As you value your sanity, do not go here.

... Dammit, you went anyway, didn't you? After I told you. You get what you deserve.

It's October 1. And, like a moron, I've signed up again.

Anyone who donates me a functioning laptop by November 1 gets written into the novel.

Weirdness abounds. Someone nicked the plates from our car yesterday while it sat in the parking garage. I didn't learn this until I staggered home from rehearsal last night; Stacy had to deal with this nonsense from the get-go of coming off the Metro. (She stayed home today as well to get our new plates and so forth form the DMV. I hear it went alright, and we're more or less fine now, if a bit frustrated.)

Stacy says the car is cursed. I don't know. We've certainly had more than our share of car-related troubles in the last couple of years: rear-ended twice (one of which put her in surgery), a break-in, numerous trips to the shop, lots of parking-lot dents and scrapes, and now this. Still, for the most part, lots of this stuff wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. We got broken into, but lost nothing of great value; we had to have repair work done, but discovered it before taking a road trip; we had our license plates stolen, but not the car itself. With the exception of Stacy's back injury (which was very serious indeed), most of what we've endured has been inconveniences, not disasters.

Am I a Polyanna for trying to make the best of all this? Maybe, maybe. It would be a fair accusation, I suppose. But I don't see the value in underlining the negativity of it all either. Two years ago, having our car broken into was an afterthought to a year that had already brought losing two members of my family, then enduring the accident and my wife's surgery, and finally September 11. I think I've got a good picture of what a real tragedy is, and this ain't it.

Robert Fulghum has an essay in one of his books about this. It's the one where he says that life is lumpy - but a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are three different orders of magnitude. It's good to be aware of which one you're coping with.

(None of which is to say that it isn't a big pain in the ass to stand in line at the DMV on a Tuesday morning because some miscreant got a wild hair. Which is something that I didn't, admittedly, have to do today. I love you, sweetie.)

Anyway, I suppose the point of all this is that I still feel like life is good today, and that I've been blessed with good fortune. For all the reasons I have to be happy, I can endure an inconvenience or two. So it goes. So it goes.

(Nonetheless, if anyone out there has a good way of de-jinxing a car, let me know...)

"Desire's a terrible thing, but I rely on mine"

It's Recommendations Night here on the Danblog - I've been listening to the Sundays, who I became a fan of eleven or twelve years ago by way of Andy, and thinking about how so much of the stuff in our lives we get from exposure to by our friends. (Also, tangentially, it made me contemplate the implications of being nostalgic about the music of the early '90s. At some point I must have gotten over learning that Harriett Wheeler was already married, but I don't recall when. I wonder what my 17-year-old self would make of that?) In any case, here are a few recent discoveries of mine:

First off, a heads-up to all my gamer peeps - Eden Studios has made their excellently cool Witchcraft RPG available as a free download, so go get it. It's spooky and Gothy and loads of fun - imagine putting Hellblazer and The Craft and Clive Barker and Lovecraft monsters in a big blender with a dash of Foucault's Pendulum and a Changelings soundtrack. Yeah, that kind of kewl. And there's even a way you can play using Tarot cards, for that extra dose of occult-nifty. And now there's no excuse not to have it. Bright Blessings, indeed.

In musical (but equally spooky) realms, Live at St. Olave's - recorded from the Current 93/Antony and the Johnsons 2002 London concert, which I picked up last weekend at Kim's in NY - is pretty good, if all too short. It's my first real exposure to Antony and the Johnsons, who do some weird and lovely stuff to judge by this; their second of three tracks on this CD is a musical rendition of Poe's "The Lake" that is certainly both of those things. Antony has a really gorgeous voice - angelically so - and the songs on here reward repeat listenings. C93 also do three tracks here, one of which is a truly incredible short version of "Sleep Has His House" that takes my breath away every time I hear it, and a performance of "Walking Like Shadow" that has some exquisite and gorgeous guitar work from the uber-talented Michael Cashmore. It's more of an EP than an album proper, and falls maybe more towards the "get this if you're a completist" end of the C93 canon, but I've no regrets in giving one a home. If you liked the melancholy, contemplative turn Tibet's taken the Current in the last few years (Soft Black Stars, Sleep Has His House) you won't either.

