When Your Name's With the Best, Will My Name Be On Your Guest List?

I just discovered I'm on the blogroll over at the new incarnation of everythingsruined. How freakin' cool is that? (Thanks, John-Paul!)

Also, note new postage from Maija, who I'd begun to fear the Vikings had gotten at last.

Me, I've got some sort of bug that I suspect got passed around the Swampstock circle (though I didn't get it from making out with Caroline, I swear), so I'm utterly useless at work today and avoiding all constructive activity. So it goes.

I'll write something interesting and witty soon. Promise.

In the Heart of the Wood (and What I Found There)

SSXI was the best Swampstock ever.

Enough so that I think my melancholy at its being over is already fading in light of how very awesome it was. Magic happened. Connections were made. Many libations were downed. Tiny arachnids were filled with smoke and made to glow in the dark. That sort of thing.

OVO had a pretty grand first performance too, which was one of many things I was worried about having oversold to newcomers. We're already putting together next year's setlist. Though I'm not sure about another finale where I have to follow Bernice singing lead. (This may indeed also be why nothing was Called Up by our cover of "The Angel Highbury"; I know I'd be hesitant myself to manifest in front of someone who could turn my name into a killing word.)

Anyway, a rousing success of a weekend all around. I do believe some of all y'all who were there took photographs. Share, please?

UPDATE: As those of you who have read the comments know, lots of pictures are here and here. Revel in the virtual debauchery!

These Endless Days are Finally Ending in a Blaze

It's almost time for Swampstock XI, which means all week I've been useless at work, restless at home, and running on too little sleep both places. This is all part of the necessary buildup of energy, I think.

I did manage, at some point in this mad rush, to finish a new Jenny Haniver story, which will be making its debut this weekend in booklet form on the auction table. My assessment of it now is about the usual ("Could use a revision"), but it ain't bad for a week's work. Though I'm not expecting to be the cause of any bidding wars or suchlike.

Possibly just as exciting is the premier performance of OVO, the first Thing in a Jar musickal project. We'll be taking the stage sometime Saturday to assault the gathering with what may be its most plugged-in set ever, putting our spare yet loopy spin on a bunch of weirdass covers in the bastard fusion style that has been dubbed (after probably one too many glasses of Pete's Purple Fuck-Me Punch) "proggoth." Be afraid.

We set out tomorrow afternoon (and I've been entertaining for a while the rather cruel fantasy of going back in time to tell my twenty-year-old self how I'll be driving out to Birdsong Hill on Friday in a car full of hot women), which means tonight will be the mad dash to do all the final packing in preparation of forgetting the two or three essential items that will be left on the kitchen counter all weekend. (This always happens, and I've just resigned myself to quit fighting it.)

So I'll see you there if you're going - and if you're heading there, or planning to be there in spirit, you might take a moment or two between today and tomorrow to focus some energy on this sigil, all charged up for "No Rain on Swampstock Eleven":



(Incidentally and resonantly, this post is the 200th entry on Otter Ponderings. And also my first posted image, mostly because it took me this long to figure out how to do it. Round of applause.)

Sing, O Choirs of Cacophony

Happy Bastille Day, citizens!

Normally, I like to commemorate this occasion with a baguette and brie and a bottle of red, but in light of the various crimes of our own ancien régime I think it may be more appropriate to take this opportunity to guillotine some aristos - figuratively speaking, of course.

In other news, note new homepage for Citoyenne Martha (Bien), as she sets out to show just how much of a nuissance one tiny, insignificant creature can be.

Viva la Resistance!

You Silly Old Man

Today is Andy's birthday, an occasion which should probably be celebrated with brandy and cigars and 30s swing records, or at least with the new Morrissey and a properly soul-wrenching session of Call of Cthulhu; but since I don't have hardly any of those things handy, here's hoping a raised lager and a "many happy returns" will do.

I've known Andy for an embarassingly long time now, and I'm happy to say he's one of the best people I know, and someone I've now spent more than half my life admiring. There are a lot of things to like about him, from being the kind of guy who could put Talking Heads, Harry Belafonte and Beethoven on the same side of a mix tape and make it work, to being kind enough to weather the crush I had on him at 17 with grace and gentleness. Mostly, though, he's just an extraordinarily decent human being, and I'm proud and lucky to have him in my life; we don't see each other nearly enough these days, but he's never made me feel like being on different coasts means drifting apart.

And in a little over a month, he's joining the ranks of the blissfully wed (officially, anyway, but I think he's been lucky enough to be more or less married for some time now). I look forward greatly to being there for that, and I even promise I won't wear what I encouraged him to wear at mine.

Anyway, go wish him well, and toast his health as he dives into that fourth decade in earnest. Cheers!

Neil When You Need Him

I was with Spyder at MoCCA in New York last weekend, but didn't go to the Harvey awards banquet because the cheap seats were $60 and then there was the barest thread of hope some NEARfest tickets might still materialize, and, well.

So I didn't get to see Neil Gaiman do his keynote speech, but he posted the text of it a couple of days ago, which I just got around to reading this morning. I felt like standing up and cheering. And, more importantly, like commencing to make comics, with a refreshed sense of cavalier roguery and aspirations of Ars Magna (in whatever sense you like).

And I'm suddenly looking forward to being a cranky old Jew myself.