known · associates

A couple of things I missed in this morning's monster of a post. First, Spooky's father, Dr. Richard Pollnac (Professor of Anthropology and Marine Affairs, University of Rhode Island) will be joining Chip Barber (Environmental Officer, U.S. Agency for International Development) for a live webcast entitled "Troubled Waters: Anticipating, Preventing, and Resolving Conflict Around Fisheries." It's being broadcast from Washington, DC, but you can watch it here (May 15, 2008, 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m., EST). The talk will focus on "...the interactions between demographics, environmental stress, livelihoods, and conflict in the context of fisheries, with a particular focus on Southeast Asia." Spooky's dad has been conducting field studies of fisheries worldwide since the 1960s, from Lake Victoria (Uganda) to Alaska to Vietnam to Thailand to Indonesia to...well, all over.

On a somewhat related note, there's an article at the "ProTraveller" website, "20 Cities, Islands & Countries Threatened By Global Warming." On the one hand, well, it does call attention to particular treasures that are being and will be lost to global warming (the Galapagos Islands, Manhattan, London, Jakarta, Glacier National Park, the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, etc.). On the other hand, I think that it somehow manages to miss the point. Yes, all these sites are indeed endangered, but that's only because the seas are rising worldwide, meaning all coastlines, everywhere, will experience drastic change during this century with even the lowest estimates of sea-level rise. Every inch of coastline, no exceptions. So, spotlighting these twenty sites, and lines like "You might want to book a trip to see some of them before it's too late!" just comes off a wee bit glib. I mean, species face extinction, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced, economies will tumble, and the very face of the globe will change...and we'll lose all these sweet vacation spots. Er...yeah.

Meanwhile, new figures published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, based on ongoing studies at Hawaii's Mount Loa volcano, indicate that atmospheric CO2 levels have now risen to 387 parts per million, the highest in 650,000 years. To put that in perspective, the earliest-known fossils that can be referred to Homo sapiens sapiens only date back a paltry 195,000 years (Richard Leakey's "Omo remains" from the Omo National Park in Ethiopia). If we go back 650ka, we reach the Middle Pleistocene, a time when Homo sapiens sapiens had yet to evolve (though remains of another subspecies, Homo sapiens idaltu, the first recognizably "modern" humans, and possibly the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens, have been recovered from strata that old).

350.org.

Is anybody looking to save money at Wis con? Has the interest rate on your ARM gone up, and you suddenly can't afford the Governors club? Do you already have a hotel reservation on the Governors club level, but want a normal room instead?

I'm here to help. I have one normal, con rate concourse room (double beds) and I'm looking to upgrade to a governors club room. (king is fine).

Anyone? My desire for the un-ending font of white Russians begs you... please... swap with me!

After a federal judge ruled that the the adminstration was illegally dragging its feet in not making a decicioin, the department of the interior says

"This has been a difficult decision, but in light of the scientific record and the restraints of the inflexible law that guides me, I believe it was the only decision I could make."

He want to to assure industry that the threatened designation will not actually change anything... Drilling and mining will still go on in Polar Bear Habitats, and this designation can not be used as a tool to force limits on green house gas emissions, even though that is preciously what is endangering the Polar Bears.

Read all about it here.

So, to recap -- A judge ruled the Administration was illegally withholding classification, and giving away mining and drilling rights while doing so. Adminstration is forced to classify bear as threatened, but it admits up front that it won't actually do anything... in fact it took special pains to introduce rules that apply specifically to the polar bear so that nothing needs to be done.

Once again, the administration is shuffling the chairs on the deck of the titanic, claiming "Nothing to see here."

Fucking vampire polar bears need to eat Dick Cheney and G. W. Bush in their sleep. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne should be forced to feed his own intestines to baby polar bears for his chicken shit statements and refusal to actually follow the law.