On the comics front, I've become a big fan of Carla Speed McNeil's Finder of late. Genre-wise, it's a kind of folkloric SF - imagine a bastard child of Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, set in a weird future of domed cities and insular ruling clans. Through this landscape wanders Jaeger, sin-eater and Finder (a kind of tracker-cum-detective), who's a bit like a bishounen Wolverine; he has amazing powers of healing and sensory acuity, and a good dose of angst by way of his conflicting obligations and a troubled past. The first two volumes deal with Jaeger's connections to a divided and disfunctional family who share part of that past in various ways, and the hard decisions he makes about what his duty to them is. Great stuff - intricate and interesting world-building, solid characterizations, and art that just gets better as it goes (and a great example of what can be done using a fairly simple style in black and white, which I imagine might be inspiring to one or two of you out there; yes, Maija, I'm winking at you).

I've managed to consume quite a bit of slack of late on Making Light, the weblog of Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who (along with her husband Patrick) edits at Tor Books and does other fine things besides. There is much good stuff to be found here, both onsite and as a goldmine of fascinating links, and the little community that springs up in the comments is a fascinating bunch of folks. (And speaking of which, I should also wave here to Space Waitress, who was nicer to me than I deserved when I derailed a recent thread with some Shakespeare-pastiche doggerel, and who also has a site well worth visiting.)

And, finally, if you haven't found your way over to gaze in wonder at iLevel, our own Vishal's fascinatingly quirky camblog - you really ought. With the same sense of slightly askew whimsy he brings to his Savant stories, Vishal opens the camera eye on the small, sometimes disorderly details of commonplace things so that they seem like the artifacts of some alien world. It's found-object art of the sort only truly weird minds can produce, and I love it. It's both reassuring and unnerving to know there are folk like this on my friends-and-relations list, which is of course exactly as I would have it.

Autumn is officially here today. It sort of feels it. Happy Equinox.

And speaking of the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, the big news is that while we were in NYC last weekend, Spyder and I went to see Neil Gaiman's talk at New York is Book Country and got to meet the mop-headed dreamer himself at the signing afterwards. He is absolutely as nice as everyone says - very warm, very genuine, very kind to his adoring legions of fans. He drew a Morpheus in silver pen on the endpaper of my first-edition hardcover of Season of Mists (carrying which earned some appreciative looks from my fellow geeks) and shook my hand when I mentioned I was directing The Tempest. And I didn't even make too much of an idiot of myself right then. So that was alright.

It's really cool as hell to go to that sort of thing with Spyder, who as a Jim Hanley's Universe employee is plugged into the NY comics scene enough to be recognized by folks at such events, making me feel much less like a random dork (not that Gaiman fans don't know their own anyway; before the reading, I was waiting outside the Equitable Center and got asked by a stranger "Where are we going?" and when I looked confused he said, "Okay, you're wearing a Sandman shirt and smoking a clove. Where are we going?"). Spyder, for her part, is an excellent partner for doing geeky things with, and maintains an almost zenlike balance of enthusiasm and calm, which I guess is one of the things you learn when you attend on Mike Mignola for four hours. Still, my hat's off.

Saturday night was a big slumber party at the Marthas', who put their big bottle of Fijian rum to good use almost immediately for a round of I Never (and I got to tell the usual round of embarassing stories about myself, some of which I'd almost managed to block from memory, hurrah). We do miss the Marthas something terrible. But it was really excellent to spend good quality time with them, if only for a couple of days. More often, more often - NYC's not that far, and family's family, after all.

Back home, Isabel has left us without air conditioning or hot water (but with electricity and cable, and got us out of work for two days, which is a pretty fair trade-off) for what looks like the rest of the week, so it's weenie-shrinking cold showers for the next few days. I almost envy Matt's T&D excursion into West Virginia this week. Almost.

