiði. Elves from all neighboring settlements were called out and there was much confusion until one large being took control of the situation.

“Ragnhildur said it was my protecting spirit, because my time hadn’t come,” he concluded.

Also: Angry Elves Said to Have Wreaked Havoc in West Fjords

Vigdís Kristín Steinthórsdóttir, a nurse, healer and hypnotist, believes hidden people, or elves, who live in the mountain were upset when the tunnel through Óshlíd was made and are causing these mishaps.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

jwz

Renouncing Citizenship Makes Facebook Co-Founder Inadmissable To US

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin's decision to renounce his U.S. citizenship just in time to avoid a large tax payment essentially means he will not be able to re-enter the United States again, immigration experts say.

"There's a specific provision of immigration law that says that a former citizen who officially renounces citizenship, and is determined to have renounced it for the purpose of avoiding taxation, is excludable," said Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "So he would not be able to return to the United States if he's found to have renounced for tax purposes."

The provision of law isn't usually enforced, added Williams, "however, this guy is so high profile that this is probably going to be the test case."

[...] Two immigration lawyers said his explanation hardly passes the laugh test. Saverin's move was timed to the initial public offering of shares of Facebook stock. The valuation of the Facebook IPO explodes Saverin stake in the social media company to some $3 billion, on which avoiding taxes could save him at least tens -- if not hundreds -- of millions of dollars. Nor does it help his case that he relocated to Singapore, which levies no taxes on those earnings.

Two senators mobilized Thursday to crack down on Saverin and other tax dodgers.

"He's fucked," said Adam Green, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles. "He must have gotten horrendous advice."

It's plausible that Saverin simply decided the money he'd save would be worth saying goodbye to the United States forever.

$100M is 3.3% of $3B. It's a rounding error to this bozo, but he thinks it's very important that he give none of that back to the people who made his lottery win possible. Bravo, Sir, you are a true Hero of Capitalism.

Previously.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/17/lowest-difficulty-setting-now-on-kotaku/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18609

Hey there! Wanted to comment on “Lowest Difficulty Setting” but missed before I closed up the comments? You’re in luck! Kotaku has reprinted the post, and their comments are open! Fire away!

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/17/journey-to-planet-joco-at-tor-com/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18606

Over at Tor.com, I’m part of a two-week festival of all things Jonathan Coulton, in a feature called “Journey to Planet Joco.” JoCo is starting a tour starting on June 1, and so I sat down to talk with him about those songs of his with a science fictional bent to them, a journey that culminates in a very special event: On May 29, we will debut a brand new song by Coulton. And this new song? It’s awesome (yes, I’ve heard it).

The first installment is up now, in which we talk about songwriting, story telling, and science fiction. You can hear an audio version of our interview or read a transcription. We’ll be talking every day through May 29th. Check it out and tell your friends. It’s as much fun as you can have with your ears.

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=11452

Here’s another freebie for you – “The Ghosts of Monsters” – a short story that ties in with Dark Hollow and Ghost Walk. It was filmed in Rehmeyer’s Hollow (the real-life inspiration for LeHorn’s Hollow) by Dark Hollow director Paul Campion.

nick_kaufmann

My good friend Tom Piccirilli’s latest novel, and his very first in hardcover, The Last Kind Words, comes out next month from Bantam. A crime novel being compared to The Godfather and Mystic River for its literary depth and strength of characterization, it’s been getting crazy good advance reviews from the likes of bestselling authors Lee Child, James Rollins, and David Morrell, and is sure to be his breakout. Of course, as a crime writer who got his start writing horror, Tom is no stranger to blood or death. Here, in a guest post as part of his blog tour in advance of The Last Kind Word‘s release, Tom talks about blood, family, and staring his own mortality in the face. These are the things the best writers draw upon, folks. The personal things. The things that keep us up at night. The things that matter.

—–

Blood by Tom Piccirilli

I’ve been getting a chance to look at my blood a lot lately. According to my doc I have “metabolic syndrome” and that I’ve become “insulin resistant,” which are delicate phrases to describe the fact that I’m fat and lazy and headed towards diabetes if I don’t start getting some exercise. My blood sugar levels are wonky as hell and I have to keep watch. I have to stay vigilant. I have to prick my finger and test my glucose levels. Depending on where they fall I’ve got to spike myself with an insulin pen, which allows you to dial the correct dosage.

All in all it doesn’t hurt, but it can get a little messy. I have a tendency to bleed. My blood wells and pools and runs. And, of course, whenever I stab my finger I get to shout, “By a pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!” My wife doesn’t think I’m funny, but I swear, I’m a hoot.

