Rixosous

Worse than SteamyPunk?

Not only has Katie MacAlister written what sounds like the worst Steampunk novel ever -- romance/chick-lit with a Steampunk veneer -- she has also stolen a photograph by Tarilyn Quinn of rather more genuine Steampunk author G.D. Falksen to use as the basis for her hero in a YouTube promotional video.

The video is here, at least for the moment:

I can't believe Penguin is going to be all that thrilled about being party to theft, so it may not be up long.  Compare with the photo here.

Even aside from the whole copyright-what-copyright? angle, listening to the breathless narration makes me choke with laughter:

A whirlwind romance that just may cause their airship to combust and ignite in a passion that will forever change the world as she knows it

'Cause, y'know, the Hindenburg disaster is exactly what you want to think about in a moment of passion.

Judging from the promo, this might actually be worse than SteamyPunk, though I'm not willing to sacrifice either time or money enough to find out for myself.

(And a note to Ms. MacAlister: when I think of "igniting passion" and "incredible gadgetry," a punked-up wristwatch is not the first thing that comes to mind.)

(1/30/10 Edited to add:  The video has now been pulled; no surprise.  A screencap is at left; click to enlarge.  A copy of the video has been posted with a record of the multiple thefts of artistic property -- background, watches, etc. -- here.  The author blames it all on the video production company, MyNextDemo, which is supposedly a professional producer.  One has to wonder how many other images they've stolen for their other videos.  You can see MacAlister's failure to apologize or accept any responsibility in the comments here.)

A Clockwork Werewulf Playlist

Several people asked for the names of individual songs or a complete playlist from Saturday's Steampunk Ball.  It was an interesting event to prepare for; "Steampunk music" is a rather vague term, and much of what is labeled as such is useless for doing any sort of historical dance to.  (Left: mid-waltz at the Ball; click to enlarge)

My musical plan for this event was an eclectic mix of nineteenth-century tunes with modern tunes to which you could do Victorian dances.  I'd thought I was overpreparing, but things moved at a pretty snappy pace, so I actually went though everything I'd prepared and then some.

I didn't keep track of the music I was playing before the official start, but here is a list of the tunes, in order, that were the ball itself from when I started calling.  For the most part, I've put in links to where you can purchase either an MP3 of the individual tune or the album on which it is found.  The exceptions are where the album appears to be out of print or is otherwise beyond my ability to find online.

A Clockwork Werewulf: Steampunk Ball in Baltimore (January 23, 2010)

A word to any Maryland-or-vicinity Rixo folks:

I'm going to be precepting a Victorian Steampunk Ball in Baltimore this Saturday, January 23rd, 2010, as a fundraiser for research against Multiple Sclerosis.  Dancing will be creatively Victorian, to a mix of Victorian and modern music.  That means a mix of called set dances (contras and quadrilles) and couple dances (waltzes, polkas, schottisches).  There will be ample instruction and the set dances in particular are very beginner-friendly.  And yes, we will do my "Airship Pirates" quadrille in its beginner-friendly version!

For more information:

Team Greykell's blog.

There's also a Facebook page, but damned if I can figure out how to link to it directly from outside Facebook.  Color me clueless!

Any help spreading the word would be appreciated, and it would be great to see more friends there!

Echo: Volumes 1-3

Terry Moore is one of the few people in comics whose stuff I'll pick up on spec.  I went into withdrawal after he ended Strangers in Paradise a few years ago, and waited to pick up his new book, Echo, until he had a substantial amount of it out.  But I decided over the holidays that I couldn't wait any longer -- its run started in 2008 -- so I now have the first three trade paperback compilations: Moon Lake (2008), Atomic Dreams (2009), and Desert Run (2009), which between them cover issues #1-15 out of the 18 so far.  The issues and the compilations are all independently published by Moore under the imprint Abstract Studio.

Unlike SiP, which was often a bit surreal but essentially set in our own reality, Echo is science fiction.  Let me see what I can do to summarize without spoilers.

Angelic

I wouldn't talk so much about Kelley Armstrong's novels if she weren't so productive.  Angelic (Subterranean Press, 2009) is actually a novella, a little under a hundred pages, focusing on the deceased half-demon-witch-ghost-ascended-angel Eve Levine, last used in a major role as the narrator of Haunted (Otherworld #5).  As you can tell just from that capsule description, Eve's situation is pretty complicated.  While I mildly enjoyed Haunted, I was rather sorry that Armstrong killed off Eve so early in the series: offstage between the first two books.  I think I'd have liked her adventures as a living person better than I do her situation as a ghost and part-time angelic bounty hunter for the Fates.

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

I can't remember why I suddenly had another urge to read about cannibalism and survival while stranded in wintry mountains again so soon after last fall's reading adventure with the Donner Party, but I was suddenly seized with the desire to run off to the library and borrow Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974) by Piers Paul Read.  Alive is the story of a Uruguayan plane carrying the members of a rugby team which crashed high in the Andes back in the (southern hemisphere) late winter of 1972.  There were forty-five people on the plane; sixteen of them survived two months in deep snow in the mountains, living in the plane's fractured fuselage while given up for dead by most of the world.

Arisia '10 Schedule

Arisia is coming up this weekend, and after rather overburdening myself last year I've cut back severely so that I can spend more time enjoying the convention and, in particular, indulging myself by going to just about every item that involves Musical GOH S.J. Tucker.

My panel schedule:

Saturday 1:00-2:00pm    Mask Making
Susan de Guardiola (m), Mimi Noyes, Jennifer Hunter
Masks make your personality, with costumes or not.

Sunday 7:00-8:00pm  Basic Costume Shapes
Ann Catelli (m), Susan de Guardiola, Toni Lay, Kristina Finan, Fiona Fawkes
Fundamental Costume Shapes: From T-tunics and conical skirts to cloaks, sometimes it just comes down to a basic shape. Some ideas are so adaptable they go on forever.

The first item is for Fast Track, the children's program.  The second is for adults of all ages.  I volunteered to be on it because I remember my first primitive efforts at sewing all involved geometry -- circle skirts, chemises made out of four rectangles, triangular gores, etc.  I was mostly self-taught, and basic shapes were familiar from math class.

In between these two items, my other big commitment is serving as Workmanship Judge for the Masquerade, which I'd estimate will occupy something like 6pm-11pm Saturday night.  Hence my desire for a very limited panel schedule.

Along with hitting as many of Sooj's items as I can, I'll also probably be at the Malice in Wonderland Ball and a completely random assortment of panels.  Otherwise, I'll just be hanging out.  Find me if you want to say hi!

Facebookery

I've decided to join Facebook, mostly for networking/promotional purposes for my dance stuff, since Facebook seems to be where the energy and opportunities for connection are lately, and I'm trying to be part of the 21st century.  I spent a few hours this afternoon energetically tracking down lots of people and sending out friend requests.  So far it's just people I know in real life, though I've taken a few friend requests from people I've only met online and will continue to do so to build my network.  I hadn't realized how many people I know through my various social circles, which usually don't have much overlap!

Once I figure out how it works and spend some time thinking about how much of my life I want on Facebook, I'll be doing some cross-connecting with my various blogs, websites, etc.  In the meantime, if anyone who reads Rixo is on Facebook, wants to connect with me there, and wasn't among the people I found yesterday, please feel free to send me a friend request.

