eddvick

By Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer. Here.

Carolyn See
Random House / 2002

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Not so much a how-to book, though there's a lot of practical advice. This is more of a why-to book. From chapter 18, the last chapter:

If you're not a bona fide "bestseller", money comes in a variety of ways. You can teach "creative writing" (if some institution will hire you), you can do the occasional book review, you can give inspirational speeches (if anyone will consent to listen), and you can sell books out of the trunk of your car. All that is fun. But money for the serious - and even frivolous - writer flows to you basically in three ways: by applying for grants, doing magazine pieces, and having some fun with the tax man. You can go on with your day job - T. S. Eliot was a banker, William Carlos Williams was a doctor, etc. - or you can go looking for "a big advance" with your big-advance truffle pig, but only a true maniac would expect to make money from writing short stories or literary novels.

There are a lot of assumptions in this paragraph, not the least the recognition of myself as a 'maniac'. But grants? If I didn't have a full time job that would be something interesting to follow up on. I'm writing grants for the adoption agency for which I work, and plan to write them for our SF conference Foolscap if we succeed in getting our 501(c)3.

Kim Long
1988 / Johnson Books

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I picked this one up cheaply at Half Price Books just to make sure I was getting lunar terminology and science correct. Sure it's dated, but I was looking for the basics. I'm trying to write a story for this contest, but it's slow slogging.

Here's a term I doubt I'll be using, from the glossary:

Apolune: The point in the orbit of an object (such as a spaceship) around the moon when it is farthest from the moon's surface.

There's a sense of foreboding about my latest story for The Daily Cabal.

Thomas Perry
2008 / Harcourt

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This novel is part of my booty for judging Jeff Wood's latest Snowbuni pinup contest. Thanks, Jeff!

I've read every one of Perry's books. This is not one of the better ones, though better than most suspense novels. I think the focus is on the assassin too much, and the heroine and her partners don't get to be clever enough. I can highly recommend Perry's Metzger's Dog or Island -- indeed any of his first nine books except Butcher Boy. His next one, coming in January, features his series character Jane Whitefield, whose specialty is helping people disappear. I'll be in line for it.

Roald Dahl
1982 / Scholastic

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Another one Katie read to me in the car. She likes Dahl a lot, except for Willie Wonka.

I've been drinking Dr. Pepper for 45 years, often several a day. A few years ago I tried to cut down, and recently converted to Diet Coke (Diet DP is awful). I knew it was also bad, but didn't realize just how bad.

When the international measure changes over time.

Amy and Katie will be off May 10th & 11th for a Girl Scouts sleepover. The 10th happens to be the date for the ginormous West Seattle Community Garage Sale (140+ families). I thought I'd spend Saturday trolling the sales, and that's always more fun with a friend. Is there somebody who'd like to go along?

Hungry? My latest flash story is up at The Daily Cabal.

This looks like a lot of fun.

I seem to have forgotten to post the link to my latest story over at The Daily Cabal. Please enjoy.

When I first saw the headline of this entry I totally saw Jesus as one of the 3 Stooges! Nyuk nyuk nyuk...

to miertam!

Warren Ellis links to an article mentioning rationing and hoarding in America.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

Via

We cleaned house a bit, then Amy quizzed Katie on her 8-times tables while I wrote the agenda for the Foolscap meeting. Then in the afternoon we had said meeting at the brand new location, the Marriott at Redmond Town Center. What a step up this is going to be! We're all so pleased with the amenities and how close it is to so many great restaurants.

Afterwards we shopped at the nearby Half Price Books, where I found a 5-volume set of WWI history, had dinner at Ooba's (affordable and yummy Mexican food), and went home.

A new breakthrough promises to put 150,000 times the amount of memory in the same amount of space.

Professor Lee Cronin and Dr Malcolm Kadodwala, from the university's chemistry department, said their work could see 500,000 gigabytes squeezed into a microchip no bigger than a two pence piece.

They increased the storage capacity without enlarging the size of the device by developing a new molecule sized switch.

Old pal Bobb points me to a great commercial featuring Ray Bradbury.

Vitamins. Yes, vitamins:

The trials involved 233,000 people who were either sick or were healthy and taking supplements for disease prevention.

After various factors were taken into account and a further 20 studies excluded, the researchers linked vitamin A supplements to a 16% increased risk of dying, beta-carotene to a 7% increased risk and vitamin E to a 4% increased risk.

Vitamin C did not appear to have any effect one way or the other, and the team said more work was needed into this supplement - as well as into selenium.

The conclusion: Just eat well.

Amy and Katie went to check on the bunnies last thing yesterday, and they were all gone. This likely means they were old enough to forage on their own. As the nest was not torn apart, this probably does not mean they became eagle or coyote food.