Squees for Mr. Pratt

I think the very best moment at Blue Heaven was watching Tim Pratt get an email containing some very good news.

Tim's one of the most talented writers I know, and he works his ass off, and I look to the guy as an inspiration and an example of how to do it right.

In other words ... KICK EFFIN' A, TIM!!!!

Whatever happened to the future?

The future was the American shopping mall, circa 1974. I can almost hear the call of "Renew."



(click the pic for a larger version)

Courtesy the funktacular Malls of America blog.

Eye stalks

Today it's creatures with eye stalks.

I might stop writing actual journal entries and just post doodles instead.

Probably not, but it's a thought.

Is it just me?

You ever feel compelled to draw huge, all-consuming mouths? Do I even want to question why I do this? Aside from the fact that it's edging on lunch time?

Meaty weekend

So far this weekend I've consumed 4 strips of bacon, 12 buffalo wings, one spicy Italian sausage (in sandwich form), one tasty mix of spicy Italian sausage and chicken (in pasta form), 2 pieces of smoked salmon (in sushi form), and 8 pieces of yellowfin tuna (in sashimi form).

Have drunk 5 or 6 beers, many cups of coffee, one fru-fru coffee beverage while putting in a couple of hours on the novel, and watched two Hollywood blockbusters featuring Ian McKellan. Neither of which was very good, but I still enjoyed going out to the movies.

I think in one weekend I will have consumed more resources than many sub-tropical villages.

And it's only Sunday. I still have tomorrow off. I expect there'll be more meat, more coffee, maybe another beer or two, possibly another movie.

Got the Suns-Mavericks game on, Dallas ahead by 2 points in the third quarter. And speaking of b-ball, "Anywhere There's a Game" from the April Realms of Fantasy made Locus's recommended reading list for their May issue, which is a first for me, and a nice little thing.

Lumpy

So, last night I asked our head instructor about head-tapping during sparring, and it turns out I was in the wrong. No head-tapping for lower belts. So, next time I see the green belt, I'll apologize to her, like a good little Shaolin.

Last night I also whacked myself in the head with the bo staff. Sorry, head.

***

Received payment this week for Year's Best Fantasy 6, whose table of contents I get to share with Heather and Tim, and other writers of note, such as Kelly Link and Bruce Sterling and Neil Gaiman. Should be a good book.

I'm not in Madison for WisCon this year, alas, but a bunch of early WisConites called Wednesday and passed the phone around to say hello, and that was very nice. So, I don't think I'll be attending Bittercon this weekend, either. Instead, I'll keep working on my novel and give Hollywood my money in exchange for viewing their blockbusters, and hopefully watch the Suns beat the Mavericks. You WisConites have a grand time. I'll miss ya!

***

And finally, love and congrats to my good friend Zilla and his wife Laura on the birth of their second kidling, Elliot Alexander!!! Rock on, little dude!

If superheroes walked among us

It's really just a Kevin Garnett Adidas ad, but, yeah, instead of heading off runaway trains, I think it'd look like this:

http://videosift.com/story.php?id=2833

Fighting stew

One thing I was surprised to discover about myself when I started taking martial arts classes is that I like sparring. I never previously enjoyed hitting people, much less being hit, but sparring gives me a ridiculous amount of giggly joy.

It's not really about hitting people. At least not hard. The contact is
supposed to be light, not much more than tapping, at least at the lower belt ranks. At my old school, we wore light padding, and we hit a little harder. At this school, we don't wear protective gear, so the contact is quite light. It's about trying to find openings in your opponent's defenses and just shooting a fist through them, or distracting them with a low kick and then making high contact. So, it's a mind game, mostly.

Last night, one of my sparring partners was a green belt -- two ranks above me -- I'd never sparred before, and when we were facing each other in our stances before the command to fight, I had a feeling something was up. It was the look on her face. I didn't know exactly how to interpret it, but it was a look I didn't like. I could tell she really, really wanted to kick my ass. Maybe put me in my place, even though I hadn't assumed a place. I don't know.

