Echoes in a Hollow Space

I hope to return to real blogging soon, but it’s been hella busy. In the meantime, here’s another one of those numbered thingies:

1. Listening to the graduate students around here make excuses to their professors as to why they haven’t completed their coursework, it strikes me that not much has changed since elementary school. They’ve just found more sophisticated, elaborate, and convoluted ways of saying, “The dog ate my homework.”

2. I’m on chapter eleven of the read-through of Venus in Transit. I should be much further along as I hadn’t intended to do any restructuring or heavy editing, but you know how it goes. A couple (or more) scenes that just had to be rewritten, language desperately needed de-clunkifying, things had to be looked up and pondered… There’s still plenty more that needs fixing, no worries, but it’s amazing to me how many of the smaller threads of plot and characterization got left untied. I’ll definitely deal with those in the next draft.

3. I’ve acquired a sudden re-fascination with cunning folk, witchery, and folk medicine, et al. lately. I’ve been reading books and scouring JSTOR for articles. (I love JSTOR. Thank goodness for institutional subscriptions.) If research interest is an indicator of which novel my right brain next wants to write, things are looking good for my proto-novel, Time in a Bottle, the idea based in part on my novella, “Sealed with a Curse.” That novella involved an 18th century cunning man, infidelity, wastrelism, and a witch’s bottle. The novel version carries forward to the 21st century descendants of some of the folks involved in that affair. And maybe time travel. Or maybe not.

4. I’m wondering if a subscription to Netflix would be worth it to me since I rarely am in the mood to watch a movie at home more than once or twice a month? I used to devour movies at a massive rate, but I lost the love somewhere along the way. The $8.99 one would definitely be sufficient, but I’m not sure I’d get my money’s worth even then.

5. Come the Singularity, I suspect I will not be allowed on the lifeboat. I suspect I will be okay with that. Utopian visions rarely turn out well for humanity at large. I have zero confidence that techo-utopians will be any better at it than every other millennial movement that has wrecked humanity in the past. I am not a Luddite. I really do enjoy living in the bright, shiny techno-age—but sweeping mass social engineering never works. That’s the lesson of history. That’s the lesson of any close study of human nature. Power corrupts, even utopian techno power—and besides, these yahoos aren’t even trying to be egalitarian. This is all about ego and rich mostly whitefolk trying to escape the filthy masses.

In case you missed this incredibly dramatic link over at lilithsaintcrow... A riveting moment-by-moment attempt to save two Russian girls from possible exploitation and sex trafficking in NYC.

The Internet sometimes does live up to its reputation.

I can see why Shakespeare didn't use this scene in Antony and Cleopatra. The vision of Antony being hoisted on a crane seems more like something out of Monty Python.

My, how the future has changed. Paleo-Future is a great blog.

Oh no! An entire web site devoted to weird. Everybody run for your lives!

Here's a sad and mysterious article about a long lost horse. The follow-up article can be read here.

Mona Lisa had high cholesterol? I suppose next you'll tell me that babies only smile because they have gas. Experts! They spoil everything.

We like to think we are the result of a steady, upward climb of hominid evolution, that we are the apex of the apes. But that's because few people have heard of our older, smarter brother, "Mycroft" Boskops.

I'd seen stories about lost civilizations in the Amazon before on Discovery or History or one of those cable channels: the "garden cities" mentioned in this article. But it looks like the civilizations were far more complex and widespread. What was fascinating about those shows was that the journal of the first Spanish explorer to go up the Amazon told of fabulous cities. He escaped with his life but most of his men died and when the Spanish returned several years later, there was no trace of any such civilizations. He was branded a liar until recent archaeology proved that he didn't exaggerate at all. Scientists believe that the diseases he and his men carried wiped out thousands of indigenous people and the jungle reclaimed their civilization.

Do you think kitchen chores are endless, never completely done, a continuum that has been the one constant of your domestic life? You have no idea just how long that continuum has gone on.

My only comment: I hope they washed this before they stuck it in the box.

The Autry Museum is something of a cultural treasure here in L.A. I was skeptical when Gene Autry funded it, but he wanted it to be a serious museum taking on serious issues about the West, the Native American experience, and colonization, stretching that definition quite broadly. They've had some great shows. This "transgender" exhibit looks to be no exception.

I know this winter seems bad, but hopefully it won't be like the Great White Hurricane.

Yeah? And your point is?

I've become the links queen lately. I belong to several feeds and recently they've been hitting the strange sauce rather heavily. I'm going to try to confine the link salad to one or two days a week because Lawd knows ya'll have got quite enough to read as it is. But some of this stuff was too delicious not to pass along in hopes it tickles somebody's imagination.

Like this eerie tale of bones found in a basement and ghost hunters who claim an apparition showed them where to look.

Or this scholar who has come up with a method of decoding the Voynich Manuscript which has puzzled folks for centuries. Alas, her methodology seems to work quite well and is disappointingly mundane. Where are the arcane mysteries of yesteryear, I asks ya?

My synopsis here couldn't possibly top the headline for this article: "Sorry I ate your great-great grandpa." I think some of the comments have it right, though. Westerners have quite a lot to apologize for themselves.

Another sad tale of ancient Indian burials being disturbed in a cavalier manner.

You could not pay me to move into this subdivision. Respect, people. It isn't that hard to figure out.

Under the category of Neato Kobeato! you can now visit Pompeii through Google Street View.

I have really got to stop reading these articles that require hankies.

Or maybe I'm just a soft touch these days. I prefer it to the cynicism. Cynicism is far too easy, I think. Hope is the very hardest thing to maintain—but hardly a fool's errand. And so worth it when it proves itself true.

Random quote of the day:


"I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak."

—Kurt Vonnegut, interview, The Paris Review, Issue 69, Spring 1977



This is a great interview, which you can read here. Thanks to lilithsaintcrow for pointing her blog readers to it in The Hack Manifesto.




( Illustrated version. )




Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Not only archaeologically incompetent, but incompetent in terms of crime scene investigation. It really makes you wonder what goes on in some people's heads.

"It was the excrement that tipped the balance," admitted Philip Womack, assistant editor of the Literary Review, at the time.

It's not often you read a sentence like that in conjunction with an award being granted. If you missed it over at booksquare be sure to pop over (if you'll pardon the expression) to read about the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award.

Always a good time reading the excerpts of the nominees.

In case you writers out there missed this over at editorialass, here's a bit of inspiration about persistence.