GrandfatherTrout

Via Rachel Maddow, I learn that Jill McDonough just won the Pushcart Prize for her lovely poem "Accident, Mass. Ave." Go read.

I have a gig! I've just finished my first week working for the UN Trust Fund for Human Security, doing a writing project that is scheduled to keep me busy until the end of the year. Which is a great thing, especially as copy-editing work at Major Publication is getting harder and harder to come by. But knowing-where-my-rent-check-is-coming-from considerations aside, it's a great thing to be working for an organization that is engaged in such boots-on-the-ground humanitarianism. It really does help make the world a safer, healthier, happier place for people who need the help -- via the sorts of projects that you read about and think, Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing I want the United Nations doing. Science fiction fans believe in better worlds.

So that's done a great deal to keep my mood buoyant lately. Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out which market to send "Nightbird" to (aka the Stevie Nicks Death Androids Story, although it contains no androids. Or Stevie Nicks, really. Well, sort of). I figure I should strike while the iron is still warmish from the success of Daisy, which I recently found out was brought to a meeting of fiction-read-out-loud afficionados called NYC Storyreading. Having random strangers enjoying my story in public still kind of freaks me out. Even if it was sort of the point. Thank you, random strangers; I am flattered beyond words.

And finally, I do a lot of walking with the new job -- from Grand Central to the UN in the mornings, and as often as not from 1st Avenue all the way to the West Side in the evenings, if the weather is good. There is much headphone-listening, and I've been reminded once again that the scars of Band Geekitude run deep. I keep catching myself adjusting my stride so that my left foot comes down on the downbeat; the only reason I notice it at all is that sometimes the tempo speeds up and I'm wondering why I'm going so fast....

Anyway, I'm off to the theatre now: a preview of the new Coraline musical, which looks like it's going to be a blast. And then an overnight in Philly tomorrow with the swimmers. Enjoy your weekend.

Hokey smokes! Some total stranger in -- Scotland? Ireland? Now I can't tell, how embarassing -- took my story "Daisy" and produced a free audio version of it, because he liked it. (And because its Creative Commons license encouraged him to do so.)

I am agog. And flattered. Thanks, Ian McMillan!

It's the first of May, and I've been going around the office of Major Publication all day reminding myself over and over not to sing the Jonathan Coulton song out loud; it's as brilliant and catchy and hilarious as his work is wont to be, but it's also seriously NSFW. (So if you've never heard it before and you're downloading it now at the office or in front of easily horrified grannies or whatnot be sure to put your headphones on. [And if you enjoy the song, show JoCo some donation love.])

But that's not why I'm here just now. No, sir. I wanted to direct people's attention to this letter from Stephen Fry to his 16-year-old self, which I found pretty moving. God knows most of us would love to go back and give a message from the future to our awkward and dopey younger selves, or at least give them big hugs and tell them it'll be okay. I'm not sure anyone else would be able to do so with such intelligence, humanity, and general awesomeness. It's also a look at gay history and a meditation on love, which is of paramount importance to all people. It's good stuff.

I was going to post something about the Weimar cabaret orchestra that's doing drop-dead fabulous covers of New Wave tunes, but this is even better.

Julia Child started cooking classes at Le Cordon Bleu in the late 1940s. She published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, her first, revolutionary cookbook, in 1961, and began her equally revolutionary television program not long thereafter. In 2002, a woman in Brooklyn named Julie Powell started a blog, The Julie/Julia Project, in which she cooked a different meal from MAFC every night in her teeny tiny NYC-style kitchen in a neighborhood with no decent grocery store, gradually working her way through the entire book. In 2004, Julia died; I found Julie's blog through the lovely essay she wrote reflecting upon the yearlong experience and how Julia had transformed both Julie's life and her own. In 2005 the blog became a book, as they were wont to do at the time. In August 2009 the cookbook that became a blog that became a book will become a movie, staring Amy Adams as Julie and Meryl freaking Streep as Julia Child. Written and directed by Nora Ephron, of course, because who else could it have been?

Come on, how can you not see this? With a group of dear friends who like to eat. And then you go out for a fabulous meal afterwards. Or -- even better! -- cook one together.

