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Saucers. I’m in a coffee shop, drinking coffee out of an oversized teacup and saucer. Cute teacup; it’s all in Russian and there’s a big star on the saucer. No hammer and sickle, though — it’s a cultural Russian thing, not a political Soviet thing. The saucer has a curved edge and a small circle […]

Election. Here’s your rare political post. Bush won. What an idiot. Daschle’s out. I have mixed feelings about that. More GOP seats in Congress. F@#$ me, why don’t we try anarchy for another four years instead? It’ll be survival of the fittest without the smarminess. Why hasn’t Bush been impeached, instead of re-elected? Why, oh,

Aaaaaauuuuuughhhh! It’s that time of year again. Not the holidays. No, it’s that time of year that every amateur writer anticipates and dreads: National Novel Writing Month. I’m not going to write a new novel this year. I’m still working on the one I started January 03. But I am going to try to finish

Flip test: passed! “There was nobody there. Which meant, of course, that somebody was there.” — Suzanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. (Paraphrase) That’s the random quote that made me buy this book. This isn’t a book whose writing makes me jealous. No! Even better. It’s a book whose writing probably makes those writers

Vyser si voko!* How to swear in 165 languages — the Swearosaurus. *Literally, “Shit out your eye!” in Czech.

Laptop. Two days before we were going to start seriously looking for a laptop, a deal we couldn’t pass up occurred at Best Buy. I really don’t know enough to be impressed (other than as a second-hand affair), but I can assure you that people who know enough to be impressed were a) impressed or

Story stuff. I’m still working, just not making as much progress as I thought I would. I figured out something this morning, if you can call digging up more problems figuring something out. Anyway, the beginning of my story is confusing. You start out with more characters than the brain can keep track of, and

Birthday! Ray’s birthday was on Sunday. We took her to Ocean Adventures in Denver, which had many fish. And other stuff, like otters and tigers. Ray and I went over almost the whole thing twice; Lee petered out after the first time through. Birthday presents. The computer Lee’s setting up for Ray isn’t ready yet,

Kids. Brenna’s over for an early mini-birthday party. For some reason, they both run into Ray’s room, and then Brenna comes out. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of the monsters in your room. Shut the door.” Ray shuts the door. Brenna runs around the living room pretending to be a pony. She knocks on

Ramble. Well, not that anyone else is really going to care, but I’m proud of something I’ve figured out recently. Took me ten years to do it. There’s this story by the sci-fi writer Greg Egan called “The Caress” that I read in one of the Year’s Best Science Fiction collections edited by Gardner Dozois.