A Curious Statistical Anomaly

All you got to do is swim, swim, swim. Anybody else remember the Dory swim song from Finding Nemo? It keeps running through my head. It’s the 30th today, soon to be the 31st of October. You know what that means? It means I’ve got to have all the zines ready to go live tomorrow night.

Two zines completely ready to go live on November 1st. Has panic set in yet? Nope. Nada. Nyet. I’m beyond panic. In an incredible feat of inattention and denial, I completely forgot that there was no author interviews scheduled/done/planned/whatevered for Gumshoe Review. I can’t believe it — I’ve already been chastised by the clue fairy and promise to do better for December. Then the big surprise interview for SFRevu fell through at the last minute. That one’s not a complete wash since it’s just a matter of getting the author’s okay on the final transcript so we can publish it. So hopefully, December will have an interview that will knock everyone’s socks off — or space boots.

Meanwhile, I’ve been formatting, proofing, and writing my own reviews all day. Only got six more of mine to write up. I’ve really got to write them within a day of finishing the book. Really, I know it. Luckily I take lots of notes while reading and even jot down phrases I want to use — most of which never see the light of pixels but nonetheless help me write a review days after reading the book.

I also joined NaNoWriMo. I’ve never done this before and I’m sort of looking forward to the challenge of writing a novel in a month. If nothing else it will get me in the habit of writing a set number of words per day to meet a goal. If you’re also taking part in this year’s NaNoWriMo let me know. On the website, I’m using Iskusva as my Id — don’t ask, it’s a long, long, winding road of a story for that one. I liked this icon from the NaNoWriMo LiveJournal Icon blog — if only it mentioned lack of caffeine and the plot bunny.

Today, I got sent a link to a YouTube video with just the phrase “you got to listen to this”. I did. First, it’s a song that I really, really like and it means a lot to me. Second, I found the Bill Moyer’s interview with Mark Johnson who has spent years getting this project, Playing for Change, together, planned, recorded, and working.

There are so many phrases and saying about music. We use them all the time:

“They’re playing out song.” — just about everyone I’ve met and talked with.
“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” ~ William Congreve
“All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!” ~Thomas Carlyle
“Music is what feelings sound like.” ~Author Unknown
“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” ~Leo Tolstoy
“When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.” ~ Edgar Watson Howe

I’m sure you get the idea that whether we think of it or not, music is a part of all of us. Music is everywhere in every culture — jazz, rock, chants, classical, R&B, blues, whatever. It’s part of the fabric of movies and TV shows — the music in films plays with our emotions and when well done, we never even notice.

Music has the power to lift us up or to bring us to tears. Reading about the Playing for Change project, I began to think that music could also be the glue that could pull the world’s people together. We share music. We share songs. The music speaks to us no matter who we are or where we come from — a song played in New Orleans, New York, Amsterdam, South Africa — it speaks to the people who hear it. We may differ in culture, economic status, education, and beliefs, but a song may still speak to our hearts equally. Maybe music will help to bring us together — to look at our commonalities and not our differences so that we can achieve peace.

What can I say, I’m a liberal/romantic/optimist. I have hope and I listen to the music.

Today is one of those grey, blustery day with occasionally spatters of rain. Mostly it’s wind. I went out to check if we’d gotten any packages because I thought I heard a truck. It wasn’t anywhere near as cold out as I thought from the sound of the wind.

Does anyone else associate sounds with weather? For example, living in Maine, I learned that if I woke in the middle of the night and everything was silent as if the world was wrapped in cotton batten or felted wool — that it was probably snowing. Somehow, when it snowed, even the house didn’t make the usually settling creaks and groans during the night.  It was truly a silent night.

I associate strong wind with cold. I know intellectually that it’s not true because the winds was horrendous during the hurricanes here but it was a warm wind even if it was strong enough to knock down trees and push you over. But, never the less, when I’m sitting here typing and I hear the wind howling outside, I hunch up from the cold. I make tea and sit wrapped in an afghan and read (or I would if I wasn’t so busy).

Also, I get migraines when the barometric pressure changes and I’ve had a constant headache for three days now. So, the sounds of the weather outside are louder because I’m sensitive to sound. Tea is doubly good because it helps with the nausea from the headache.

If I could think straight, I’d probably have some pithy statement about the combination of sound, wind, pain, and tea — but for now I just wonder if other people hear the sounds of weather and make assumptions about what’s happening outside.

