Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad, convention edition

x planes with a wing walker photo — That’s one category of stunt that has always blown my mind.

Stainless goddess — Oh, the cultural signifiers in this image…

Language Log is either funny or cranky about the Twitter — Frankly, I can’t tell.

The spell of the cell — Art guru James Gurney on the sociology and physiology of cell phone use.

All is vanity — More on the usual conservative misrepresentations of, well, everything. In this case, Obama’s character.

Cantor tells Netanyahu that he will “check” the White House — Now, just imagine if the tables were turned. Think back to 2007. Imagine if Nancy Pelosi sat down with the President of France and told him that she would serve as a check on the Bush Administration. What if she followed that up by noting the 200-plus-year-old special relationship that NATO ally France has had with the United States since LaFayette? She’d still be fighting the treason charges in court today.

?otD: What was your favorite con badge, ever?

11/14/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (2,600 new words on Kalimpura)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo/post-op stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, emotional distress)
Currently reading: Between books

Tags: Cool, Culture, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics

Posted: 8:16 am Sun November 14 2010 | Comments(0) |

[cancer] The port removal

Yesterday morning I got up at my usual hour (4 am), exercised, blogged, then hit the Day Jobbe earlier than normal (5:30 am) for some critical meetings. I finally got myself over to the Witchnest about 7:30 am, where I promptly popped two Lorazepam (a/k/a Ativan) to deal with my deep anxiety about the port removal procedure.

My fear was based on the fact that this would be done in office with anaesthesia but no sedation. I didn’t really want to watch a doctor go fishing inside my chest just below my line of sight.

By the time got me to the clinic, I couldn’t walk in a straight line and my balance was wonky. In a word, I was looped. This was the first time I’d taken two of those at once, and I’m not sure I’d care to repeat the experience.

The procedure happened in an oversized exam room while watched. I couldn’t see anything, they’d put surgical drapes around the site and besides, my eyes don’t bend down that far. Thanks to the Lorazepam, I didn’t much care.

Everything took about forty minutes, and involved a surgeon and nurse fishing around in my chest with four hands and a cluster of instruments. Though they had anaesthetized the area with a local, I could still feel pressure, tissues being shifted, and the occasional crackle-pop of the electric cauterizer, along with a lovely barbecue smell. reports being able to see wisps of smoke during the procedure.

Basically, it felt like they trenched my chest and went digging. At least one of the anchor stitches had been overgrown with a caul of tissue, and so took some work to free. When the port finally came out, they showed it to me, though despite repeated requests I was not permitted to keep it for a souvenir. Once I was closed up, the dressing was about the size of a band-aid.

My question at that point was what the heck happened to that trench in my chest big enough for four hands and instruments.

bundled me back to the Witchnest where I passed out for over two hours, sleeping off the stress of the procedure and the double dose of Lorazepam. We still managed to make OryCon by 2 or 2:30, and I lasted til almost 10:30, with little more than a dull ache in my chest.

So, well, I’m no longer a cyborg, nor a Harkonnen techno-serf. For now, I am free.

And shortly, back to OryCon. See some, all or none of you there.

Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Conventions, Food, Funny, health

Posted: 8:53 am Sat November 13 2010 | Comments(4) |

[books|writing] Kalimpura Progriss Riport, More Thereof

This morning, I crossed the 50,000 word mark for November’s new word count production on Kalimpura, with this morning’s writing adding 2,600 words to finish up at 54,200. (Between medical needs and OryCon, yesterday entailed no writing at all.)

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo for two reasons. One, this manuscript wasn’t eligible. 3,200 words of it were written in October, before my mother’s health issues sidelined me for several weeks. Two, though I am not a NaNo doubter (see various kerfuffles of late), for my own part, every month of the year is NaNo, or should be.

If you’re doing NaNo, I applaud you for engaging with the effort, practicing the ass-in-chair, and putting the words on the page. I’m a big fan of word count and finished drafts. After all, without that raw material, you have nothing to revise or sell.

Meanwhile, some WIP: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Books, Cancer, Conventions, Green, health, Kalimpura, Process, Writing

Posted: 8:43 am Sat November 13 2010 | Comments(0) |

[photos] Your Saturday moment of zen

Your Saturday moment of zen.

More frost on the flowers. © 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.

Tags: flowers, Photos, zen

Posted: 7:32 am Sat November 13 2010 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad for an OryCon weekend

Batman Returns — Drawn! with a really awesome alternative movie poster.

A meeting of solitudes — Roger Ebert follows up his recent post on loneliness with a meditation on the responses he received.