Hardball

I've been reading Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski detective novels for many years, so when I came across the latest in hardcover at the library while searching for true tales of human misery, I grabbed it and spent an evening reading it instead of cleaning house for company this weekend.  Oops. 

Hardball (Putnam, 2009) is the thirteenth in the series, and it follows the usual V. I. formula of having her chase corruption and murder in Chicago while persons unknown try to get her to back down from her investigation with increasingly nasty tactics.  It's a familiar formula, but it's a really good one, and Paretsky is a gripping writer who, as usual, turns out a story that's impossible to put down.

Worst. X-Men. Fanfic. Ever.

And the best taking apart ever by Rob Bricken over at Topless Robot:

It's like Babelfish decided to write its own erotic fan fiction.

I'm not going to dignify the writer by mentioning his name or by linking to his fanfic, but you can read Rob's fabulous commentary -- and the entire fic -- here.  For the first part of it, I was laughing so hard I was actually wheezing while tears (of hilarity) streamed down my face.  But be warned: it turns graphically violent (rape, murder, cannibalism, etc.) by the middle.  If you're freaking at the first kitten, stop there, 'cause it gets a lot worse.

(I mean, the violence gets worse.  The writing...really can't get worse.)

Hat tip to Paul Constant at Slog for this one.

Dodd is out

Dodd pulling out wasn't exactly a surprise, given his political troubles of late.  I'm on his mailing list, so a resignation letter, presumably a transcript of his speech, arrived at lunchtime, somewhat behind the political gossip.

It was thoughtful:

...none of us are irreplaceable.

None of us are indispensible [sic].

Those who think otherwise are dangerous.

The work to make our nation a more perfect union began long before I was elected to the Senate, and it will go on long after I'm gone. Our country is a work in progress. And I am confident it always will be.

And included some refreshing honesty:

...there is nothing more pathetic than a politician who announces they are only leaving public life to spend more time with their family.

The result of this announcement today will, I hope, create that opportunity -- but it is not the reason for my decision

And signed in that over-casual way with just a first name:

Thank you,

Chris

I can't quite bring myself to be on a first-name basis with elected officials I've never met and wish they would not try for it, even in email.

My response:

Dear Senator Dodd,

Despite your political misfortunes over the past year, I believe you've generally done a good job in office.  I've been proud to have you as my senator, and I would have been happy to vote for you again.  I will never forget your "first hour" speech during the last Presidential campaign and the way you focused on the damage done to our Constitution by the Bush administration.

I hope you will spend your last year in office working to pass health care, immigration reform, and some sort of financial regulation.

Thank you for your service to Connecticut and to our country.

Sincerely yours,

Susan de Guardiola

He's going to be replaced in the race by our Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, whose positions I generally agree with but whom I found when I saw him in person to be the epitome of the slick politician.  I have no special urge to work for him, but he'll be heavily favored to hold the seat; losing Dodd makes me sad but is a strategic improvement for the Democratic Party.  So this slightly narrows my choices for political work over the next couple of years.

Out of the football closet

I'm a weird sort of football fan who never actually watches football anymore (having no television and no time) but who for assorted reasons (childhood programming and adult masochism) follows football compulsively during the NFL season.  The Sports Illustrated online Power Rankings are the highlight of my Wednesday afternoons for five solid months of the year.

So I must confess that I am a very happy camper today because both my teams won yesterday, which means both of them are actually in the playoffs.  To quote Strictly Ballroom:

That was unexpected.

The odds of them meeting in the Super Bowl are low, but they both have a decent shot at winning at least one game.  If they both make it all the way...well, I'll worry about whom to root for if it happens.

The menu is cheering

This afternoon's dance event was one of those mixed joys: I went out just for fun, but it turned into advertising, which is professionally good but made guys scared to dance with me.  I hate that tradeoff.  And while the drive back was fine, with minimal snow and occasional glimpses of sunshine, the drive back was slow and nasty in a snowstorm.

I had dinner with the band before heading home, since we do a lot of business together and wanted a chance to chat.  We went off to a diner which had one of those diner menus that covers a wide range of cuisines and every meal from breakfast to dinner.  But it was a bright-pink menu insert that caught my eye:

Sautés Specialties

I wouldn't make fun if it if that were the only error, but inspecting the dishes listed below just got funnier and funnier.

Tales of the Slayers

I never actually finished watching Joss Whedon's two biggest television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I got as far as season five (of seven) and season two (of six), respectively, before burning out, though I do mean to go back and watch the rest one of these days.  But I found out at Whedon's talk at Wesleyan back in the spring that not only did Whedon admit the influence of my beloved Tomb of Dracula on Buffy, he'd actually gotten ToD artist Gene Colan to illustrate the 1970s slayer story in the comic book anthology Tales of the Slayers (Dark Horse Books, 2001) by way of a little subtle homage.  So I put it on my family wish list and promptly forgot about it until I unwrapped it on Christmas day.

First thought after reading it: what a depressing bunch of stories!

Second thought: okay, to be fair, they weren't all depressing, and the sad tone shouldn't have been a surprise anyway, since he'd made the point in the television show that most Slayers did not survive very long and that Buffy was unique in having a cluster of friends and a life outside vampire-slaying.

I'm going to talk rather carefully around the plots of the stories to avoid spoilers (though since this came out in 2001, presumably anyone who cares has read it already), and since I expect that this will only be of interest to Buffy fans, I'm not going to bother with background.  So if you know nothing about the Buffy universe, the rest of the post probably won't make much sense.

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is the eighth movie I've seen in theaters this year, which is probably the most I've ever seen in one year in my entire adult life.  I freely admit that I dashed out to see this one on opening day because of my eye for the talented and attractive Robert Downey, Jr., in the title role.  I'm also a moderate Sherlock Holmes fan, in the sense of having read and enjoyed all the stories more than once, but not the rabid sort of fan that's going to obsess on all the details.  I've paid enough attention to be aware that the typical Basil Rathbone-style movie treatment with Holmes as an older guy in a deerstalker cap is a rather limited view of a character, who, if you go by information given in the stories, was a drug-addicted manic-depressive with substantial martial arts skills (swordfighting, wrestling, professional-level boxing, and "baritsu"), a total slob who shoots up his apartment walls when bored -- that scene is in the movie -- along with shooting up cocaine, and who was in his twenties or thirties during most of the cases.  I was already aware from the trailers and advance publicity that this was going to be a more lively Holmes than usual, and I was rather curious to see the results.

Overall: I was pleased by Downey as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson and thought the overall concept of the character as a man of both brains and action was quite acceptable.  But I did have some problems with the film.

Disney's A Christmas Carol

I don't know what goes on in Robert Zemeckis' head.  With a talented cast including Jim Carrey, Bob Hoskins, Colin Firth, and Gary Oldman, why exactly would he want to use motion capture technology to create a creepy animated version of A Christmas Carol rather than just film it in live action?  I don't get it.

I went to see Disney's A Christmas Carol less because I felt the need to see another adaptation of it than because my friend Matt Henerson had several small roles¹, though the mo-cap/animation thing meant he was entirely unrecognizable.  Seeing it on a weekday morning almost two months after its release meant that I got to watch it in solitary splendor, my very own private showing at the local multiplex.

