Your Tuesday moment of zen.
Me and ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
shelly_rae last weekend at Mother of the Child’s birthday party. © 2010 M. Lake, all rights reserved, reproduced with permission.
Posted: 3:51 am Tue February 09 2010 | Comments(0) |
I make #1 on a top ten list in Sweden — Ugliest fantasy writers, but I’ll take my honors where I find them. (And for the record, I think this is hilarious.)
Kelly McClymer is very smart about ebook inventory costs — In my comments section.
Scrivener’s Error on disintermediation, Amazon vs Macmillan and Google Books — Some dense, worthwhile thinking. Go read.
An alternative, very pro-Kindle view of Amazon vs Macmillan — A lot said here, I don’t agree with much of it, but worth the read.
On Sleekness — Pablo Defendini (of Tor.com fame) on production techniques, creative destruction, and professional sleekness. Fascinating stuff.
Bookstores may have to turn page — A depressing column about bookstores. (Thanks to garyomaha.)
A writing career becomes harder to scale — An essay in the Los Angeles on what I call psychotic persistence as a critical success factor in writing. In the 20 years that I’ve been publishing books, I have fared better than most. I sold my first novel while still in graduate school and published six more books, pretty much one every three years, like clockwork. I have made my living as a writer. Obviously not writing in my genre…
British airship R33 in hangar — This photo from x planes has a nicely ominous cast.
An Early Warning System for Cancer — Autoantibodies could alert doctors to cancer development. A little late for me, but interesting.
Revisionaries: How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks. — More on how conservative, Christianist nonsense enters your child’s school, no matter where you live or what the truth actually is.
?otD: Read a good book lately? What format?
Posted: 3:42 am Tue February 09 2010 | Comments(1) |
Your Monday moment of zen.
Guest photo “March of the Ents”, Kinichna, Mayan ruins near Bacalar in the Yucatan. © 2007, 2010 Simbalee.
This work by Simbalee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 5:31 am Mon February 08 2010 | Comments(1) |
lonfiction with a thought experiment for writers — Concerning motivation and unsold words.
Amazon, Macmillan Settle Price Dispute — The Wall Street Journal with more lazy, single sourced pro-Amazon reporting. One of the reporters replied back to my query about their coverage by telling me they were waiting for the iPad release to see how the price increase fell out, without acknowleding my point about the lack of coverage of dynamic pricing or Macmillan’s perspective.
Galleycat with a brief round up of the quiet ending of the Amazon-Macmillan Standoff — Given a continued lack of public statements on the part of Amazon’s senior management, I’m not convinced this is over. I continue very disappointed ghat both the popular media and the general media are treating this almost exclusively as a “price increase: story, when the reality is much more nuanced.
Fritz Lang: Behind the Scenes with a Master Science Fiction Filmmaker — Wow. (Via @pablod.)
Vintage dating techniques from the 1930s — Wow. The past really is another country. (Via vintagephoto here.)
Sun halo over Cambodia — APOD with an alien sky right here on earth.
Scaramanga’s flying car — I was impressed as hell by this when I was 12.
Secret Caves of the Lizard People — Strange Maps with some downright Dero history of hidden Los Angeles.
?otD: Have you danced the Lorazepam tango?
Posted: 5:28 am Mon February 08 2010 | Comments(2) |
Your Sunday moment of zen.
Classic gas pump, Virgelle, Montana. © 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: 10:50 am Sun February 07 2010 | Comments(0) |
Amazon and the pipeline — Anna Tambour is wise about the Amazon issues, specifically from the international perspective.
Hey, 1997 – Macmillan called, they want the Net Book Agreement back — WaPo with a contrarian view of Macmillan’s moves against Amazon.
As I start to write my latest book, I fear for the future of publishing —The Guardian with views on disintermediation. I submit that the role of publishers in the story telling cycle is not intermediation in the usual sense of distribution, as the publisher provides significant value add.
Kulula Air with a rather novel paint job — (Via x planes.)
Iowa Pride Network: House Republicans seek to bully gay students — Des Moines, IA – February 4 – House Representatives Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig and Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, co-sponsored legislation introduced today which seeks to exclude LGBT students from the 2007 Iowa Safe Schools Law. Stay classy, conservative America, that’s why we love you. And can anyone tell me the alleged logic behind this?
AP photo shows Palin cheated, read notes off her hand at Teabagger conference — I’m not sure why that’s cheating, but it’s very seventh grade. Which fits with the entire ethos of the Tea Party movement. More here. Note that Palin has mockd Obama for using a teleprompter. Using your hand is an improvement?