So, the head instructor gives us the command to fight, and my opponent starts kicking my ass. Literally. She's throwing these roundhouse kicks to my ass, kicking me harder than anyone else has kicked me at this school. At my old school, the ass was not a legal target, because, you know, it's just your ass. It's not like there's anything delicate or fragile in the ass. But she's really getting into it. She's got that gleam in her eye. That "I'm totally kicking your ass" gleam.

Now, I'm not any kind of fighter. I don't have fast reflexes or great balance or super solid technique, and my footwork is kind of a mess. The one thing I've got is reach, and I can fairly often smack an opponent's head when they're attacking my middle. So, I tapped her head.

She glares at me and shakes her head and warns me to be careful. As though it were a cheap shot. As though I were out of control. And she keeps throwing the hard roundhouse kicks to my ass. I give her the same back, and now I can tell she's really furious at me. So I tap her head again. I mean, literally, I'm merely touching her head. She grits her teeth at me and shakes her head again, utterly exasperated with me.

There's a concept in sparring: Respect the technique. That means, if your opponent gets in a good shot, even though it's not actually hard enough to hurt or stop you, you back off a step to acknowledge that, if you were really fighting, you might have been hurt or stopped. Make contact with your foot in my midsection, and I will respect your kick as if you'd landed it hard. And if you charge me and I get my fist on your solar plexus, you should stop as though I'd just socked you hard. But my opponent wouldn't respect my technique and actually got angry with me for fighting her back. So, if you don't want me touching your head, and if you won't respect my technique, and if you insist on coming at me hard, you're simply not fighting fair.

None of which should bother me, except that I'm the kind of person that, if you tell me I've done something wrong, I'll be bothered by it. I'll mull and stew. So, I'm still wondering if there was some protocol I was unclear about, or something I inadvertently did that was disrespectful and not in the spirit of the school. Maybe she thought I was one of those guys who assumes some kind of superiority because I'm a guy and she's not, despite the fact that when I looked for a school, I wanted one with gender diversity. In fact, my first martial arts role models were women. But she doesn't know that about me.

Or, maybe she's just a person with a poor attitude.

Other than my brief encounter with her, though, it was a great class. I'm starting to get the rough movements of "Reversibly Facing Four Opponents," and I felt incrementally less lame than I did the previous class. And I had good sparring sessions with other classmates that were challenging and fun.

So, hm. Maybe now that I've written this I can stop stewing and mulling.

Well, pretty much true

True English Nerd You scored 89 erudition!

Not only do you know your subjects from your objects and your definite from your indefinite articles, but you've got quite a handle on the literature and the history of the language as well. Huzzah, and well done! The English snobs of Boston salute you.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 90% on erudition

Link: The Are You Truly Erudite? Test written by okellelala on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Blued

So, it turns out it wasn't all a big hoax, and that there really is an island in Ohio, which is where I just spent the last week, at the Blue Heaven writers workshop. And a very terrific week it was, spent with ten other writers, a smart, companionable bunch who gave me very good feedback on my Norse novel and shared their insights on writing and publishing and kept me laughing.

The group was a nice mix of people I'd never met before, people I'd run across at this or that con before, and people whom I've considered good friends for some time. To a person, everyone was fun and smart and there to learn and contribute.

Kelley's Island was green and lush and populated by congenial lushes. The lakeshore offered blue herons and nests of endangered snakes (and we never poked them with sticks, no, because that would have been wrong [see Chance's pic of snake rescue operations]). I already know I'm going to miss hanging out at the Village Pump (free wifi, cheesy 80's music), but I probably won't miss the brewpub or their three varieties of Gherkinbrau. The planned martial arts demo went about as well as one could expect (captured again by Shutterbug Chance).

Marvin kept us comfy and well fed in the big old house, and I even managed to get over my fear of the evil homonculi in the scary doll room.

