Category: Internet Destinations

Into All Things Some Update Must Fall

On By griffinwordsIn Internet DestinationsLeave a comment

Crazy, random, all-encompassing blog entries are fun once in a while!

First off, these next three days Lena and I will be attending the H P Lovecraft Film Festival here in Portland. Lots of fun is anticipated — film screenings, author readings, panel discussions, and a vendor room full of Cthulhu-y merchandise goodness.

I’ve been dividing my time between work on Hypnos stuff (readying the next CD releases) and writing, revising and submitting stories. In September I sent 16 story submissions, and my previous monthly high was 11. Obviously having more stories out there is part of the deal, but also I happened to hit several quick-turn markets. If you’re going to get a rejection, a faster rejection is preferable, I think, in that it allows you to move the story along to the next market a bit sooner.

I haven’t completed (meaning finalized and sent off) a new story in over a month, but I have several churning and likely to be completed in October. I regularly start new pieces, at roughly the same pace I complete older ones, so I have a pipeline of a half-dozen or so in various stages of completion. Sometimes this balance swings toward a half-dozen rougher pieces, and other times, like now, I end up with several that are closer to complete.

One of the stories I’m about to start is a sort of dark, second-world fantasy about a paranoid, delusional monarch who lives in a nearly inaccessible dome atop a mountain. This place can only be reached by a tremendously dangerous climb on narrow ledges beside great chasms. I’m naturally scared of heights, though I also love the mountains and hiking. This story incorporates much about altitude, danger of falling, the discomfort of being at a cliff’s edge. Here’s a link to a video that gives a sense of that “teetering on the edge of death” thing I’m talking about. Coincidentally, the name of this real-life path is Camino del Rey, which means Path of the King.

Otherwise, we’re enjoying a great spell of late-summer weather and looking forward to a long weekend of Cthulhu cult insanity.

Harlan Ellison Says He’s Dying

On By griffinwordsIn Internet DestinationsLeave a comment

Harlan Ellison, one of the all-time funny crazy weirdos in genre fiction, has a reputation for weird antics and boorish behavior.

His stories were an enormous influence on me in the seventies and early eighties, as well as the Dangerous Visions anthologies he edited. So as far as I’m concerned, Ellison gets a lifetime free pass and can act as weird and cranky as he wants. Lately, there have been rumors that Ellison’s health is failing, and today an article appeared in which he basically said “I’m dying, so you’d better come to MadCon because it’ll be the last time I do a convention.” Link here.

What do we make of this? The article sounds pretty jokey to me, like plain old classic Harlan. Favorite quote, when asked about his current appearance:

“I weigh 154 now. I look like Gollum. I was great-looking when I was younger — I was hot. All the pictures of me, they’re very hot.”

You’ve gotta love this guy, don’t you? Don’t you?

Look at your God. Now Look at me.

On By griffinwordsIn Internet Destinations, Motion PicturesLeave a comment

At the beginning of October, I’ll be attending the HP Lovecraft Film festival here in Portland. It’s a three day event, not just a film festival but a gathering of filmmakers, authors, editors and publishers involved to at least some degree in Lovecraft-influenced films or literature. My wife Lena — who shares a birthday with old Howard Philips — will be going too, and it looks like it should be a lot of fun. If you’re near enough Portland to be interested in attending, the festival web site is here. Oh, it’s October 1-3.

Saw this today, (via wil wheaton dot net), and it’s gettin’ me in the mood.

How Would You Have Wanted Firefly to End?

On By griffinwordsIn Internet Destinations, Motion PicturesLeave a comment

I still feel a pain in my chest every time I think about the early cancellation of Firefly. Yes, it was just a TV show, and true, it lasted less than a full season so there was hardly time to get a sense of where it was headed. It’s just so rare to find an intelligent TV show, with characters you can care about, it’s something to lament when it vanishes prematurely.

Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee (ship’s mechanic, and lovable tomboy), recently gave an interview in which she gave her own wish list for how the show should have ended. It’s somewhat tongue in cheek, but it’s wonderful at the same time it rips open the old wound. You can read the interview here. Scroll down to the bottom for the question about how she would’ve liked to see the show end.

Choice quote:
“Nine glorious seasons later, Kaylee and Simon have had several beautiful brunette babies, a couple of which have turned out to be crazy geniuses like their Auntie River (Firefly: the Next Generation?)”

Apparently I am some kinda lame fanboy, but at least I didn’t stick a picture of Kaylee or Inara in here.

Amazing Sweat-Inducing Video

On By griffinwordsIn Internet Destinations1 Comment

Via Daring Fireball, here’s a helmet-cam video of an engineer climbing a 1,700 foot tall antenna tower. There are simply no words to describe how amazing this is. He goes without any kind of tether or rope most of the time, and has a 30-pound toolbag dangling under him from a cable. Holy freakin’ sweaty palms, Batman!

Big Climb

(edit: oh no, pulled! I’ll seek another source)

Consolation prize: similar death-defying high-flying insanity.

Semi-Serious Comment on Punctuation

On By griffinwordsIn Internet Destinations, Words In, Words OutLeave a comment

Kottke recently linked to a video of Kurt Vonnegut, the great writer-character, and he talked about the semicolon. I love this quote:

“Don’t use semicolons. They stand for absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. They are just a way of showing off. To show that you have been to college.”

The semicolon has drifted out of contemporary usage, and I feel generally where a semicolon is used, a period or a comma might work better. I find the semicolon has an archaic feel, and those writers for whom the semicolon works well tend to be dead and buried, or else taking on an intentionally ornate, old-fashioned, or throwback style.

Elmore Leonard is handy with them, and uses them a lot, but the guy was writing and publishing novels before my parents were born.

Stephen King uses a ton of semicolons, but he also does a lot of nonstandard technical stuff. He’s a big-time Elmore Leonard worshipper.

I’ll give the writer the benefit of the doubt with semicolons if their voice is strong and their prose is unusual. I’m halfway through Laird Barron’s collection Occultation (fantastic work, review forthcoming) and he’s got a slew of ’em in there. His writing also includes all manner of unorthodox technical stuff, though — dialog set off not by opening and closing quotes but by an emdash at the beginning, or short paragraphs containing dialog by multiple, different speakers.

Generally I’d say the semicolon bothers me less when the writer shows a confident, slightly experimental, maybe even baroque approach to stringing words together. In the middle of plain vanilla prose, however, the semicolon stands out in just the way Vonnegut describes. Beginning writers, stick with the comma and the period. It’s easy enough to remember what those guys do, roughly corresponding to the yellow and the red traffic lights, respectively.

Rocking the World 140 Characters at a Time

On By griffinwordsIn Internet DestinationsLeave a comment

I’m now on Twitter, though not using it too terribly much yet.

twitter.com/mgsoundvisions

Eventually I’ll just post stuff on my blog about Twitter and post stuff on my Twitter about my blog, with occasional digressions into Facebook, MySpace, the Hypnos forum and all the other social network thingies that have ever wasted occupied my time.

Here’s a brief, worthwhile guide to utilization of the Twitter thing, if you’re confused by it or hating it:
A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funly. Link goes to Zen Habits.

Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner

On By griffinwordsIn Internet Destinations, Words InLeave a comment

First off, Philip K. Dick didn’t write Blade Runner, but he did write Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the story on which Ridley Scott’s science fiction masterpiece was based.

Also, Dick never had a chance to see the completed film, but he did apparently have a chance to see a short clip, which was enough to inspire him to write this letter to the Ladd Company (producers of the film) expressing his pride and enthusiasm for Blade Runner.

If you know much about Dick, you know he was very troubled, and it made me feel good to read this letter. It’s too bad he didn’t get a chance to see the entire film, which is one of my favorite films in any genre. Speaking of which, I’m going to create a page on this blog to list some of my favorite books and movies. Lists are fun!

Via Kottke.