That's all for tonight. For my part, I have completed the laundry and am going to bed.

It is starting to niggle at me that my standard icon uses my old (prebeard) face. The old spectacles, fine, but even that small amount of upper lip is more than anyone has seen of it in years. I oughtta take a new photo.

I'm presently singing with the Dessoff Symphonic Choir, which is the giant economy-size version of the Dessoff Choirs, a long-running NYC amateur chorus. We're preparing for a pretty spectacular series of June performances with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.

First, Britten's "War Requiem," his spectacular antiwar piece from 1962. Composed for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral in England (destroyed in a World War II bombing raid), the piece sets two soloists singing English-language poems by Wilfred Owen about the experiences of soldiers during World War I in juxtaposition to a massive choral performance of the traditional Latin Mass for the dead. It is harrowing and fabulous, sometimes angry, sometimes achingly sad, sometimes transcendently gorgeous. June 11, 12, 13.

Then, Mahler's Symphony No. 8, which will feature about a skillion singers and instrumentalists packed so densely on the stage that frame-dragging phenomena will be measurable in local spacetime. Big, bombastic, wonderful. Probably the more listener-friendly to those arriving unfamiliar with the music. June 24, 25, 26, 27.

For tickets to either performance -- going fast! -- or more details, see the Dessoff website. (You may need to scroll down to get to the actual text; there's something wonky in their stylesheet.)

It appears I am now a Published Author Person. My short story "Daisy" is now online as part of the CC-licensed anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments. My first sale!

In other news, would the person who left the dial cranked way up to "August" please look after that? Because dude, seriously, 90 degrees? It's not even May yet.

A man takes a stroll around Manhattan in 3-inch heels, suddenly giving me even more respect for those drag queens at the Black Party. Even if I'm still not sure how I felt about drag queens at the Black Party.

Why, yes, I am closing out old tabs -- why do you ask?

Because who doesn't enjoy a visit to the City by the Bay?

This seat is not as comfortable as it looks.
At the end of the day,
We cannot feel our buttocks.

Once I lost the stone we call the Eagle's Tear.
It was missing for three days.
I used a jellybean instead, and
Nobody noticed.

The gods tell me the future
Because they know it will change nothing.

It takes twenty-two days
To wear out a deck of cards,
Usually.
In spring, seventeen.

I have an answer for your dog.
Tell her I said
Yes.

I miss my nephew.

If you leave right now, you will meet —
Oh. Too late. Never mind.
This happens all the time.

Sometimes I have a dream of my very own:
I cast the bones.
They say,
YOU ARE NOT WEARING PANTS.

Once I told the fortune
Of a man's socks
By mistake.
He never knew the difference.

A lagniappe for elisem as part of her runaway Oracles project.

Y'all have seen this, right? It is, how you say, le bwah.

Got my new Tom Bihn Smart Alec today, to replace my old one, which was mauled by a ferocious beast. Am quite pleased, although the redistribution of pen slots et cetera will take a day or two to get used to.

I initially learned about Bihn's bags in 2004, when BoingBoing pointed out their care-instructions label. At the time, the last two lines of the label's French text read:

We are sorry that our president is an idiot.
We didn't vote for him.

(Much as I found the sentiments laudable, that only got me as far as the website; it's the excellent laptops/backpacks/messenger bags that got me to make the buy. Highly recommended, honest.) Anyway, I checked the tag in the new pack. Reflecting the changing times, the new tag's French text is merely a translation of the English care instructions. But at the bottom it says:

Siquid mantica non capit, domi relinquendum est.

Is there a classicist in the house?

Via BoingBoing, the true(?) story of the Greatest Diamond Heist Evar.

I should be bringing on the Apocalypse right now, but boy is my cat shiny.

A while back, I saw this most excellent ad for the Chevy Malibu. I mean, it didn't make me want to buy a car, but it was conceptually fun, visually well-executed, and had this fabulous song going in the background. Maybe you saw it? It was the one with the baby and the robots and the pasage of time.