Foundation (no, not that one)

Just what kind of chutzpah does it take to give a mediocre novel which is the nth in a long fantasy series the title of one of the most famous science fiction novels of all time?  Possibly the same chutzpah that makes Mercedes Lackey beg the comparison by stating on her webpage that she intends to surpass Asimov's total of a hundred novels in her lifetime.

Quantity is not the same thing as quality.  I've read Isaac Asimov.  Misty Lackey, you are no Isaac Asimov.

I need an intervention to stop me from reading this series.  I thought the last time I had this reaction (why is my guilty pleasure no longer pleasurable?) to a Valdemar book it was because it was an anthology of stories mostly by other authors.  Nope.  Foundation (DAW Books, 2008), gods help us, is the first of yet another Valdemar trilogy featuring an abused adolescent who is chosen by a Companion, a spirit-being which appears in the form of a horse of unusual intelligence and eye color.  Young Mags (short for Magpie) is, of course, unbelievably talented and rapidly finds himself at the center of political intrigue which presumably will grow to kingdom-threatening proportions over the next couple of books, resulting in a major war during which one of his friends will die a tragic death and he will form a relationship of true love with one of the other characters.  There: I've saved you reading not only this book but the next two as well.  Valdemar novels are nothing if not predictable.  But even within those parameters, this one really is just phoned in, with adolescent angst-once-removed left dripping all over the page without explanation and not even a pretense of bringing any resolution to the foreign-intrigue subplot.  Even the identity of the enemies is left dangling: characters state that they know who the mysterious evil dudes are, but no one sees fit to enlighten the reader.

I can't believe that DAW brought this out in hardcover; needless to say, I waited for this fall's paperback edition.  Even so, I felt rather cheated.  I picked this book up as fluffy reading to help recover from my hideously busy fall, but this is not even satisfying fluff.  It's like finding your cotton candy has been replaced by polyfill: ack, ptui!

Lackey obviously has an audience for this plot, or the books wouldn't stay in print and keep coming out, but do yourself a favor: don't be part of it this time around.  Don't spend your money.  But if you must, use the link below (left).  Or, better yet, buy the original of this plot: the very first Valdemar novel, Arrows of the Queen (right), back when Valdemar and its standard story were still fresh and it seemed like Lackey actually cared.

Survived!

Well, I survived.  Four months of non-stop work, divided between my day job (which gets very intense in the fall) and my dancing and teaching (every single weekend since Labor Day).  Things become calm now for a couple of weeks, then the dancing starts to pick up again in mid-January.  I'm going to my mom's in New Jersey for Christmas this weekend and probably popping into the city sometime in the next couple of weeks to do some costume-related shopping and see a show and friends.  But mostly, it's going to be calm.  No day job from 12/23 to 1/3.  No teaching except my regular Monday night group.  Time to catch up on sewing, cleaning, reading, blogging, email, and sleep.  I'm hoping this year my winter break will not be eaten up by illness the way it was last year after I similarly worked myself into the ground beforehand.  And I did finally score a vaccination for H1N1, for which immunity should kick in this weekend.

To celebrate, I went to the comic shop after work and picked up four issues of the original 1970s run of Tomb of Dracula, including one of the Giant-Size quarterly issues and #4, one of the pre-Marv Wolfman issues.  I now have 48 of the 70 issues, including the very first one and the first-appearance-of-Blade issue, and three out of five Giant-Size.  Most of what I'm missing is from the first twenty issues.  I realize I could probably complete my collection very quickly via eBay, but really, it's not nearly as entertaining as rummaging through boxes in comic shops.  The hunt is part of the fun.

My holiday spirit this year is just about nonexistent.  No tree, no lights, gifts for only five friends and family members.  My big effort today consisted of wearing snowman earrings to work.  I hope everyone else is more cheerful and less exhausted.

A Play of Treachery

I'd been keeping an eye out for Margaret Frazer's latest Joliffe mystery since I read the first four of them back in the summer.  Taking up shortly after 2007's A Play of Lords in the autumn of 1435, A Play of Treachery (Berkeley Prime Crime Historical Mystery, 2009) takes Joliffe away from his company of players and off to France to serve as a spy in the household of the widowed young Duchess of Bedford.  That answers my immediate question after reading the first four books, which was where Frazer could take her character after having his formerly poverty-stricken acting troupe perform for the highest nobility in London.  The answer, apparently, is away from his troupe entirely.  I have mixed feelings about this, since for me part of the attraction of this particular series is the chance to read about 15th-century players and early English drama.  Taking the theater out of it lessens my interest, and I'm sorry to lose track of the other players.  On the other hand, the character of Joliffe himself, with his mysterious background and multiple unexplained aliases, is still compelling, and I haven't lost hope that he will eventually go back to being a player along with a spy.

Dear Odyssey

Dear Odyssey organizers,

Thank you for the lovely postcard encouraging me to attend Odyssey in order to "improve my Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror writing."  While I am grateful to be thought of, I think that a six-week workshop costing $1900 (plus room and board) is perhaps a little more than is strictly necessary to take my fiction writing to the "next level" when the movement in question is from the level of "totally nonexistent" to the admittedly important level of "producing even one sentence, no matter how awful."

I am also a little puzzled by your metaphor:

"...strap yourself to the mast this summer and attend..."

While I recognize the reference to your namesake poem (and assume it metaphorical since your location in Manchester, New Hampshire, is not easily reached by sea), I feel that it sends an odd message to the prospective student.  In the scene in question Odysseus is tied to the mast so that he may hear the song of the Sirens and not respond to it by jumping into the ocean and drowning himself.  Is the prospect of writing as a career the Siren song that one pursues only at the risk of self-destruction?  If the student is placed in the role of Odysseus, are the instructors intended to be the Sirens, whom it is dangerous to hear and fatal to respond to?  That seems to suggest that the student should attend in order to listen to the instructors' tempting advice, but under no circumstances follow it.  Or are the instructors the sailors with their ears plugged, made immune to the Siren song themselves and serving to convey Odysseus past the Sirens and ignore his pleas, tying him more tightly when he attempts to respond?  Would that make the Siren song the temptation to use a vanity press?   Or some other hazard on the road to publication?

Metaphorical tangles aside, while I am not personally conservative or easily shocked, I feel that even the suggestion of bondage games with publishing professionals may create a certain wariness in many of your potential attendees.

Sincerely yours,

Susan de Guardiola

P.S. While I realize that noted authors, agents, and editors are above such trivial concerns as proofreading, I can't help but think that I would be more enthusiastic about accepting criticism of my writing from people who get my name right on the mailing label.

One more weekend...

One more weekend on the road, then things become calm for the holidays with three relatively quiet weekends in a row.  I can't wait.  But this weekend I'm headed up to Boston for two events:

On Saturday night, I will attend the Fezziwig Ball in Salem, which is being held by my good friends in the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers.  They've asked for costume from the lifetime of Dickens, which means 1817-1870.  I suspect they're looking more for 1830s-1860s, but I plan to take advantage of the early part of the range and wear something Empire-waisted.  With luck, this will include wearing new stays, gown, and still-TBD outer garment (since the ball is preceded by a lantern-light parade).  How much of this actually happens...well, let's just say it's going to be a long night in the sewing room.  I've already decided, given the likely temperature and my lack of sewing time, that punting on a bonnet and going with my black sheepskin hat and muff for the parading is probably a good idea.

