Christopher Rowe

But the kind that writes poems and takes good care of his horse

Your result for The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test...

The Knight

You are the hero. Brave and bold. You are strong and utterly selfless. You are also a pawn to your superiors and will be lucky if you live very long. If you survive the Holy wars you are thrust into you will be praised for your valor and opportunities both romantic and financial will become available to you.

Take The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test at HelloQuizzy

Monthlies

That meme y'all are doing where you put the first line of the first post from every month ain't fair to people who don't update every month, just saying.

I got a flickr and will soon update it with pictures of my new secret underground lair.

Library, Alchemy, SORBS, High School

I've been asked to give an introductory seminar (an hour or two, I think) on "improving your science fiction & fantasy writing" at one of the local libraries. It's scheduled for the afternoon of October 28th, so hopefully you guys will come up with some great stuff for me to say by then. My other teaching stints have all been sprawling, multi-week gigs and I'm interested in what people would find most beneficial from a more concise, focused session. Please, comment away, or drop me a line.

Pleasant surprise in PO Box 1304 this morning. Editor/publisher Steve Pasechnick sent us a copy of the third issue of his gorgeous magazine, Alchemy. It features stories from a lot of my favorite writers; folks like Hannah Wolf Bowen, Theodora Goss, Beth Adele Long (twice!), Sonya Taaffe and Sarah Monette. Also some folks who are new to me. You can (and should) order it here.

This situation with SORBS blocking some messages from gmail and other e-mail providers (search on "vindictive") is getting on my nerves and costing me time. Please ask your ISPs to not use this junk.

Click on the "continue reading" link to see me meme it up on the high school thing going around. I got it from Gwenda, and she should be mindful that I'll be aggressively policing the comments to this post.

The Songs Remain the Same

Barb's the latest person I've seen doing the music meme involving favorite songs by various bands. I didn't want to have to think that hard, so here's this instead.

The other day I kind of randomly pulled together a playlist of 111 songs to listen to while I was working at my desk. As random as it can be under the circumstances anyway. So, instead of my fifty favorite songs by the Beatles et al, here are the first fifty songs from that list that came up when I hit the shuffle button just now.

If I saw this list somewhere else, I might guess the listener is slightly (but only slightly) older than me. I think I'd have pretty good guesses about race, probably about socio-economic background, and even roughly where the list compiler grew up. And how he wore his hair in 1988. But maybe I only think that because I know those things about me.

1. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) by Talking Heads
2. Stripped (Live) by Depeche Mode
3. Radio Radio by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4. You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby by The Smiths
5. Pictures Of Matchstick Men by Camper Van Beethoven
6. Je Voudrais Bien Me Marier, Mais... by Magnolia Sisters
7. That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate by Mission Of Burma
8. Try Not To Breathe by R.E.M.   
9. A New England by Kirsty MacColl
10. I Like Drinking by The Gourds
11. Walkin' After Midnight by Patsy Cline
12. Lo Boob Oscillator by Stereolab
13. Rudie Can't Fail by The Clash
14. Nothing In This World Can Stop Me Worryin' Bout That Girl by The Kinks
15. You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby by Kirsty MacColl
16. Corazón by Los Lobos
17. Transcendental Blues by Steve Earle
18. Skank Bloc Bologna by Scritti Politti
19. Bridges & Balloons by The Decemberists
20. State Trooper by Bruce Springsteen
21. Outside The Trains Don’t Run On Time by Gang Of Four
22. Midnight Rider by The Allman Brothers Band
23. Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield
24. Don't Get Your Back Up by Sarah Harmer
25. Pictures Of You by The Cure
26. Little Sister by Nico
27. Michelangelo by Emmylou Harris
28. The Caterpillar by The Cure
29. Beautiful Day by U2
30. (Rock) Superstar by Cypress Hill
31. Paradise by Robert Shanon Meitus and the Dorkestra
32. Bring On The Night by The Police
33. Can't Stop The World by The Go-Go's
34. The Reflex by Duran Duran
35. Flying Saucer Dudes by Béla Fleck & The Flecktones
36. 'Til The Last Leaf Shall Fall by Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
37. Let's Dance by David Bowie
38. Under The Milky Way by The Church
39. Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires by Cocteau Twins
40. Absolute Beginners by The Jam
41. World As One by M.I.R
42. J Breas by Moby
43. Our Mother The Mountain by Townes Van Zandt
44. Ohio River Boat Song by Palace Music
45. Tides Of Time by Donna The Buffalo
46. Barber's Adagio For Strings (Ferry Corsten Remix) by William Orbit
47. Something About You by Level 42
48. Bring On The Dancing Horses by Echo & The Bunnymen
49. Fortune Present Gifts Not According To The Book by Dead Can Dance
50. Boys Who Love Girls by The Rosebuds

Sleepin' in a boxcar when it rains...

