23rd December, 2009
Artsy-Fartsy Baby Bongo Born at Busch Gardens
cute_overload
12:39 am
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/CuteOverload/~3/36izFGiUUC0/
http://cuteoverload.com/?p=36442
The other animals thought he was crazy when he started painting his own body. But we just call him Keith Haring.
And here’s the real story: Busch Gardens welcomed a baby bongo to the park Sept. 13. Bongo are native to the rainforests of Africa. Busch Gardens cares for the endangered Eastern Mountain subspecies of bongo.
Forwarded by Lauren H-W at Busch Gardens, Tampa.
Photo: Matt Marriott
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Unusual animals
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22nd December, 2009
Raping the Lamb 6
chadmichaelward
5:29 pm
Miss Crash
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Raping the Lamb 5
chadmichaelward
5:28 pm
Miss Crash
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Raping the Lamb 4
chadmichaelward
5:27 pm
Miss Crash
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Raping the Lamb 3
chadmichaelward
5:25 pm
Miss Crash
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Crash
chadmichaelward
5:25 pm
Miss Crash
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Crash
chadmichaelward
5:24 pm
Miss Crash
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Odds and Ends
grrm
5:55 pm
Mood: 
busy
SUICIDE KINGS is out in hardcover (see below) and BUSTED FLUSH has been released in mass market. Meanwhile, I've delivered the additional content -- three new stories -- for the first volume of this storied series, WILD CARDS itself, which Tor will be reissuing later in the year. Since the first volume was historical in nature, telling the story of the wild card from 1946 to 1985, adding some original material to cover some of the "lost years" seemed like a natural.
The three new tales:
-- "Captain Cathode and the Secret Ace," by Michael Cassutt,
-- "Powers," by David D. Levine,
-- "Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan," by Carrie Vaughn.
No publication date yet. You'll know when I do.
As for FORT FREAK, the twenty-first volume in the series that WILD CARDS began, first drafts are all in, I've given the usual editorial note, and the writers are all off revising. This one looks to be a lot of fun. The Class of 2009 is doing some great work, and the old-timers ain't half bad either.
On other fronts, Gardner Dozois and I are very close to delivering our original cross-genre anthology STAR-CROSSED LOVERS, to Pocket Books. We're waiting for some minor revisions from one writer. Once those are in hand, the book will be delivered. Only it's not STAR-CROSSED LOVERS any longer. Pocket's sales force did not like that title, so the anthology has now been rechristened SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH. Got a great line up of writers for that one, including Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, M.L.N. Hanover, Peter S. Beagle, Marjorie Liu, Jacqueline Carey, Carrie Vaughn, Robin Hobb, Neil Gaiman, and many more.
Everybody's talking about AVATAR, which I haven't seen yet... but I have been going to movies. While the crowds queue up for Cameron, I've been catching up on some of the other films now in release. I enjoyed THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, and liked INVICTUS as well, but the one that really impressed me was ME AND ORSON WELLES. The guy who plays Welles should get an Oscar nomination for that performance.
As usual, I am way behind on my Xmas shopping.
Where does the time go?
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Now On Sale
grrm
5:01 pm
Mood: 
chipper
Today was the official publication day for the latest Wild Cards book, SUICIDE KINGS.
Run, don't walk, to your favorite bookstore and getcha copy now. And hell, while you're there, get copies for all your friends as well. All you Xmas shopping in one swell foop.
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Midwinterish
warren_ellis
4:34 pm
This is me with local musician Carolina Fasalo of The Voronas. Caz dumped a load of old photos on to her Facebook account and turned this up. Last summer, I think?
I was reading this interview with David Simon the other day — he gives good interviews, see if you can find the one he did with THE BELIEVER magazine sometime — and something he said stuck with me a little bit. As it often does in Simon interviews, as he’s good with a bon mot or two. I’ve hacked some connective tissue out to present it as a complete thought:
There would be a series of planning sessions. First, at the beginning of every season, we did a sort of retreat with the main writers, the guys who were going to be on staff the whole year. We’d discuss what we were trying to say… we weren’t cynical about having been given ten, 12, 13 hours — whatever we had for any season from HBO. All of that was an incredible gift.
So goddamn it, you better have something to say. That sounds really simple, but it’s actually a conversation that I don’t think happens on a lot of serialized drama. Certainly not on American television. I think that a lot of people believe that our job as TV writers is to get the show up as a franchise and get as many viewers, as many eyeballs, as we can, and keep them.
What we were asking was, “What should we spend 12 hours of television saying?”
Which, yes, should sound blatantly obvious. But it’s easy, when working in fast and deadline-intensive serial formats, to forget that bit: to trust to the process of pulp writing and the form’s innate effect of whatever you’re really interested in leaking out into the work regardless. It’s easy to forget what you turned up for.
It’s also an interesting process note. A good 95% of longform serials, I’d guess, turn up not knowing what they want to talk about. Sometimes they don’t discover what they showed up to talk about until the third or fourth season. And I don’t mean so much the working out of what’s now called "show mythology," the actual overarcing storyline — and we can all name shows that suddenly realised they’d payed out all the rope they had and they didn’t know where the plot went next. I mean the serials where they finally open their mouths and nothing comes out. They made the show because they were allowed to make the show.
In other news, Karl Urban has apparently been signed to RED. This brings the cast up to something like the eight thousand most popular actors in the world.
