Dear Blogger Readers:

After much agonizing, I've decided to move my blogging over to my LiveJournal, at least on a trial basis. As Alan pointed out a few days ago, most of the discussion tends to happen over there anyway. So, this blog will be inactive at least for the near future. Come on and join the fun over there.

I'm So In Love With You, I'll Be Forever Blue

I got my first LJ comment spam last night! It turns out, this guy? His wife left him for another guy? And there's video now on the Internet of her doing this stuff with the other guy? That she would never do with the first guy? So this guy wanted me to see the video of his wife and this other guy? . . . Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. BUT, I figure this is some sort of rite of passage, and I fully expect to have chanting and nude bonfire leaping later.

I am experiencing the fatigue and heartburn that usually presage a cold. (Does anyone else get heartburn pre-cold? I hardly ever get it, so if it happens two nights in a row I can be pretty sure I'm getting sick. I've never heard of this as a cold symptom, but there it is.) I suspect that by tonight, or possibly tomorrow morning, I'll be miserably stuffed up. So I have that to look forward to, which is nice. (Maybe I should pass on the nude bonfire activities.)

It occurs to me that the whole Astronaut weirdness really just signals a new acceptance of the Astronaut people into our culture. Now they really are just like us! Just because they come from space doesn't mean they don't occasionally decide to murder each other. Man, I can't wait until the first Senator plots someone's murder. What? Why are you laughing?

I wonder if Pynchon already knew that the Vikings used crystals to navigate when he wrote Against the Day? (Which is AWESOME, BTW. It has airships and anarchists and journeys through the center of the earth and that's just in the first hundred pages. I'm still reading, though, so please don't spoil me for anything!) (I must say that the linked article is some pretty bad journalism: "Vikings were a seafaring race from Scandinavia who used their longboats to explore and conquer parts of Europe, Greenland, Iceland and Russia." WTF? The Vikings were a separate race? Did they came from space as well?)

Look! Smart people talking!

The fashion must-have for WisCon 50. (Via Warren Ellis.)

Excuse me a second. (What? Really? . . . huh. I, uh--are you sure?!? Well, I just thought . . . OK, fine.) Sorry, folks. Turns out Astronauts don't actually come from space. Turns out they are HUMAN BEINGS. (Vikings too?) Vikings, too.

Now I've got a wiggins.

I did not take this picture . . .

Am I a lost Oliphant, or what?
Originally uploaded by 2composers.

. . . but I love it.

Take a Picture, Sweetie, I Ain't Got Time to Waste

According to yesterday's poll happiness is "Something to do with food," with "A warm puppy" and "A chemical imbalance in the brain" rounding out the top three. Please adjust your expectations accordingly. [Blogger-readers note: I gots no polls over here. Sorry.]

On the way to work I saw a woman doing perhaps the weirdest walk I've ever seen in a non-physically challenged person. She would walk normally for a quarter-block or so, then hunker down and sort of lope forward (in the lupine sense, not the equine), taking really long strides and staying low to the ground like she was stalking prey. It was like running, only really slow so I can't figure out any benefit as far as speeding up her commute. I was fascinated and also freaked out. Keep on keepin' on, weird lady! Rock on with your weird self!

Today I am very excited about my book, specifically the new one I am still writing. This doesn't happen every day, so I thought I'd mention it.

Speaking of rocking on with your weird self, as we were before the commercial break, HOLY SHIT DUDE I KNOW EVERYONE ALREADY LINKED THIS BUT IT'S LIKE THAT "ASTRO-NUTS" SHOW COME TO LIFE IF IT WAS ABOUT CRAZY ASTRONAUTS. I think Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin need to give this woman a good talking to.

The Writers' Block has an interview with rockstar editor Ellen Datlow. Check it out. And Strange Horizons has a story from the talented Joey Comeau. It's kind of a meditation on the scary power of blood and words. Check that out as well.

I had this whole thought forming about how 24 is a workplace drama and the turnover is making it a less interesting show, but then last night's episode wasn't bad so I kinda lost interest in it. I was going to tie it into Studio 60 and how Sorkin's shows all pretty much reflect a worldview in which everyone loves their jobs and works all the time, which is pretty far from my own experience. The shows sort of work--Sports Night is a fun place to work, and The West Wing is about the most important place in the world you could work, but one of the problems with Studio 60 is that everyone is too caught up in their little dramas all the time, and they won't shut up about them, and pretty soon you just want to go get a nice quiet job as a parking lot attendant.

Prince at the Super Bowl. (Part Two is here.) Man, that makes me feel good.