Der Publishen Rassenfrassen

Mine is online at http://www.flashquake.org/.

Finished jaylake's novel, Trial of Flowers, during the weekend's travels [to be detailed and bitched about later]. It falls rather outside my usual area of reading material, so bear in mind that the only things remotely like ToF that have been on my bookshelves are Chia Mieville's Perdido Street Station (this is a common comparison, from seeing previous reviews), and some of Neil Gaiman's work, Neverwhere in particular. Some reviewers say that it imparts a scale of history that is seldom achieved by similar works; I can't say I agree with that assessment overmuch (or maybe my "historical scale" detector is poorly calibrated).

I wander in from a Sci-Fi environment, so it's not second nature to accept magic out of hand; some of it is carried off with a deft touch and is very natural; some less so. The characters themselves are all immediately and vibrantly identifiable and distinct, few falling prey to established tropes or archeypes in any genre. For my money, they're the best facet of an interesting universe hewn from irregular stone.

If you're a fan of weird and twisted things happening to not altogether blameless characters, I can endorse ToF without reservation. I found some aspects of the story maddeningly believable (petty politics in the face of grave threats, and self-centered motivations throughout (which is a pleasant change from characters who always take the long view and work for the good of the many unreservedly), but this was offset by a vaguely gratuitous application of perversion that didn't seem to serve much purpose, or was insufficiently explored to pertain to the story in a complete manner.


I may not be able to say precisely what "the new weird" is as a literary genre, but I know it when I see it. Trial of Flowers is.

Fuck ATL

That would be airport code ATL, Atlanta Hartsfield Int' Airport, right in its mechanical ear.

I have no idea where our outbound plane from TPA->ATL was coming in from, but AirTran knew it was going to be ~25 minutes late before K & I even left the house on Saturday. ATL is their hub. It is reasonable to expect that the airline should communicate "We've got a hundred or so people making connections, let the gate crews know."

Yeah, right.

K & I did a passable impersonation of OJ Simpson (the Hertz Ad version, not the Brentwood) in hauling ass from the end of one concourse, through the tunnel, and halfway up another, in order to make a flight that had originally allowed us a 50 minute layover in something like seven minutes. It was nearly as close a call as departing from C10, when our ride to the airport took a circuitous route, and we had to hurdle over gavinsca at the security line and sprint past trid on the way to hollering "HOLD THAT PLANE" just as the jetway was about to be shut on us.

On the way back, ATL/AT managed to mislay some maintenance paperwork. For an hour. Just what we wanted to do after a whirlwind visit - sit in a fucking airport.

Yes, this is trivial relative to the weather-related clusterfuck of Thursday & Friday, I'm sure, but these were fuckups without any cause but human stupidity, and I'm less forgiving and sympathetic of that. When we can control the weather, I'll hold people responsible for it.

The visit itself was, in the main, not too bad, but deeply marred by my brother-in-law's brother's eldest spawn being one of the worst-behaved three year olds I've ever had the misfortune to share space with. He kicks his not-quite year old brother in the head. Hits him with toys. Tries to open the birthday girl's presents (EVERY ONE OF THEM) despite admonitions from no fewer than six(!) adults that they Are Not His. "Aiden, NO," is going to be the sonic wallpaper of the home video. He blew out the candles on the cake despite being told not to. And whenever he feels like he isn't getting his way, he does a passable MacAulay Culkin impression, mashing his hands to the sides of his face and opening his mouth in some kind of mute mutant variant of ZOMG LIFE IS NOT LOVING TO ME NOW PRZ.

This week will suck less.

on lunch....

etcet: if [coworker n] gets back, i'll mke some popcorn
critus: mke?
etcet: make
etcet: nuke.
etcet: otherwise release from their shelly prisons
etcet: distribute the steam-powered grandeur of the kernels, even

this is what happens when 1:30 rolls around and all i've had is a packet of instant oatmeal and two cups of tea.

as critus said, "eating is important."