On Sunday, I'm running an afternoon tea dance in Cambridge for CVD and Eclectic Enterprises' Mostly Victorian Tea Dance series.  (Update 12/20/09: This tea dance is CANCELED due to severe weather conditons.)  I'm likely to not be in costume for this one due to general lameness and the fact that long gowns make it harder to teach and demonstrate steps.   The format is an instruction period followed by social dancing followed by more advanced instruction, food, and more social dancing.  The dances will be a general 19th-century mix of couple dances (waltz, polka, schottische, galop) and set dances (contras, quadrilles).  I will probably focus the teaching on the schottische and polka.  Music will be some mix of recorded and live.

Given that schedule and the fact that I want to spend time Sunday morning with the friend I'm staying with, I won't really have time to socialize outside of these dances during this trip, but I would love to chat with anyone who's coming to either of these events.  I will have much more time for this at the ball than at the tea dance, since I'm not in charge of anything at the ball.

A Night in the Lonesome October

I promised, after Clifton and Paul's strong recommendations, that I would read Roger Zelazny's final novel, A Night in the Lonesome October (Morrow/AvnoNova, 1993), the minute it arrived.  It actually arrived last Wednesday, but I had a crush of work at the day job and then a completely insane weekend followed by several nights of coming home from the day job and simply passing out from exhaustion.  I kept trying to read it and falling asleep, including once, memorably, for about fifteen minutes over the check in a restaurant.  (I left a larger-than-usual tip.)  This makes it sound like it might be a dull book, but truly, it is not.  Once I finally caught up on my sleep I burned through it very quickly.

Illustrated with rather weird line drawings by Gahan Wilson, A Night in the Lonesome October consists of thirty-two brief chapters (a prologue plus one for each day of the month) covering a supernatural Game which takes place only when the moon is full on Halloween night.  The players and other characters are taken from or inspired by famous works of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature: the Count, the Good Doctor, the Great Detective, etc.  Fortunately, Zelazny did not make the mistake of trying to write in an overwrought nineteenth-century style.  And he was quite a good enough writer that even though I hadn't actually read all the works upon which he drew, it all worked perfectly for me.

Overbooking

My relaxing weekend:

Friday

4:30 PM: Official end of work day at day job.

5:30 PM: End of mandatory-attendance formal presentation event.  Grab portable food and return to office to deal with ongoing crisis.

6:00 PM: Give up solving crisis before Monday morning.  Send email to this effect to those affected.  Actual departure from day job.

6:15 PM: Arrive home.  Frantically do food prep for evening's dance.  Spend fifteen minutes churning through green room looking for black evening pants.  Remember why it is a bad idea to have all one's clothing be black.  Find pants neatly on hanger on costume rack.  Why are they there?  Finish dressing, do hair, load car.

7:15 PM: Out the door for dance.

11:45 PM: Return home from dance, richer but completely exhausted.  Remember that I promised to read Zelazny book as soon as I received it.  Received it Wednesday.  Late.  Oops.  Crawl into bed and open book.

Very soon after: Fall asleep while reading page three of book.

3:44 AM: Wake up with book on lap, glasses still on face, and light still on.  Remove glasses and book, turn out light, go back to sleep.

In The Next Room, or the vibrator play (Lincoln Center Theater/Broadway, December 5, 2009)

I'm getting a bad case of theatrical whiplash here.  The last work I saw of playwright Sarah Ruhl's was the magnificently surreal Passion Play at the Yale Rep.  The last time I saw Laura Benanti she was taking her clothes off as the famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy.  The last time I saw Michael Cerveris he was playing the title role in Sweeney Todd (which also starred Patti LuPone, who played Momma Rose in that same producion of Gypsy).  What a small theatrical world it is.

I don't even know how to describe In The Next Room, or the vibrator play, and it's difficult to discuss without drifting into double entendre.  It's a sex comedy without sex, made all the more insane by the characters' ignorance of what the sensation caused by the "thermal electrical massage" actually is.  I think most of the audience was laughing as much in nervousness and embarrassment as genuine amusement; female sexual response is not something people are used to seeing or discussing.  But I also found it unbearably sad; all the characters except the black wet nurse (who, in an annoying bit of stereotyping, is the only woman really in touch with her body, in contrast to the repressed white women) are estranged in some way from both their spouses and their own bodies.

Piratica II: Return to Parrot Island

There are spoilers for the first book, Piratica, below.  You have been warned.

My copy of Piratica II: Return to Parrot Island (Dutton, 2006) arrived with remarkable speed, and I devoured it just as quickly.  The subtitle this time is "Being: The Return of a Most Intrepid Heroine to Sea and Secrets."  This direct sequel to Piratica (discussed here) finds pirate Art Blastsides and her husband, artist Felix Phoenix, married and retired to a beautiful country estate in the year Seventeen-Thirtenty (approximately 1803).  Her crew is scattered, with some trying to make a living as actors and one involved in smuggling.  It's not quite a happily-ever-after opening; none of them are quite as happy or successful on land as they were at sea except perhaps Muck, the Cleanest Dog in England, who has been adopted by an adoring young lady who finds him much more interesting than her fiancé. 

In the wake of Art's exploits in the previous book, all of England has succumbed to Piratomania:

Inside twenty paces, Eerie swerved around ten cutlassed and beplumed persons, three with stuffed parrots glued to their shoulders, one with a real parrot standing on her head, two pet monkeys in boots with small sword belts, and a carriage horse with a feathered three-cornered hat and black eye patch.

I can't help wondering whether this is a poke (affectionate or otherwise) at the many pirate-reenactor groups (of varying degrees of historical accuracy) that exist and hold pirate feasts and cruises and such.  Whatever her intention, it's quite funny.  And Piratomania has, naturally, produced a sort of anti-pirate salvation army movement, the Pirate Intolerance Regiment and Teatotalers of England (PIRATE), who drink nothing but tea and try to save citizens from "Buccaneerafear."

Barbara Hambly's Further Adventures Of...

I was just tipped off to Barbara Hambly's new experiment in direct fiction sales by a friend and went off to her website to find out all about it.  The short version: people keep asking for more stories in certain of her series that publishers have dropped.  So she's going to write short stories and sell them directly via her website, starting with a pair of previously-published Benjamin January tales (historical mysteries set in 1830s New Orleans) and a brand-new Windrose Chronicles story (Joanna and Antryg).  I downloaded all three, though I skipped a universe-crossing pastiche that was also available, at $5 each, and was quite pleased with my purchases.  Payment was via Paypal and the stories arrived within half an hour or so in PDF format.

Piratica

The advantage of long bus rides: much time to read while someone else deals with the traffic.

I was fully intending not to shop at Philcon, but how could I resist a Tanith Lee novel with the subtitle "Being a Daring Tale of a Singular Girl's Adventure Upon the High Seas"?  I hadn't realized Tanith Lee wrote YA fiction, but I was certainly game to try it.