Rehearsals progress apace, though I'm all too aware that Full Fathom Five badly needs an update, not to mention I have a Last Dark Art long overdue. So it goes. For now, I ride out the whirlwind. I'll catch up when I get a chance to grab hold of something.

There is a wait so long (so long so long)
You'll never wait so long...

Wasn't I just making wiseass cracks about this, it having been the "when pigs fly" event of alternative rock for the last dozen years? "Now I will believe that there are unicorns."

Nothing more to say today than this.

Moce Fiji

Back in La-la Land now, where I write this at an internet station in LAX and we await our flight out at 10 tonight. I slept for much of the 11-hour Air New Zealand flight in, but we managed to score a direct flight back, so the wait's worth it. Huzzah!

It was tough leaving, but it's good to be almost home.

Report, Mr. Sulu

So, Fiji. Fiji is a delight. Our room faced the ocean, which we could hear crashing nearly at our door at high tide. At low tide, we could walk out nearly to the edge of the reef (the ground underfoot was sand and mud and shelss and crushed coral) and see the wondrous miniature wolrds in the tidepools: turquoise fish like little jewels, sea urchins in crevasses, electric-blue starfish. There was some kind of bizarre black sea-slug or worm that was everywhere; they looked like machine hoses jutting out from under the rocks, groping slowly around their shallow pools. And in the deep places, brilliant coral was everywhere, branches and clusters and knotted brains.

The Fijians are great people - a touch conservative, but warm and friendly almost to a fault. Even the con-men are nice enough to strike up more or less genuine conversations before they try to filch you. The population is about 53% native Fijian (a racial blend of Melanesian and Polynesian), 40% Indian, and the rest "other" (mostly Australians, New Zealanders and Chinese), with a few pockets of racial tension but more harmony than you might expect.

Everywhere you see the sulu, the skirt that's the national garment (unisex, though men favor a version with pockets and a beltlike strap - I bought one, naturally, and wore it to happy hour). Every city has handicraft stalls selling local wares made by the villagers - baskets, beads, penadants, and the ubiquitous war clubs and cannibal forks. (I didn't leave with a club, alas, but we made off with quite a few forks and other neat things.) And Fijian beer, both Fiji Bitter and the lighter Fiji Gold, is quite excellent. I could go on at some length about the food (and the best calamari I have ever, ever had), but I risk tedium already, so I'll stop.

Got just a touch homesick by the end of it all, wishing for my big fearsome cosmopolitan city. So it goes. We're almost there now, and happy to be so.

I'm sure I'll be missing the sea all too soon (and spending days on our villa porch, smoking Silk Cut like my literary heroes John Constantine and Bridget Jones), but for now - it's nice having home in sight.

Bula all and sundry from lovely Nadi, Fiji, where I write this from the Cyber Net Space Cafe. It's wonderful here.

Our resort is right on the beach, where we watched the sun set over the ocean last night before falling asleep (bloody jetlag). It's winter here, which means it's warm but dry, and cool at night and in the morning. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Too much to tell all at once, so I'll write a more detailed account when it's all over.

In the Hills, the Cities

Los Angeles is not a city. Los Angeles is a veritable world, like Faerie. It's hard to appreciate how huge it is until you fly into it and see it coruscating beneath you, consuming the horizon in every direction. L.A. is vast, it contains multitudes.

I was ultimately underwhelmed, though. Something about the culture of California puts me off. I think L.A. and I are at odds in philosophy. It's a fine place to visit, but... well, you know.

It was actually quite a relief to come from there to a place where the people are about as real as can be imagined. Fiji is a jewel, and full of exactly the sort of kind and open people you'd hope would be there. You should go.

That's all for now. More later.

HOLYLIVINGFUCKI'MGOINGTOFUCKINGFIJIOHMYGOD

Er. Um.

Leaving shortly for L.A. Lot of flying very soon.

September will find me in a whole other hemisphere. Not wrapping my head around that very well.

