What's up with Me?

I've been writing and writing, which is why no posting.

Other news: I went in for a EGD, which is what they call it when they run a camera down your gullet to look at your throat and belly and decide if you need surgery to correct your ulcer or not. (Spoilers: Yep.)

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

I may have mentioned to y'all, a few dozen or a few hundred times, that the kid is genderqueer.

And, as you know, Bob, we live in a Red State, and in a severely conservative area, and deeply Evangelical Christian area, of that state.

All this by way of saying that her adolescence has been rough.

Just recently, and once again, she was treated to another adolescent informing her, piously, that while he didn't have anything against LGBTQ people himself, and while he certainly believed that they should have equal rights, nevertheless he believed, due to his religious convictions, that what they did was a sin.

Could This Be Good News at Last?

Why, yes, it is!

I have sold a story to Fantasy & Science Fiction. I cannot even tell you how pleased I am. F&SF is one of the "big three," the top SF print magazines, and also this story, "The History of the Invasion Told in Five Dogs," is one I like a lot.

The editor, C.C. Finley, was just great, working with me during the submission process.

I'll let you know when it comes out!

New Office

So I heard from the Committee for Central Planning. My new office has been selected.

I have to admit I was in denial about all this. The CCP has been threatening to tear down our building for years, and nothing ever came of it. Sure, every other professor in the building except me and one other has been moved out over the past year... but surely the CCP was just, um, surely...

Nope. I'm out too, as of this month.

The new office is in a (slightly) newer building, which I suppose is good news.  It has a window (yay!) and only one bookshelf, but a much bigger desk. It's on a long hallway filled with my colleagues, so that's nice. The one bookshelf is going to be a problem -- I have three here in this office, and they are crammed full. I think I can fit the small one into the new office. Aside from that, I am going to have to weed out books, I guess. (NOOOOO.)

It's a nicer office in general, except for the bookcase issue -- by which I mean it doesn't look like it was built in a day and a half, which this office does, since it was. The walls aren't made of sheetrock, and the floor isn't indoor-outdoor carpeting laid over cement slab. That sort of thing.

Also I'd imagine the mold and dust issue is better over there.

I'd be pleased, in general -- and I will be pleased -- except for how I now have to moved. Once the move is done, I'm sure I will be pleased.

So Where Have I Been

Laid low, y'all.  Laid low.

I got some sort of evil virus, or flu, or demonic infestation, which made me sicker than I have been in year. For a few days there I did almost nothing but sleep. Seriously, at once point, clawing my way to consciousness, I googled sleeping sickness to see if, you know, maybe....

It's not endemic in Arkansas, though.

I went back to school on Monday, which was probably a mistake, even though all I had to do was meet students for conferences over their papers; and on Tuesday, which was definitely a mistake. I taught for about forty minutes (I do not remember most of what I said -- I vaguely remember going off on a rant about Plato), realized I was very close to passing out, and sent them home.

Today, like a miracle, I am all but well.

Lying there on the sofa at my sickest, though, racked with misery, fever, and pain, I thought about Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- who lived for years like that, in pain like that, unable to move from a sofa, and all the while managed to write poetry*.

A better man than I am.




*I couldn't write. I read, during the hours I managed to stay away, straight through Kage Baker's Company series. The entire thing.

Here's What I'm Doing

Two of the kid's friends have come to visit, so I have a house filled with young adults.

These are her two best friends, Rabid and Neon (those are net names). She met them over the internet, which according to internet lore means they ought to be 57 year old pedophiles. Instead they are nineteen and twenty-two and delightful.

They've spent the week talking comics (they are all web comic artists), catching Pokemon, drawing and discussing their drawings, and watching movies. On Friday we went up to Crystal Bridges.

Crystal Bridges has a wonderful new painting, by the way, by  George Copeland Ault.  This one:

It's much more amazing in person. I tried to find prints in their gift shop, but no go.

Then yesterday we drove up to Devil's Den to hike Yellow Rock trail. It was hot and humid, but due to all the rain we've been having lately, so green. And so many flowers. More hikers than I've ever seen up there as well. My little pack of artists were hiking on only five or six hours of sleep (they have also been staying up until four-thirty every night) but seemed to enjoy the climb nonetheless. Many hikers had their dogs along which helped. Also we saw tiny toads, lizards, and also one snake.