And if all that wasn't good enough, there was Sela, the sweet, snake-harrowing pit bull/German shepherd mix who just wanted to splash in the lake and play fetch with big rocks. Every workshop should have an eccentric doggie.

And as an additional bonus, I got to briefly see Maureen McHugh when she swung by Mary's house to drop off a batch of chili. Cuz when you live near Cleveland, Maureen McHugh stopping by to drop of chili is just the sort of thing that happens.

And now I'm home, and it's good to be home, and I'm looking forward to getting back to my novel, but I miss the island and the workshop folks, and I don't see why everyone has to live scattered across the country. I think it's stupid.

Checking in

Am currently sitting at a bar on Kelley's Island with about half the workshop, drinking beer, eating snacks, and using the free wiFi. Wildlife and writers are about. Across the street, there's a vending machine that vends live leeches.

Am having a wonderful time. Hope you are well.

Love,
Greg

Beer grease

Sitting here at Gate C-17 in Chicago O'Hare, 6:07 AM local time, 4:07 AM my time, patiently awaiting my connecting flight to Cleveland, less patiently awaiting the return of circulation to my extremities. In about 4 hours I'll meet up with workshopmates Mary and Sandra and Sarah, and then we ride in a car to a ferry which takes us to an island in Ohio, where there will even more mateys.

Hope the airline doesn't lose my bag, cuz it contains about 1,000 pages of marked-up manuscripts. It also contains some clean shirts, one of which I should like to change into since I got Sausage McBiscuit grease (or McSausage Biscuit, or Sausage Biscuit McGrease, or whatever, it was yummy) on the shirt I'm wearing.

Air travel is weird, but not as weird as time zones. It was just a few hours ago that I was killing time in a bar at Sky Harbor, nursing a Fat Tire. And now here I am with breakfast grease on my shirt. Makes me feel so 23.

Anyway, the Suns are up on the Clippers 2-1 in the Western Conference Semi-Finals, and Go, Suns!

I haven't slept in about 22 hours. I am so going to crash.

Kex

It's that participation meme going around where you come up with ten words starting with a letter. Patrick Samphire (he of the spiffy new blog) gave me K. If you leave a comment, I'm supposed to give you a letter (if you want one), but I don't know how much I'll be able to get online after tomorrow, so, you know ...


Kal-El: His whole planet, it blew up! And Braniac shrunk the survivors down to microbe size and put 'em in a mason jar!! And his adoptive parents died of a pirate virus!

When I was a kid, Superman was the height of tragedy.

Kung Fu: In the scant time I've been taking martial arts classes, I've gone to three different schools. The first taught a mix of Kajukenbo (a branch of kenpo developed in post-war Hawaii) and Hung Gar Kung Fu. I had to stop going there because one day I showed up and the school wasn't there any more. My next stop was a school that teaches Shaolin Kenpo (also developed in post-war Hawaii, and different from kendo, which is fighting with swords), which is fancy talk for punching and kicking. I was never really comfortable at that school, and when they tried to dick me with a $250 registration fee, I bailed. My new school teaches various styles of Shaolin Kung Fu, and I'm having a blast.

I don't think the style I study is overly important. As long as it's not one of the styles that emphasizes grappling, or gymnastic kicking, I imagine I could be happy studying just about anything. But, I have to say, I like saying I study Kung Fu more than I like saying I study kenpo or kajukenbo, largely because most people have at least heard of Kung Fu.

Kermit: The thing about Kermit is, he's responsible. Saddled with a company of nut jobs and furry wackos, he's just doing his best to put on the show. I was a fairly serious kid, and when I was trying to get something done, I didn't have much patience for goof-abouts, and I'd often be the most focused, uptight kid in the room. Now, for better or worse, I am often the least focused kid in the room. I could probably stand to regain a bit more of my inner Kermit.

Kirk: He's the captain. 'Nuff said.