Piratica (Dutton, 2004) is the tale of one Artemesia Fitz-Willoughby Weatherhouse, daughter of deceased pirate queen Molly Faith and currently a student at the Angels Academy for Young Maidens in the year Seventeeen-Twelvety in an England that is just a bit different from our own.  This is a fantasy world in the swashbuckling romance-of-piracy sense, not in the dragons-and-magic sense, though there are some unusually well-trained parrots.  Artemesia has some memory problems as after-effects of the cannon explosion that killed her mother, but once she remembers her past (or does she?), she doesn't stay long at the Academy.  Enter one Art Blastsides, would-be pirate queen; her parrot Plunqwette; and her scurvy crew, currently working as adverteers for a coffee magnate. 

Windows for Illiterates

What does the print advertising for Windows 7 say to me?

It may take fewer clicks (than what? Vista?), but I bet using a Mac is still less hassle overall.

 I don't know; how do you feel about being Windows users being portrayed as semi-literate?

Thanks, and resolutions

As usual, I'm spending my Thanksgiving quietly at home by myself.  Also as usual, this is fine; I've never been attached to the holiday traditions and I'll have plenty of socializing this weekend.  I have invitations I could accept if I really wanted to.  But I don't.

I haven't done much so far except catch up on my sleep when I really ought to be sewing, cleaning, or doing something else useful.  But it's been such a crazy fall that I'm burnt to a sad little cinder and just need the downtime before heading down to Maryland tomorrow.

Not being religious, I don't devote any time today to thanking a deity for anything, but I do want to thank those of you who are still reading Rixo despite my very peculiar posting schedule.  I think I've mentioned before that I've acquired this hideous habit of writing posts and then not finishing them, or not adding the pictures, or for whatever reason/excuse putting them on hold.  Sometimes I get around to posting them much later, but I have a frightening number of them just sitting around in draft form.  I keep thinking I'm going to come up with brilliant things to add to a post if I just wait a bit longer and maybe fuss with it a bit more.  This is delusional; if I've got the ability to be verbally witty on a regular basis, it's yet to become obvious. 

And that's not a fish for a compliment.  I'm a dance historian, not a writer.  I like being a dance historian, even though this fall it's just about killing me with overwork.  But it makes me a bad blogger.  No blogger biscuit for me.  I'm more grateful than you can imagine that some folks are still reading and my wonderful little group of commenters is still puttering around in the comment threads making cheerful conversation and the occasional bad pun, even when I vanish for weeks on end.  I'd like to have even more commenters, but I realize I've got to give people something regular to chew on in order to inspire this so we can create a happy positive feedback loop and collectively raise each other's beta-endorphins or whatever.  I feel like mine could use this.

So I'm going to try to do two things over the next month:

Darkovercon 2009 Schedule

Here's a rather belated schedule (my fault, not theirs) of what I'm doing at Darkovercon this weekend down in Maryland.  As usual, I'm mostly doing dance stuff, and this year everything is packed into one crazy day:

Saturday 11:00am-1:00pm
Early Playford Dances (1650-1670)
Weird country dances from the early editions of The Dancing Master, mainly unusual stuff: progressive rounds, longways multifigure progressives, and some of the more exotic short-set dances.  In previous years we've done this on Friday afternoon and had a small but game crowd.  I've no idea how well it will work on a Saturday morning.

Saturday 5:00-7:00pm
Regency Ball
Early 19th-century dancing, with live music and without the fancy historical steps.

Saturday 9:00-11:30(ish)pm
Clam Chowder Concert/B.O.G.S. fundraiser
I'm not a member of the musical group -- anyone who's heard me sing will be relieved to hear this -- but for the past twelve years I've run a fundraiser at the intermission on behalf of Children's Hospital.  I hope to bring in a couple of thousand dollars this year despite the recession/depression/unemployment rate.  The story of this fundraiser is related here; it started as a joke, but has evolved into a major charity event.  I'll be one of the folks up on the stage begging for money.

As usual, I'd be happy to see any Rixo readers who are attending the convention.  Saturday may not be the best day for this, but Friday and Sunday should be pretty relaxed. 

Other things I hope/plan to do at the con:

• hear Emma Bull (one of this year's guests) speak
• something craftsy; maybe the Kumihomo braiding
• attend the Steampunk Chrononauts Parade at 7:00 Saturday evening, though actually participating may be overly optimistic given that it's squeezed between the ball and the concert
• attend the midnight singing of the Hallelujah Chorus (but I won't be singing, just experiencing)

I will be traveling by bus once again, hopefully with a smoother return trip than last year.

Chalice

I was glad I'd picked up some light reading Saturday before leaving Philcon so I had something to read in Gettysburg late at night while trying to unwind from the ball and then in the morning over breakfast.  I hadn't considered myself a particularly passionate Robin McKinley fan before reading Sunshine, but I liked that novel so much that when I stumbled across Chalice (Putnam, 2008, no editor listed; paperback Ace, 2009), I picked it up purely on the strength of the author's name.  I was pleased to find that it was a good read, though not as overwhelmingly brilliant as Sunshine.  But the similarities in plot and character were a little startling.

Philcon 2009 Schedule

I'm a complete zombie this week because it's the craziest time of year at my day job.  That means I'm looking forward to a con in order to catch up on my sleep/email/blogging.  Isn't that awful?

So, I'll sort of be at Philcon this weekend.  Once again I'm doing the "doughnut" version of the convention, with brief attendance wrapped around running a ball elsewhere.  I'll be there sometime Friday evening, though I'm not clear on my arrival time, and Saturday morning-into-early-afternoon.  Then I will leave to go do my usual dance gig in Gettysburg.  I'll return to the con Sunday morning and be there until I feel like going home.  I'll mostly be working in Program Ops (details still TBD), but I'll be on a few program items.  Here's the list with official descriptions:

Sat 1:00-2:00 PM in Plaza V
New Trends in Costuming: Steampunk, Gothic Lolita, Variations
Panelists: Susan de Guardiola (mod), Lisa Ashton
    Costuming is a diverse hobby, and offers something for everyone.  Take a look at some of these "newer" hot trends, how to build them, where to get inspiration

Sun 1:00-2:00 PM in Plaza III
Historical Corsetry
Panelists: Susan de Guardiola (mod), Lisa Ashton
    All those wonderful fantasy corsets that we dream about on our female heroes--learn from our experts about the real historical corsets that they are based on

Sun 2:00-3:00 PM in Plaza V
Writers That Should Have Quit When They Were Ahead
Panelists: Susan de Guardiola (mod), John Moore, Lee Gilliland
    Which writers work never lived up to their early promise

I'm also listed as being on "The Invasion of the Janeites" on Saturday at 5:00 PM, but they're going to have to take me off it since I'll be long gone to Gettysburg by then.

I vaguely hope to hit at least a few of these panels, though a reality check suggests that it's not likely to happen:

Fri @ 7: A Science Fiction Curriculum for Newcomers (because this is an endlessly arguable topic)

Fri @ 8: Cory Doctorow on Copyright (because it's Cory Doctorow)

Fri @ 10: Naughty Bits (bawdy ballads, always fun)

Fri @ 10: We Started this Cult Film S**t!  (Repo! panel)

Sat @ 10: Riding a Wave of Looking Backwards (Victorian/steampunk)

Sat @ 11: The Age of Anonymous (net, hacking, Cory Doctorow)

Sat @ 11: The Editors Panel (Short Fiction) (curious to hear Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld)

Sat @ 11: The Fannish Generation Gap (which I feel like I am in the middle of)

(Yeah, I have a little problem at 11; usually I solve this by not going to any of them)

Sat @ 12: Makeup Mini-Demo ('cause I suck at stage makeup)

Sat @ 2: Cory Doctorow reading (self-explanatory, right?)

