Nothing hugely substantial today; just a quick signal boost on three fronts. Strange Bedfellows First up: an anthology of political science fiction (“Where ideology is a character!”), a crowdsourced project to be edited by Ottawa insider (and personal con buddy) Hayden Trenholm. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that if there’s one thing [...]
I don’t have any pictures of my father. I just realized that now, two days after he died sitting on a toilet in frigid fucking Edmonton, 2700 km from home. He was visiting my brother. He was supposed to be back by December 21st, we were going to go out for dinner before Christmas. But [...]
I was never much of a family person during my first five decades; anyone familiar with the family of my childhood will understand why I spent a half-century running in horror from the prospect of having to deal with another one of the fucking things. As a result, I’m a bit of a virgin when [...]
This is for Steve. And Private Quentin. And whoever else has nothing else to do but argue on Amazon’s fora on a Thursday night, when you all should be out drinking (which is what I’m doing, although fortunately the Duke of Somerset has WiFi). I’m not Quentin. I’m just me. Steve Ptasznik should lay off.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Apparently I don’t fit in with the Brits or the Irish, on account of my nose. Although someone who whose avatar looks like Trinity describes me as North Atlantid, which sounds pretty close.
Two things on the agenda today, the first being a brief announcement: apparently Crysis: Legion has made the finals for some kind of award called the Scribe. It’s handed out by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, in categories that include original works and adaptations, general fiction and speculative. Legion‘s been nominated under the [...]
Two months ago my brother Jon — my senior by eight years — suffered a stroke which bled into his cerebellum. The time since has been, as his wife Tracy described it, a roller coaster: neurosurgeons reluctant to operate while Jon was on heart meds, cardiologists unwilling to take him off those meds for fear [...]
Russian for “God”, I’ve been told. Phonetically at least. Also British for “toilet”. But here, now, it’s an acronym: Big Orange Guy or Beloved Old Goof or Barrel O’Greatness. He is not, as you can see, a great beauty. He may in fact be the homeliest mammal in all of southern Ontario. And we [...]
I’m on my way to Vancouver for a week (no, I can’t tell you why just yet — hopefully soon). And I gotta say, looking at the weather forecast I am not happy. I lived in Vancouver for over a decade, and among its many pleasures was the torrent of cherry blossoms and the t-shirt [...]
I was going start this off by claiming that I don’t often pimp those in my own social circle — to try and convey the sense that I’m Mr. Objective and totally averse to conflicts of interest, I guess — but when I thought about that for about two seconds I realized it was bullshit. [...]
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