• 12:29 @JhnenVEE They have a similar program at the SF Zoo at Christmas, it involves getting raped and eaten by a siberian tiger. #
• 12:38 Before you think your beard is cool, look at this one: worldbeardchampionships.com/chevalier.html #
• 13:16 @evacide ip choking doesn't work that way #
• 15:07 I got a shuggoth for my birthday! www.flickr.com/photos/tjcrowley/2490857684/ #
• 16:17 Um. Yeah. 12 year old dominatrix: tinyurl.com/65sr7v #
• 16:31 @netik comcast has outages like clockwork around 4pm in our hood. I blame those damned kids. #
• 16:36 @sfslim toss one to Darren@tribe.net #
• 16:38 YASNS: yet another social networking site. #
• 17:00 @stephentcolbert happy birthday to a fellow taurus and patriot. #
• 17:01 @stephentcolbert if you wish me happy birthday on the air may 15, i can get you into the freemasons and eventually the shriners. #
• 17:28 I just misread this month's popp roxx email as POPP ROXX Presents THE FAIL. #
• 17:30 People really need to teach their children 'inside voice'. #
• 17:48 @sfslim try 'rational anarchist' #
• 17:56 Nice place. Clean water. Fresh air. Blue skies. #
• 18:08 @chadsavage my wives always made me cook #
• 18:41 I am stuck in an elevator. This is not funny. #
• 18:52 @tea jwz is choking on cocks again #
• 18:57 I fixed the elevator in my building with a penny. I should charge my landlord. Actually, I'm glad I wasn't stuck in there overnight. #
• 19:10 indiefest facebook group completely spammed to facebook, or at least my little corner of it. #
• 20:23 @mpeace that's cheap #
• 20:27 @mpeace for me the silver lining is not owning a car. #
• 20:43 WoW time. Kill kill kill. #
• 21:49 If anyone posts a twittergasm ( tinyurl.com/64hkqv ) you are so unfollowed. #
• 08:09 I posted his picture to my lj, haha #
• 08:47 @netik so that is what that giant ball of fire in the sky is all about #
• 08:50 Woken up by bird drama on my balcony. The finches were pissed at the pigeons and demanded they leave. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts

Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel

present:

Jack O’Connell, author of The Resurrectionist, just published by Algonquin, and four previous novels set in the fictional city of Quinsigamond, including Box 9, Wireless, The Skin Palace, and Word Made Flesh

&

Ekaterina Sedia, author of The Secret History of Moscow, published by Prime Books this past November. Her next, The Alchemy of Stone, will be out this July. Her short stories have been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies.

* Mobile Libris will be selling books

Wednesday May 21st , 7pm at
KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
www.sensesfive.com/kgb.php

Subscribe to our mailing list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/join
Readings are free
Forward to friends at your own discretion.

An addendum from Matt Kressel:

"Ellen Datlow and I were also talking about ways to attract readers outside of NY to read at the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series. Part of the problem is that we just don’t know when authors will be in town. Outside of the NY Metro area, few people have heard of KGB, or know about its long and interesting history. I suggested that we spread the word far and wide; let people know the history of the organization and all the greats who have read there. So…

First the history: Terry Bisson and Alice K. Turner started the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series in the late 1990s, attempting to bring together mainstream writers with writers of speculative fiction because, as Alice Turner says, “they are plowing exactly the same field.” Ellen Datlow took over for Alice K. Turner in 2000. Then Gavin J. Grant stepped in for Bisson in 2002. Matthew Kressel (me) took over for Gavin last month.

And, who has read at KGB? No less than:

Joyce Carol Oates, Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Scott Westerfeld, Kelly Link, China Miéville, Nancy Kress, Jack McDevitt, Stewart O’Nan, James Patrick Kelly, Barry N. Marlzberg, Samuel (Chip) Delaney, Holly Black, Michael Swanwick, Kit Reed, Peter Straub, Andy Duncan, Richard Bowes, Catherynne Valente, Ellen Kushner, Jeff VanderMeer, Naomi Novik, Elizabeth Bear and a smörgåsbord of other talented authors."

So, suggestions welcome.

Right, I'm throwing down to gauntlet for world's twee-est song, and I'm starting with the winner. I can't even think of anything that comes close, but perhaps you can...

If you don't know what twee means, here's a definition from Webster: affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint.

And here's the song - David Bowie's "Come and Buy my Toys," from his unfortunate 1967 Anthony Newley period. Wins just for the line "...and you shall own a cambric shirt."

Challenge me if you dare!

• 16:04 Sinister Visions inc. just went global #
• 19:30 If I'm going to be forced to watch American Idol, I want the judges and contestants to be armed to the teeth and all hopped up on goofballs. #
• 19:51 Dear American Idol Bass Player Guy. If you're going to play one of my favorite songs by yourself, LEARN THE EFFIN' NOTES. #
• 20:06 My wife can cook better than your wife. #
• 22:25 Watching a home invasion horror movie. First thing I'm buying for the new house: Louisville Slugger. Alex says "Pfft. I'm buyin' a GUN." #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