So, anyway, this is zai jian for a little while. I may post from the other side of the world if I get a chance.

Meanwhile, take care of yourselves back in the real world. I'll be on a beach in cannibal country, doing lots of nothin'. My love to you all.

Huzzah!

Courtesy of Patrick, a joke with a somewhat narrow audience: He recounts that he was driving to DC and listening to Bob Marley, Jackson Browne, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Tool, and found himself afterwards with an overwhelming urge to roll a fattie and write a 20-minute song in 11/8 time about how magic isn't as good as it was in the old days.

Ahem.

Anyway, it's been a pretty good week. Had a sort of impromptu party last night with Caren and Patrick over, and we all watched the sobering Bowling for Columbine (one of Stacy's birthday presents) and sent out for pizza. I had this idea that I'd be inspired to get some packing done during all this, but it didn't happen. Big surprise.

Tomorrow night I'll be in Los Angeles. Too weird.

Tonight's just getting our affairs in order and getting ready to take off. It's sort of disorienting to realize that I have one more night to sleep in my bed and then be hurtling off to parts unknown for a while. "If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been." I hear ya, Sam.

In the meantime, get a load of this wonderful new slack toy: the Zombie Infection Simulation. It's best viewed with the zombies set to green, I find. See how long that last pocket of resistance can hold out! Braaaaaain!

First and foremost: Happy birthday, Mrs. L-K! Everyone go give her some loooooove.

Secundus: Got The Tempest mostly cast this weekend. I'm down a couple of people with last-minute conflicts, but so it goes. We have our first meeting as an actual cast on Tuesday. (I had some folks who hadn't quite written down all their conflicts, which I'd more or less expected. I also had some cases of "Oh, I'm waiting to hear from other auditions, can I think about it and get back to you," which I hadn't; the idea of trying out for a production you're not sure you want to be working on is so alien to me that I don't even have a frame of reference for it. And these were big parts, too, not the friggin' Boatswain. On the other hand, there was also a lot of very encouraging enthusiasm from folks accepting roles, including one or two who seemed almost awestruck at being cast, so that's alright. Not that anyone should be surprised at the part they got offered - I was lucky enough to have a whole crew of really fine actors at my auditions, and a lot of tough decisions to make.)

Tertiarily, Patrick's in town this week, and I think we're all going out tonight for a birthday dinner somewhere of my lovely wife's choosing. Hooray! Sweetie, I promise to try not to spend the whole evening talking about prog and Mage: the Ascencion and Alan Moore. It's your birthday, after all.

Lastly, in four days I'm headed for the other side of the effing world. The reality of this has begun to sink in. By Friday, I fully expect to be a complete mess. But looking forward to that good island food all the same.

I tossed a whole bunch of my stories into the Gender Genie this morning, and it diagnosed me, across the board, as female. I find this to be a source of great comfort.

Aside from the obvious reasons for this (i.e., as recounted here), I have to wonder what's at work here (assuming you can place any stock at all in an algorithm designed to detect your gender, which you can't). Thinking of the influences on my writing, there are at least as many men as women who I could think of as having a direct impact on my voice and style. The implications of all this I leave to folks more hung up about it than myself.

But it's interesting to consider this in light of an issue Steven Brust brought up in his weblog months ago (no permalinks there, so you'll have to scroll down to the entry for 1/30/03) about role models for women, or whoever, in literature. I think I see his point here - and I couldn't agree more with his statements about the supposed differences between men and women - I also disagree that because you it's possible to identify with a person of the "other" gender that it isn't a good thing to have role models who are like you. Especially for women, especially in light of how narrow the popular consciousness is about what it means to be female and what's allowable within that idea. The sad truth is that, without artists making an effort to challenge those ridiculous notions, nothing will change. I'd love to live in a world where all things were equal and everyone had enough heroes to go around. But that's not how things are.

