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Lateshift: It's later in the future.

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04:06 / 23.03.08

If you did that simultaneously, you're my hero.

04:34 / 23.03.08

I just tried to explain where the "global village" definition mutated and went wrong to a friend who's putting together her thesis and eventually threw my hands up in surrender to the phone.

It is important to remember at all times that one cannot gesture with the hands at a phone with no video-input and be understood well.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:02 / 23.03.08

Running down to the landlord's place to feed his cat. Back in a second...

05:14 / 23.03.08

I'm waiting to see if my desire to sleep tonight or my desire to go out and get chocolate will win out, but right now, my desire to sit here and finish the pot of coffee is in temporary lead.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:21 / 23.03.08

Ah, apathy and lassitude!

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:23 / 23.03.08

Cat-feeding turned into impromptu lightbulb replacement, and I shifted around which lights I'm keeping on tonight. Vary it a bit to emphasize that somebody's home.

Watched the remake of Hairspray last night and was pleasantly surprised.

05:32 / 23.03.08

I've heard the soundtrack, but haven't seen it.

Worth a rental, or would you suggest possibly waiting for it to run on television?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:40 / 23.03.08

Worth a rental. It's undyingly cheerful, Christopher Walken does a good job, and the main actress is superb.

05:44 / 23.03.08

I'm in shock just a bit. The news just informed me earlier this evening, that Dane Cook is set to star in a remake of High Sierra. The internet tells me nothing of this, but then, the internet has hidden things from me before. And shown me a great deal I could probably have lived without.

I would, of course, have to see this remake, purely for the horror.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:46 / 23.03.08

Horror!

I'm reading someone's online novel about interstellar with living ships crewed by zombie posthumans and commanded by a vampire. It's -- actually, really good.

I'm also working on more of my future stuff and this particular section is actually flowing-like.

05:51 / 23.03.08

Cool, cool.

I'm slowing buttressing a piece before it has to go out. Right now it's very much more a sequence of emotions within a narrative frame than it is a story as they say. Romance in the city of the dead shouldn't really go any other way, though. So... frustration!

But, I promised the piece by a deadline, so out it will go, and rewrite I will do.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:59 / 23.03.08

It'll work out, even if you have to rewrite it a few times.

I'm still having a bit trouble with this one. I like both the characters, though. It might look completely different by tomorrow.

06:18 / 23.03.08

Rereading, I think it's actually closer to done than I'd thought.

And just the right mix of really sweet and extremely atrocious, to keep it from being too sentimental or too cruel.

06:45 / 23.03.08

And I think the urge for latenight chocolate has won, so it's off to the store for me.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

06:49 / 23.03.08

Have fun! I'm going to go to bed and try to sleep.

07:18 / 23.03.08

we are drinking absinthe and watching horror movies. for some reason i had to let the late shift know. jesus hasnt shown up yet, but i do a reasonable impersonation.

(i have time to type this while others smoke tobacco; pity them.)

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:15 / 24.03.08

Sitting in the landlord's kitchen while Puck-the-cat eats some of his dry food when not actively demanding all of my attention. I'm theoretically reading an online SF novel but we'll see how that goes with the smaller life form around.

I'm not very good with animals, and I'm allergic to cats, which tends to reduce my "wealth of experience" even more. But we're getting along for the most part.

Is anyone else plugged into the shift?

03:21 / 24.03.08

Hey. Just popped by to look at the Scalped thread and Oh, look, someone is lateshifting!

03:22 / 24.03.08

I killled the story and fired it off. So that's done.

And since it was ninety-seven degrees today, I did nothing outside at all, and little inside except type, drink tea, and watch movies.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:26 / 24.03.08

Pretty much describes my day as well, though it's alternately stormy outside, and replace "drink tea" with "eat pistachios until my fingertips are numb from prying shells apart."

Why were you looking at the Scalped thread?

Okay, now Puck just took off out of the cat room, through the kitchen, into the front hall, and is now hiding under the dining room table. It's late, it's stormy, he's getting a bit batshit.

Managed about a page of writing today but it wasn't hitting the right biochemical triggers, so it's been put away. I have an idea for a story based on the fact that Roald Dahl hosted two separate horror anthology TV shows back in the day, one of them airing right before Twilight Zone. Apparently he'd monologue in the openings about perfect murders and the like. Now I have him mixed in with the Cryptkeeper in my head.

03:29 / 24.03.08

There are people in ahem Indian Country who've just caught onto the series and are less than enthusiastic. Despite disliking the series, I am trying to defend it against certain allegations/assumptions/readings.

As though I actually have anything to do with it and aren't just sticking my nose in things.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:34 / 24.03.08

I haven't read it, so I can't really comment. It didn't really look, from the times I've skimmed through it, like it was quite my thing. What allegations are being made?