I am a very lucky nixar. No gaping, bloody wound in my head. My dentist is wise and merciful, and I was allowed to keep that right second upper molar. It seems the discomfort was arising from a problem caused by upper and lowers no longer occluding properly (because of the work done on the cracked tooth in February). A little grinding (not even the indignity of Novacaine, thank the gods) Still, she gave me Lortab and penicillin scripts, just in case something should go wrong in there before I find a new dentist in Providence. She's been my dentist since March 2000, and it was an oddly bittersweet parting. Anyway, don't ever say that I've never given you a glimpse of true horror, because if you look behind the cut, you'll find x-rays of my frelled-up mouth:

( You've been warned )

After the dentist, enormously relieved and not low on blood, we dropped by the storage unit to see just how annoying moving everything out of it will be on May 27th. Not too bad. And then we went to the Birmingham Public Library, and I sat beneath the beautiful old murals in the Linn-Henley wing. That part of the library appears in Threshold, and it's on that very short list of things I will miss about the South. Truthfully, in an alternate-world Alabama with an entirely different cultural and political climate, I could probably have lived my whole life in Birmingham. Anyway, Spooky took some photos, and I'll put them up tomorrow, after she's had time to edit them. Today, you just get gnarly teeth. We saw an assortment of flattened and living fauna along I-20: crows, buzzards, deer, armadillos, dogs, a hawk. At the rest stop just across the Alabama state line, we spotted a large (probably female) Broad-headed skink (Eumeces laticeps). Spooky tried to get a photo, but the lizard did not cooperate. Alas. After the library, we stopped by my Mother's house in Leeds, and spent a couple of hours there, just talking. She's coming up to Providence to visit in the autumn.

I suppose, now that there is not unsightly recovery to endure, I shall be trying to finish up Chapter One of The Red Tree, beginning today. I need to have that done, and also Issue No. 30 of Sirenia Digest by Wednesday, the 21st, at the latest. Not only will the packing schedule become so hectic by then that there's no way I can even hope to work, but, also, I have to go back to Birmingham next week, to see my regular doctor one last time before the move (and she's been my doctor since 1990).

Last night, after finally getting back to Atlanta about 9 pm and grabbing some Thai food for dinner, we watched two episodes from Season Two of Millennium ("The Hand of St. Sebastian" and the hilariously wonderful "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense", the latter with Charles Nelson Riley). Oh, and discovered a tick latched onto my left hip. No idea where I picked the little fucker up. Maybe at my mother's (rural location plus dog), maybe at the rest stop earlier. She was a female Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum), and was surprisingly painful when Spooky removed her. The blasted thing had apparently been on my clothing for some time, had only just bitten, and hadn't yet started to feed (no blood), or had fed only a very little. We dropped the tick in a jar of alcohol (70%), where she survived for a hour. Spooky's calling my doctor about it today, just in case she wants me to take any precautions beyond those we have taken already. And, please, no oogy tick-borne disease related stories. Thank you.

Later, I tried to work on the Palaeozoic Museum (New Babbage, Second Life), but the damned asset server was on the fritz again, so that didn't happen. I did make quite a lot of progress on it Monday. Oh, yeah. Monday. On Monday, I worked on the Museum, we got dinner from the Vortex at Little Five Points, and watched two episodes of Farscape ("Home on the Remains" and "A Constellation of Doubt"). I went back to the biography of Henry Fairfield Osborn, which I hope to finish before the move. That was Monday. Huzzah.

Also, I should repost the link to 350.org.

Is it just me, or are these entries getting far too long winded? At any rate, only 13 days remaining to the dread birthday -04. Blegh. But my Amazon wish list is here,, if you are so inclined.

Oh, and since this entry has gone on Way Too Long, I may as well mention how I've been complaining about the sudden proliferation of needless contractions, because people simply can't be bothered. Sure. It's not really anything new. Nabisco stopped being the National Biscuit Company back in the early sixties, but, lately, it seems like this is happening everywhere. National Geographic as NatGeo?! The Biography Channel as Bio? I wonder how many people still remember that WB stands for Warner Brothers, or that KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken, or that iHop is shortened from the International House of Pancakes? But the one that really tears it for me, that set off a rant last night, was seeing Scarlett Johansson called "ScarJo." What the holy fuck?! Okay, sure. First we had JLo, but that was just Jennifer Lopez, so who really cares? Not only is Scarlett Johansson a fine actress (The Black Dahlia not withstanding), she has a cool name, so why ruin it with a silly contraction like "ScarJo"? It is beyond me, these things that people do. Maybe I would be a more popular writer if I went by CaitKier. Or just CRK. Regardless, I am looking forward to hearing her album of Tom Waits covers. And now the platypus says if I don't stop and drink some coffee, it's going to start gnawing my ankles.