Sun @ 11: Is The Short Story On Its Way Out? (reality check says I won't be back in time for this)

Sun @ 3: The Future of Print Genre Magazines (of vague interest to me)

Obviously one of the exciting things for me this year is Cory Doctorow as a special guest.  I am, um, less excited about Catherine Asaro as Principal Speaker.

To politick, or not to politick, that is the question...

In the wake of yesterday's election, I've gotten email from Ned Lamont stating that he's forming an exploratory committee to run for Governor of Connecticut.

I'm torn.

Lamont was my first political crush, the first candidate I ever worked for (just a little bit) or went to a rally for.  But I got my heart broken when Lieberman won the general election.  I'm still frothing about it three years later; don't get me started. 

I didn't work for the Obama campaign; surrounded as I am by safe Obama states there wasn't much to do locally, and I was never able to be quite as enthusiastic about Obama as others, despite the historic nature of his campaign and win.

So...to work for Lamont again?  Part of me says "yes!"  But Governor isn't the same as Senator; an executive isn't the same as one of a hundred legislators.  Different, more local concerns; different skills needed.  Does Lamont have them?  Probably; he's been an executive.  Would he address my major concerns (property tax relief, city-suburb financial burden-sharing, universal health care, better mass transit)?  Probably.  He'd certainly be no worse than a generic Connecticut Republican.

But part of me is still heartbroken and doesn't want to stick my neck out again.

And if I do, there are other candidates for my time and energy.  While Dodd has gotten amazingly bad press for what strikes me, in the grand scheme of things, as a rather minimal financial favor (a sweet mortgage interest rate from Countrywise), I can't forget that his platform in his failed presidential run last year was to restore the Constitution.  He was the only candidate to make that a priority, and though he hasn't lived up to all his promises (what politician does?), I honestly think he's a thoughtful legislator who's on the whole done more good than harm.  And letting a Republican take a Senate seat strikes me as just as dangerous -- maybe more so -- than letting one take the Governor's seat, which, after all, they already hold.  We need Senate votes.  So should I work for Dodd?

Or should I sit out next year and save every iota of energy I have for 2012, when I will work once more to take out Joe Lieberman?

I can't help but remember that when I worked the polls for Lamont on election night in 2006, exercising every bit of retail sales skill I could summon up in a very tough town, one of the local pols told me I ought to run for office myself, that I'd make a very good candidate.  I don't think I can do that, with my life and background, and in any case I don't know that being a good candidate is quite the same as being a good officeholder; sales are not substance.  But they clearly thought I had campaign skills, which I could just as easily put to use on someone else's behalf.

Or maybe, given my incredibly hectic lifestyle, the idea of working on a campaign is completely insane.

But I'll think about it.

Election Night 2009

Well, after last year's suspenseful but weirdly anticlimactic evening, tonight feels pretty calm.  Hopefully I won't have to stay up so late that I end up baking in the wee hours of the morning again.  But there are half a dozen things I'm following via Kos, the Times, and fivethirtyeight.

Two actual races:

NJ Governor; can Corzine pull it out at the last minute over the "corruption fighter" who seems to have a personal knack for corruption?  Corzine isn't a very good politician, but I think he's really trying under some very bad economic conditions, and I'd hate to see a Republican take this seat.  My mom has to live with this government.

NY-23; craziest race in the country, with the Conservative candidate gaining so much teabagger support that the Republican (a very reasonable moderate sort) dropped out and endorsed the the Democrat, Bill Owens.  He probably can't win here anyway (it's been a Republican seat for decades), but it's still been a lovely political soap opera to watch.

I don't have any hope for VA Governor; Deeds lost it.  I hope Virginians like their right-wing nutto who's against women working outside the home and contraception for unmarried people (he's against fornication, too).  Welcome back to 1950.  I'm also not all that interested in how many points Bloomberg wins by in New York City.

But civil rights ballot measures are more interesting this year:

Maine: looking for a no on 1 here.  I'm refreshing these two websites for results.

Washington: R-71; I want a yes on this one.  I read Slog regularly so I'm even more stirred up about Washington than one would expect.

Kalamazoo: Ordinance 1856; also looking for a yes.

And finally, I have an interest in the race for Fairfield, Connecticut's Representative Town Meeting, of which my fannish friend Bob Greenberger is an incumbent member for District 8.  It took me some time to figure out where one gets Fairfield election news, but the Connecticut Post seems to be the place for me to check.

Bright Star

After a summer of seeing movies that were essentially pretty silly (though two out of three were lots of fun regardless), I'm back to something a little more serious.  I went to see Bright Star with a group from my Regency dance class both because it was a period piece and because the band I generally work with had their CD, The Regency Ballroom (on which I served as a dance consultant) taken up for use in the film.  So, first things first: it was incredibly bizarre to hear in the theater music we had been dancing to just a few hours before; we all started bouncing in our seats and nudging each other madly.  Using period music (for once!) didn't actually save the director from muffing the ballroom scene; what is it with the desire to show men turning women under their arms?  Fortunately that scene was early, and extremely brief, so I had time to recover from it and enjoy the movie.  A later learning-to-waltz scene (left) was charming, despite the rather modern handhold.  But I do wish they hadn't put a fake dance card up on the film website, thus perpetuating the myth of dance cards in the Regency era.

Let Me In

Rounding out October's vampire reading -- not that I need a seasonal excuse to read vampire novels -- I stepped up from the tedious Stoker pastiche and the enjoyable but lightweight mystery to John Ajvide Lindqvist's impressive Let Me In (2004; English translation by Ebba Seberberg for St. Martin's Press, 2007).  This is the book on which the film Let The Right One In, which I discussed a few months ago after seeing it at Balticon, was based.  I got the book soon afterward, but it's taken me quite awhile to get around to reading it.  Happily, it was well worth the wait.

This should shock anyone who knows me: see the movie before reading the novel.  It's not that one is better or worse than the other; it's one of the best book-to-film translations I've ever seen and does an admirable job of trimming down a hefty 400-plus page novel into a bleak, blood-splashed movie while touching on all of the important story elements.  Only the goriest and most horrific subplot is eliminated, and I'm actually just as glad not to have seen one particular scene in that subplot on the screen.  But the movie is enchantingly ambiguous in several ways which are eventually explained in the book.  Some of these clarifications were mildly unwelcome to me; I preferred to speculate.  I don't want to go into detail because, book or film, the ambiguities are too important to spoil.

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of A Donner Party Bride

Like anyone who studied any American history in school, I knew the basic outlines of the story of the Donner Party, an ill-fated California-bound wagon train that got stuck in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846-1847 and whose survivors resorted to cannibalism.  When I drove around the country back in 1992, I drove eastward through Donner Pass and remember being morbidly amused to find that there was no food whatsoever available at the rest stop there, not even a vending machine.  I drove in June, but that still seemed to me to be tempting fate.