Suggestion: instead of defending, ask instead of how they would have done it, if given the basic concept? Would they rip it apart and do it entirely different, or what? It seems to be a safer, more creative, and potentially more positive way of dealing with certain lines of criticism (which are valid, certainly, but after a while the anger can be draining).

03:51 / 24.03.08

The biggest part of the problem, from my perspective, is people getting upset at seeing their people represented as crimies. But, y'know, it's a crime story. It's a violent not-good-folks story from what I've seen, so... and the issue of research and familiarity, which is what turned me off, so there I can agree more.

But, personally, I'd take just as much a stretch writing, oh, straight middle-class white protestants from Boston, if I did so, hence I cannot comfortably be too harsh on people fictionalizing and making shit up in fiction.

So, yeah, my response has kinda been "Why aren't you doing a call-back or response fiction, then?" more than anything, but I'd like to defuse a few people before it gets silly. Especially since they'll go run an article somewhere over the offense, but nobody but me's praising Warren Ellis loudly for being like the one White Comics Guy who does great reasonably-portrayed - and frequently badass - Native characters (American Eagle, Dani Moonstar, Forge, et al).

I suck at the racial politricks and I love comics almost blindly sometimes. It's a hard road.

On the bright side, I have a new can of coffee, a box of Moon Pies, and I've begun rereading L.M. Montgomery stuff I haven't touched since I was tiny tiny. Emily Climbs and all that.

04:01 / 24.03.08

Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the olden years before the world turned upside down.

If I wasn't so inclined to make everything literal and eighteen different metaphors, that probably wouldn't be nearly as magickal, but I am, and it is. Schoolgirl fiction will be the end of me.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:01 / 24.03.08

Goodnight Moon, as well, right?

Callbacks -- so good! If nothing else, these should be excuses for dialogue.

The issue of identity politics and reappropriation through fiction is dicey, dicey, dicey. Obviously, there's the issue of whether or not you can accurately portray stuff outside your experience (the Mambo Italiano argument), but if you subscribe to that after a while we're all writing inside our little boxes. I suppose your point the other night -- "Don't be boring" -- works the best, as long as people are actively trying to write honestly, even if they screw things up. But maybe that's just naive of me. "Honesty." "Good intentions."

I was going to say something else but the cat just moved and now it's gone. Probably occur to me at 3am tonight when I'm startled awake or something.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:05 / 24.03.08

No, wait, Goodnight Moon was by somebody else.

I really can't remember what my other point, but it was about twice as brilliant as what made it into that post. DUH.

Leigh Monster loses its cool

04:09 / 24.03.08

hallooooo, what time is it?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:09 / 24.03.08

10:09pm, PST. Or lateshift time. Hi Leigh. How's tricks?

Leigh Monster loses its cool

04:12 / 24.03.08

hurray, I'm on time! tricks are tricky. I'm in NY visiting a friend who's now at the office working, tipsy on wine he left for me and lazily contemplating my thesis. How are yoo?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:16 / 24.03.08

Covered in cat hair. Contemplating the bottle of wine which is just over there, which I should really be honourable about and wait until I can drink it with the Accomplice, since we bought it together on a winery tour. BUT IT'S JUST SITTING THERE, going "Oh, look at me, I'm wine. You're sober and I'm wine and you have no chocolate at all so wine would be just swell, wouldn't it?" I'm thinking of scavenging a tin of oysters or something.

04:17 / 24.03.08

I have great patience for the best intentions, really, and suspect most people do not.

The only Goodnight Moon that came to mind was a song, but the internet tells me there is a book by Margaret Brown and Clement Hurd.

And, ooh, apparently I got a great bad review last week, wherein a short piece is slammed as being "like a Brecht play" and "fails to understand that even the unorthodox needs to conform." I smell potential for a future back cover blurb there!

Leigh Monster loses its cool

04:20 / 24.03.08

hahahaha. Nice.

04:20 / 24.03.08

Hey, Leigh!

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:21 / 24.03.08

I'm confused. Was this piece reviewed by a Dalek?

NOT A BERTOLT BRECHT PLAY! Dear God. If only my stuff was compared to Brecht plays. "Even the unorthodox must conform." No, really: will you be assimilated for writing this play? Please send a note to the reviewer noting that his royal jelly is showing. Fucking hive-mind.

04:24 / 24.03.08

I've asked that at least a photocopy be sent to me, so I don't have to pay for a Uni paper to get a review if I don't absolutely need to. Apparently he liked the rest of the anthology, it's just me that was a problem. At length.

It may also signify the only time anyone's going to compare me to Brecht, postively or negatively. I could just about sing Pirate Jenny. In fact, if I tap into the whisky just down the hall, I will.

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