MY newest pal liatarded and I have been exploring the interactivity of Facebook together. In particular, we have been playing with a Facebook application called "Friends For Sale", where we buy and sell friends online. Mostly this is exploring the totally fake economics of the application -- we drove the price up on missmorte so high that now I can't unload her even if I tried and Lia is laughing at me for being stuck with her.

I also bought Siouxsie Sioux, Nick Cave, and Bob Dobbs. This app is totally awesome in a high school kind of way.

As with most things out in the open on the Internet, it was just me and Lia until this complete stranger stepped in and bought her and myself. One of the features of this application is the ability to give a silly nickname to your 'pets'. My own name got changed to 'the plum' (wtf? I don't get it). Lia and I bought each other to get away from this creepy Internet douchebag who jumped in on our game without asking. This morning I awoke to find that he had yet again bought Lia, so I bought her back.

Then I bought this guy, the one I've been in an unwanted bidding war with. This is his picture.

As a final touch, I nicknamed him "Cat Molestor".

I guess we should have expected it. We'll see if he still wants to play with us after getting a snarkdown like ours.

Democrat Travis Childers defeated Republican Glen Davis in Mississippi's First Congressional District.

This is a huge defeat for the Republican party, and boads well for a Regan-84/Nixon-72 style landslide in November, with senate and house seats to be picked up on the coattails of the democratic presidential ticket.

But remember... If the democrats do win big in November, It is up to us to keep their feet to the fire... to demand all the damage of the last 8 years be undone, and to demand that we move for with real progressive reforms. The road is long, and it doesn't end in November.

Scarecrow Gods is now on sale at horror mall.  If you're a member of their book club, you get 25% off.  If you haven't done that yet, they you have 6% off and 797 points towards free stuff.  This is a pretty major deal, so even if you have a copy, please pass this on. 

Also, I'm going to be part of the Dark Delicacies Mass Autograph Party on 29 May.  If you're in the area, for god sakes come by so I can get Del to pass you a beer and get you in the mood to buy a copy of this book.

I'll also be in Los Angeles from 29 - 31 May for the Book Expo of America.  If you're going to be in the area, we should make a list and try and get together.  I'll have a rental car, so I can travel pretty much anywhere.

I got a shuggoth for my (early) birthday from atomicgypsy. I love it! He lives with my stuffed octopus now. She always gives me the most awesome presents.

It's her birthday today though! Happy birthday, atomicgypsy!

I tried to warn you. Now it’s here and you’re all screwed. Okay, not really, but I *did* warn you about the following cross-promotional, multi-media, genre-exploding short fiction PUBLISHING EVENT.

First and foremost, I give you the fourth issue of Murky Depths with cover art by BFS Artist of the Year Vincent Chong. Prepare to ruin your undergarments . . .

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Short Stories

“Demon Lover” by Sam Stone
”Saint Darwin's Sprirituals” by D K Thompson
”Miracle Michael” by A. Pignatella
”First Aid” by Edward Morris
“Flave's Formula” by Jason Palmer
“The Man With The Hologram Face” by Louise Cypher
”Paternoster Blues” by Richard Barber
“Casting Sin” by C.S. MacCarth
”Day Boy” by Trent Jamieson

Comics

The Dark Gospel 3 - Halo Slipping by Luke Cooper
Rex The Dog by Mur Lafferty & Dan Gardner
Warped by James Johnson & Leonardo M Giron]
The Visitor R.D. Hall & Denis Pacher

ALSO in this issue, an interview with Vincent Chong and my new Depth Charge column. It’s entitled “When It Stomps Beneath the Terra” and in it I examine the evolution and current state of underground arts and media. Or something similarly intelligent sounding like that.

But you know that’s not the end of your emotional, intellectual, and psychological ass-kicking, kids . . .

”Saint Darwin’s Spirituals” by D.K. Thompson is also now live in audio form on the Variant Frequencies podcast. Featuring the music of mindgasming steampunk band Abney Park and the vocal stylings of Rick and Anne Stringer, Maia Whitaker, Ali Groves (who is NOT, in fact, Irish), and Agent Dani Cutler, this is far and away one of the highest quality episodes in a two and a half year history of the highest quality podcast out there.

So there it is, folks. Buy, read, download, listen. This is a new one in short fiction marketing. And we chose the best possible story to pop its cherry. Be a part of it.