back in Boston, listing things I’d like to be doing.

So, I’m back here in Allston at my apartment, looking for work and messing about on the internet and reading and hopefully writing some stuff.  I seem to be writing a lot of email recently.  I’ve applied to a number of jobs I’m tagentially qualified to do or think I might be able to get hired to do.  I bought a new laptop that will form my window onto the Internet and a portable, digital information hub for interesting ideas and articles and text and the like that’ll all get mixed around until I actually write some fiction.  I’m also runing Linux on here, so that’s been a whole quality learning experience unto itself.  It’s gotten very easy to use relative to my more abbortive attempts 3 or 4 summers ago.

I’ve found a piece by Warren Ellis on “where ideas come from” that I’ll just quote below in it’s entirety becase it’s brilliant and perverse in a way only he can be:

How It Works

I still get asked with appalling regularity “where my ideas come from.”

Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 2 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea”.

And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.

That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

From my chair.

See, this is the good bit about writing. It’s what keeps you going. It’s the wild rush of “shit, did I think of that?” with all kinds of weird chemicals shunting around your brain and ideas and images and moments and storyforms all opening up snapsnapsnap in your mind, a mass of new and unrealised possibilities.

It’s ten past two in the morning, and I’m completely wired, caught up in the new thing, shivering and laughing and glowing in the dark. Just as well it’s the middle of the night. No-one would be safe from me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats with a glare.

Faster than the speed of anyone.

That’s how it works.

(originally here.)

In other news, I’m headed to Kansas for the Annual SFRA confrence on the 9th, staying in a hotel attached to the confrence center and hopefully absorbing a passable introduction to the scholarship of SF.  I hope also to meet lots of interesting people, I got my first printed and bound issue of the SFRAreview, which I’ll hopefully be published in shortly.  I’ve also got a big stack of comics to read and a number of books.  I’ve also got to fit in some fiction writing in there someplace, one flash fiction story ala 365tomorrows / week doesn’t seem an unreasonable goal.  I’m also hoping to start research and reading in earnest for a long, long paper I’d like to write on Singularity as a Secular Millenial movement, a natural outgrowth of the rise of science and rationalism combined with the rise of secularism and the developement of AI etc. etc.  I could study the subject for a year and get no where conclusive I think.  I’m also hoping (once I charge my camera) to post a new photo here once a day, there’s really no point in curating a seperate photoblog, since having twice as many websites means that twice as many people won’t read it.  Behold, my superior logic.

I also need to do a major overhaul of my use of tags and categories here, I’ve got to file down my use to one and sharpen my use of the other.  or something.  I also need to write about how if you spend more than an hour a day reading things online you’re doing yourself a disservice by not running Flock.

back from India

Hello, dear non-existent readers.  I’m back from India, a bit early.  I’m home in NY for a while, then travelling a bit then going back to Boston and preparing for my trip out to Kansas for the SFRA confrence in Lawrence, I’m very excited about that, it should be a hell of a lot of fun, or so I hope.  After that I’ll have to get serious and find myself a job and a place to live next year.  For the moment though, my only concern is deciding how much time to spend reading every day.  It’s good to be back.

India!

Signing off here, invisible audience.  I’ll be in India for the whole month of June.  If you read this you’ll undoubtable know this already.  Watch this space for pictures when I get back, also look for a link to my review of Charles Stross’ forthcoming Saturn’s Children in the SFRA Review.  See you on the other side.  There’s a small chance I’ll be able to update via twitter, so look for updates in the sidebar, you should check out using the service and following me if you’re interested to know what I’m up to nearly instantly while I’m away.

facebook and gender conventions in English

Have you noticed the use of ‘their’ as a gender neutral ‘his’ and ‘her’ in language? This is the kind of thing I can remember doing in 6th grade when avoiding gender specificity of the person in question to avoid being teased about associating with a girl. I’ve just noticed recently that Facebook does this as a rule when referring to people.

Jane Kelly added “Harold and Maude” to their favorite movies

I can see a number of practical reasons from a computing standpoint. This saves having to hunt in a database somewhere in facebook to see what gender is tied to a name and then put the corresponding his or her, so there’s your practical reason. I think though it points to a more widespread use of ‘their’ as genderless and pointing to an increased need for such a thing or a preference to referring to people without highlighting their gender, though what motivates that is another thing entirely. I’ve found this short history of the use of the single their there, no, I mean, here. It’s an interesting little linguistic resurgence, another mark that we’re slowly and steadily emerging from the repressed and oppressive gender conventions of the Victorian era and afterward.

right now, not thirsty

I’m not thirsty right now, but that’s probably because I drank something like 5 liters of fluids in the last 24 hours. Ever since my kidney surgery a couple of years back I’ve drank a lot more fluids, it’s nice to have organs that are working at what I think is now full capacity, before the surgery my left kidney was working at something like 40% or 60%.

mp3blogging | Anti-Records Week: Part II

Billy Bragg - I Keep Faith
Track 1
Mr. Love & Justice


Ultimately a decent song that I like but am not crazy about. I have also only heard Bragg in his Wilco collaborations in setting music to Woody Guthrie lyrics so I have no gague for this album or this song as far as quality relating to the rest of his catalog. Friday’s Anti- Records submission will be a lot less Woody Guthrie tinged.

blod new plan!

I think I’m going to start putting corrections where I’m too laze [sic] to correct them myself.  This is easier than figuring out how to spell the words correctly or type any slower.