In my stress-relief reading I've now ascended (or descended, perhaps) from new-style urban fantasy to vampire novels to humans-in-extremis nonfiction.  While I don't read the latter genre obsessively, I'm quite fond of two standouts: Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (in which people die in the snow on Mount Everest) and Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (in which nineteenth-century whalers' ship is wrecked by a whale and they undertake a lengthy sea voyage in the lifeboats during which they resort to survival cannibalism; this was the event that inspired Moby Dick.)  Daniel James Brown's The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride (HarperCollins 2009) combines the best/worst aspects of both tales: nineteenth-century pioneers die in the snow in the mountains and resort to survival cannibalism.  There's nothing like reading this sort of thing to keep stress in perspective, and Brown writes a truly compelling tale which manages to sustain suspense in the details of who survives even when the broad outlines of the outcome are known.  I was up half the night reading it in one sitting.

Lady Crymsyn

I remember working my way through the first four of P.N. Elrod's Vampire Files series about 1930s vampire Jack Fleming back in the 1990s, and they're still on my bookshelves, but it's been over a decade since I followed the series. But a copy of the ninth book, Lady Crymsyn (Ace, 2000), turned up in my to-read pile, and since light reading is all I can handle with all the craziness with dance travel this fall, I decided to check back and see how the series was going.  Despite the silly misspelling of crimson in the title, which looks more like a cutesy late 20th century girl's name than anything they'd have done in the 1930s, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's been long enough since I read the books that I didn't remember much about them, but the story works as a standalone.  Elrod fills in enough background to keep the reader going without slowing down the story, and the mystery is surprisingly good with some nice twists at the end.

In brief, Jack is involved with the Chicago mob and with his girlfriend Bobbi, a nightclub singer.  At the moment, he's using some carefully-laundered cash to open a ritzy nightclub, Lady Crymsyn.  Unfortunately, as renovations proceed, a corpse is found in the basement, a woman who had been chained to a wall and then bricked up in an alcove to die.  Jack decides to investigate her identity and discover who murdered her and why.  This leads him into the complicated business and romantic lives of several of Chicago's gangsters, who do not particularly appreciate such attention.

Along with his late-20th century taste for replacing perfectly good vowels with the letter Y, Jack also is surprisingly modern in his attitudes: he not only has black friends but also a live-and-let-live attitude towards gay men, even hiring one to manage his club.  Elrod doesn't ignore the prejudice of the time, but Jack seems immune to it.  It's a mildly false note, though presumably more palatable to modern audiences than having a prejudiced hero would be.

This isn't an especially deep or groundbreaking book either as a mystery or a vampire novel, but it's a perfectly enjoyable light read with a fun historical backdrop.

Shopping link (to the hardcover, but there's a link on that page to the paperback edition):

Puttin' on the Ritz: Fred Astaire and the Fine Art of Panache

I've spent most of the last week reading my way through a sizable new biography of Fred Astaire by the late Peter Levinson with the unwieldy title of Puttin' on the Ritz: Fred Astaire and the Fine Art of Panache (St. Martin's Press, 2009).  It's a lot of material (400+ pages, not counting notes) to digest, so I've been taking it in small bites in the evening and at lunchtimes.  Even though Astaire's career was in theatrical dance while my interest is in social dance, Astaire's sheer skill makes me happy just to watch him.  My copy of The Gay Divorcee is permanently rewound to the beginning of "The Continental," which I watch over and over again.  I'm eternally grateful for Astaire's insistence that his dancing be filmed in full-body shots with minimal or no cutting.

The Dracula Dossier

Rixo commenter extraordinaire Serge sent me a copy of James Reese's The Dracula Dossier (William Morrow, 2008), and it floated to the top of my to-read pile when I was trying to upgrade my stress-reading from paranormal/new urban fantasy/whatever.  Vampire fiction, of course, is not generally a big step upward (the occasional brilliant entry like Fledgling excepted), but at least it's appropriate to the month.

(Major spoilers ahead.)

Disappearing Nightly

Moving from the wilderness back to the city, next up on the list of relaxing books to read during my stressful and overly-busy fall was Disappearing Nightly (Luna, 2005; no editor listed), by Laura Resnick.  Ms. Resnick is the daughter of Mike Resnick, whom I was busy dissing back in the summer for his cloying short fiction that unaccountably keeps making the Hugo ballot.  I'm pleased to report that while this isn't a wildly exciting novel, at least it isn't cloying.  It is, however, basically fluff, and uneven fluff at that.

Frostbitten

I promise that this is the last Kelley Armstrong book I'm going to talk about for a few months, but I finished off my little Otherworld binge by grabbing her latest, Frostbitten, from the library.  This is the tenth book overall, and continues the story of werewolf Elena Michaels that was the main theme of previous novels Bitten (#1), Stolen (#2), and Broken (#6).  Characters from several of the other books of the series make brief cameos as well.

Frostbitten sends Elena and her husband, badass werewolf Clay Danvers (whose back story was filled in by the recent anthology Men of the Otherworld), all the way to Alaska in pursuit of a young werewolf and in quest of two former Pack members from long ago.  Complicating their search are a brutal group of werewolf criminals from eastern Europe, legendary monsters haunting the wilderness, and new responsibilities to the werewolf Pack.

The Awakening

I'm starting to feel a little bad for spending a week of blogging doing little but ragging on Kelley Armstrong.  I think she's a good author and her two paranormal series are significantly better than most other works in the adult and young adult paranormal romance/fantasy/whatever subgenres.  That makes it all the more disappointing when her books are anything other than great.  And while The Awakening (HarperCollins 2009, no editor listed), second in the YA "Darkest Powers" trilogy that started with The Summoning (discussed here), is a pretty good book and, unlike the first, does not end on an infuriating cliffhanger, I'm still having some problems with the trilogy so far.

Warning: spoilers below for the first book.

Men of the Otherworld

I decided to succumb to the impulse to binge a little on Kelley Armstrong books this week, so I hied myself to the library to check out Men of the Otherworld (Bantam, 2009).  Profits from this book are going to World Literacy of Canada.  I'm still considering whether that's sufficiently worthy a cause to convince me to shell out for a hardcover.

First things first: the title is a bit misleading.  This isn't a book about the men of the Otherworld.  It's a book about the recent (1940s-present) history of the major members of the American werewolf Pack.  Yes, that means men, but primarily Pack Alpha Jeremy Danvers and his adopted son Clay, with a bit about his father Malcolm and the other Pack characters.  None of the other major male characters she's introduced in the series.  Not even the other (originally) non-Pack werewolf Karl Marsten.  This isn't actually a big problem storywise; I think Armstrong does better when she focuses more tightly on one or two races and characters rather than skittering around between several, as in Living with the Dead.

Riddles at my fingertips

I touch-type in a rather eccentric way which involves only three fingers and one thumb.^*  This occasionally produces really awful results if I'm not correctly oriented on the keyboard when I start.  Despite this flawed technique, I regularly type 80+ WPM and can do 100+ for short bursts if I'm on a friendly keyboard.  (Yes, I've done some professional transcription.  No, I do not want to do yours, though I'll reconsider if you want to pay me ridiculously high hourly rates or if you're as witty as Joss Whedon.)