As I was deleting my spam today — well yesterday and the day before too. I got to thinking about the spammer that finally got arrested and went to trial in Virginia. They let him go because the judge didn’t think it was fair, the law was too broad, and so on and so on. Well, as I’ve been clearing out the spam not caught by my filters — usually around 1,000 per day — and remember, that’s not counting the spam caught by my filters on my PC or the ones that the ISP catches before it even gets to me. I have to wondered about this double standard.

Well, we all know that the security at airports is just security theater. It causes people discomfort and inconvenience so they think it must be keeping them safe — when in fact it doesn’t make anyone a bit safer than they were before. It’s all just for show. If they keep telling us we’re safer and we’re all in long lines and it looks like they’re actually doing something somehow we’ll believe it.

Congress talking about protecting children from pornography on the internet is the same. They talk and the pass laws and they make things inconvenient for everyone — yet they don’t do anything to protect anyone from pornography, let alone the children. How do I know? They won’t pass any legislation to protect us from spam. We need a Can Spam law with teeth but when it’s proposed then they start saying we can’t have that because it will restrain trade and yadda yadda…

I’ve been using computers for years, and the internet before it had webpages — I know hard to believe but back in the early years you had to put in these really long addresses to route your email to the places and people you wanted to reach. In comparison to today, we carved our messages on rocks and threw them in the direction we wished them to go and crossed our fingered that they’d get to the one we wanted to communicate with.

In all the years I’ve been on the internet, I’ve never come “accidentally” on pornography. It is out there, I know that it is, I’m just saying I’ve never accidentally stumbled upon it unaware. The closest I came was when I offered to look to see if I could find a prosthetic breast for my mother after her mastectomy for breast cancer. Seems a good place to buy a breast is at sites for transvestites, cross-dressers, costumers, and sex sites. Who knew? So while it wasn’t pornography, it’s as close as I’ve come in close to 40 years of active internet/computer use.

Now back to spam — that’s where I’ve been subjected to pornography. Blatant, disgusting images of body parts. Before you ask, I’ve got my machine set to not display photos unless I tell it to, but the spammers get around that — as you well know. I get propositions, offers of videos of the act and all its variations, and some that just aren’t right….ick…all with coming into my inbox without my permission or consent, and with no way to stop it.

So, I say to Congress if you really want to protect children from pornography on the internet — do something about spam — you know, unwanted, unsolicited email. My experience of 40 years of internet use with lots of searches and miscellaneous website browsing has resulted in no porno. But everyday on my PC without my permission, I get spam with lots of porno. So, lets not have “protect the children” theater. Let’s get rid of the spam.

PS: I happen to like the canned stuff and hope that the unwanted, unsolicited junk that fills our inboxes each day doesn’t put you off. As a student, spam was a food staple — you either acquired a taste for it or your food budget didn’t last very long. Today it’s gotten a bit pricey but it’s the same hearty meal stretcher.

I was perusing the news this morning and ran across an article about a walking house. Well, the article seemed so far-fetched and weird that I looked up the N55 Collective to find out more about it and found this manual about the walking house.

I’m flabbergasted by it. All I can think about is Howl’s Moving Castle. It was a very good anime film based on a YA novel by Diana Wynne Jones. But, watching the film I was entranced by the castle which moved about the landscape from country to city to lakeside — where ever it wanted to go. Imagine having a home that you could move about the countryside in. Suddenly you’ve not limited to one plot of land — you become nomadic.

The houses can move on their six pneumatic legs. But they’re built to have a very small environmental footprint. They have a water capturing system, solar panels, a small windmill, composting toilets, a energy-efficient wood stove, and there’s an option for a greenhouse so you can grow your own food. The living space is very small — kitchen area/living space with toilet and sleeping loft. You’d need to really, really, like the person you chose to live in the walking house with.

But think of the ability to move with the seasons or the sun — to get the most efficiency out of the solar panels, solar water heater and wind generators. Think of being able to move and take your house with you without being in a gazillion dollar RVTrailer. Nomads without tents — while now most are nomads with RVs.

However, living in small spaces takes a different mindset than most of us are comfortable with — though we could learn. For me, the hardest part of moving to a very small space such as this would be giving up my books. But the current technologies in ebooks and the Kindle could make that much easier than in years past. But still, I’ll be interested to see if this walking house takes off as more than an oddity, seaside vacation home, or hunting hut. It has potentially some very good uses and I wonder if they’ll be realized or this will just disappear as an interesting idea with no takers.

