The Nerve

Books / By /

FulldirtJust who does the New York Times think it is writing a story about zombies with nary a mention of or consultation with Ms. Kelly Link, Bard of the Zombies or Zombie Bard?  I submit the following as evidence that this is unforgivable (along with her fabulous zombie stories):

From Strange Horizons interview: "One is about someone who steals a painting, and the other doesn’t really have a plot at all. It’s just about zombies and zombie contingency plans. I don’t know how it hangs together, though. I’d like Sleeping Beauty to end up in there too, but I’m not sure yet how she fits into any sort of zombie contingency plan."

From the One Story interview: "For the last few years, I’ve been obsessively watching zombie movies, and also writing stories about the ways that the dead haunt the living."

Another from the Strange Horizons interview: "Maybe I’ll retell Sleeping Beauty and make it about narcolepsy and zombies, because presently I’m obsessed with zombies. But it hasn’t gotten thick enough yet."

From the Return of the Reluctant interview: "In all situations, I like to ask myself: What would Jackie Chan do? Not because I have any sort of Jackie Chan skills, but because it’s soothing to contemplate an imaginary Jackie Chan in imaginary action, kicking imaginary ass, zombie or otherwise. More usefully, what Jackie Chan does is improvise, using objects at hand. So we have a pantry with a lot of different kinds of jam, and some Lyle’s Golden Syrup, as well as a lot of heavy, tall bookshelves, and several interesting fireworks, such as The Titanic, and The Naughty Elephant. There’s also a lawnmower in the garage, and I’ve seen Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive at least five or six times."

See also, this fabulous set of photos of and information about that zombie cake up at the left there and similarly delightful desserts prepared for a zombie cake party. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, the NYTimes’ oversight will be reported to the Zombie Oversight Authority. Don’t you worry.

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Random Images

3 Comments / Memes Upon Memes / By /

Because this is kind of amusing and I’m useless for anything more today… Snitched from here via here.

The Rule is that you take the best picture you like from the first page of Google Images results:

The city and state of the town in which you grew up, no quotation marks.
The town in which you currently reside. (Note: Pleasingly weird and not current.)
Your name, first and last, with no quotation marks. Tied with this.
Your grandmother’s name. (I did both and chose my favorite.)
Your favorite drink.
Your favorite food. Another tie.
Your favorite smell.

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archy says goodnight

1 Comment / Science Project / By /

TurtleA so-so piece in the WaPo about the death of Addwaita, a very old turtle:

One of the world’s oldest living creatures died last week in Calcutta.

Addwaita, a tortoise believed to be 250 years old, died at the local zoo. The tortoise arrived there in 1875. Zoo officials, who have yet to definitively prove Addwaita’s age, say he was one of four tortoises that had been brought to India more than a century earlier by British sailors from the Seychelles islands as a gift for Lord Robert Clive of the East India Co. Clive, who kept the turtle in his garden, was instrumental in establishing British colonial rule in India before he returned to England in 1767.

Mostly, what this piece has to recommend it is its continued reliance on the words of Don Marquis’ archy. Everybody loves archy.

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Stone Cold

Hemingway, LLC / By /

Because this doesn’t happen every day (yet!). Last night, Hemingway stole my tiara.

It’s plastic, and on my desk, and I was typing and all of a sudden he leaps up and grabs it with his teeth and runs away with it while I’m saying, "Give me back my tiara!"

Yes, this really happened.

See also: Previous picture of cat being coerced into attacking tiara. There was no coercion this time. He just took it.

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More Aztecy Goodness

5 Comments / Write Talk / By /

Aztecs(This is a post to skip if you aren’t interested in my obessive ramblings while working on this book. I wouldn’t blame you.)

I’m still loving the hell out of Aztec Dance Tunes. It’s a hard book to write, sure, but aren’t they all? Anyway, here’s a couple of fun things.

I made another playlist, this one with a few of the long songs I wanted to put on the first one but which wouldn’t fit. (I couldn’t get all of them on this one either.) This playlist isn’t necessarily made up so much of songs in which I hear the novel as songs which aren’t off and strike me as good writing background music for this book. Or at least that I think will be. It’s mostly long songs. And a few short ones because. I’m now rotating out the two discs (still Podless, oh wealthy benefactor).