I flashback to when my mother who, in her last few years, had late life diabetes. She also had to do all this shit with needles. It was harder back then. She had keep bottles of insulin in the fridge. She had to make sure to eat or she’d go into a fugue state and pass out. I clearly recall one day when she stared at me like she had no idea who I was. I had to repeat to her, “Ma? Ma? Are you all right? Do you know who I am?” She didn’t. My aunt had to jam cake into her until she came back to herself. I watched her memories of me return to her eyes. It’s a spooky thing, kids, having your own ma look at you like you’re a stranger who just climbed in the kitchen window.

So part of my blood is her blood, the legacy of her blood. As mine wells from the pinpricks and pools at my fingertip, a bead of my history, full of my parents and grandparents, my forefathers, my ancestors clubbing sabertooths, I can almost hear each one of them in turn taking account. These are people who sailed over Italy in steerage with $5 in their pockets, who worked in sweatshops eighteen hours a day, who fought wars. My father lied about his age so he could enter the Navy at sixteen. Six-fucking-teen. No fatass “metabolic syndrome” for him. Fuck no. He was out there protecting the country, sailing around the Phillippines, sticking shells into those long guns on the deck, his friends dying. When I look into my blubbery sugary blood I see him there, I feel him there. I see him watching me with a face dark with sadness and disappointment.

My blood drips onto the pretty flower calendar I use to record my results. The insulin is helping. The meds are helping. The numbers grow progressively lower. Today is May 15. In twelve days I turn 47. My old man died at 46. I always felt like there was a line drawn in the sand, like I would never last this long. Some kind of cosmic balance would need to bump me off before 47. So now I wonder if my heart will give out over the next twelve days. If I’ll dig too deeply with the needle and hit something vital and suddenly arterial spray will paint the walls, and they’ll find me with my face on the pretty flower calendar. I wonder if it’s bound to happen. I wonder if I’m somehow continuing to tempt fate. I wonder if the wicked thing is still coming closer. Or if, in fact, it’s already here.

Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty novels including The Last Kind Words, Shadow Season, The Cold Spot, The Coldest Mile, and A Choir of Ill Children. He’s won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. You can read all about him online at tompiccirilli.com and visit his blog at thecoldspot.blogspot.com.

Originally published at Nicholas Kaufmann. You can comment here or there.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/17/lowest-difficulty-setting-follow-up/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18603

It’s been a couple of days since I’ve posted the “Lowest Difficulty Setting” piece, and it’s been fun and interesting watching the Intarweebs basically explode over it, especially the subclass of Straight White Males who cannot abide the idea that their lives play out on a fundamentally lower difficulty setting than everyone else’s, and have spun themselves up in tight, angry circles because I dared to suggest that they do. Those dudes are cracking me up, and also making me a little sad.

There have been some general classes of statement/questions about the piece both on the site and elsewhere on the Internet, that I would like to address, so I’ll do that here. Understand I am paraphrasing the questions/statements. In no particular order:

1. I fundamentally disagree with every single thing you said!

That’s fine. It happens.

2. Your metaphor/analogy is good, except for [insert thing that commenter finds not good about the metaphor/analogy]

Well, yes. Metaphors are not perfect; it’s why they’re metaphors and not the thing the metaphor describes. Likewise analogies break down. I thought the “lowest difficulty setting” description worked well enough for what I wanted to say, but I don’t think it’s perfect. “Perfect” wasn’t what I was aiming for. And of course, if you don’t think it’s the right metaphor/analogy, that’s fine. Please, make a different and better one — the more ways we can make a general point to people who need to understand that general point, the better chance they will listen.

3. Your description should have put wealth/class as part of the difficulty setting.

Nope. Money and class are both hugely important and can definitely compensate for quite a lot, which I have of course noted in the entry itself. But they belong in the stats category because wealth and class are not an inherent part of one’s personal nature — and in the US particularly, part of our cultural sorting behavior — in the manner that race, gender and sexuality are (note “inherent” here does not necessarily mean “immutable,” but that’s a conversation I’m not going to go into great detail about right now). You can disagree, of course. But speaking as someone who has been at both the bottom and the top of the wealth and class spectrum here in the US, I think I have enough personal knowledge on the matter to say it belongs where I put it.

4.I’m a straight white male and my life isn’t easy! My life sucks! Your “lowest difficulty setting” doesn’t account for that!

That’s actually fully accounted for in the entry. Go back and read it again.

This one’s a stand-in for all the complaints about the entry that come primarily either from not reading the entry, or not reading what was actually written in the entry in preference to a version of the entry that exists solely in that one person’s head, and which is not the entry I wrote. Please, gentlemen, read what is there, not what you think is there, or what you believe must be there because you know you already disagree with what I have to say, no matter what it is I am saying.

5. What about affirmative action (and/or other similar programs)? It just proves SWMs don’t have it easy anymore!

Asserting that programs designed to counteract decades of systematic discrimination are proof that Straight White Males are not operating on the lowest difficulty setting in the game of life is not the winning argument you apparently believe it is. I’ll let you try to figure out why that is on your own. Likewise, anecdotal examples of a straight white guy getting the short end of the stick in some manner do not suggest that, therefore, it’s hard out there for all straight white men all the time.

