My To-Be-Read pile. Not everything is here, but this is a sort of “wanna read” for the coming year. I plan to follow up in December with a picture of then. We’ll see.
That’s all for now.…
Month: March 2012
Marriage, Politics, and Dogs
I must at the outset state that I personally don’t, as the good ol’ boys like to say, have a dog in this hunt. There was a time I might have, but at this stage of my life—our lives, my partner’s and mine—there is no personal blowback. At least not yet, but I’ll make a point about that later. I say this in order to assure people, some of whom will assume what they will no matter what, that I’m grinding no axes here other than my usual intolerance for duplicity, hypocrisy, and related misapplications of do-goodism.
First, watch this video:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?311757-1/national-organization-marriage-nom-rally-national-mall…
On A Roll
I’ve been having a productive month. This morning I polished up and submitted the fifth short story in two weeks. Granted, most of them are rewrites, but a couple of them are such thorough redrafts that they might as well be all new, like the one I finished today.
Normally, I let a story sit for a while before sending it out, but right now I just want material in submission. It has been a long time since I’ve had this kind of productivity in short fiction and I want to take full advantage of it. Of course, it would be nice if some (or all) sold, especially to the markets they’ve been sent.…
To Care Or Not To Care
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments for and against the Affordable Healthcare Act, specifically the individual mandate. At issue is whether or not the Constitution allows Congress to require people to pay for something they do not want. Commercially, that is.
At least, that’s the stated issue. Depending on the group you listen to, the real issues range across the board, from “death panels” to socialism to Big Brother government intrusion to contraception.
There are some paradoxes. Without getting into precise numbers—because, really, which ones are correct?—I’d like to review some of the inherent curiosities in this debate.
Health care costs are going up. …
The Other Side
Let’s imagine the conflict known as the Civil War. It had been brewing since before the Constitution was ratified. The issues were marrow deep in American society, so much so that any attempt to address the issue of slavery was, in effect, a deal breaker for the new nation. The South made it abundantly clear that any action on the part of the North to write into the new guiding document the idea that black slaves were somehow deserving of the liberty being claimed for their white owners—and thereby signaling the end of slavery among the Thirteen Colonies—would be met with absolute refusal to play. …
Spring, Damp, Coolth
I haven’t done any new images lately, so…
I made these on Bellerive, off of Grand, last Saturday evening after a light rain.
You might wonder what I was doing there. Well, it was just before the coffeehouse at which I play and of which I just wrote. I did a few images there, too. To finish up, here’s one.
Just thought I’d share a little pleasantness before the forthcoming, which may or may not be…stormful. We’ll see.
…
Music On A Saturday Night
Storms apparently kept a lot of people away. A shame. The monthly gathering at the New Covenant Methodist Church on Bellerive happened anyway, a St. Patrick’s Day session complete with a pot of corned beef, and the limited audience enjoyed an evening of good music delivered by people who were having an enormous amount of fun.
More fun than I’m used to having inside a church.
I’ve been attending these now for almost five years. Maybe longer, someone would have to check. When I began, these open mic sessions offered nearly 80% karaoke, of variable quality. Rich and Annette (Annette more forcefully—though Annette’s “forceful” comes across with the glee of a 12-year-old wanting to share a puppy) had been on me to come play. …
Noir at the Bar
There is, in University City, which is attached to St. Louis with Washington University as a buffer, a cool little coffeehouse/restaurant called Meshuggah’s. They play host to a literary event called Noir at the Bar, which my friend Scott Phillips and a gentleman named Jedediah Ayres manage. Primarily it’s all about crime fiction, which apparently includes a vast range of macabre material.
They had me in their line-up on February 28th. I am the first science fiction writer to perform at this event and I think it went rather well. It was recorded for podcast by Booked and the link to my reading is now up. …
Bunk
One of the downsides to the information super highway is the amount of bunk that disseminates faster than ever before. It has always been with us, though, so we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it’s the fault of the internet. All the internet does is make this nonsense available faster, in more formats, and about more things than ever before, but the basic impulse has not changed since, well, forever.
Consider one of the earliest bits of nonsense that still gets some juice from time to time: Nero played while Rome burned.
Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, C.E.…