Today, I was going through my datebook and noticed that my blog had its one year birthday on September 24th. Somehow, I totally missed it. So, today I wish myself a Happy Belated Birthday.

Here’s where I stand at the 1 year and 1 month (-2 days):
244 posts in 36 categories.
10,433 total comments, 49 approved, 10,383 spam.

I’m pretty pleased that I’ve posted so regularly not quite once a day but better than the three times a week that I was aiming for when I started. I’m pretty excited to have some actual comments on some of my posts but also appalled at the amount of spam that the blog gets.

When I started, I hoped to use the blog to help me get in the habit of writing. Not just sitting and staring at the screen for hours at a time but to write something at least three times a week. I’ve used my blog to write book and movie reviews that don’t fit in the venues that I usually review in. I’ve written pieces that helped me flesh out an idea or thought. I’ve used the blog to write about some issues that I find interesting, appalling, hurtful, or astonishing — those things that just strike my fancy and I want to share.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed following along with me over the past year. I’m more than willing to hear about any ideas that could make my blog more interesting or helpful to those who read it. I know why I write my blog but why do you read it?

One of the wonderful things about conventions is that you meet so many new people, make some friends, talk with people you haven’t seen for a while, and stay up late and get up early. The problem with conventions is that you get too little sleep, meet lots and lots of people and in the process of talking, shaking hands, and giving hugs of welcome — you all share germs. So after the convention you get what is called “con crud”.

Really, it’s an official term. It’s that run-down achy feeling you get — sometimes with a cough, fever, or cold — after spending time with a bunch of people from areas other than yours. You see people get used to the germs around them where they live. When I worked at a college we all knew that everyone would be sick as soon as all the students came back from vacations because they’d go home get whatever germ/illnesses were being shared around at home and them bring them back to share with roommates, classmates, and the faculty and staff. Conventions do the same thing only on a smaller scale.

So, since I got home Sunday, I’ve been resting and drinking lots of juice. I even love the pictures of citrus fruits. I wonder if just looking at the vitamins in the raw, fruity form can help me feel better. And, I’m the lucky one. Hyperion has a slight fever and a cough and chills. Of course, he’s now sharing the joy at work since he has to be there. Luckily, I work at home — yes, I know I’m lucky. I get to take naps and bundle up in a blanket when I get the chills or get too run down to think straight.

I don’t care there — I still had a great time this past weekend and wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Finally, I’m getting the Sunday Capclave details up. As you know, we were so busy on Sunday that we didn’t get to post.

We got up late. Packed up and got our bags and baggage out to the car. Double checked that we hadn’t missed anything in the room, and checked out. By this time, we’d missed the 10 a.m. panels and it was after the 11 a.m. ones had started, so we visited the ConSuite, talked to some friends and waited for the noon panels to start.

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Is Genre Good panel

Noon: Is Genre Good? There’s lots of talk about genres and breaking genre restrictions. Authors find themselves having to use different names in different parts of the bookstore. So why do we have genre? What do these lines do for good or for ill? What happens when writers ignore these lines or try to cross them?
Panelists: Jim Freund (moderator), Michael Dirda, Ted White, Dr. Charles Gannon.

Ted White gave an excellent overview of how genre distinctions came to be used. He started where publishers would just have stories and a magazine would have a mix of science fiction, horror, westerns, literary, poems, and so forth. Ending with the divisions that we have today in publishing and bookstores.

The panel talked about how genre is really a marketing tool. It tells bookstores where to put books and then readers can look for the books that they like in the categories they read. If you like romance you look in the romance section ….

While things have changed over the years and there are now classes in the university on science fiction and fantasy, it’s still not fully accepted as a field of study. If you are in academia and up for tenure you need to have a list of publications. If you’ve published in periodicals, even prestigious ones in Science Fiction Literary Study or Review — it has less weight then publications in the standard academic publications.

One benefit of genre is that there is an identified group of readers, you don’t have to explain things like FTL (faster than light) because the readers are already familiar with the tropes and accepted mechanics of the field.