There's a wonderful bit in the last section of Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman where Moore is talking in correspondence with Dave Sim about the purpose of art, and he makes the point that art doesn't reflect the world as it is - it attempts to "imprint" the world and cause reality to reflect it. I'd have to agree (and it's very interesting to read that correspondence in light of the arrogant, moralistic, misogynistic ideas with which Sim approaches his art on the one hand, and Moore's dynamic, magickal, radical philosophy on the other). So I choose to create art for the world the way I hope it would be, and part of that means being responsible about what kind of role models inhabit my fiction. I think the world could use more Jenny Hanivers. Nothing would make me happier than to know my work encouraged one or two to come to the surface.

So there you go: I write like a girl, and proud of it. And I didn't bother correcting the Genie when it thought so too. Just doing my part to ensure the Universe holds on to one or two ambiguities...

I noted with some delight that the current issue of Lucifer (the conclusion of the "Naglfar" storyline) is titled "Full Fathom Five." Synchronicity is a lovely thing, though I imagine being on the same wavelength as Mike Carey is sort of a double-edged sword.

Eight days from now, I'll be on a plane to L.A., and thence to Fiji, for my first honest-to-God vacation in too damn long, and my first trip out of the country ever (assuming Canada doesn't count). I think Stacy's feeling more conscious of the countdown than I am, but it's pretty bloody exciting in any case. Sadly, the war club I want is too long for my suitcase... I may have to make do with a nice set of Long Pig forks, or else set myself up as an importer of "works of art." As if I needed something new with which to hurt myself anyway.

Speaking of my lovely wife, her birthday's coming up Monday, which of course means that we have to start celebrating on Friday. (It's in the rules, you know. A birthday adjacent to a weekend requires partying for the entire duration of that weekend. Especially if you have to wait until Monday for the actual event.) So we're doing happy hour at the Brickskeller after work tomorrow, and whatever else seems like fun afterwards. I haven't asked her how old she's going to be this year. I'm kinda hoping it's 29 again, so I can catch up.

Tempest callbacks are tonight. Which means I will have a cast soon, and then all this will be... real. It's nearly too much to contemplate.

Holding Tempest auditions tonight, a handful of hours from now. I write at length about this over at Full Fathom Five. Of course, in the meanwhile, I'm more or less useless, but so it goes.

I made my monthly sojourn out to Big Planet Comics on Saturday, and picked up the first volume of Alan Moore's Promethea along with my monthly pulls. Wound up not being able to put it down last night. Wooch. Yeah, it's as good as you've heard. It's the kind of story I want to be telling. Moore continues to inspire and delight.

Also finally got to see Pirates of the Caribbean on Saturday, which may be the perfect pirate flick - a good solid supernatural swashbuckler with Johnny Depp at his flamboyant best. (The only drawback, as Spyder pointed out, is that it makes you want to try and end sentences with "...savvy?" all the time.) And the night before, Stacy and I caught the second Tomb Raider - I liked it at least as much as the first, and maybe a little more, if only 'cause it has Djimon Hounsou doing the big amiable African guy role he's so good at. A fine weekend for movies in the gratuitously pulpy vein, which is pretty much exactly what I needed.

Matt's been hard at work these last few days building his new site, and everyone should go sign up there, or at least go for the link to the updated Swampstock photos. Shiny! It reminds me that I too must do a new site soon. One of these days.

And on Friday, I signed up for a subscription at Suicide Girls, because I'm always bitching and moaning about how bad so much porn is, and this is exactly what's called for as a corrective. So I'm more than happy for my six bucks a month to go to support erotica that's actually empowering, and gives the models creative control, and treats them as real people - because if that sort of thing doesn't get support from folks who believe in it, it'll go away, and I'll have no one but myself to blame. So I took the chance to put my money where my mouth is. Or whatever physionomical region best applies.

Plus, it has HOT HOT GOTH CHICKS. All hail this age, for giving me the opportunity to satisfy my feminist principles and my inner fifteen-year-old simultaneously. "Oh, brave new world..."

Me Too, Al

A reminder to my loyal readers: if nothing else, you can count on this space to bring you a perspective that's fair and balanced.

