So I’m sitting here wrapping up book packages and getting caught up on the email, and were_gopher sends me this link. (Thanks Om!) And now my birthday is complete before it’s barely started.
 
The full story is here. Go, read, be happy. (The piccie also appears in the large version here, at […]

Posted in Current events, Humor, Uncategorized 2 Comments »

…for the book that didn’t get published, starts on page 16 of this fascinating document.
Just look at all those zeroes. (Not that the poor ghostwriter gets to have many of them…)
Technorati Tags: O.J., Simpson, book, novel, contract

Posted in Current events, Writing No Comments »

But then the statement was made “late Friday”, when everybody was probably at a Christmas party somewhere. (Or NewsCorp hoped they were.) (Sorry, the only link I have at the moment is to a registrant-only story at Variety.)
News Corp.-owned HarperCollins announced the news late Friday on the East Coast with a terse press release headlined […]

Posted in Current events, Media 1 Comment »

Guns? They’re giving them guns now??
Erik Estrada and other lesser celebrities have been sworn in as reserve officers of the city police department here, allowing them to carry badges and guns as part of a reality television series.
About 200 people packed into a Muncie City Hall auditorium for the Tuesday ceremony to swear in the […]

Posted in Current events, Media No Comments »

Hey, look: it’s the congressional version of a Hugo Losers’ Party.
A closed-door panel of defeated and retiring members [of the U.S. Congress], including Katherine Harris, R-Fla.; Clay Shaw, R-Fla.; Mike Bilirakis, R-Fla.; Anne Northup, R-Ky.; J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz.; and Ed Case, D-Hawaii, turned up in the Longworth Building on Tuesday for a career advice panel […]

Posted in Current events No Comments »

Somewhere definitive, perhaps, to send your cellphone video of crashing zeppelins…
Beginning tomorrow, media companies Yahoo! and Reuters will allow members of the public to upload or e-mail photos and videos to illustrate breaking news stories. The “You Witness” service, which aims to turn the world’s hundreds of millions of camera phones into a news resource, […]

Posted in Current events, Media, Note to self 2 Comments »

Goodle. It’s Google News…but all good.
Including:
World Peace sparks outpourings of joy
George Lucas to refilm all three Star Wars prequels
Spam drying up
Scientists pack up: “Everything explained”
Rivers, lakes of wine and beer
Golden age back
And more. (sigh) Just the headlines, unfortunately.
Technorati Tags: Google, Goodle, humor

Posted in Computer stuff, Current events, Humor, Online life 1 Comment »

And too many desserts, if you ask me.Technorati Tags: White House, Barney, dessert, menu

Posted in Current events, Food, restaurants and cooking No Comments »

I swear, it’s like watching high-stakes poker on TV. But high-stakes poker played by six-year-olds.
i m divorcin u kthxbye
Oh yeah? I want a lot of money or I’m taking the kids because you’re a bad mom.
No I’m not and no you’re not. Read the prenup again and buzz off.
Oh yeah? Well I have a sooper […]

Posted in Current events, Media, Online life, Psychology / psychiatry 1 Comment »

Somebody at the BBC deserves a cookie for this one.
Transgender MP in toilet fracas
Pity, though: I had hoped it was a British MP. Turns out the story hails from Italy.
An Italian opposition MP and former showgirl has expressed outrage after meeting a transgender colleague in the parliament’s ladies’ toilets.
Elisabetta Gardini, spokeswoman for former PM Silvio […]

Posted in Current events, Humor No Comments »

I read the Long Island newspaper Newsday partly to keep an eye on the part of the world where I grew up, and partly because the father of one of my characters (apparently) works for it. This morning, though, on their website, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before.

Newsday’s front page features a Google map […]

Posted in Current events, Media 1 Comment »

Duane “Dog” Chapman of “Dog the Bounty Hunter” fame has just been released on bail after an arrest on foot of an extradition request from Mexico. They want him on a charge of illegal detention: apparently he chased a criminal to Mexico and caught him there. But bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico.
The part of […]

Posted in Current events, Media 2 Comments »

Wow, more than a thousand fifteen hundred of you have been in since Glenn put up that posting. Welcome!
For those of you curious about what’s going on around here at the moment: a precís –

First of all, the usual blogging. Tales of travel, cats, food, the home life of a writer married to another […]

Posted in Current events, Home life, Online life 1 Comment »

From an article about the deploying of the International Space Station’s new solar panels: one astronaut is mentioned…
…Christopher J. Ferguson, another Navy captain, who is on his first shuttle mission and is a member of the all-astronaut rock band Max Q.
The all-astronaut rock band??!!
Where do they play? Where can a geek(ette) buy their CDs? Someone […]

Posted in Astronomy, Current events, Travel 1 Comment »

Or the second planette. (Or dwarf planet, or planetoid, or whatever-the-F we’re calling the Small Guys Out Past Neptune this week.)
Anyway: the planet formerly known as Xena is now Eris. …Which makes so much sense, given recent events. And her moon is Dysnomia. (Which I would otherwise have pegged as the word for […]

Posted in Astronomy, Current events 3 Comments »

I am a big fan of Benvenuto Cellini’s. Okay, maybe it sounds a little strange to say that, at this end of time: but the man’s personality is an endless fascination to me. He was an exquisitely talented painter and sculptor who worked for popes and kings, a contemporary and acquaintance of Michaelangelo and […]

Posted in Current events, Graphic and plastic arts, History No Comments »

So CopperCon was a blast (as was the heat in Tempe: like a blast furnace…). Met many cool people, and had a super time. Had time to touch base with our fellow GoH, the excellent (and very busy!) Marc Scott Zicree. Ate the terrible Jack In The Box tacos for breakfast twice. (Don’t ask what […]

Posted in Conventions, Current events, Fantasy and science fiction, Home life, Uncategorized No Comments »

Here’s the roundup at BoingBoing. Succinctly titled: “Not guilty, just inconveniently brown.”
Technorati Tags: cellphones, security

Posted in Current events 2 Comments »

– was my response when I woke up this morning to hear our old buddy David Moore from Astronomy Ireland on RTÉ’s morning news show, talking about a story that the tapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing had been mislaid.
Needless to say, the story’s all over Google News at the moment, in many permutations […]

Posted in Astronomy, Current events, Media 1 Comment »

Just (via Blog of a Bookslut: thanks, Jessa — ) came across this Telegraph article about — let’s call it what it is — signing envy. An ugly thing, especially if you catch yourself at it.

Never having been at this end of the whole book-festival process, it hadn’t occurred to me that book-signing is a […]

Posted in Conventions, Current events No Comments »