Keeping Control of Your Characters panel

1 p.m. Keeping Control of Your Characters. How do you make sure your characters follow the plot you want without making the author’s hand too visible or your characters seem out of character? Do you follow your characters or your plot? Or do you not outline at all, just create characters and see where thy go?
Panelists: Resa Nelson, Dina Leacock, Brenda Clough. (The moderator didn’t show for this panel).

The panelists agreed that characters are plot. Everything that makes a fully-formed character — their backgrounds, education, profession, social interactions — effect their decisions and their decisions are what get them moving and reacting and that’s plot.

What is bad is characters as sock-puppets for the author. You should concentrate on story not getting your political or social agenda over to the reader. When you’re more interested in getting your world view across you should be writing non-fiction. That’s not to say that you can’t have your story convey your opinions and beliefs but if it doesn’t come out of the characters it’s not a good story.

The trick is to realize that when you’re having problems in a story and it won’t go the way you want it to — it may be that the characters you have developed wouldn’t do what you want. If you write for the characters that you’ve developed the story should flow smoothly. So, if you’re stuck, try to imagine what your characters would do or say in that situation (one at a time), you’ll probably find one of them just doesn’t fit that scene. You are the ruler of your story but if you develop characters that are fully developed you can’t cause them to act counter to their core — they must move according to how they are created and their background you gave them.

Sometimes the problem will arise from how you decided to tell the story (point of view). Maybe it needs to be changed. Maybe one character wants to narrate and since you’re not telling it that way it keeps stalling. The panelists all believed that authors have to learn to listen to their cast because characters are plot.

2 p.m. Who should we be reading? Who are the great writers of our day? Who is unfairly neglected? Panelists recommend books, stories, films and authors.
Panelists: Doug Fratz, Kathryn Cramer (moderator), Hildy Silverman, Lenny Bailes.

The panel decided that actually that they’d list writers who are good solid story tellers that are under-appreciated. The key is under-appreciated. Some of those listed are fairly well known but still the panel considered them under-appreciated. Here’s the list in no particular order:

Terry Bisson (light SF with heavy themes)
Robert Reed (has short stories in almost every major SF/F magazine but little known)
Howard Hendrix/Howard V. Hendrix
Elizabeth Moon
Michael Flynn (The January Dancer)
Matt Ruff (Tiptree Award Winner)
Ken Macleod
Cory Doctorow (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town)
Neal Stephenson (The Baroque Cycle)
Grania Davis (The Rainbow Annals)
Avram Davidson
A.R. Morelan
Jim Butcher
Greg Egan
Mary Sangiovanni
Karl Schroeder
Steven Baxter
Nancy Kress
Greg Benford
Michael Swanwick
Gwyneth Jones
Gene Wolfe
James Patrick Kelly
Bruce Sterling
Robert Sheckley
Carol Emshwiller
Mary Rickert/M. Rickert
Lucius Shepard
Jeffrey Ford
Ted Chiang
L.E. Modesitt Jr.

The audience suggested: Jennifer Smith Stevens, David Marusek, Karen Joy Fowler, Howard Waldrop, Nick DiChario (Valley of Day-Glo), and Susan Palwick.

Movies mentioned were: Pan’s Labyrinth, Being John Malkovich, Momento, 13th Floor, Donny Darko, and Gattica.

After Con Review Session

3 p.m. Gripe Session. This is the session where convention attendees can come and tell the convention committee what worked and what didn’t.

We explained our problem with the smelly/perfumy room. There were a lot of suggestions to make the convention better next year (double index for the restaurant guide, find out if the hotel could have coffee/tea available in the bar after the restaurant closes for non-drinkers, more time between events to allow a trip to the bathroom or such so they don’t have to miss panels, suggested a clock on each panel table so the panelists could better check time, add in koffeeklatches if possible as well as the readings, a bit more time for some of the workshops such as the one for Reviewers, publicity, and how to get an agent, since they ran over, add a handout or something on the web for those who are attending their very first convention so they know about things old-timers take for granted, such as they can go to the parties on the party board, in the bio section list some of the books the authors have written, maybe have a break for lunch (again so attendees don’t have to miss panels.

Seems like everyone, including myself, had a great time at the convention. After the gripe session, we met some friends to sit and talk for awhile before going out to dinner in a big crowd. Finally drove into our driveway at about ten. As you know, I didn’t get Sunday written up. But now you have the full report from the convention. Check out the Capclave 2009 website for the dates for next year.  The Guests of Honor are Harry Turtledove and Sheila Williams.