uhh...wut?

Ascension in the Terrorgraph!

AS controversial ARIA nominee Ladyhawke played down the road, things got into the, er, gloom at a reoccurring goth night called Ascension at the Sly Fox Hotel earlier on, where piercings, platforms and pink hair pervade and The Cure play on repeat. But we learnt never to judge a goth by its make up - everyone was lovely and only one person tried to bite us. Just joking.

More work on the Buddha Reduction today. Spiralling closer and closer to a final mix / master. Today involved a lot of combing over files with a "fine toothed comb" so to speak... listening to each file with headphones on (something I really almost never do!) listening for clicks and unwanted anomalies. I was confronted with new kinds of distortion, and came up with new ways of thwarting them. I discovered frequency peaks that were previously hidden. I squashed them. I redrew the line between acceptable noise and unacceptable noise, and excavated the terrain to match the map.

Some days, my music work involves a lot of waiting for files to process, and then performing some small task and waiting again some more for files to process.

Tedium is an acceptable side-effect to progress.

Today Caitlin and I hopped into the Cookie Monster for its inaugural jaunt out of town. We headed out to Snoqualmie — not the pass or the casino or the subdivision acres, but to the tiny frontier town with its adorable old train station, museum, and “downtown” strip.

(I don’t use the quotes to mock Snoqualmie’s downtown. The quotes indicate that this strip is pretty much one street. But it’s a lovely street, and I rather like the place. I’ve been there half a dozen times now, just to hang out and poke around.)

Anyway. The main official purpose for the trip was to acquire some new author photos for yours truly. Caitlin has an awesome camera, and she does a most excellent job of photography … and she works for peanuts. Or for lunch and a ride, and a cup of tea — as the case may be.

I’m going to place the results of our pictorial excursion behind a jump, because I’m just not quite narcissistic enough to want to see several big pictures of myself every time I load the page. I know, I know. I must be getting old or something. Anyway, click the link immediately below this paragraph to take a peek at them (or merely scroll down, if you’re reading this via a feed or direct link.)

Read the rest of this entry »

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

Been streaming the debate on the floor of the House about the Health Bill. Right now they're debating an amendment to ban Federal funding for abortion, even though the bill already has language for this.

http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream2

Once this Health Care debate is over and done, my blood pressure health sure will improve greatly.

The greatest animator of all time, Bruce Bickford, has some Twin Peaks scenes on his website...

http://www.brucebickford.com/gallery/twinpeaks.shtml

Very happy-making :)

One day, back in the 90s, my boss's husband Dave brought in a complete set of Omni magazine, every issue ever printed, and left it in the break room at work.

I should have taken that box home directly, instead it lived in the break room for a couple of years, and issues got lost or trashed, and I now only have about two or three issues that I can account for.

I sure do wish I had all of those Omnis now. What a great, entertaining magazine that was.

They go from 10-15 dollars per issue on ebay from what I've seen.

Grr. Stupid me.

"Performers centred in their head will tend to play ahead of the beat & move around it; Sample listening to the standard repertoire of violin concerti & its soloists will reveal much movement around the beat, particularly in passages of allegro & presto. To anyone who has ever played for dancing, or those experiencing time in their bodies, this is poor time."

-- Robert Fripp


After reading this, "Poor Time" could be a description for the theme of my entire musical contribution.

The Cobweb Club will be back in 2010!!

Put the following dates in your calendars, because we'll be playing the best goth, deathrock, coldwave and horrorpunk that we can get our claws on:

January 30th
April 24th
July 31st

Finally, finally, finally I think we’ve gotten our vehicle situation sorted out. Finally. Why yes, we DID buy the new (to us) vehicle a couple of weeks ago now. And no, we haven’t been driving it all this time. It’s been this epic Sierra adventure game of how we need to get one thing fixed, but we can’t fix that one thing until we do this other thing, and we can’t do that thing until yet another thing has fallen into place, and that wouldn’t happen until we drank the grog and entered the spitting contest with the pirates, and that can’t happen until more than three people get this joke, which probably won’t occur, etcetera etcetera etcetera.

