Balls and Walnuts
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Monthly Archives: September 2005
Review of Asimov’s, December 2005
For you SF fans, my review of Asimov’s December edition is up at Tangent.
I’ve been kvetching to my editor, Eugie Foster, about having to read so much mainstream SF, but honestly, this issue rocked. Two superb stories, and I mean top drawer (Damian Kilby’s “Earthtime”, and James Maxey’s “To the East, a Bright Star”), three good stories, and only one tale which required Mr. Snarkypencil.
I liked Kilby’s and Maxey’s stories best because of their rich sense of humanity. Which is a poofy way of saying, they wrote about believable human beings and made me care about them. I’m a sucker for heartstring-tugs, and both stories gave me lots of the good stuff.
Those two stories also gave me a better sense of what’s wrong with my current short, “Renee”. The damned thing lacks heart. I wrote it for one of Keith’s 500 word challenges, so I’d had to cut back on everything. Minimal description, bare bones characterization, everything pared down to the core idea. It’s a fine idea, but the story will be much better if I can give it a heart and soul.
Back to the drawing board.
D.
Formication
Subtitle: We be schleppin’ spiders
formication
An abnormal sensation as of insects running over or into the skin, associated with cocaine intoxication or disease of the spinal cord and peripheral nerves.
Vote with your wallets
No, this isn’t a plea for money. Not exactly.
You can defeat the Neocon machine. Doesn’t even matter if you’re American. You buy from American companies, right? When was the last time you sent money to Amazon?
Yeah, baby. That’s right. Amazon is a rightwing tool.
The hand that feeds
This is an old story from last May, but since some of you aren’t Trent Reznor fans, you may have missed it.
Trent’s band, Nine Inch Nails, had a spot on the MTV Movie Awards. They wanted Trent to perform The Hand that Feeds, the lead single from his new album, With Teeth.
Trent asked that a photo of George W. Bush be used as a backdrop for his performance.
Well, maybe not that photo. In fact, Trent has stated that the photo would have been “unaltered and straightforward”. I like the George-flipping-bird photo because it reminds us all what an uncouth jackass the man is.
Anyway, MTV refused to let NIN do this, saying it would politicize the Awards. Trent, stand-up guy that he is, pulled out of the festivities. Read more about this here.
Why did Trent want George’s mug as a backdrop? Oh, maybe because the song is all about Dubya. Here’s a bit of lyrics, and you can find the whole song here.
You’re keeping in step
In the line
Got your chin held high and you feel just fine
Because you do
What you’re told
But inside your heart it is black and it’s hollow and it’s coldJust how deep do you believe?
Will you bite the hand that feeds?
Will you chew until it bleeds?
Can you get up off your knees?
Are you brave enough to see?
Do you want to change it?What if this whole crusade’s
A charade
And behind it all there’s a price to be paid
For the blood
On which we dine
Justified in the name of the holy and the divine
Chorus.
D.
Why it pays to go to a board certified ear, nose, and throat doctor
Meanwhile, over at Chelicera, Karen reviews the gruesome history of the Mississippi Flood of 1927. (Don’t freak over the title. She’s being sarcastic. Or ironic. One of those.)
Those who don’t remember history are condemned to repeat it, right?
D.
Blacks in America are Just a Tad Paranoid
“It didn’t really matter if these people were uncomfortable. It didn’t really matter if they were starving. It probably wouldn’t have really mattered a whole lot if a lot of ’em had died for one reason or another. They were gonna keep their laborers and that’s just ruthless contempt for human beings.” *
Where is this from? The speaker is talking about thousands of poor blacks who were surrounded by floodwaters from a broken levee. A few white people were stranded with them. Transportation was available with room to evacuate all the flood victims but only the whites were taken to safety. The blacks were left behind without food, water or shelter. Eventually they were put in refugee camps patrolled by the armed National Guardsmen. A Republican in charge of federal government relief efforts engaged in a coverup of the refugee scandal.
The fundamental frequency of guy thought
From Monica Jackson’s blog, The Way There:
“Okay, tell me the truth. Do you ever go to the grocery store or somewhere like that, and count the guys you’d possibly sleep with in a ratio to the ones who are ick, and work it out mathematically—and figure out when is the highest likelihood of the greatest concentration of fuckable men at particular grocery store at any one time?”
Thank you for asking this question, Monica. Why? Cuz I never would have guessed that women think this way. Guys, yes. Beginning at puberty, sex never leaves our brains (except for a thirty minute interval after each orgasm).
Quien es mas lindo?
One Saturday afternoon in 1982, I watched The Sting with Karen and her two roommates, Kira and Suzie.
“So,” I said, “who is cuter, Newman or Redford?”
Take a moment to answer that one for yourself. Even if you’re a guy. Especially if you’re a guy, cuz the point of this exercise . . . well, hell, let’s not get too pedantic just yet. Guys? Ask your wife this question. Try to predict what she’ll answer.
I figured it had to be Newman. Those blue eyes, that chiseled facial bone structure. (Great bones do it for me every time. I still have wood with Lauren Bacall’s name on it.) But, no. All three picked Redford.
Even then, twenty-two years ago, Redford had a white raisin thing going. And now look at the two of them.
Newman first.
It still baffles me, this question of what women find attractive or unattractive in certain men. Miss Snark has femwood for George Clooney. Maureen’s nipples go stiff over Al Pacino. Meanwhile, the Bitches keep ripping on poor Fabio. (See, Beth? I worked in a Fabio reference!)
This question is important to me, since I enjoy writing strong female characters. These female leads have been mutant parakeets and giant spiders, but eventually I mean to get back to Homo sapiens. When I do, I’d better have a grip on the feminine mystique.
So, help me out, y’all. Here are some pairings of famous duos. Tell me who is cuter and why. To keep from prejudicing things, I’ll save my opinions until the end.