Spread the meme, lads and lasses. Spread the meme.

The Long Shadows Fall

And good thoughts go out tonight, of course, to our NYC peeps, and all others making it through the long dark of the night; I've been there, and I know exactly how much fun it is. Careful with those candles, everyone, and let me know when you can that you're okay.

What a sucky way to wrap up the week. Hang in there.

"...on the thin ice of a new day"

I was a writing fiend yesterday, to the point of being cranky when I had to stop and eat and stuff. I fussed with a number of small projects, but the crowning achievement was three whole pages of a new draft for The Residents #1, where I finally, finally feel okay working in the medium. It's feeling... natural, at long fucking last. (It helps, mind, that I now sort of know where the story is headed. But anyway.)

And today, there's a whole new post at Full Fathom Five, for the first time in weeks. Just in time for tomorrow's production meeting! Hooray!

As I write this, the Marthas are nearly in New York City. They left at about 8:30 this morning after crashing here for the night. (Best move EVAR getting them out of their place yesterday, incidentally - I think there were about a dozen pairs of hands involved there off and on for the couple of hours it took to clean out their former apartment. A sad day, but exciting too.)

I was at my Nobilis session for most of last night, and got home just in time for the pajama party to break up, but I did drag my sorry ass out of bed to see our favorite feelgood lesbian couple on the road. It's a bittersweet sending-off, but as I've said before, having more reasons to go to NYC ain't exactly all bad.

Today's a quiet laundry day in these parts, and hopefully some writing will be done too. I'll let you know.

Okay, first things first: Today I became a, er, numbered-something-or-other cousin again, as John Mitchell made his grand entrance to the family. He's a couple weeks ahead of schedule, which sets a kind of new precedent for the Gallucci line. Welcome, Jack! I'm afraid we can't help you be normal, but we can sure show you a good time. Meanwhile, here's hoping your first few hours in the Big Room have been happy ones.

So I not only got to go to my first Jethro Tull concert last night, I got to go, apparently, on Ian Anderson's birthday, for that extra level of fanboy coolness. And I gotta say - it was even better than I'd hoped for. I figured, hey, these guys are all respectable middle-aged gentlemen now, they'll be putting on a nice serene little show that fondly recalls when they were wild rockers... Um, no. Ian is still a crazy skinny demon flautist who stands on one leg and bounces all over the stage and likes to make wee-wee jokes and do that phallic thing with his flute. These guys are all having the time of their lives, and I think seeing them made me really appreciate, even more than when I was a teenager and catching hell from my metalhead friends for grooving to a folk-rock band, what consummate musicians and entertainers they are. So not only do they still give good show, but they played stuff I figured they'd've gotten sick of years since - all of "Aqualung," all of "Locomotive Breath" (in a truly kickass encore) and lots and lots of the early tunes like "Living in the Past" and "Fat Man." And they did one of my personal all-time favorite Tull songs - "Hunting Girl" - which alone would've been worth the concert for me (though it was an odd and amusing moment when I and the serene-looking middle-aged woman sitting beside me cheered for that one at the same time). Interestingly, I sat and read the lyrics to that today over at the excellent cupofwonder.com site, and I don't think I ever realized before what a really dirty song it is...

In other news, I'm now on the map, and that's pretty cool. (Just hover over the Wheaton station button and you'll see me on the list that pops up, with a link that'll take you right, um, here.) Many thanks to Maureen for including me there, and for putting together a really cool site. (And her blog is also worth checking out.)

And lastly, I finished the stories I was working on the other night, and posted 'em to the List, as some of ye have already seen. I feel pretty good about an opener like this:

The sky was dark overhead, but off the end of the pier, the water was even darker. My hands were tied behind my back with plastic cords. Altmann looked down at me and smiled, thinly.

“Well,” he said. “It comes to this at last, old girl. You and me and the deep cold sea. Ahaha.” His hands were folded in front of him as he said this, slender and pale; the signet ring of his Lodge showed on the left middle finger, heavy and gleaming. He had a dark tailored suit and a little pointed goatee. I think it’s some kind of membership requirement.

