February 2011
This week’s tv shows →
Saturday is the day that I catch up on the previous week’s tv shows, while at work. So yesterday I watched Fringe, 30 Rock, Hellcats, The Vampire Diaries, and Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.
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More in the way of soup →
1. M appears to be coming down with something. He’s complaining of a sore throat and is lying in my bed looking pale and tragic. He’s got coloring which is most typically described as “Irish” — red…
Wednesday evening is for cooking →
1. It’s possible that my body no longer processes lactose the way it used to. Some dietary testing was done, and the results were strongly suggestive, let’s say. Yes. Let’s leave it at that.
So,…
The Native Star and steamfeminism →
The 2010 Nebula Award nominees were announced today, including among their number M. K. Hobson’s The Native Star.
I just finished The Native Star, on a friend’s recommendation, and quite liked…
Briefly, snow →
Someone I follow on Twitter has started simply tweeting “#fimbulwinter” as the only real, sane response to the weather. I got to work yesterday in terrible driving conditions and stayed the night….
Reviewing Voice →
I wrote up my review of Carla Speed McNeil’s latest Finder collection, Voice, for Fantastic Fangirls.
I really cannot stress enough how there is something for everyone in Finder. I mean, you…
Wednesday morning is here →
1. Around 8:00 last night I got a call from my friend Nancy Clue. Her wee cat, Madeline, was ill. I live less than a mile from the emergency vet hospital, so she swung by and I took them over there….
Feed, by Mira Grant →
Neuromancer did not foretell the future. William Gibson’s novel, the work that brought “cyberpunk” out of the short stories and fringe elements of SF and into the limelight, it did not come true….
Eight is no longer little →
K is eight years old today. She’s not a “little” kid anymore, really. I mean, I can remember things from my life when I was eight years old, and in those memories I was a fully comprehending person,…
History: The Persian Army
So I made the terrible mistake of trying to watch the movie Prince of Persia last night. I made it about twelve minutes in before realizing I was not in the right mindframe to watch the film, and stopped. I mean, first of all, there’s the whole whitewashing issue in the casting, which I could not stop seeing. But secondly, I’ve been reading Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at...
Plot- or character-driven →
So, here’s a thing about storytelling. By and large, I tend to prefer stories in which the plot happens because of who the characters are, rather than plots that just happen and to which the…
Bad Romance: Kelly Sue DeConnick On SPIDER-MAN &... →
Spidey and Black Cat 2.0: Well, one demonically-assisted annulment later, Spidey’s a single boy again, and enjoys the odd hook-up with Felicia…who insists on keeping it casual, and more importantly, his not telling her his real name and leaving the mask on. What’s more unsettling, that she insists on this or that Spidey goes along with it?
DeConnick: “That is unsettling? Seriously? Have you...
Happy Valentine’s Day! →
1. The kids, with J’s assistance, got me some dark chocolate for Valentine’s Day. Yay! I feel vaguely bad, as I did not help them get *her* anything, but that’s alright. They got me an enormous…
Starting my Wiscon homework →
Every year around this time I start preparing for Wiscon. I start thinking about the panels I want to be on, mentally making notes for what I want to talk about. And I start reading books just for…
Three things make a post →
1. Second draft of the steampunk spiritualism story is off to beta readers. I am continually thankful for the awesome community of intelligent, articulate editors I met through writing fanfiction.
2. I am up to my eyeballs in trying to read through everything on TVTropes that might possible be related to the trope I want to add. And reading up on how to add tropes.
“I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they...”
– Tina Fey (via hardlyart)
Intergalactic bounty hunters →
1. I truly do not understand the disapproval and ire I saw on Twitter and blogs about the Superbowl performance of the Black Eyed Peas. I mean, clearly their monitors weren’t working right and they…
Saturday miscellane →
1. I’ve been getting up most mornings this week and checking Al-Jazeera on my Roku player. N said, a few days back, he wonders if this will be the news event that makes the U.S. realize Al-Jazeera…
The goal →
My kids are old enough that, on mornings that J and I aren’t feeling well, they can get ready on their own. Sure, it takes them longer than it does when one of us is riding herd, but it gets done….
Available in US! Batgirl and Wonder Woman boy...
dcwomenkickingass:
A lovely, smart reader has pointed out that you can order these in the States!
Here you go!
I wonder if my daughter would like these …
History: From "American Lightning"
“By the time the telegram arrived in Los Angeles, the two prisoners had been hidden away. They were not taken to police headquarters or to the Cook County jail. They were not allowed to contact lawyers. The Chicago district attorney’s office did not know about their arrest. In fact, they had not been formally charged with any crime. On Billy’s instructions, they had been...
Hey, that’s a girl! →
Before the Bechdel test, when I was a kid, I had a simple measure for whether I was going to watch a tv show or movie. Was there a girl? A regular cast member who had lines every week, and who…
History: From the beginning
However often we try as a nation to forget it, domestic terrorism has been a part of U.S. history from the beginning. The Whiskey Rebellion, John Brown, the Labor movement bombings of 1911, the Wall Street bombing of 1920, the Oklahoma City bombing — I’m watching a documentary on the Weather Underground right now. And, as far as I can tell, the Weathermen did what they did because...
History: Insurance
Most of the damage from the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was officially recorded as damage from the fire. Insurers covered fire damage, but not earthquake damage, and after all was said and done, who could tell, anyway?
