No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons (Re-reloaded)

One last miscellaneous grab-bag before oblivion, folks:

Parsec:
As in, the award. This is old news (it was announced late last month, I think), but “The Things” — or rather, Kate Baker’s wondrous, melancholy performance of “The Things” — has been nominated for the Parsec Award under “Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form)”. Kate squeed [...]

This whole writing retreat thing is stranger than I remember it. This is the approach to my bedroom.  My bedroom door is the pale green thing with the poster taped across it:

For those of you with teensy monitors, here’s a closeup of the sign outside said approach:

Yes, you read that right.  My bedroom is [...]

I go running in the Don Valley.  And something did kind of sting my face the other day, as I brushed past a low-hanging branch.  Felt like a nettle.  A two-meter-high nettle…
I thought Genesis was just ripping off Wyndham’s Triffids.   I thought it was just standard seventies prog-rock science fiction…

(Yes, this is a cover. [...]

A dispatch from a place we haven’t quite got to yet:
A newsfeed running in one corner of his display served up a
fresh riot from Hongcouver. State-of-the-art security systems gave
their lives in defense of glassy spires and luxury enclaves—
defeated not by clever hacks or superior technology, but by the
sheer weight of flesh against their muzzles. The [...]

They could have held the whole damn G20 summit in Huntsville, like the G8 immediately before it; the infrastructure was already in place, after all. But they didn’t. They decided to stick it in the heart of downtown Toronto, and then build an indoor wading pool with fake plastic trees and wall-sized pictures [...]

I don’t suppose any of you know anything about this?:

I found it in my laptop bag the other day. I have no idea how long it was lurking in there. It might be there yet if my accursed Dell laptop hadn’t finally crapped out beyond any hope of redemption, forcing me to clean [...]

So, I see that some of you have noticed the endearing footage of the kleptopus making off with some hapless diver’s video camera. (For those who don’t follow the endlessly proliferating comment threads from previous posts, the smoking-gun is here.1) Oh yes, how cute.
But how many of you have noticed how closely this act [...]

I was planning on getting back to science this time around: an opinion piece on gengineered non-suffering livestock, perhaps, or a review of recent progress in telematter technology. But someone died last night, a distant member of my immediate family: someone I ended contact with years ago, save for one brief shining [...]

“Comparing moms to an octopus would be like pitting an army of savages against one well-oiled gatling gun sitting atop a hill. The mothers would charge the hill, hurling rocks and sticks; they’d roar righteous, compassionate battle cries of warriors who believe they are fighting for the betterment of humanity. They’d truly fight from the [...]

I’ve spewed these shrimp from both ends now
From front and back, and still somehow,
It’s shrimp gone rotten I recall
I really can’t eat shrimmmmmp…
At allllllll…
To those who were expecting to hear back from me early this week, my apologies. I think the worst has been purged.