So today I horribly mistyped a search request as:

bpstpm imoversoty

Google actually parsed this and brought up a page of results pertinent to what I'd meant to type.  It also helpfully asked me whether I really meant to search for

bpstpm imoversotu

Just on a whim, I agreed that I had and clicked on it.  I got a similar list of results in a slightly better order: my desired website was the top result rather than second this time.  I was rather impressed.

I tested the same two searches on Yahoo and Bing, and they baffled both of them: no results at all.

I can't help wondering whether this sort of thing could be used somehow in "captcha" testing to sort out humans from, um, Yahoo and Microsoft.  So here's the riddle: is what I was searching for as obvious to you as it is to Google?  Can anyone reading this translate the search request into regular English?  Yes, you could cheat and run the search to get the answer.  But that would be, y'know, cheating, and you would know deep inside yourself that you are not a sporting sort of person and would be shunned by polite society if they really knew what you were like.  I trust that no one here wants to have to bear up under this bit of sad self-knowledge.

(Why yes, I do get in trouble for trusting people.  How did you know?)

But how's this: for extra credit, explain exactly what I did to produce that little bit of gibberish.

Please rot13 answers in the comments.  I'll flag correct ones.

*They tried to teach me proper typing technique in school when I was twelve, but it was already too late then to undo my ingrained bad habits.

Living with the Dead

I've been following Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series since the third book came out.  The ninth, Living with the Dead (Bantam, October 2008; editors: Anne Groell (US/Bantam), Antonia Hodgson (UK), Anne Collins (CA)), is now out in paperback, which is the format I've pretty much settled on buying for this series.

Living with the Dead is a bit of a departure for the Otherworld books.  While it's an okay read (even the worst Kelley Armstrong novels are pretty good), Armstrong's decision to write in third person and follow the story from multiple perspectives (including, unusually, a villain's) makes it less gripping than the very best in the series.  Two of those focal characters, non-supernatural publicist Robyn Peltier and untrained necromancer John (Finn) Findlay, just didn't grab me all that much, and both break with the series premise: Robyn isn't a "Woman of the Otherworld," and Finn isn't a woman at all.  Other characters followed are half-demon Hope Adams (the narrator of the more-interesting eighth book, Personal Demon, discussed here) and young clairvoyants Adele and Colm, who are members of a rather creepy clairvoyant commune styled around Romany culture that (predictably) hides dark secrets.  Several other clairvoyants and a few sorcerers enter the story mix, as does Hope's on-and-off lover, werewolf jewel thief Karl Marsten.

What to say about the story?  The main plot thread about Robyn's misadventures as she is pursued by a supernatural stalker -- and the police -- is serviceable enough, though I thought one character was left mysterious a bit too long.  Romantic elements are present but don't dominate the story, which is how I prefer it.  And the romantic resolutions were not convenient, clichéd, happily-ever-after endings; that's a plus.  I was especially pleased with how the Hope/Karl storyline has developed.  I'm not qualified to judge the accuracy of the portrayal of Romany or Romany-influenced culture.

There's nothing really wrong with the Living with the Dead.  I just expect something a little more intense from Armstrong and hope she'll go back to single- or double-narrator first-person writing in future books in the series.  There are hints at the end of the book that the Otherworld series as a whole might be building up to something big.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

A final note: I was unhappy with the use of serial rape as a story device, even in the service of demonstrating just how despicable the chief villain was.

While I can't really gush over this book, it's a perfectly fine, well-written supernatural/paranormal/urban fantasy/whatever-the-heck-this-subgenre-goes-by novel.  There are sample chapters on Armstrong's webpage (look at the menu at left) if you want to test the waters before reading it. 

Shopping link:

Call for Papers: Early Dance at Kalamazoo (2010)

A call for papers for a dance-oriented session at the International Congress for Medieval Studies taking place next May in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Responses are needed pronto, as the paperwork has to be in to the Congress by the end of September.  The conference is huge and very exciting, with scholars in many disciplines from all over the world; I've presented there the last three years (including my particularly exciting travel experience in 2008) and hope to have a paper there this year as well.  They're looking for something a little beyond a simple dance reconstruction -- more on the process of reconstruction itself and the history of dance reconstruction and connections between dance history and other fields of study.

The call for papers:

Long Ago and Far Away: Intra-European perspectives on early modern dance.
Early Dance at Kalamazoo
45th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 13-16, 2010)

Early Dance at Kalamazoo is an organization formed to encourage further scholarship at Kalamazoo in the field of early dance and its relation to other disciplines, including literature, art history, musicology, theater, history, and textiles through the interdisciplinary pursuit, independently or in conjunction, of textual and performative research. We are particularly interested in forming links between scholars in the field of dance history and those in other disciplines, as each group is, to its detriment, often unaware of the significant work done by the other. We focus on different aspects of issues in dance reconstruction and the general subject area, bringing together scholars of dance, manuscript illumination, textiles, and church history.

This year's proposed session looks at cross-cultural aspects of and perspectives on early modern dance, its history, and textual background, such as the Renaissance French interpretation of dance in the Ottoman Empire. It is a segment of the field that is rarely studied or discussed and deserves greater attention in order to further understanding of greater cross-cultural currents in 15th and 16th century Europe.

We are seeking papers dealing with these themes for the session entitled "Long Ago and Far Away: Intra-European perspectives on early modern dance."  Abstracts are to be sent to earlydanceatkzoo@gmail.com before the end of September.

Shout it from the rooftops

[There has not been] “a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops."        ---   Antonin Scalia, Kansas v. Marsh, 2006

Going away to dance camp put me away from the news, so I'm behind a lot of other bloggers on this.  But this name deserves to be repeated, even belatedly.  Shouted, even.

Todd Cameron Willingham

Rosemary and Rue

I picked up a copy of Seanan McGuire's first published novel, Rosemary and Rue (DAW Books, September 2009; editor: Sheila Gilbert), as soon as it came out.  She'd let me read her author copy at worldcon, but I only got about a hundred pages in during the weekend before leaving for home and losing access to it. So I've been left hanging for a few weeks waiting eagerly for the end of the story.

(Disclosure: Seanan is a dear friend of several of my good friends and a friendly acquaintance of mine; she was among my roommates at worldcon this year. That wouldn't make me praise her book if I didn't actually like it.  Especially since she wouldn't give me her author copy and made me wait to finish it!)

Eyes Like Stars

I have to give Lisa Mantchev full credit for originality in her first book, Eyes Like Stars (Feiwel & Friends, 2009), a young adult novel that I picked up for light vacation reading.  It's part of the mini-genre of fantasy tales (such as the previously-discussed King of Shadows) which take place in theaters.  The theater is a natural setting for the magical, of course, but this book goes the usual theme of real magic mixing with stage magic one better.  The name Théâtre Illuminata makes me twitch slightly on grammatical grounds, but the concept of a theater inhabited by the players of all the roles ever created in all the plays ever written is intriguing to me as a confirmed theater geek, and Ms. Mantchev follows through with good enough theatrical jokes to leave me laughing:

Gertrude pointed at Macbeth, who was holding up a cruller and muttering, "Is this a doughnut I see before me?"  Then he noticed the raspberry jam on everything and started to shriek.