But. It seems to be sorted out now, down to the insurance and the maniacal giggling. The “Cookie Monster” (as I’ve come to call it) still needs a tiny bit of belt work, but I’ll see if I can arrange for it tomorrow afternoon or Monday, and it shouldn’t be a big deal. Point is, Cookie Monster is ours. Fair and square, in the clear. Now I just have to clean out the old car and call up the PBS donation folks, and then we’ll be back down to one vehicle — it is to be hoped, one vehicle that works pretty much consistently. We pray.

Anyway. I regret to admit that due to the epic run-around and outstanding asshattery from the repair shop,* I got virtually nothing productive accomplished today (except some day-job work, but even that wasn’t as extensive as it should’ve been).

In order to wind down and quit seething, I cleaned house and did the floors, and started some laundry. Now I’m just waiting for the hubs to get home, and I hope he brings booze, because hot damn I could use a drink right about now.

---

* No, I’m not ready to bore you with the particulars, because things actually did get sorted eventually, via tremendous headache. However, I will say this: If you are in Seattle, avoid Econo Lubes. Oh wait, there’s only one Econo Lube in Seattle … so … yeah. Avoid that one.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

finished reading After the Quake by Haruki Murakami at work today...not the best of his stuff i've read but pretty good...on my way home from work hung out with Dustin and Courtney and Mary Beth...that's about it for today and my immediate past...now for the immediate future...

Last night’s event was just a delight — not only because I got to meet Jeff VanderMeer and Cat Rambo, but because the turn-out was wonderful and I only knew a small percentage of the people who showed up. Don’t get me wrong — I am all awash with warm fuzzies when friends come out to be supportive; but it’s always exciting when strangers show up, because it surprises the hell out of me.

I sold a bunch of books and signed them. So did Jeff and Cat. We had good readings and lots of fun, and I am utterly pleased to make the formal acquaintance of them both.

* * * * *

And now for the recent stats for the fabulous urban fantasy adventure about a neurotic vampire/thief and her wealthy blind client, now with Bonus! Cuban drag queen and military intrigue:

Project: Bloodshot
New Words Written: 2186
Present Total Word Count: 67,972 words
Goal: 95,000 words by December 12





Things Accomplished in Fiction: Not enough. Didn’t even finish the scene I was working on the other day; this was kind of a weirdly difficult work day. Not sure why it took me all day to get barely 2200 words out. I’ll try to get a better handle on it tomorrow. And at least I’m still ahead of goal, which is to average a thousand words a day between now and December.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Day-job work; some shopping (but I forgot some of the stuff I need); did other assorted errand-running.

Reason for Stopping: I need a break. So I’m going to take one, and then start fiddling with another story I’m trying to write (due at the end of this month).

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

I dreamed of a large, dark, wooden house... cramped with books and disused furniture. I had been there before. The town was a coal-choked industrial revolution town.

The house was full of people who seemed to go about randomly, but had some sort of unspoken, deep connection with each other, like a disfunctional family who don't speak, but hurt each other nonetheless.

I saw a girl I liked during my childhood (Cindy H.). She was a nerd-weirdo and a dancer, she'd always been too snooty to pay any attention to me, but I had been loopy for her. I told her how I had felt about her and she was thrilled, but somehow she felt like someone else in the house was going to find out and that would be bad news.

• Why I destroyed Seattle for the sake of steampunk - A very silly piece by yours truly, up at Omnivoracious right now. And you locals, don’t forget: Tomorrow night, University Book Store, me plus Jeff VanderMeer plus Cat Rambo equals awesome. (Note: You should never trust my math skillz, but you should totally trust Jeff and Cat to make things awesome.)

• Stealing an adorable GIF banner from Tor.com - Well, I suppose I stole it with permission. And I’ve also been given permission to pass it around, so by all means, if you’re interested help yourself. Likewise, feel free to direct it to the bookseller of your choosing. If you don’t have an image server, you can hotlink off me. I don’t mind.

