Category: Personal

It’s Friday

Posted on June 17, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

So it is.Â I’ve been crunching away on line edits all week and having a good time.Â The weather has been pleasant, at least compared to last week, and a couple of mornings I’ve been able to turn off the air and open the windows while working.Â I loaded up the CD changer with classical—Respighi, Strauss, Grieg—and did fresh ground coffee.

During breaks, I’ve been playing with pictures again.Â You know, you make damn near anything fascinating, even beautiful in a dark, bizarre way, with enough patience and mods.Â For instance:

Someone pointed out that in the past something like this would have taken a dozen Kodalith masks and posterization steps.Â …

Pathological Hypocrisy

Posted on June 13, 2011June 13, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I thought I might leave this alone, but some itches are too difficult to leave unscratched.Â Others have posted about Rick Santorum’s unbelievable hypocrisy over abortion.Â You can read the article here.

Basically, Mr. Santorum has it in mind to use the law to prohibit a medical procedure his wife had to go through in order to save her life.Â As the piece makes clear, in October of 1996, Karen Santorum underwent an abortion in the 19th week of pregnancy in order to save her life from an infected fetus.Â She had a 105 degree temperature.Â She would have died without the procedure.…

Memory Day

Posted on May 30, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

It’s Memorial Day.Â Lot’s of flags flying around the neighborhood, most of them made in China.Â Barbecues will permeate the air with the hunger-inducing aroma of charcoal and burning meat, the pop-spritz of cans opening will mingle with the sounds of conversation, laughter, and portable stereos pumping out classic rock or C & W quasi-patriotic gunk.

We bought a push mower this morning from Home Depot.Â Go green.

I would like to take a few moments to tell you what I feel and have felt about this country.

I grew up on a steady diet of John Wayne and wanting very much to make my dad proud.Â …

Still Here

Posted on May 23, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

So, it’s the 23rd of May now.Â I heard on the radio this morning someone claiming that we’re now in the Tribulations and that we’ve got 153 days before the actual end of the world.Â That might be just about enough time for me to finish the rewrite on my desk and the new novel I am now half-finished with.

I thought about writing something scurrilous and amusing, but why?Â People who would laugh at it don’t need to be reminded that this was silly and those who wouldn’t laugh likely wouldn’t read my blog anyway.Â And there’s the story about the kids whose parents, utterly convinced that this was the weekend, had quit their jobs and went on Mission, handing out tracts and stopped paying attention to the college fund the kids were acutely aware of.Â …

Rapture Ready

Posted on May 18, 2011May 18, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

This weekend, it’s supposed to be all over.Â Harold Camping of the Family Radio evangelist organization has announced the Rapture for May 21st—at six P.M.

In my own little patch of interest, the SFWA Nebula Awards will be given out this weekend.Â If Mr. Camping is right, this will be the last of these.Â Going out in grand style, that.

I don’t have a lot to say about this other than it’s silly.Â It’s one more reason that makes me wonder about the people who follow this kind of nonsense.Â I can’t help but think that, beneath all the sanctimony and babble, a lot of these folks are just, well, unfortunate.Â …

A Different “Doctored” Photograph

Posted on May 13, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

For something less fraught with the concerns of the day and a bit more fun.Â They say you ought not take photographs from a moving car, but sometimes it’s the only way to get certain shots.

And yes, this is heavily worked over.Â I wanted an extra rainy effect.Â This is something I was never able to achieve in color before and in B & W only by chemical abuse of the film.

I’m completing some of the online galleries—this one finishes out the Experimental gallery, which is filled with images that I have played with at length.Â It might not be immediately obvious in some of them that they are, indeed, experimental insofar as the extent of manipulations are concerned, but they are all distortions of what was Actually There.…

Invisible Women

Posted on May 11, 2011May 11, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I’m taking time out (already) from all the rewriting I have to do to complain and restate a principle.

Here’s a lovely little bit of misogyny.

Read the article?Â A newspaper took the photograph of the ready room where Obama and his cabinet received the news of Bin Ladin’s death and photoshopped out the women present.Â For reasons of “modesty” they claimed.Â They then apologized but asserted they have a First Amendment right to have done this.

Inadvertently—and I am sure they didn’t think about this when they did it—they gave Bin Ladin a small cultural victory out of his own death.Â …

Working

Posted on May 10, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I tell hopeful, wannabe writers all the time, when they ask that marvelously optimistic question, “what’s the secret to being a writer?”Â It’s a deceptively simple question, because the answer…well, I give the same answer no matter who’s asking, but the expectations differ from person to person.Â I suspect most want to know what the “trick” is, like there’s a gimmick, a magician’s sleight of hand, a way around the essential thing, which is hard damn work.

But I tell them all: persistence.Â Those who never make it are those who quit.

Obviously this begs a few questions.Â What if they have no talent?Â …

Atavistic Pleasure

Posted on May 2, 2011May 2, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

Since hearing the news this morning I’ve been trying to find a calm space wherein reason and judgment will allow for a rational response, but for the time being I can’t help it.

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

I can’t help feeling glad about that.Â There is an atavistic part of me responds to this kind of thing.

I have a number of other thoughts—for instance, where they finally found him is suggestive of a whole bunch of negative assessments about out “allies” and the uses to which historical fulcrums are put—and there will doubtless be backlash over this, but done is done and I cannot find it in me to feel in the least sorry.Â …

Dead Stuff

Posted on April 26, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

This may be social suicide, but I’m going to say it anyway.

I don’t like zombies.

Not too thrilled with vampires, either.

I mean—hell, they’re dead.Â Dead.Â And motivating.Â The contradiction alone is…

I am tired of zombies, though.Â And vampires.

In the last several months, I have picked up at least two novels I was very much looking forward to reading because their premises looked really cool.Â I put both down because zombies got dragged into them, and I thought unnecessarily.Â Zombies are cool right now, though, and apparently a lot of people like reading about corpses shambling around trying to eat the neighbors.Â …