ADT Long Songs #1 Playlist

Scatterheart / Bjork
Car / Catherine Wheel
April The 14th (Part I) / Gillian Welch
Draining The Pool For You / The Go-Betweens
The New Cobweb Summer / Lambchop
23 Minutes In Brussels / Luna (Live)
The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be / The Magnetic Fields
I Think I Need A New Heart / The Magnetic Fields
Miles Away / Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Fourth of July / Galaxie 500
Your Dirty Answer / Kristin Hersh
Limbo / Throwing Muses
I Dream A Highway / Gillian Welch

In general, the music I’m putting on these is slightly older than what I’m listening to the rest of the time. And I’m recycling several of the same artists — people who have made a great deal of music that I love — maybe because this book is also drawing on all sorts of things I’ve loved for ever and ever and ever. I like the familiarity and also that little buzz you get from hearing something you haven’t been listening to a million times a week already but still love. I’m mostly sticking this one up here because some of you cottoned to the first (and there will be many more, I’m sure, before this sw-et b-tch is done), but also to see what long songs you have to recommend… (Long song = 5 minutes plus.)

And here, as a bonus, is one of the best, grossest bits of my research reading that I don’t plan on using and can’t help but share. I like to call it "The Misunderstanding":

As discontent arose, the Mexica themselves precipitated their own violent departure. Obeying the promptings of Huitzilopochtli’s priests, they had approached Achitometl, one of the Calhua magnates, asking for his beautiful daughter as their "sovereign" and "wife of Huitzilopochtli." Not understanding the implications of this request, Achitometl acceded to the honor; his daughter went to Tizaapan, where she was splendidly arrayed and sacrificed. Following an old custom, the body was flayed and a priest donned her skin in an ancient agricultural rite symbolizing the renewal of life. The unsuspecting chieftain Achitometl, invited to participate in the concluding festivities, suddenly recognized the skin of his daughter on the body of the priest. The outraged Culhua took arms and were joined by others and, in the wild melee of javelins and arrows, the Mexica were once again driven into the reeds and brackish swamps of Lake Tetzcoco.

From The Aztecs by Richard F. Townsend

I know you’re wondering why I wouldn’t use such a spectacular gem. But, you see, Aztec Dance Tunes is funny. It’s not just funny, but it’s supposed to be funny enough that this particular anecdote won’t quite fit. Misunderstanding or no. (Oh, to be a fly on the wall of an Aztec bar.)

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Monday Morning Hangovers

1 Comment / Hangovers / By /

Stuff I (mostly) didn’t get around to linking last week. (And I’m STILL woefully behind on email.)

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Endings

Poemtry / By /

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

– James Wright (1927-1980)

An exchange between Wright and an interviewer (scroll down):

Henricksen: I wanted to ask you about one specific poem that you read the other night … You talked about the final line, "I have wasted my life," as being, perhaps, a realization that more time ought to be spent lying in a hammock, as I remember.

Wright: Yes, I think that I didn’t realize it at the moment, but looking back on that poem I think that final line – "I have wasted my life" – is a religious statement, that is to say, here I am and I’m not straining myself and yet I’m happy at this moment, and perhaps I’ve been wastefully unhappy in the past because through my arrogance or whatever, and in my blindness, I haven’t allowed myself to pay true attention to what was around me. And a very strange thing happened. After I wrote the poem and after I published it, I was reading among the poems of the eleventh-century Persian poet, Ansari, and he used exactly the same phrase at a moment when he was happy. He said, "I have wasted my life." Nobody gave him hell for giving up iambics. You can’t win.

from Bruce Henricksen, "Poetry Must Think" (an interview with James Wright published in 1978)

(Thanks to Mr. CVR.)

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Busy Bee

1 Comment / Excuses, Excuses / By /

Whitefronted_beeeater_268040_1I owe quite a bit of email and feel kind of lousy and am busy, busy, busy.

But do expect a response over the weekend, which will be mostly spent furiously finishing up some reading, reading, reading for the LBC and the Fountain.

(That, over there on the left, is the Whitefronted Bee-eater eating an, um, bee.)

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R.I.P.

1 Comment / Goodbyes / By /

David Stemple passed away yesterday. Jane Yolen talks about it in her journal.

I didn’t know David nearly as well as I’d have liked to, but every moment I was around him was a joy. I always thought of David as Indiana Jones, because that was what he was like. On a trip to Mexico, he and Adam braved the wilds of the countryside birding and he looked perfectly like he was on safari. You can see some pictures and listen to some of his bird recordings here. It feels strange to post about this, but it’d feel stranger to have the day pass and not mention it at all.

The world is less without him in it. My thoughts are with his family.

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