Saying ‘Constitution’ while meaning ‘Lawlessness’: Palin attacks Obama — “Constitutional” is one of those conservative code words that means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. Much like “original intent”, which winks at the 9th amendment, disregards the 1st and worships the second. Intellectual consistency was never a conservative strong point, but Palin transcends the absurd.
?otD: Can you tell me why the bells are ringing? Nothing’s happened in a million years.
Posted: 10:42 am Sun February 07 2010 | Comments(1) |
Your Saturday moment of zen.
Sinclair dinosaur, Great Falls, Montana. © 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: 9:13 am Sat February 06 2010 | Comments(0) |
One of the world’s oldest languages dies — A sad and fascinating article that eventually led to me an even more fascinating Wiki on the Sentinelese people. Some serious First Contact stuff going on there, for you skiffy types.
Lucy Knisley on the comforts of life — I really like this piece.
Children playing at air war — A strange photo from x planes.
I met a character out of Dickens — A love letter to vanishing London from Roger Ebert.
War of the Worlds: 1905 — Detroit, with the moon towers that later wound up in Austin, one near my old house.
Lusi Mud Volcano: Indonesia — From NASA’s Earth Observatory.
The Big Hold-Up — Daniel Larison on the Shelby Senate hold on Obama nominees. I’m rapidly becoming a big fan of Larison, even though we don’t agree on much, because he’s honest about GOP policies and politics. Almost literally no one else on the Right is. Look at the conservative outrage over Obama’s handling of the Underwear Bomber, which happens to be virtually identical to Bush’s handling of the Shoe Bomber, which conservative commentators were perfectly fine with. Larison doesn’t fall into that “Democrats did it, there it’s bad; Republicans did it, therefore it’s good” trap. I am learning a lot from him about both political analysis and rhetoric.
Harold Ford Jr., Michael Steele spar on issues during Arkansas appearance — “Steele attacked President Obama for letting the Bush tax cuts expire for families who make more than $250,000.’Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money,’” And this is the party that a significant percentage poor and middle class American votes with? The reporting claims this is a joke, but the statement is completely consistent with GOP politics and policy. Confidential to anyone in America making less than six figures: the GOP does not have your interests at heart, and they’re happy to say so quite openly. (And yes, I know I’ve been taken in by a couple of parody links. But when the parody is indistinguishable from the everyday rhetoric, pace Colbert, isn’t that a symptom of a much deeper problem?)
?otD: Did she feed you tea and oranges that come all the way from China?
Posted: 9:07 am Sat February 06 2010 | Comments(0) |
The chemo infusion number three was harder today than the first two. Not sure if this is cumulative effect, or a ripple from the massive sleepfails earlier this week. I am feeling rough and ragged tonight, and have made rather an ass of myself once or twice, including to calendula_witch.
Dad, Mom and shelly_rae took me over there. tillyjane was there a while. lillypond likewise. H— dropped by with some goodies. ( We watched a barge being launched from the shipward next to the clinic. )
Mother of the Child’s extended family is (mostly) in town (for the first time EVAR) to celebrate her n0th birthday. It was officially last Tuesday. She has a huge shindig tomorrow night which I will likely not make it to, much to mutual sadness. If I have the energy, I’ll put in an appearance, but it’s a 45-minute round trip to the ballroom she rented, and starts at 7 pm. Which is pretty much a deal killer for me given my energy levels these days, especially while I’m still on the chemo pump.
So I went next door for a little while to visit with various in-laws and cousins. the_child still has a bad cold, so she stayed well away from me. It was the right thing to do, but it made us both sad.
I have been told that my various blood counts are holding up remarkably well. But the leading indicator for white blood cells is down as expected, so in a few more weeks, the flatlining of my immune system will be far more serious. I have to treat it now as-if, even though we aren’t quite there yet.
Also, ironically, I got the first billing letter on my chemo sessions today. $16,900 for pharmaceutical and lab costs, exclusive of billing doctor costs, facility costs and nursing care (none of which I’ve seen yet). Call it $18,000 per session for twelve sessions. There’s $216,000 spent this winter and spring. Thank Ghu I have good health insurance, but my direct and indirect out of pocket is hitting me to the tune of $12,000 per year these past two years, and I don’t expect it to be any easier this year. That’s a sucking huge hole in my cash flow. Frankly, I supported healthcare reform years before I got sick. But now with lifetime coverage caps and pre-existing conditions, and my out of pocket expenses, it’s personal. Deadly personal.
Oi. So much to deal with. Stoopid cancer.
Posted: 7:26 pm Fri February 05 2010 | Comments(0) |
Every time I go to the infusion center, I take the cancer mail and go through it there while I’m in the big chair. You guys are amazing. Thank you for the hats and spoons and blanket.
( More awesome gifts from friends and fans... )
Posted: 1:09 pm Fri February 05 2010 | Comments(3) |