Misapostrophication

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Things are getting a bit frantic over here, so I’m afraid that you won’t be getting much in the way of coherent blogging (not that that’s ever really a problem, I suppose). My laptop keyboard is still buggered, and has fits of semi-working, followed by seizures of not-working, making the whole writing stories business a bit of a challenge. I’m a bit behind on deadlines as a result.

Since so many of you were intrigued by the hazily photographed ’snow brown’ drink of the other week, you’ll be happy to know that I stumbled upon it once more (at a Korean place on La Trobe Street), and this time was daring enough to order it. No doubt you’ll be fascinated to know that it tasted like Weetbix with crushed ice. Mmm-mmm.

Today’s enlightenment is an equally hazily photographed image (I only had my phone with me, unfortunately) from a menu at Ghurka’s on Chapel Street, which is also apparently proud to proclaim that its menu is ‘glutton free’ (not true, given all we ate last night):

Jack Denials: for the abstemious drunkards amongst us

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From The Age:

Tourist caught smuggling lizards in pants

Lizards in pants? What’s next? Elephants in pyjamas?

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The Racy Pages Surprise anthology has picked up my 100 word drabble, ‘Explorations’. This story was inspired by Jono’s tendency to leave his jeans and socks strewn about the house. Fortunately, he’s in charge of the washing, so I’ll forgive him.

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Taken in Germany last year. I’m quite sure a troll or two lives beneath this bridge.

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Oh my goodness, this game is hilarious.

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From The Age:

Police push to cut assaults.

Surely that’s not the best way to go about it?

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I’m not quite sure whether this is meant to be a positive or a negative review.

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This is one of the many reasons why I think Cate Kennedy is fabulous.

I haven’t yet bought Cate’s novel The World Beneath, but I did sneakily stand in Borders for a while last week reading it. Definitely on my to-read list.

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Taken in the bathroom at Jono’s office:

(no, I wasn’t the smartypants who wrote ‘what’s a tiolet?’ at the bottom. For once.)

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Aqua Vita has been reprinted in the new e-zine LITSNACK. This story first appeared in print form in the youth magazine Voiceworks, and in audio form on Drabblecast.

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Wheatland Press, publisher of the fabulous Polyphony series has put out a call for pre-orders for the forthcoming Polyphony 7 in order that it might go ahead with the whole printing and publishing bizzo. The ToC includes my short story ‘The Possibility of Love’, which is probably my favourite out of all of the stuff I’ve written, so it would be great if it could see the light of day.

Deb Layne at Wheatland Press says the following about P7:

In 2002, the Polyphony anthology series debuted. Conceived as a short fiction venue for stories that would skate gracefully across the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, and literary fiction, it was quickly recognized as the standard bearer for cross genre work. Since then, the series’ six volumes have become a vital, unique collection of voices in literature of the fantastic.

Polyphony has been twice nominated for a World Fantasy Award and the stories therein have been featured in several “Year’s Best” anthologies, along with garnering accolades from several award judges and committees. Polyphony authors range from multiple-award-winning seasoned writers to the previously unpublished. The series is truly a melodic interweaving of many voices: old and new, speculative and literary, heralded and unknown. Polyphony has not merely crossed literary boundaries, it has reformed and redefined them.

The harsh economic climate threatens to kill this vital series. Wheatland Press is asking for your help.

The authors have graciously made concessions to make Polyphony 7 a reality. They’ve agreed to a reduced pay rate to see the volume published. Now we need readers.

In order to publish Polyphony 7, Wheatland Press must receive 225 paid pre-orders via the website by March 1, 2010. If the pre-order quantities cannot be met, Polyphony will cease publication. It’s that simple. The preorder link is here: http://www.wheatlandpress.com/
(mid page)

If the preorder number is met, then Polyphony 7 will be published on or about July 1, 2010.*

We have heard from many in the SF/F literary community that Polyphony is a vital part of landscape. We agree, but we cannot continue without your support. We hope that you will support our fine authors and their art by becoming part of the Polyphony community and pre-ordering a copy of Polyphony 7.