Hey, this one is fun. Via Steven.  

What metros have I been on? (I need to add to these. If you don't recognize the logos, these are from Paris, Glasgow, London, New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. Not necessarily in that order. A couple of cities have multiple systems and I've put in multiple logos where I've ridden multiple systems.)

Got at b3co.com!

3:10

I think I may have made this up. But it's also possible I saw it somewhere and am simply operating under the delusion that I've come up with something new. Luckily, as a fiction writer, that's something in which I'm well practiced.

Anyway, today is 3/10 as we figure dates here in Kentucky. If you're in Europe, I guess it's 10/3, but you can play along. In Australia it's 3/11, so consider this an opportunity for time travel.

It goes like this. Sort your digital musical files (if you do that sort of thing) by length of track. Post everything that's three minutes and ten seconds long. 3/10, 3:10, get it?

It was this or post cat pictures.

"Blue Jean," David Bowie
"Beestung," Kristin Hersh
"Devil in Disguise," Emmylou Harris
"Good Year for the Roses," Elvis Costello & the Attractions
"Peek-a-Boo," Siouxsie & the Banshees
"Better Be Home Soon," Crowded House
"Talk Like That," Kelly Willis
"Whitewater," Béla Fleck
"(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea," Elvis Costello & the Attractions
"Wrong 'Em Boyo," The Clash

Now you. Post your results or a link to such in the comments. If you do that sort of thing.

Makes as much sense as anything...

 

Dead Kennedy's This is where you belong in the annals of punk history!

You are the thinking man and pranksters punk. You are what the ideal "punk as social rebel" is supposed to be. You see the capability for amazing art that punk contains just beneath the surface. You are America's favorite underground hero and your brains are what really scares the establishment. Just don't become too "more punk than thou," because then you just become the establishment that we've spent all this time fighting against and your rebellion goes up in smoke. You're too smart to let that happen. You're the real deal.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 23% on wild apathy You scored higher than 20% on pissed off You scored higher than 50% on comically evil You scored higher than 82% on socially aware

Link: The What classic punk band are you Test written by DrLebowski on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

In brightest day or blackest night, baby.

Gwenda says I have to meme it up and choose a painter whose work best expresses my personality. Now, I'm pretty sophistamicated and shit when it comes to the fine arts in general. But in terms of my own personality? Alex Ross! You know it!

Curly

Look at that graphic, baby. I'm not just quotes; I'm smart quotes.

Every Little Thing is Gonna Be Alright

After a week off for Bluegrass College's Fall Break (and let me put in a word here for Fall Break, I think everybody should get one), I'm back to being a full time student and a full time writer at the same time. There's precedent for this, as my old buddy Stilgar said. "Liet serves two masters."

Obviously, things aren't as bad for me as they were for old Liet, what with Harkonnen scum staking him out over geologically active spice sands, but it is tough some days to keep my Penfield dialed to 419 ("giddily appreciative of the extraordinary opportunities that keep landing in my lap") when my natural predilections are to tune it to 254 ("anxiety that increases in direct proportion to the growing height of the real and virtual stacks of text books, research materials, manuscripts, e-mails, books and magazines to be read, and to do lists").

Next entry, comic book versions of mixed metaphors.

Now, since the internet moves much faster than the world at large, and thus it takes much less time for the old to become new again, I'm going to pretend it's already retrohip to do the "first lines" thing that stormed around all over the place back in the middle Triassic/a couple of weeks ago. I'm just going to do three, as these are the three things of "my own" that I'm actively trying to finish in the next couple of weeks. When finished, they'll all be genre short stories, novellinis or novelites, depending on what length they wind up needing to be.

These are all works in progress, and all lacking context, so excuse any present inelegance; the final versions will be great, I swear. (Somebody needs to invent an emoticon for that one kind of smartass "ahem" throat clearing noise, I'd use it all the time.)  Titles and first lines are:

Gather: At the beginning of winter, Gather had thirty-four dollars to spend.

Another Word for Map is Faith: The little drivers were throwing baggage down from the top of the bus and out from its rusty undercarriage vaults.

Some Properties of Asphalt: Rhea’s father, the Fed, had named her for some whack branch of science that people predating even his ancient ass had messed around with.

Okay, Kentucky Short Fiction midterm tomorrow, so that's all for now.