Your Friday moment of zen.
19th century cross, Old Mission State Park, outside Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. © 2006, 2010, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 4:16 am Fri March 26 2010 | Comments(3) |
A reader reacts to Trial of Flowers — Objects (accurately) to the lack of female characters.
Don’t Ask Me Where I Get My Ideas — Howard Tayler explains it all for you as cogently as I’ve ever seen it done. Plus he’s the Schlock Mercenary guy, which makes him doubly cool. Some of the best long-form SF out there. Buy the books, or hit the Web archives from strip number one. Absolutely worth your time.
I want to see you fly your airship — A challenge from Steampunk Flugtag Flying Olympics.
Watch Man-Controlled Bacteria Build a Nanoscale Pyramid — They buried the lede: [I]n the future, they’ll use that same technique to create a bacterial propulsion system for larger nanobots. Booyah!
Conservatives reject Frum-ism — What you’re seeing here is the tension between being a conservative and being a Republican. It’s not that you can’t be both at the same time, but that you have to know which wins when ideological push comes to electoral shove
Is There A Majority for Health Care Repeal? Not Really — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on the wishful thinking of Republic rhetoric about HCR repeal. Also, could we just put a bullet in the “America is a center-right nation” meme, please? It’s grown damned silly, not to mention as deeply counterfactual as most cherished Republican memes.
An Open Letter to Conservatives — Oh, yeah. (Thanks to
Big Fucking Deal — Hahahah. And because you know, dropping the F-bomb on live mic is every bit as bad as death threats, which aren’t the GOP’s fault anyway. (Thanks to
?otD: Do you know how the needle feels sliding into your chest?
Posted: 4:14 am Fri March 26 2010 | Comments(0) |
Title, author, and a little bit of description would be favorite, and maybe a note on why you like it.
ETA: If you know
Posted: 4:13 pm Thu March 25 2010 | Comments(23) |
Tomorrow is day one chemo infusion session six of twelve.
There’s a ritualistic aspect to Thursday evenings, however. That’s when I update the side effects log for my oncologist, count the number of pills remaining in my copious medication bottles, and inventory the chemo supplies.
The drugs are obvious enough, they’re the helper medications I take to mitigate the side effects of the chemo. Mostly need to make sure I don’t run out during the cycle. So I count them out of the bottles, then set up a pill case with the needed doses between now and the beginning of next week.
The supplies are around the unhooking process for the pump. My inventory includes the following:
We go through them at different rates. And we need certain levels every time. So one of the first conversations I have on infusion day concerns supply levels and replenishment.
It’s so mundane, so clinical, and so strange. Counting the injectors today, it occurred to me how much strangeness one can get used to.
Posted: 4:10 pm Thu March 25 2010 | Comments(2) |
I will be reading and signing Pinion on Thursday, April 1st, at 7 pm at Powell’s Cedar Hills Crossing. This is immediately after its March 30th release date. Thanks to chemo and its discontents, this is my sole promotional event for the book. It’s a one-stop book tour!
Except for JayCon X on July 3rd, this will also be my one and only public appearance here in the US prior to the Seattle-area convention Foolscap in the fall.
So if you’d like to get my latest novel hot off the press, listen to me read, or have anything signed, mark your calendars now for April 1st. If you just want to show up and support me in my cancer battle, that would be a delight, too. It would please me to no end to fill the place. I look forward to seeing some, all or none of you there.
Posted: 5:00 am Thu March 25 2010 | Comments(0) |
Not much new to report. The cold is definitely a tail-end charlie, no worse than a mild allergy fit today. This means I can go in for my chemo infusion tomorrow. Need to be health as possible, and well-rested, for that. Been laying low all the same, including another passage of the Lorazepam tango last night. I was up for an hour or so in the middle of the night thanks to my lower GI, but lately that’s been more normal than not. For whatever value of “normal” ever pertains to me these day.
I am pleased with the amount of writing I’ve gotten done lately, including an hour and forty-five minutes’ worth yesterday. “The Stars Do Not Lie” will have to go on hiatus while I munge through chemo weekend, but it’s got shape, momentum, direction, etc. That’s good. Other projects are advancing as well, at varying but appropriate speeds. I think I’ve got a handle on writing during chemo.
Don’t know yet what this weekend’s Tweetsnark movie will be. I’ll have to figure it out today. Also seeing my therapist today. Not like I have any life issues these days or anything.
