Just got my author's copy yesterday. The anthology features stories about about a suburban U.S. high school catering to young wizards and witches, and my story "The House" bats cleanup in the volume (always a fun position to be in):

She lay face down on her bed, clutching her pillow over the back of her head, and moaned, “It’s useless. Useless!”

            In the hallway outside her bedroom, Brianna’s mom had the linen closet open and was stacking sheets in it: Bri could smell the lavender water from here as her mom sprayed it onto layer after layer. And for the moment, the light clean scent infuriated her. Her mother’s compulsive housewifeliness didn’t usually bother Brianna so much except at moments like this, when the world was ending, and how nice the sheets smelled wasn’t even slightly germane.

            “Sweetie,”  her mom said,  “maybe you should just wait a few days and ask him again.”

Fortunately for me, when I’m plastered I routinely lose the ability to type — at least without committing so many typos that I simply give up on the project until the blood alcohol drops. So this isn’t for me.

But for those who have better motor skills even when inebriated, Google now introduces an app that (when enabled) slows you down with math before you send that late-night boozy message.

Fascinating…

This morning’s best read… and about time somebody said it. Brava.

Apropos of absolutely nothing (except that I want to know where I put this in a couple of weeks, and my bookmark files are beyond congested at the moment):

A comparison of US instant mashed potatoes at Bad Ingredients. (Don’t even ask about Irish instant mashed potatoes. There is only an imported UK brand called Smash ((originally made by Cadburys, and now owned by Knorr, I believe)) that turns out a result exactly mirroring the texture of wallpaper paste. Here in the land of Real Potatoes, Smash is mostly famous for its silly ‘70’s commercials featuring Martians mocking the food habits of those primitive Earthlings; apparently British viewers once voted these the best TV commercials of all time.) Disclaimer: I have sometimes brought home the “Potato Buds” brand for use when I can’t be bothered to boil the real thing. But this would be rare, and a box of Potato Buds would normally last me 3–6 months. That last brand they describe, though? Wow. Anybody know anyplace in New York that carries those?

Never mind. Here's a compendium of the Smash commercials. (The first one doesn't have the Martians: the rest do.)

(If you can't see the YouTube video embedded below, go here.)

(courtesy of Mark Evanier’s news from me)

Finally…

After four months of deliberation, Judge Robert Patterson has ruled that the H.P. Lexicon infringes J.K. Rowling’s copyright in the Harry Potter series.

The decision proper is here (.PDF file).

Briefly: yay.

More news stories on this subject are linked to in the news widget below.

Very unwell. And apparently getting more so. I’m starting to work my way through all the usual stages to make sure of where the problem is — replacing the monitor driver, installing new display drivers for the card (it’s a Radeon 9800), running diagnostics — but at the moment, here’s what I’ve got.

…Not much to say but frak. And this is the worst possible timing for this, as the household budget is not going to allow me to do anything about this for days and days yet.

…If I have any fans at Radeon who feel inclined to send me some old 9800 that’s lying around (it would be something of a legacy card these days), this would be the moment.

…Gaaaaaaaaah.

For those of you on the European side of the water who haven’t seen it as yet: SciFi UK  is showing Sword of Xanten (this being the goofy name that Channel 4 in the UK, like a terminally confused fairy godmother, wished on The Ring / Die Nibelungen / Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King) this Sunday and Monday.

Kristanna Loken is absolutely worth watching in this as Queen Brunnhild. And there is, of course, the story: a somewhat-reworked but not too damaged version of the great German epic poem the Nibelungenlied.  (The trouble with the Ring mythos is picking and choosing which bits you’re going to keep and which you’re not. Our producers chose to avoid the Wagnerian additions to the story, hewing closer to the storyline as set out in the poem., though we also drew on the Eddaic sources for some pieces of business.) 

We had fun writing this. If you have time, pop a beverage and sit back and watch Brunnhild whale on Siegfried with that spear. (And chuck poor King Gunter out of bed before the real trouble starts.) Watch the dragon engage in mortal battle with Bennu Fürmann’s wig. (Those wigs never worked on the poor man.)  And watch South Africa look really amazingly like the Rhine valley…

Just reading this article gives me entirely too many ideas for SF stories having to do with scary possible gene therapies… 

A study of Swedish twin brothers found that differences in a gene modulating the hormone vasopressin were strongly tied to how well each man fared in marriage.

"Our main finding was an association between a variant of the vasopressin receptor 1a gene and how strong bonds men reported they had to their partners," said lead researcher Hasse Walum, of the department of medical epidemiology and biostatistics at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. "Men carrying this variant scored on average lower on a scale measuring the strength of the bond compared to men not carrying this variant."

Women married to men carrying the "poorer bonding" form of the gene also reported "lower scores on levels of marital quality than women married to men not carrying this variant," Walum noted.

…Vasopressin activates the brain's reward system, and "you could say that mating-induced vasopressin release motivates male voles to interact with females they have mated with," Walum said. "This is not a sexual motivation, but rather a sort of prolonged social motivation." In other words, the more vasopressin in the brain, the more male voles want to stick around and mingle with the female after copulation is through. This effect "is more pronounced in the monogamous voles," Walum noted.

NB: this study was done on voles. If you’re human, your mileage might vary.

And this final note:

…it's too early for men to blame their inability to commit on a single gene, although Lucas guesses it's an excuse that's "certainly going to be used."

My nominee for this year’s Too Long: Don’t Read award…

This autumn, according to the newspaper Libération, 676 new books will be published [in France], 466 of them written in French, the rest long-awaited translations. According to François Reynaert in Le Nouvel Observateur, "The name alone is leaden - in the expression 'rentrée littéraire,' one hears especially 'rentrée.' It smells of the back of the classroom and the old eraser."

One novel, "Zone," by Mathias Enard, consists of one sentence running over 500 pages.

Pass.

…for rigorous medicine applied to that often non-medically-rigorous venue, the comics. The most recent example, quoted at length (and there’s more at source — I trimmed it a little):

Dr. Koslowski (narrating): Dr. Singh decided to inject 5ccs of Adrenalin directly into the Joker’s heart. It was our only chance to save thousands of lives.

Injecting medication directly into the heart, despite what you may have seen in Pulp Fiction, is not a good idea. It’s too easy to lacerate a coronary artery (causing a massive heart attack) or inject the medication into the heart muscle (causing a fatal arrhythmia). It’s not done anymore….

Dr. Koslowski: At which point the Joker flatlined.

So what does the medical team do? They defibrillate him.
Once again repeat after me: Do not shock a flatline. It is a bad idea. It may work in comic book (like it does here), but in real life it doesn’t work and may actually make the situation worse…

Once again, the Joker suffers a cardiac arrest . This time, Batman himself jabs the Joker in the heart with a syringe full of Adrenalin. The second time’s a charm and it works! The Joker returns to consciousness and promptly escapes…which was all part of Batman’s plan; he wanted to trick the Joker into leading him to the third bomb.

…Let’s count the medical errors in a mere eight pages: the Joker flatlines and is subsequently defibrillated, not to mention injected twice directly in the heart with an overdose of Adrenalin.

Note to self: Do not seek emergency medical care in Gotham City. Hold it until you reach Metropolis.

Heh heh. Go Scott!

Today’s delights from LJ’s Metaquotes community:

• Deep Ones! Meet the Deep Ones! / They're a rugose, squamous familyyyyy…

• “…OH CHRIST WHO LET JOKER HAVE PENCILS!?"

• …In these days "batsh*t" literally meant the sh*t of bats, and flame wars were conducted via snail mail or newspaper editorials.