King: I will admit, the fact that Stephen King writes genre and has mountains of cash did little to dissuade me from the notion of being a writer when I was a teen. He made it seem fun. And a lot of the stuff he wrote in the 70's is just darn rip-roarin'. The shorter, expurgated version of The Stand is a marvelous epic fantasy.

Kong: I'm talking about the Jeff Bridges/Jessica Lange version. It was filmed at MGM studios, just down the road from where I grew up, in Culver City. I'd managed to convince myself that the studio had built a fully mobile 40-foot high mechanical Kong capable of walking freely and climbing buildings and killing everyone. I was very disappointed that the monster robot ape never broke free from the studio property to wreck my hometown.

Ktulu: My favorite spelling of the Great Cephalopod's name. And Metallica's "Call of Ktulu" is totally awesome, dude.

Kvasir: Kvasir was a Norse god created from the saliva of all the other gods. A pair of dwarves offed him, mixed his blood with honey, and fermented the mead that inspires all poets. Think you suffer for your art? Kvasir suffers for your art, too.

Killer Whale: For my money, killer whales are the coolest of all animals, no competition. They've got intelligence, cunning, speed, power, grace, and an insanely cool color scheme. I'd do three rounds as an earthworm if I could come back as a killer whale for my fourth.


Kilt Lifter: There are folks with whom I could have endless debates about which Four Peaks Brewing Company beer is better, the English-style bitter 8th Street Ale, or the Scottish-style Kilt Lifter. The Kilt Lifter has better flavor, but the 8th Street is crisper and doesn't sit in your gut like a loaf of bread. So, the 8th Street gets the nod, because you can enjoy more of it. But if it's not too hot a day and I just want to leisurely sip a pint? Kilt Lifter is the way to go. And it's very nice to have such dilemmas to unravel.

Windmill

Two days? Only two days till Blue Heaven, which is a week-long peer writing workshop focusing on novels that takes place on a freakin' island in Ohio???

Man, that snuck up on me.

But, holy jeez, what fun!

***

As the weather gets hot (not warm, not hotter, but HOT), I find myself struck by the urge to take long walks with my camera. This urge emanates from the part of me that comes up with stupid urges. I might have been struck with this urge during the several months of the year that the weather was gorgeous and comfortable. But, no.

It's possible that I'm feeling this urge now because it's my brain rebelling against the idea of being shut indoors with the AC. Or possibly it's because I want to capture in photographs the true character of the urban desert, and that involves covering great distances through vast cells of superheated air. You know, because things look different in the heat.

Quite possibly, I'm starting to feel this urge now and will feel it even more strongly in the days to come because the heat has cooked my brain and made me somewhat insane.

Who knows?

In any case, I think I'll take my camera to Blue Heaven and take some pictures in a far more mild environment than will greet me upon my return.

***

Kung Fu continues to be much fun. And rather more challenging than my kenpo classes were. I probably know as many techniques at yellow belt (this school's second rank) as I did at purple belt (my old school's fourth rank, or seventh, if you count all the stupid half ranks they made us test for). Which is good, because I feel most comfortable when I'm sweating, flailing, and off-balance.

We learned some bo staff spins the other week, and I loved the way my instructor introduced us to the weapon: "Staff has long been associated with wisdom. For example, Gandalf carried a staff. And Yoda had a staff, a tiny little one. Okay, start off holding it like this ..."

I go to a geek school. I love it.

***

And here's a short video of British-style karate. The language is not safe for work, but the technique is very impressive.

Short checklist

Just three quick notes:

First, a very happy birthday to Samantha Ling, long may her merciless reign prevail. Birthday! Woo! Birthday!!

Second, will the guy who recently made the really good magazine sale please announce it so we can go congratulate him? Thank you!

Third, despite being posted with a kinda retarded title, this United Airlines commercial features some truly wonderful and beautiful animation and storytelling, and I cannot get enough of it. I mean, damn. It's really nice.

Okay, was that everything? Yeah, think so. Okay.