6. Your piece is racist and sexist.

This particular comment was lobbed at me primarily from aggrieved straight white males. Leaving aside entirely that the piece was neither, let me just say that I think it’s delightful that these straight white males are now engaged on issues of racism and sexism. It would be additionally delightful if they were engaged on issues of racism and sexism even when they did not feel it was being applied to them — say, for example,when it’s regarding people who historically have most often had to deal with racism and sexism (i.e., not white males). Keep at it, straight white males! You’re on the path now!

7. I feel this piece is an attack on straight white men.

You need to re-calibrate your definition of “attack,” then, because it’s depressingly (or hilariously) out of whack. Suggesting all straight white men should be defenstrated into a courtyard covered with spikes would be an attack. Noting that straight white men operate at the lowest difficulty setting in life is an observation.

Otherwise, in a general sense,  when people point out the things straight white men get on credit (or don’t have to deal with), the unspoken part of that is not “and that’s why we plan to burn all you bastards in a big screaming pile when the revolution comes,” it’s “hey, just so you know.” Because you should know. It’s not about blame, it’s about knowledge. Stop assuming it’s about blame. Paranoid and hypersensitive is no way to go through life.

8.  You did not lay out in exhaustive factual detail, with graphs and charts, your assertion that straight white men operate at the lowest difficulty setting in our culture.

Also generally lobbed at me by aggrieved straight white men. And indeed I did not. Also, when I write about tripping over my shoelaces and falling on my ass, I do not preface the comment with a comprehensive discussion of the theory of gravity. For two reasons: One, it’s not needed because for anyone but committed gravity-deniers, the theory of gravity is obvious and taken as read, and two, that’s not the focus of the entry. In the case of the “lowest difficulty setting” entry, I took what I see as the obvious advantages to being straight, white and male in our culture as read. One may of course argue with that assertion, and some did in the previous comment thread, but I have to say I’ve generally found those arguments to be less than compelling (see point six, above).

9. In your comment thread with the article, you censored people who disagreed with you.

I indeed malleted quite a few people in that comment thread. Most of them disagreed with me philosophically on the issue under discussion. They were also being assholes. They were malleted for the latter, not the former. Who gets to judge when someone’s being an asshole here? Why, I do. Because it’s my site. A quick look through the comment thread in question shows that quite a few people, who disagreed with my ideas to varying levels of strenuousness, had their comments posted unmolested. That’s because they were generally polite to others in the thread, did not lead with their asses, and their comments were not generally dripping with racism/sexism/condescension/stupidity. This is all covered in the comment policy, which is linked to on every page of the site.

Now, people may be upset that in addition to deleting people’s comments, I also mocked them when I deleted their comments. But, you know, when you show up on my site and decide to shit all over the carpet, I’m not going to be nice to you. Also, this.

10. I am never going to buy anything you write ever again.

I don’t care.

11. Not every straight white man thinks what you wrote is wrong.

Of course. Noting that some straight white men are having difficulty accepting the idea they operate on the lowest difficulty setting in life doesn’t mean that all straight white men do, or that any particular straight white men will experience said difficulties. Alternately, there are a lot of straight white men who think my premise is wrong to a greater or lesser extent, but who can express that disagreement cogently, and even forcefully, without additionally coming across as a five-year-old having a tantrum because he’s been told he has to share his toys. Straight white men, like any group, have all sorts of personalities.

12. You wrote the article and pointed out the straight white men live life on the lowest difficulty setting. Okay, fine. What do I/we do next?

Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it? What I’m doing is pointing out a thing. What you do with that thing is your decision.

That said, here’s what I do: recognize it, and work to make it so the more difficult settings in life becomes closer to the one I get to run through life on — by making those less difficult, mind you, not making mine more so.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/16/things-that-pretty-much-suck/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18600

My absence from the Internet was a bit longer than I had anticipated today, for one genuinely depressing reason: I left my travel bag in  the taxi that took me to my hotel from the airport, and that bag included my computer and some other stuff (including my car key). So my day was spent procuring alternate computing resources (say hello to my new cheap netbook) and generally being a bit pissed off.

Before you ask: I have no idea what cab it was that brought me in, its number or anything else. If anyone in the DC area can tell me which cab companies use black cabs (regular cars, not limos) I would be obliged. Otherwise, I’m pretty much stuck hoping the cabbie who drove me around remembers who I am or otherwise uses the various clues in the bag (the computer that has my name on it when one tries to log on, the books with my name on the cover, etc) to locate me. Whiile not assuming anything about my cabbie’s honesty, let’s just say I’m really expecting him to be a super sleuth, although I’d be happy to be wrong.

In any event: DC, I’m not feeling the love, I have to say. That is all.

nihilistic_kid

—from The Primal Screamer by Nick Blinko

jwz

Mirrored from jwz.org.