{"id":1764,"date":"2011-01-09T13:05:06","date_gmt":"2011-01-09T21:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2011-03-31T15:47:39","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T23:47:39","slug":"pictures-postscripts-performance-pimpage-pus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1764","title":{"rendered":"Pictures, Postscripts, Performance, Pimpage, & Pus…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…Being not the name of the most unfortunately-named law firm in history, but rather a collection of reasons explaining my disappearance from the crawl this past month while we entered the second decade of the twenty-first century (still without personal jet-packs, I note with ongoing disgust).<\/p>\n

When last we left the ‘crawl I was en route to Germany, where I ended up posing with Richard Morgan and a bouncer from the local fetish club:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m the guy in the center.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This was actually the first time I’d met Richard in the flesh; Crytek put us both up in Mordor’s finest hotel, where we ate and drank and tried to figure out how many Euros to feed the mass-transit system for a cross-town fare. If anything, Richard is more charming and eloquent in person than he is on paper; having been introduced to the man largely through the secret diaries of Takeshi Kovacs, I was half-expecting every second word out of his mouth to be “fuck”. That actually turned out to be me.<\/p>\n

Upon my return I spent the whole bloody holiday getting moved into the new digs, where after four years I have a proper office again, not to mention a home for the pet scrambler Siri Keeton snuck back through customs on his way home.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I also discovered that “The Things” has now made it into four Best-of-Year anthologies: Gardner Dozois’s Best SF 28<\/em> and the third iteration of Allan Kaster’s audio series The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction<\/em>, in addition to the two reprints I crowed about last month. That was nice.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Performance and Pimpage. This is kind of short notice I guess, but ChiZine<\/a> \u2014 microgods of small-press speculative fiction, the same guys who held last fall’s SpecFic Colloquium<\/a><\/em> and who seem to be congenitally incapable of releasing a bad product \u2014 are hosting the first instalment of their reading and workshop series, “Midwinter Tales<\/a>” this coming Tuesday evening (i.e., January 11th) at Hart House<\/span> [update\/correction:<\/strong> Augusta House, not Hart. \u00a0On Augusta Avenue. \u00a0Apparently the lighting is crap.] \u00a0here in downtown TO. Three of us will be reading: Karin Lowachee, Caitlin Sweet, and myself. I cannot speak for Karin or Caitlin (although admittedly I frequently do<\/em> speak for Caitlin, just to piss her off), but I myself might be trying something a bit more experimental this time around. You’ll just have to show up to find out what I mean; suffice to say, it’ll be something never read in public before (and, if it doesn\u2019t go well, possibly never again afterwards).<\/p>\n

I think there’s also some deal where you can have drinks with us for an hour beforehand if you’re a student. Or if you’re willing to sacrifice your left gonad on a platter. I’m not entirely sure of those details. You’ll have to check out their facebook page<\/a> to get the deets on that.<\/p>\n

What’s left, what’s left, what’s \u2014 oh, right. Pus.<\/p>\n

Anybody know what this thing is?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It appeared on the inside of my right calf about a week ago. It’s kind of a teat that dispenses bloody pus instead of milk. At first I thought it might be a message from aliens, because it looks a little like the Trifid Nebula. But then other smaller copies started erupting on my other leg \u2014 so if it is<\/em> aliens, they are very small and building a perimeter below the knees. Once they’ve established that beachhead, they’ll presumably advance up the body, rotting my flesh as they go. I hope to get laid at least one more time before that happens.<\/p>\n

Suggestions to date include an infected furbuncle (whatever that is), lymphoma, or the bite of a brown recluse spider. Can’t really rule any of them out at this point except the whole spider thing (although I did<\/em> play footsies with Scott Westerfeld a couple of months back, and as I recall he’s had some bad arachnoid experiences downunder. Maybe I picked up a hitchhiking larvae or something). The crimson corona might have receded a bit over the past day or so; or perhaps I’ve just gotten so used to it that it no longer jumps out at me when my legs glue themselves to the sheets overnight. \u00a0Anyway, I’ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n

Or maybe not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…Being not the name of the most unfortunately-named law firm in history, but rather a collection of reasons explaining my disappearance from the crawl this past month while we entered the second decade of the twenty-first century (still without personal jet-packs, I note with ongoing disgust). When last we left the ‘crawl I was en […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,18,35,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crytekcrysis","category-misc","category-on-the-road","category-public-interface","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1967,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}