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April 23, 2010 /

I have, as expected, read more Maureen McHugh–specifically Nekropolis. I liked it more than China Mountain Zhang, in that it had a much defter way of pulling my heart out and stomping on it. The problem with writers who deal in compassion is that they are mean.

McHugh has a prose style which I believe I am required to call “unadorned” and which I don’t typically go for–despite all my protestations about clarity and Strunk and White, I am easily seduced by linguistic fireworks (Douglas Adams, William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Ellen Kushner, et al). She makes me understand why people get so lathered about Hemingway.

Not All Dreams Can Come True

April 9, 2010 /

From across the political spectrum (that is, from my liberal girlfriend and my conservative cousin) I have heard rumblings of disappointment about Obama’s supposed plan to end manned space exploration.

If you go read that article you’ll actually see that it’s not the case at all: they’re scrapping the rickety Space Shuttle program, which has been slated for retirement for years and basically only goes to the International Space Station, because they want to concentrate on the mission to build a Mars base–a mission proposed by Bush. Resupply missions to the ISS are being contracted out to an increasingly healthy private spaceflight industry (which development I’d think would please free marketeers). NASA’s budget is actually increasing by $2 billion next year.

But this also seems like a good time to re-link Leonard’s article from 2008 about the relative awesomeness of manned vs. unmanned space exploration. It did a lot to persuade me that, while manned spaceflight does a lot for a very small group–a few hundred people worldwide, all more genetically perfect than supermodels, mostly white, mostly male–unmanned exploration delivers a great deal more, dollar for dollar, for the rest of us.

This is the least useful blog entry I have ever posted

April 6, 2010 /

I finally figured out what delineates the podcasts I like from ones I completely can’t stand and want to punch in the mouth! SHUT UP I HAVE BEEN THINKING REALLY HARD ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS

Okay, here it is. The first podcast I listened to regularly was the Daily Affirmation, Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz’s little morning chatter that they would record off the cuff while starting work in their studio. I am a Kris Straub superfan, as is well established, and I like Scott Kurtz too (actually, I like Scott Kurtz more than I like PvP). I really liked it, and that led me to the Penny Arcade podcast, probably my favorite collection of nonmusical audio ever. I listened to both of those corpuses repeatedly; they kept me sane and amused during long, boring days of working from home or driving across the country. They’re much of the reason I started doing a podcast of my own.

Here’s the thing: Scott and Kris did another podcast called the Power Hour, which was also them just talking, taking callers, like a radio show. I tried listening to it a couple times, and I never liked it. This is much the same setup as the podcast Kris and David Malki ! have now, called Tweet Me Harder, which I listen to out of loyalty and don’t mind, but of which I’m still not particularly fond.

This contradiction repeats: I love Dan Savage, both in writing and persona, but the Savage Lovecast turns me off. I don’t read the webcomics Sheldon or Evil Inc., but when their creators (Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar) show up with Kris and Scott on Webcomics Weekly, I really enjoy it. I can’t stand any of that hip snarky bullshit on Jordan Jesse Go or You Look Nice Today (they engender the aforementioned desire for mouth-punching). I have a well-known affection for Mr. Glass and This American Life, but actually listening to that show is too much mental work on podcast time, which is almost always during work hours.

So maybe I just like podcasts about webcomics? Yet I love listening to some creator commentary on movies and TV shows, and in particular, I’ve listened to one episode of the old Battlestar Galactica podcast–where the creator, his wife and a large chunk of the cast got together and just talked about the show for hours–again and again. But when the commentary is just the director talking to himself (or when the BSG podcast was just Ron Moore) I don’t care.

This is my working theory right now: I like listening to people who care about their work talking to each other about how they make it. It’s fascinating, funny, educational and sometimes thrilling. But I can’t stand listening to people talk for the sole purpose of being listened to, even people whose work I admire. The fact that people who are talking about the things they make tend to be unself-conscious when they get into a dialogue helps avoid the potential overlap between those paradigms.

Anyway, this is why if you mention Jesse Thorn to me in any context I will throw something at you. I have a rant for another day about how much Put This On sucks compared to the late, lamented Manual of Style.

Raising the level of discourse

April 2, 2010 /

The other day Erika got a request to do up a Penny Arcade guest comic and made the mistake of saying so on LJ–and, worse, confessing that she was a little nervous about it–at which opportunity I leapt like a jaguar in a trebuchet. I believe my exact words were “ERIKA ERIKA LEMME HELP I WANNA HELP ERIKA LEMME HEEEELP.” Out of some unknown and misplaced emotion, she acquiesced.

Anyway, it’s up now, so that’s pretty neat! That gag was Erika’s (and Matt’s?), I just helped tweak the dialogue (and, shamefully, truncated Professor Snugglesworth’s name). I did write the little bonus strip mentioned in the post.

This marks the second time in two years that my work has made some kind of appearance on PA. Based on linear progression, the plan is working, and by 2240 my takeover will be complete.

March 15, 2010 /

Kara took about eighteen pictures of Lou Ferrigno at Emerald City this year because she was fascinated (not in a good way) with his biceps. I urged her to stop, having heard tales of Ferrigno’s anger at people who took his picture without paying–it is his only job, after all–but honestly, I think now I see what she was saying.

Looks roided, really.

Credit for that picture to Josh Trujillo; you should click through to check out the gallery, which has cute kids in costumes.

SO THERE

March 3, 2010 /

I love Nathan Rabin. I’m just going to quote this whole thing, from his ongoing retrospective on the endless NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC series of chart-topper compilations:

Like The New Radicals, Semisonic will forever be tarnished with the one-hit-wonder tag. That’s a shame, because it was a fantastic power-pop group, a trio of eggheads with a gift for monster hooks, passionate vocals, and sincerity that never lapsed into sentimentality. Their 1996 album debut Great Divide is a minor power-pop masterpiece, but the trio’s follow-up birthed “Closing Time,” the group’s unlikely contribution to the NOW pantheon.

At a time when much of what passed for alternative music was steeped in rage, angst, and sneering irony, Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson was refreshingly willing to be romantic and sincere. He wrote great love songs like “Secret Smile” and “Singing In My Sleep,” and songs that weren’t what they appeared to be, like “Closing Time.”

On the surface, the song finds the romance in barflies scrambling for a closing-time hookup, but according to So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star, the likeable memoir of Semisonic drummer Jacob Slichter, it was written about the birth of Wilson’s first child. The song’s key line is purloined from the Roman philosopher Seneca, who originally wrote, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” It’s a line with multiple meanings; there’s the end of life in the womb and the beginning of life outside, but also a father and mother forsaking the pleasures of youth for the responsibilities of parenthood.

Dear everyone who has mocked my Semisonic completism: YEAH, FUCKERS.

Still playing catchup on my 2009 material

February 28, 2010 /

On the plane to Kentucky for Christmas last year, I read Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang. For the first half of this reading, I was under the vague impression that it had been published in 2008. I found it tremendously enjoyable, and contemporary–a gay protagonist of color and strong female characters, China as the sole world superpower, a mundane and difficult life on a lunar colony–but with some irksome anachronisms, like the way the characters used their wrist-implant cyberjacks to make calls from pay phones.

Eventually I flipped back to check the copyright page. It came out in 1992.

Jesus Christ, Maureen McHugh, you were on top of this shit while the rest of the field was just starting to get boners for steampunk? I will be reading more of your books.

This is an easy test for determining premillennial science fiction from the postmillennial, by the way: the ubiquity of cell phones (and how big a deal the author makes about them).