When we reached the top, some adorable Christian had used the loose rocks of the scree to spell out GOD! in big rock letters.

My kid (making an annoyed face): "Rabid. Help me change this to GOD IS DEAD, okay?"

But instead, what they did was rearrange the rocks to read DOG.

"After all," as they put it, "God is probably a dog. Or at least he likes dogs."

Book Review: Ringworld

Apparently this summer I have decided to read a great deal of 1960s/1970s SF written by men.

Why? I do not know.

Ringworld, written by Larry Niven, was published in 1970. I read it as a kid. I can't remember when, exactly, although it would have been sometime after it was published, probably when I was fourteen or fifteen.

It was the first Niven I read, and I do remember liking it. I liked it a lot. I liked it so much, that I read every book I could find by Niven, no matter how terrible they were, right up until Footfall, when I just gave up. I couldn't take anymore.

Reviews of 1960's SF

I am currently reading -- I can't even remember why -- two SF novels published in the 1960s, both by men. One is Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, which I read I was (much) younger, and a big Heinlein fan.

The other is William Nolan's Logan's Run, which I had never read before.

One point I'm going to make up front is that, wow, science fiction is terrible at predicting the future.

The second is that these particular SF writers certainly have an interesting attitude toward women.

The third point I will only mention: LGBT issues. Yeah, wow.

Score!

So my kid received a comment from someone on her currently running comic asking if she could make it "a bit more obvious" who is male and who is female in the comic, since the reader was having trouble deciding this important issue.

My kid's reply: (a direct quotation here): "nah the gender binary is bullshit my friend"

Yep, I do parenting right.

Reading

While our AC was down, I was just not able to function. I am not functional when in an environment where the temperature is 90+ and the humidity is 80+, though mad props to all y'all who are. (Dr. Skull is one who is. He loved the AC crisis.)

Essentially all I did was teach (the university AC was wonderful -- I'm the only one left on our hallway, as our building is scheduled to be torn down soon, so I could crank our AC down to 66 degrees, and I did), and -- when I reluctantly returned to the pit of hell that is our house, slouch in my chair in the middle of three different fans and under a ceiling fan and read.

Here is what I read:

Update: Much Rejoicing!

The air condition repair guys, having worked from just past eight this morning until now, just past four, have -- knock wood -- fixed the air conditioning.

Are we not filled with bliss?

Help. Send Ice. Send Ice Packs. Send Winter.

So here is what it is like in Arkansas when your air conditioning has not worked for three days.

Number One: Every linoleum floor is sticky or else literally covered with a fine slimy layer of condensation. Mopping this up will only work briefly. This humidity-induced slime, by the way? Oh my what a fine stench.

Number Two: Every thing begins to smell, almost at once. You can't leave garbage in the pail all day, or milk in a cup by the sink. Deal with that shit pronto.

Teaching Again

I've picked up a Summer I class from a colleague who has a family emergency, which mean we have a little more money this summer -- yay!

In other news, the air conditioner which was fixed three days ago failed again yesterday afternoon. The landlord sent new guys to fix it. The other guy had said it needed Freon and also my filters needed cleaning (they didn't -- I clean them religiously, mainly because that's one way to help keep the cost of electricity down, summers). He cleaned the clean filters and put in new Freon.

These guys said the compressor was shot. They're supposed to come back today with a new compressor.  I hope they do, and I hope this works. Summer in Arkansas without AC is... well, many people in this country are having a worse week than I am this week, obviously, so I won't say hell on earth. But it's very unpleasant.

Right now I'm in my office, where I'm the only one on the hallway, since it's summer.  I have the AC cranked down to 66.  Bliss.

Fragile Updates!

Fragile, the comic by our favorite kid, has updated.

This panel might be my favorite so far.

Read it here: Fragile.

Complaining Post

This is going to be a whine, so feel free to skip it.

We rent, because my cancer some years back destroyed me financially in a way we are only just beginning to recover from. I don't think we'll ever own a house, at this point.

Luckily, we live in an area where rent is cheap. And we've had more or less decent luck with landlords.