In Chengdu, China, Remaking Sichuan Food — Having eaten in Chengdu, hmmm. (Thanks to Dad.)

Augmented Reality Goggles — New video glasses can produce dazzling special effects, but who’ll wear them? Dept. of SF come to life.

Jonathan Storm: Alaska in Her Shadow — On Sarah Palin’s new reality tv show. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves, and sometimes the jokes are on all of us.

This Week in Innocence: Why the Hell is Kenny Hulshoff Still Practicing Law? — Law and order conservatism, where some innocent go to jail that the rest us might feel safer. Unless you happen to be one of those innocents, of course. Why do so many conservatives never think they will be the one indefinitely jobless, or gravely ill without healthcare coverage, or falsely arrested, or… I’ve argued before that the conservative mindset is fundamentally a failure of empathy. Stories like this only reinforce that view. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

?otD: What was your favorite con badge, ever?

11/13/2010
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (medical follies, convention time)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 245.0
Yesterday’s chemo/post-op stress index: 5/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, emotional distress)
Currently reading: Between books

Tags: Art, China, Cool, Culture, Food, Links, Movies, Personal, Politics, Tech

Posted: 7:30 am Sat November 13 2010 | Comments(1) |

[books] Sunspin

Apropos of nothing in particular, I now have proposed titles for the three books that compromise the Sunspin cycle. Apparently, the projects are queueing in my head.

In order:

• Calamity of So Long A Life
• The Whips and Scorns of Time
• Be All Our Sins Remembered

This time, unlike my last two trilogies, I intend to write it as one continuous, planned arc. With luck, I’ll start drafting in January, take a break in March or April to revise Kalimpura, and then resume to be done with the first draft this project by summer. I figure a minimum of five elapsed (not calendar) months to lay down the first pass of this, and that’s if I write fairly short and at speed.

For those just tuning in, Sunspin is my planned Big Idea space opera, sort of a fusion of contemporary New British and 1970′s psuedofeudalism, with a blue collar tinge and a deep dose of paranoia. So far I’ve published about half a dozen short stories set in this continuity, and have an incomplete (at 70 pages) outline for the trilogy.

And yes, after Sunspin, Original Destiny, Manifest Sin.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Kalimpura, ODMS, Sins, Sunspin, Whips, Writing

Posted: 5:44 am Fri November 12 2010 | Comments(1) |

[photos] Your Friday moment of zen

Your Friday moment of zen.

More frost on the flowers. © 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.

Tags: flowers, Photos, zen

Posted: 5:41 am Fri November 12 2010 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad heads for the clinic again

Best SF likes “On the Human Plan”

The METAtropolis: Cascadia microsite is live — All the details, and some fun goodies there.

People like stuff that you don’t. That’s OK. — Kelly McCullough on genre wars. (Via M. as a blog comment.)

One Underwear Bomb = 10 Million Nudie Pics (The Question of Body Scanner Legality) — More on the new TSA rules, from a fellow unfortunate. (Via and .)

Is the Deficit Commission Serious? — Not hardly. More conservative political posturing with the usual disregard for those pesky true facts.

Our Banana Republic — C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Yep. That definitely explains why “real” America votes Republican.

?otD: Chest port or IV?

11/12/2010
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (5,100 new words, to 51,600 words on Kalimpura)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.25 hours (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 245.4
Yesterday’s chemo/post-op stress index: 5/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, emotional distress)
Currently reading: Between books

Tags: audio, Books, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, reviews, stories, Travel

Posted: 5:39 am Fri November 12 2010 | Comments(0) |

[cancer] The last surgery, for now

Tomorrow morning I have my chest port taken out. It’s an office procedure with anaesthesia but no sedation, and is reportedly trivial. I have been told I can resume normal activity the same day. Nonetheless, I am feeling rather freaky, in some ways more freaky than I did about the major surgeries of the past three years.

At the same time, this is the end of cancer being a daily presence in my life, at least until the next scan. Which means I get five more months of living like there’s another day coming.

So, yeah, Lorazepam will be my friend tomorrow. (After some critical early morning Day Jobbe conference calls.) Then I go to OryCon. Makes for an interesting day, if nothing else.

Tags: Cancer, Conventions, health, Personal, work

Posted: 8:32 pm Thu November 11 2010 | Comments(4) |

[culture] My one comment on the current steampunk kerfuffle

For those of you who complain that the goggles in steampunk do nothing, what, precisely, do the neck ties in Mad Men do?

This post has been brought to you by Cultural Signifiers ‘r Us.

Tags: Culture, media, steampunk, Writing

Posted: 4:38 pm Thu November 11 2010 | Comments(1) |