Last night, during my awake period, my brain decided to inform me that Jabberwocky can be sung to the tune of “Amazing Grace.” (And therefore to “House of the Rising Sun, “Gilligan’s Island”, etc. Yes, I’m fun at parties.) I decided to test this assertion, for which
Also working on a complex post about the logical fallacies I see in political discussion, both on my blog and elsewhere. A lot of false equivalency and “No True Scotsman” arguments from conservatives anxious to distance themselves from the statements of their own leadership, and the behaviors of their activists. Requires more time and attention than I have before Day Jobbery this morning to finish, especially given how much I slept.
I swear, one thing I will embrace the most, post-chemo, is a return to my normal sleep schedule. Gah.
Meanwhile, you may shop as usual. No need to return to your homes.
Posted: 4:55 am Thu March 25 2010 | Comments(0) |
Your Thursday moment of zen.
19th century priestly vestments, Old Mission State Park, outside Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. © 2006, 2010, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 4:44 am Thu March 25 2010 | Comments(0) |
DNA identifies new ancient human dubbed ‘X-woman’ — Scientists have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human through analysis of DNA from a finger bone unearthed in a Siberian cave. The time traveller’s wife’s wife!
Hostility towards a scientific consensus: A sign of a crank — Sign of a crank, or a Republican.
Kristallnacht, Revisited — Making Light on the politics of organized window-breaking.
Lying Liberal Liars and their Loathsome Lies — The Edge of the American West on conservative views of history. This stuff would be funny if it weren’t going into textbooks to be taught to unsuspecting children.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032500006.html — Senate Republicans have successfully identified two minor violations of reconciliation rules in the final piece of the health-care package. The violations will force the Senate to change the reconciliation bill and ship it to the House of Representatives for final passage. The ideologues and dead-enders win a round in their quest to restore pre-existing conditions, lifetime coverage limitations and strip insurance coverage from America’s children.
?otD: Have you seen them buried in a sheltered place in this town?
Posted: 4:42 am Thu March 25 2010 | Comments(0) |
There’s a new poll coming out today which appears to back up what the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll said a few weeks ago. As you may recall, at the time GOP leaders and pundits reacted angrily, saying the poll was meant to make them look stupid.
The lede on the Harris poll is “Majority of Republicans: Obama is a Muslim”.
Confidential to GOP in America: When you tell your followers that the president is a Muslim, a Socialist, and that he pals around with terrorists, you look stupid. When they believe you, your followers look stupid. When the real world notices this stupidity, you look stupid.
No one made you look stupid but yourselves.
Brighten up, Republicans. Your media strategy has been a success. People believe all those lies you’ve been feeding them for years. A significant portion of this country is convinced we have a Muslim Socialist Nazi fascist terrorist traitor in the White House. And many of them carry guns, for bonus fun! Never mind what any of those words actually mean, or how internally contradictory they are. Never mind what the actual facts on the ground are. Your message has succeeded wildly.
It’s not looking stupid. It’s sowing what you reap. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live in this country.
Crazy isn’t looking like such a great electoral strategy these days, is it?
Maybe you should try, you know, facts. Ideas. Governance instead of politics. Reality instead of rhetoric. But that passion that Beck and Limbaugh inspire is a powerful drug, isn’t it? Hard to kick the buzz, hard to lose that “king of the world” feeling when the mob is shouting your name as their savior.
This is what Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes set out to do almost forty years ago. Demonize the opposition, activate the base, and turn the media. Hope you like our country now, conservative America.
You broke it, but we all have to buy it.
Posted: 4:56 am Wed March 24 2010 | Comments(4) |
Odd day yesterday. The tail of the cold hung on. (Still here today, too.) Spent the day in a foul mood that eventually degraded to grumpiness, as everyone around me was kind. I probably still owe apologies to both
And of course, I got my contrib copies of Pinion yesterday! The book lays down next Tuesday, and I’m having my reading/signing at the Beaverton Powell’s next Thursday. Yay!
Took a Lorazepam last night to try to get the sleep situation righted. Chemo infusion six is Friday, and I can’t go into it exhausted. I can’t go into the infusion center at all if I haven’t shaken this cold. Slept shorter than I intended, thanks to various urgent communiques from my lower GI, but I got good, solid sleep when I did. Physical therapy this morning for my left rotator cuff (nothing to do with the cancer), and then Day Jobbery, with hopefully more writing to come this afternoon.
Posted: 4:44 am Wed March 24 2010 | Comments(0) |