Tonight I am mostly clearing the house. Not enough strength left in me for proper writing. I’d actually really like to be digging into the outline I wrote for the GRAVEL film, and fixing all the stuff in it that looks broken. I’m delivering it at the end of the second week in January, so there’s plenty of time, and it’s actually in reasonably good shape overall. But the thing about distance from a thing — and this is actually not bad advice for any new writer — is that it gives you essential and often surprising perspective once you’ve been away from it for a few days. Walking away from something for a few days or a week is sometimes the best possible thing you can do for a piece. Again, not something we always have time for in the deadline game.
I’d also like to be working on the animated series I have in development, but, like I said. Burned way the fuck out. So I’m going to content myself with clearing the house, catching up on my RSS feeds, scheming about getting a new phone out of Vodafone, and making a few notes on loose ideas. Proper writing can wait a couple of weeks, now.
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)
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Why all the lettering is getting smaller...
officialgaiman
6:34 pm
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/why-all-lettering-is-getting-smaller.html
posted by Neil
I'm flying out tonight to the UK. I'll hole up in the middle of nowhere with my children and ex-wife and my mother as well, and probably be off-the-internet the whole time. There will be no TV in the middle of nowhere, so I will miss
Doctor Who and miss "Statuesque" on Sky1 (10 pm Christmas Day).
Trying to deal with the last things I have to do before I get out of here. (Also realised very late last night that the problems I've had reading comics for the next Year's Best American Comics that I'm guest editing has nothing to do with losing my love for comics and everything to do with the fact that somewhere in the last year I must have started needing reading glasses for small print and had not realised this. I found a pair of reading glasses and the world became one with good, easy-to-read comics in it once again... I suppose more things like this will happen as I age. How odd.)
I leave you with a handful of links...
Okay. Back to last-minute things...
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Raping The Lamb 2
chadmichaelward
10:32 am
model: Miss Crash
www.iheartviolence.com
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Raping The Lamb 1
chadmichaelward
10:31 am
model: Miss Crash
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The Queen of Cunt 2
chadmichaelward
10:30 am
model: Miss Crash
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Dragon Lady
chadmichaelward
10:29 am
model: Miss Crash
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In Approximately 8 Seconds, Prepare to Roll Eyes, Groan
cute_overload
6:46 am
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/CuteOverload/~3/PLSDSoeaPtI/
http://cuteoverload.com/?p=36966
The Rebel Alliance, a.k.a. Sitting Kitten and his #2, Crazy Eyes, observed the enemy for some time and meticulously planned their attack.
It was a huge success, albeit a sloppy one, and the battle became known as Custard’s Last Stand.
Help me, Yogurt-On Mekitti, you’re our only hope.
I guess you could help too, Cathy O.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Kittens
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Have your squid and eat it, too.
greygirlbeast
12:23 pm
Mood: 
better than yesterday
Music: Jethro Tull, "Aqualung"
A few minutes ago, Spooky said, "I think if the Crawling Chaos offered me an apple, I'd have to run the other way." Which makes quite a bit more sense if you've seen my "Miskatonic Valley Yuletide Faire" T-shirt (thank you,
Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs), and I know you probably haven't.
Merry Cephalopodmas, one and all.
Yesterday, I read "The Jetsam of Disremembered Mechanics" to Spooky, and then tended to an awful lot of line edits. I think it's as good a story as it's ever going to be, so today I'll be sending it to
subpress. By the way, this story will appear in an anthology of short stories inspired by the works of Robert Silverberg, edited by Gardner Doizois and Bill Schafer. Not sure of the publication date, but I'll post it when I know. My piece is a sort of "prequel" to Silveberg's
Nightwings (1968, 1969). Also, yesterday I received the finished cover art for
The Ammonite Violin & Others from
Richard Kirk, and I'll post it here sometime in the next few days. It is truly, truly gorgeous. This is going to be a marvelous volume.
When work was done yesterday, Spooky and I bundled up and ventured out into the snowy world. Mountains of snow everywhere. We made it as far as the house at 599/597 Angell Street that was Deacon and Emmie's house in
Daughter of Hounds. I'd not visited it since we moved here last summer, and, indeed, not since June 28th, 2004, when Spooky and I first happened upon it while I was researching the novel. It sits directly across the street from 598 Angell Street, where Lovecraft lived from 1904-1924. And after I took a few photos (below, behind the cut), we stopped by the market, then headed back home as the sun was setting.
Last night, we snacked on strawberry hamantashen and fresh Mandarin oranges and a huge tin of chocolate cookies, and watched a couple more episodes of
Fringe. I rather enjoyed "August," no matter how blatantly the "observers" are ripped off from
Dark City. And after that, there was WoW. We're fifty quests into the Borean Tundra (out of one hundred and fifty), and I really, really hate the region. After questing at Vengeance Landing and Dragonblight, it's just too disjointed and garish and noisy and hokey, too much like Outland, and I just want to be finished with it and get back to Dragonblight, which actually feels like a
place. We both made Level 73. Shaharrazd has let her hair grow longer, what with the cold and all.
Sadly, there was very little in the way of Soltice ritual. I'm afraid that the whole "solitary practioner" thing just isn't working for me (I've been at it for five years now), and in the coming year I am going to make an earnest effort to either find or found a coven. I may even resort to WitchVox. There has to be at least
one good GLBT-friendly coven in the area, one that isn't all fluffy bunnies and white-light nonsense.
Anyway, here are the photos from yesterday:
( 21 December 2009 )
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DO ANYTHING 025
warren_ellis
7:18 am
Very nearly completing the first volume, at Bleeding Cool:
(And there’s an error in there that should read: "…crossing the four hundred miles from Berlin to Metz")
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)
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“Whew! I cannot believe I held it together this year. Got all the Christmas cards mailed, shuttled three sets of relatives from airports to hotels, and got all the presents wrapped and under the tree at the last minute.