“And your squad of goons, of course.” I gave him my sweetest smile. With my hair falling in my eyes and plastered to my face, I doubt it had quite the effect I would’ve liked, but you work with what’s at hand.

Rest assured it goes on to show Jenny at her wiseass and resourceful best...

Aah! AAAAAH! There's a microphone in my eye!

Click on the "Main" button of the same page to see more.

(Thanks to Matt for putting these up, and for weeding out the really incriminating ones.)

And as if there weren't enough reasons to hate Texas already, now we have this.

Which is exactly why I'm a member, and you should be, too.

Spent last night writing, polishing up "Him" (the working title of the story I mentioned a couple days ago) and starting right into a new one, for the momentous occasion of the 250th topic on Fantasybits. I think I'm about halfway through it, and it's great fun so far. If all goes well, I shall post it tonight.

Readers may note that progress on "The Pagurus Game" pretty much dropped off as of May - it's been a thorn in my side, but I continue to pick at it, slowly, slowly. Hopefully, soon I will have better things to say on that front; a nice dialogue scene got done on Friday night, and I'm starting to feel like I can move ahead with it. We shall see.

Back in the mundane world, Spyder got back from her upstate vacation last night, and was pretty bouncy on IM. I think the unicorns are a bit warier around her than they were two weeks ago; I'm still waiting on the full story there, but it promises to be properly juicy. Ah, nineteen. I'd miss that age if it hadn't been such an embarassing time for me.

"Another Teatime, Another Day Older"

And speaking of my misspent youth, I'm going Thursday night to see Jethro Tull at Wolftrap, which I can safely say is something I've been waiting fifteen years to do. This was a surprise present from my wife, in one of those I-knew-you-loved-me-but-I-didn't-know-you-loved-me-that-much moments. I don't even care that they do "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath" and all the old faves in a big medley these days - this is Ian fucking Anderson, hero of my teenage years, wild pagan god of prog.

And the Marthas are making the big move to NYC this weekend. They'll be missed in these parts, for certain, but you can only complain so much about having more people to go visit in New York. Make waves, sweetie darlings, make waves, and know that the city's fairer for your being there.

Two weeks from tomorrow, I hold auditions for The Tempest. That is just... unbelievable.

A pretty low-key weekend around here - Stacy is still under the weather, and has been watching bad movies for something like four days straight, which has about the effect you'd imagine. I've been on the recover (not 100%, but I can see it without a telescope) and got out of the house briefly yesterday and today. And Matt's staying with us while he finds a new place to live, making him the most fun person in the household at the moment. Under other circumstances, we'd've been kicking back rounds of Coronas all weekend in that spontaneous-new-roommate-party spirit, but the flesh has already filed an objection. So - feh.

I note that Vishal, newly returned from monsoon country, has linked me on his blog page, so props to him. Everything that helps me on the way to international acclaim is more than welcome. (And if I get there first, V, you can count on a big thumbs-up cover blurb for that erotic novel, just on principle.)

Speaking of acclaim, the July issue of Locus (the graphic novels issue, with Alan Moore looking his usual spooky self on the cover) has an article co-authored by Spyder's boss, which is pretty cool. It's still on newsstands, I think, and worth having anyway; check it out, and goo over the Sandman: Endless Nights preview art like I did.

And if you're an ilyAIMY fan, as you should be, there's some interesting news from them - they're going on the road come September, on an impromptu musical odyssey-cum-pilgrimage. Anyone who knows about good spots to play grungy, ferocious folk music in various parts of the country should go to their site and send 'em an email. It's a wonderful, brave thing Rob and Heather are doing, and any support they can get would be much appreciated, I'm sure.

Nothing so exciting from me, but I did manage to finish a Jenny Haniver story this weekend that I've been picking at for like a year, and I'm now polishing it up for submission to the FB list. Hooray!

And so closes the weekend. Can't say I'm ready for the week to start, but that's how it goes. More as it comes up.