• Amazon.com’s editorial Best-Of 2009 picks - And as if making Publishers Weekly’s best-of list wasn’t enough, Boneshaker makes this one, too! If you scroll around, you’ll see that I’m in excellent company. I’m so thrilled - two lists in one day! (Since I found out about this last night.) [:: does a little dance ::]

• Victoria Steam Exposition, May of 2010 in Victoria, British Columbia - This is a personal first for me, folks … I’m going to be their guest of honour! With an extra vowel in “honour” and everything! I am so excited about this that I can hardly believe I have to wait until next year. Life is so unfair! But boy, this is going to be wild.
  

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

OMFG, people. calm the fuck down.

between my evil bitchface e-stalker and a stay at home shopping mom that accused me of stealing because OMGZ i listed two of the same of exact thing after she purchased one from me (like i couldn't buy two and then turn around and sell them?).

i'm just.

taking an internet hiatus.

people are asshats.

which reminds me, the other day Z was going through a notebook that i keep in the diaper bag (nosy little jerk) and he came across a page that i wrote down some writing prompts/notes to myself and he started laughing hysterically at this:

What I Hope to Teach my Children
--------------------------------
The World is full of Assholes.
Hopefully they will not be one of them.

Awwww, so sad.


I have 8 million things to do, and a flight at Ugly O'Clock tomorrow morning. Watch out, Melbums, here I come (for work, unfortunately).

Here are the recent stats for the fabulous urban fantasy adventure about a neurotic vampire/thief and her wealthy blind client, now with Bonus! Cuban drag queen and military intrigue:

Project: Bloodshot
New Words Written: 4022
Present Total Word Count: 65,786 words
Goal: 95,000 words by December 12





Things Accomplished in Fiction: Began to navigate a truly tense situation via phone, wherein a teenage boy is trapped inside a warehouse that’s being raided by evil government agents–and Raylene is thousands of miles away, unable to help except to talk him through it.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Day-job work; went to post office; did some online birthday shopping for zee husband; that’s pretty much it.

Reason for Stopping: I need a snack. I’m gonna go make one.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

It’s dark already, and I’ve written little enough today to bother remarking it with a word meter. But the husband will be gone part of this evening, so I’ll try to do a little catching-up tonight. Even so, I feel like the day is a waste from a productivity standpoint. Le sigh.

Wow. It’s been a few days since I updated. Well, let’s see. The Secret Garden event was a blast; I got to meet some very cool local authors with whom I was previously unacquainted, and the kids were a hoot. Also, there were many great snacks and I ate so much sugar that I came to regret it later.

Likewise, Mark Henry’s Halloween party was a scream; I spent the evening dressed as a “slutty Amelia Earhart” (as one too-old-to-be-trick-or-treating dude put it)*, and I bogarted the front door so I could hand out candy to all the little kids. Mark’s neighborhood is chock full of little kids, most of whom were super-cute and very polite. It was a lot of fun!

The Rock Band marathon in Mark’s living room was also a lot of fun. Here’s a pic of me looking on while Psynde rocks out to an old White Zombie tune.

That’s Caitlin on bass, and Aric’s head poking into the bottom of the shot.

Earlier, I had torn up the vocals on “Don’t Stop Believing” much to my husband’s disbelief. I don’t think he’d ever heard me sing before, much less in front of God and everybody. Somehow, this revelation did not chase him screaming into the night. Instead, he whipped out his iPhone and started taking video. Naturally, he caught the moment wherein the young daughter of another guest tugged on my elbow and informed me that I was frightening the dogs.

If he uploads it, I might link to it for giggles.

Anyway! In other news — which is to say, in the very best news of the day — Boneshaker has made it onto Publishers Weekly’s Best-Of 2009 list! Seriously! Just scroll down to the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror section to see for yourself. I don’t mind telling you, I did a little bootydance when this news reached me.

I’m immensely proud of Boneshaker, and I’m constantly relieved and flattered by how well it’s been received. This book is lucky number seven for me, and I hope the good reviews and (what appear to be) steady sales bode well for the future of the franchise.

Right. So. Since I started writing this post, the husband has come home from work, hung around, chatted with me, and left for his martial arts class. I suppose that means it’s time for me to buckle down and try to salvage the day’s word count.