*The fine print: If we do not receive enough orders by March 1, then all preorders will be refunded immediately.

Do feel free to buy another Wheatland Press title while you are stopping by the website! Those will, as always, ship immediately.

And, also feel free to repost this announcement with impunity

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‘. . .ignoring the elephone in the room’

Maybe I’m working myself too hard.

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Jono is currently standing by the sink doing the dishes, his leg propped up against the dodgy cupboard door that always comes open.

Me: Just thought I should let you know that I’m working on a horror story about that door that you’re standing in front of–the one that always opens of its own accord.

Jono: . . .

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This morning I cleverly managed to spill a cup of tea on my beautiful laptop, in the process managing to render half of its keys useless (although thankfully the rest of the machine still seems to be in working order). So I spent the day hogging a computer at Jono’s office while working on some commissioned articles. Obviously, though, I was in a bit of a frazzled state, as a quick proofread revealed that rather than writing about home invasions due to burglars, I’d spent quite a bit of time discussing how to keep buglers out of one’s home.

Fair enough, I suppose, as they can be rather noisy, but still. Not quite in line with my brief.

The laptop is now in the shop awaiting a new keyboard, so here I am hogging another of Jono’s computers. Can I just ask what on earth Apple was thinking when they not only put only two USB ports on their MacBook Pro, but placed them a) on the left side of the computer, making it hard to use a mouse unless you’re left-handed, and b) so closely together that they can scarcely be used at the same time?

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From ‘Towards an action-oriented science curriculum’, by Hodson, D, Journal for Activist Science and Technology Education:

‘We certainly need to rake steps to counter the somewhat bleak view of technological determinism’

It actually took me several reads to realise that anything was wrong here.

Oh, and in other news, WQ, a writing magazine out of Queensland, will publish a short article of mine in its next issue. I also had a short article in their recent young writers edition, and I can recommend it as a magazine–it’s a very nice looking magazine, and there’s some great content.

Other than that, I’ve been spending my days at work writing on education stuff, and at home writing web content stuff. My fingers have been worn down to stubs, but my typing speed is faster than light!

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From today’s Age:

Frozen Chicken Fire Blocks Freeway

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Weird sentence of the day:

‘Longevity of tenure is further supported by Southworth (2006) who cite a traditional period of 20 years to harvest a headteacher’

in D Barrett-Baxendale, and D Burton, ‘Twenty-First Century Headteacher: pedagogue, visionary leader or both?’ In School Leadership and Management

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(also known as ‘crash blossoms‘, as Lauren the Linguist tells me)

From The Age:

Anger over release of man convicted of murdering doctor shot dead on footpath.

Hmm. Can you murder someone who’s already been shot dead?

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Taken from Toby Litt’s Hospital:

The boy stumbled out of the shower of the 14th floor stairwell, now thick with panicking, escaping people.

(Why yes, apparently I do only read books with red and white covers)

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From The Age:

Police hunt knife-wielding milk bar bandit

I guess there’s always a bad egg — even amongst milk bars.

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I guess the young woman in this picture is called 99% Fat Free Special K? With a name like that, I bet she got teased at school. . .

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From, as usual, The Age:

A Paris laboratory found the left-hand fingerprint on the work drawn in ink and chalk in January and established that it was “very similar” to one found on a da Vinci work in the Vatican, said laboratory director Jean Penicault on Tuesday.

Well, given that it was apparently only drawn in January, I’m going to guess it’s a fake.

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Sentence of the day:

‘In the present study, inter-scorer reliability based on 28 definitions, 2 definitions per word randomly chosen from all children in our sample, resulted in a kappa of .96’

I realised I wasn’t the target audience for this article when I read ‘kappa’ and thought instantly of the open-skulled Japanese monster.

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The ebook version of Paper Cities (through Senses Five Press) has gone live on Amazon. It’s a great collection containing short stories by authors such as Kaaron Warren, Ben Peek, Jay Lake, Cat Sparks, and, er, me.