After a couple weeks of seeing it go by during MythBusters, I couldn't get the tune out of my head. A little Googling and it turned out to be Oren Lavie's song "Her Morning Elegance," from his debut album, The Opposite Side of the Sea. And I found me an mp3 of it, and listened to it two or three times, and bought the disc.¹

I like the album a lot. It's dreamy and sweetly melancholy and pleasing to listen to, like the rain outside the window when you're at home on the couch in sheepskin slippers and, I dunno, maybe Sense and Sensibility cued up on the teevee. Some of the songs are more successful than others: his lyrics are sometimes clever and sometimes a little too much so. The instrumental arrangements -- and this is an album that relies heavily on strings and wind instruments and a real piano and a vibraphone, even -- are really good. "Her Morning Elegance" is the undeniable gem of the disc, a fast 3/4 tune that makes you want to dance down the sidewalk on your way to work. Or it does me, at any rate.

And then a little while ago Mason-Dixon Knitting posted the video, and it's superb. Here: enjoy.

¹ Note to the RIAA: Oren Lavie made money off that unauthorized mp3, and so did you.

And today, on Things You Didn't Know You Should Be Freaked Out About: Bedbugs!

Oh, but I hear you say it: we are New Yorkers, and we already know about the whole Bedbug Thing. In the 20th century, bedbugs went from rather common to almost unheard of in much of the industrialized world. But over the last few years, a combination of increased international travel, the disuse of DDT, and increased resistance to the weaker insecticides used instead has led to their global resurgence. They hide in folds of fabric, they hide in suitcases (and the baggage-return conveyor belts at airports), they hide in the upholstery of the furniture you find on the sidewalk, and then they move into your house. Getting them out again is a massive undertaking. And then there's the itching and the scratching and the welts and the oh my god they're sucking my blood while I sleep and suddenly we're all losing our minds. They're running amok in Park Slope.¹ We are already freaking out about bedbugs. Those of us who are prone to (a) worry, (b) hypochondria, or (c) itching are just about out of our heads.

Ah, but did you know this? They're hiding in the crevices of the wooden benches on the subway platforms.

So don't sit down, folks. And for god's sake, stop scratching. You're fine. Maybe.

(Thanks [I think] to Sari, for bringing this to my attention.)

¹ The bugs, not the Brooklynites.

On the other hand, I found out today that barring some seriously unlikely turns of events, I will not be getting the Dream Job.

Time for Plan B, kiddies! What should Andrew do next? Preferably a staff position somewhere that offers health benefits and doesn't expect me to pay my rent on $12.50 an hour. Answers on a postcard c/o this station.

Damn. Tonight, though, I'm going to see Sita Sings the Blues, and then the new Battlestar Galactica, with friends in Queens. So that should take the sting out for a while, at least. And this weekend will see the rollout of a new design for the blog, which always gives you that fresh-start feeling.

I am pretty damn chuffed to announce that I have made my first fiction sale.

I sold "Daisy" (aka the sponge-golem kitty story) to the online anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments, which goes up in May. The anthology is edited by Leonard Richardson, another Viable Paradise grad who is a totally excellent writer in his own right. (When his story "Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs" comes out on Strange Horizons later this year, read it. Do not pass Go. Hokey smokes, it's so funny and awesome. And dinosaury.) My heartfelt thanks to all of you who beta-read the thing, or were encouraging about this ridiculous 'writing' idea I have been toying with, or bought me beers when it seemed appropriate, or anything like that.

So, um. w00t!

So I'm off to Washington DC for the weekend for a choral recording session: a couple of new American songs, with Crazy Lady conducting. This means I'll be missing the NYC comic convention and a visit by stealthmuffin. Aargh and treble aargh.

As it happens, I have this client in DC for whom I'm ostensibly doing some freelance work -- only this week has been utterly devoid of productivity. They're hoping to see something from me v soon. I think I'm going to take an early Bolt Bus down to DC tomorrow, boot up the laptop, inform them from the road that I'll be dropping something off, and then hope that the resulting state of utter terror will force something useful to flower in the trackless desert of my brain. (This has worked in the past. It's not a technique I'd recommend, though.)

If that's going to work, of course, I need to get my sorry ass into bed now. G'night.

You know what? I've gone round and round and round and there's simply no way I can justify the expense of going to Boskone this year. I'm still out of work, and I'm putting too heavy a draw on my savings as it is.

Will miss seeing the gang.