Have a good evening, everyone.

---

* It was my steampunk aviatrix outfit, and I’ll grant you, the pants are tight and the top shows a little bit of tummy. But it’s not particularly slutty. It’s looks like this, except with a slightly different vest.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

yesterday at work i finished reading both Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (good, of course) and Faust by Wolfgang von Goethe (okay, i don't know if it's something lost in translation but i have a hard time finding Goethe as remarkable...) (i did realize after i had started reading that the version i have does not have all of the second part, like three or so scenes i think are expurged...it seems like that's a common editing move with it? oh well, maybe i'll pick 'em up later...) today i continue my monday series of going to work really early...so now i'm off and stuff...in the mail from Rhino: New Order: Movement (the collector's edition newly redone and hopefully without those errors that the reissue had when it first came out, the only reason i didn't immediately pick it up last year...) and Devo: Recombo DNA (number 3690/5000, exciting huh?) and i guess that's about it for now...

This was a funny weekend to trawl my LJ friends of friends. I saw a lot of funny / cute / questionable Halloween costumery.

Who's doing Newtown Festival this weekend?

Mayhap we should organise a bit o' a picnic...

Martha Stewart, eat your heart out:

This weekend, I made Zombie Brain Cupcakes. Buttercake cupcakes, dyed arterial red, with raspberry chocolate brain, vanilla cream cheese frosting, and caramel blood.

Apparently they were awesome. Shoulda taken photos!

Next time, i might make the brains smaller, and fill the centre of the cake with raspberry puree, instead of pouring blood over them

I see God

We've got squirrels.

Our yard is a place where many of the squirrels like to hang out, because it's relatively secluded and we usually have some seeds out for them.

Most of them are just anonymous squirrels, but there are a few whose personalities stick out. There's Fat Mama, who has long been the alpha female. She has a notch in her ear, so she's easy to identify. Then there's Ears, who will probably be the alpha female when Fat Mama dies.

Both of those girls are very forward, to the point of being friendly. Ears has climbed onto my lap. Usually they're just begging for peanuts.

Here's Ears:



This year a new squirrel is beginning to stand out. He's a very peculiar boy. If you hold a peanut up for him, he's far more interested in grabbing your hand than taking the peanut. He tries to pull your finger in close for a sniff and a taste. It's a little scary, actually. He's never hurt me, but he's bitten me. Bitey Boy.

We expected we wouldn't get Halloween kids last night, and I don't think we did. Wifey just left some peppermint patties outside for any kids to help themselves to, because waiting around all night for kids to show up is a drag when none do. We watched a Mary Pickford movie and forgot about the candy out front.

This morning, Bitey discovered the candy and made off with one of them. I saw him nab it, and went out to try to get it from him. He did grab my hand and pull it close, sniffing loudly, but he couldn't bite because he had that package in his mouth. For my part, I tried to grab that package out of his mouth, but he wouldn't let go.

He ran off across the yard and climbed the hackberry tree. Wifey and I watched with binoculars as he unwrapped the goodie and chowed down. I hope Bitey doesn't get too sick!

Here's Fat Mama & Lily:

didn't really do much last night...just stayed in with my wife...she made meaty squash and i went to rite aid and bought crappy masks...that is how we celebrated the evening of everything hallowed...or something...and i guess last night i did something really scary! i downloaded my first mp3, for my own personal listening pleasure and in a semi-purchasing fashion...i had a $1 mp3 credit on amazon so i wanted to get one song i would in no other fashion own in any form it is normally released, and i got the PERFECT song for that: "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins...GREAT SONG! fucking great song! a shame that EVERYTHING else that man did is about the worst kind of steaming turd possible...how is it that such a crappy recording artist managed to make only one song that's not just alright or not so bad but actually really great is pretty bizarre...the one concentrated point where the few songs he played on those three Eno records rubbed off on him...a while back i'm thinking, well, it's his first album maybe there's another awesome Eno-ish gem on there, i listened to sound samples from all the songs and sure enough they're the kind of shit that sounds just like the rest of his reprehensible solo career...but now i have used mp3 downloading successfully, its greatest use, and i listened to "In the Air Tonight" a bunch of times in a row...it was pretty great...oh, and the end is ever better than i'd previously thought, now that i have the luxury of paying close attention...i almost had a scare this morning...Mary Beth's alarm went off, and it's always set later than mine, really at that moment when it'd be the last moment for me to get ready for work in a hurry...and i'm thinking i didn't hear my alarm go off and that's strage and i'm hurrying and all...my alarm goes off while i'm in the shower...oh, yeah, daylight savings, mine phone updated itself and hers didn't...so now i have extra time anyway! (fascinating anecdote, that...)

