Thud: Sugar, and Owls

February 1, 2009 Progress Notes:

"Sugar"

Words today: 1000.
Words total: 23,850.
Reason for stopping: Round number, and I'm still not getting far enough fast enough on this stupid scene that will not budge. I am going to bash it with a brick like I'm Nick Cave and it's a badly street-proofed blonde in a minute.

Books in progress: Robert Graves, The Long Week-end; Claudia Dey, Stunt.
The glamour: I did yeoman's work on the glamour front today. Despite being out most of the day, vasty depths of slush were read, information was sorted and spreadsheeted (spreadshot?) for a new OWW feature, the March Ideo lineup was finalized and sent to the Deities of Layout, and generally I swabbed the decks of my inboxes almost clean of actionable e-mail. Also, I did dishes. :p

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Today I had an Unexpected Change of Plans and, instead of going climbing, went birdwatching on the Leslie Street Spit.

It was a really nice day for this: sunny, bright, about 5 degrees Celcius which is super warm compared to oh, the last month or so. There was also about fifty feet of snow, which I tromped through for about three and a half hours, which means my legs are not talking to me at the moment. But despite never doing the birdwatching thing before I was with someone who knew what they were about, and got to see two Great Horned Owls, one Saw-whet Owl (tiny! like a little fluffy grapefruit!), and some sort of kestrel. Also discovered was the remains of one of the big owls' lunch all over one of the little trails: a perfectly petrified little dead white mousie, some fur bits, some brown balled-up nasty bits, and a whole rabbit spine.

0.0

Owls? Fucking scary.

So this will probably not be a regular thing -- I don't really have the pleasure in taxonomy that I think you need to make this a hobby -- but it was a fun thing to try once. Except for that bit with the spine.

Yes, I am a city girl. And thank you. :p

Two Things, Brief

"A Thousand", which is about paper cranes, Vancouver, and the rather unfair communication traps inherent in a certain kind of fairy tale, will be appearing in a future issue of On Spec.

Also, via time_shark, Clockwork Phoenix has made the Locus Recommended Reading List, with stories by Laird Barron (imago1) and Tanith Lee singled out for extra recommending. This is further proof that it is an awesome anthology and should be read by you, the consumer. Also, it may cure the King's Evil, but this is not a guarantee.

Slapfights, on the theory of.

Y'know, I think I've located the glitch in our metaphor system; the semantic breakdown:

The internet is not a battlefield, upon which a war is fought. Against an enemy. Who requires no-holds-barred force.
The internet is not your house, which needs to be defended. From, again, some implied faceless mob of attackers.
The internet is not a square mile of territory which one can be driven off.
The internet is not a community which one can be ostracised from.
You cannot win the internet.

When you stop looking at it in those terms? You'd be surprised how unnecessary it all becomes.