23 April 2003

Woooo! The Wild are in the next round! In overtime yet, a good game to watch (not like the poor Leafs, sigh), and as they were interviewing Brunette at the end, he said, "We just had to come out and play hard." And the "ou" in "out" was the most beautiful vowel I've heard since January. Good stuff!

(And when the ESPN people talked to Pascal Dupuis, between the end of regulation and the beginning of overtime I think, they were on about how calm and composed he was. Huh? Had they never talked to a French-Canadian before? He was scared out of his mind and showing it rather obviously, I thought! Heck, had they never talked to anyone from north of Missouri before? Honestly!)

The Merc, of course, covered it halfway through a story on page 6 of their sports section. And they don't list who will be playing whom or where or when. Hosers. Ah well. The Wild are playing Vancouver starting on Friday, so I don't even have to cancel dinner with Zed on Thursday. (I'm kidding, Zed. I wouldn't cancel on you for a hockey game. Well, not for the first of a seven-game series in only the second round.... No. Not for a hockey game at all.)

Bookslut claims that it's World Book Day. I don't know how we could fail to celebrate something like that. How I'll celebrate is still not entirely clear.

But Raechel has a blurb (soon to be updated, I think) for Why I Hate Aliens in the Jintsu section of the Eggplant site, so yay! And she's talking to the cover artist. Very cool.

And I got a book in the mail yesterday -- long-term mix-up with some Christmas stuff that finally resulted in me being the proud new owner of Leah Cutter's Paper Mage. I heard her say sensible things at WorldCon. I'm sure I'll let you know how her book is.

I finished the Ballard (meh) and read a collection of essays from various sources, Old Norse Literature and Mythology. Meh again. I did get a good image for a later book, though, so I scribbled that down and moved on. I also read Down and Out in Paris and London, and I was confused: almost nobody generated any Whuffie at all (except maybe that Russian guy), and nothing was Bitchun whatsoever. A few things might have been sort of ad hoc, but that was about it. Not what I expected at all.

Yes, for heaven's sake, I'm kidding. I did read the Orwell, and I didn't expect it to be like Cory Doctorow at all. In some ways, I think he's fighting the same battles as people are now, when they deal with poverty and homelessness, but in some ways, it's such a different system and time that it was more interesting to me for the tiny details than for social insight. I never knew, for example, that London sidewalk artists in the 1930s mixed their pigments with condensed milk. I loved that bit. I also loved and hated that there was a censored word that they cannot now identify, because it was just rendered as "-----," and the original uncensored manuscript is gone. So there's about a page of discussion of the use of "-----" and speculating that it will eventually become acceptable usage in drawing rooms. Which it may be (if they still have drawing rooms?), but we'll never know.

I've moved on to Gary Paulsen's Winterdance, recommended ages ago by Karalee when I was looking for nonfiction. I'm ambivalent about it right now, because it's about running the Iditarod, and that seems like risking dogs to prove some human something-or-other. And also the author is annoying me with some of his behaviors that seem to be utterly oblivious to the feelings of the people and animals around him. But we'll see how the rest of the book goes. Maybe he grows as a person. Maybe his dogs bite his butt. I can't say for sure yet.

I suppose working on a book (or two) is probably the best way to celebrate World Book Day, so that's what I'll be doing. (It's all about World Book Day, of course. Otherwise, naturally, I wouldn't do a thing on it.) I finished the draft of "Wishing on Airplanes" yesterday, gave it a quick polish up, sent it out. I may edit it longer if this market doesn't want it. (Because, you know, longer stories are so easy to sell. Sigh.) I can save the draft of "Moss" for tomorrow and work on the Not The Moose, and it's what I want to do anyway. Sounds like a plan, then.