i was browsing etsy to LULZ at some of the WTFBBQ!111 wedding cake toppers like these gems which people actually buy.


no, but really, i wanted to take another look at these because i have a few of those wooden dolls around here and thought maybe i could paint my own, but THEN i saw these. and i want!

i actually want everything in that shop! and i notice the seller makes slightly smaller dolls for $22 vs. $50 for the wedding couple. then i look in her sold items and see she's sold some unfinished ones before....hmmmmm.....you know what i'm thinking?

wedding hobo newsboy gypsy faerie chic just wouldn't be complete without a set of these and i'll paint them my damn self. and then. they can be toys that our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren can play with and teethe on and cherish forever and ever amen. yeah. for real.

but really what's up with the inflation on this crap just because the word "wedding" is thrown in? i mean really? this seller charges nearly double for the toppers compared to the other custom couple dolls she makes. because they come on a wooden base? *eyeroll*

last night Mary Beth and i hung out with Ryan and played some Settlers of Catan...he just got a job teaching at some semi-scary-sounding special school (not life-in-danger scary, but scary in terms of like, i dunno, unnverving...i guess i can't explain without describing the whole thing which i don't feel will be worth the effort...) anyway, back at home, i have a few notebooks i keep in boxes and they've been under my desk situated so that i was sure Trudy wouldn't pee on them...well, it turns out she's peed on one of the boxes...for the most part the damage doesn't look too bad...only one loose sheet of paper (so far as i THINK) has been completely destroyed...unfortunately this was a poem i wrote in high school called "Fly"...i forget the exact gist of it now...it absolutely terrible...but, of course, charming in that way and absolutely irreplaceable so now i'll never get it back...nice...that's a complete fuckin' bummer...anyway, i worked today...don't have anything terribly social to do on this great night of festivities...or social at all i guess...i forgot to mention earlier that because of my platinum status with club nintendo i finally got my free game downloaded a couple days ago: Doc Louis's Punch-Out!!...a demo really where you fight the trainer dude...pretty much just an elaborate ad for the real Punch-Out!! but it's something...as i can't afford to invest in the real one, it's uh, something, as i said...and i'm out of stuff to say...

One of the things I love about LiveJournal is that with my paid account I am not subjected to a barrage of irritating advertisements. On the flip-side though, Facebook's attempts at targeted advertising amuse the hell out of me.

I intentionally don't give Facebook much to work with, and have on occasion gone out of my way to confound their data-mining. At one point, after adding a few hundred completely random words picked for their obscurity to my "interests" I successfully confused their ad-bot into complete silence. I actually went about a month or so with no advertising. That was nice, but of course it didn't last. Soon enough I started getting the default ads that go to completely blank accounts and simply changed my "interests" to  the phrase "Subverting the data-mining operations of marketing-weasels!" in ROT13.

The only things they've got to mine are my age, gender, that I live in Vancouver, and my relationship status. Now this is where it gets funny. Since my relationship status changed from "engaged" to "married" the ads I have been getting have changed.

While my status was "engaged" most of the ads that came up were for local wedding photographers and the occasional ad looking for men over 40 to participate in market research. Now that my status is "married" and I remain over 40, suddenly all the advertising is for real-estate, home repairs, and erectile dysfunction.

Very many tweets.
( Read more... )

finished reading Four Plays by Eugène Ionesco at work today (good stuff...of course almost just like Beckett and Pinter...maybe better for the most part?)...otherwise work was lame and busy...the end...