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| Vincent Bugliosi, that is. Manson Family prosecutor. OJ Trial eviscerator. My personal choice for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (Yes, I know how old he is. Doesn't matter. Not with that legal mind.) A man who has two passions: truth and justice. A man who is releasing a new book next week: The Prosecution Of George W. Bush For Murder. Yeah, I'm there. What are your favorite writings about law, fact or fiction? I have a selection, but I suspect they overlap many of yours, so I'll let you play through. Okay, just two: Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, and the play (and screenplay) Inherit the Wind. | |
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| Tomorrow we dive into what promises to be an amazing Balticon! Just having either the always-entertaining Connie Willis as Author GOH or the fabulous Urban Tapestry as Music GOH would be enough for a great con. And we've got both! Plus the spirit of Ghost of Honor Douglas Adams will be looking in on the proceedings. Make sure y'all know where your towels are! Of course, no program survives contact with the fans (or, apparently, with the Pocket Program editor). Here's a quick rundown, with corrections from the pocket program noted in bold: FRIDAY 7:00pm Everything You Wanted To Know About Filk (Salon E) 8:30pm Concert: Maugorn (45 mins)(Salon E) (not 9pm)9:15pm Concert: Gary McGath (45 mins)(Salon E) 10:00pm Open Filk (Salon E & F) SATURDAY 2:00pm Musical GOH Concert: Urban Tapestry (1 hour)(Valley) ( correct in the grid, though missing from the Special Events list) 4:00pm Medieval Dancing (2 hours)(Garden) 10:00pm Open Filk (Salon A) 10:00pm Storytelling Circle (Chase) ( not Salon A as listed in the Pocket Program) SUNDAY 11:00am Kids Concert: Urban Tapestry and Friends (1 hour)(Chase) 7:30pm Concert: Stone Dragons (Tom & Sue)(45 mins)(Salon E & F) 8:15pm Concert: “Decadent” Dave Clement (45 mins)(Salon E & F) 9:00pm Theme Filk: Literary Songs (Salon E & F) 10:00pm Open Filk (Salon E & F) MONDAY 1:00pm Enhancing Your Musical Performance (Salon E) 2:00pm Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Filk Circle (Salon E) ( both programs shifted an hour) Hope to see a bunch of you there! | |
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| [Crossposted from my LJ] Most of you probably know my partner Callie Hills, AKA ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cflute, at least by reputation. Singer, flautist, songwriter, arranger extraordinaire; formerly of the duo Echo's Children. More recently, a solo performer, a frequent guest artist for various other musicians, toastmistress at Conflikt I, and a member of the occasionally-seen band Tres Gique, who are performing this weekend at Baycon. You may or may not also know of Ray Phoenix, AKA participant, a longtime member of the filk community who has flown somewhat under the radar for reasons I can't remotely fathom. He's a terrific guitarist and singer, and one of the best songwriters I've heard lately in filk. Well, Ray and Callie have been conspiring musically for the past several months, and I'm delighted to announce that they've decided to formalize the arrangement and become a band. The name is Rosegold, ladies and gentlemen. And I want to tell you, I've been listening to them rehearse, and Rosegold ROCKS!!!Songs drawn from all sources -- Ray's writing, Callie's, some covers; they're even using one or two of mine, but don't let that scare you away. Ray's amazing lyrics and Callie's harmonies; Ray's guitar virtuosity and Callie's sweet flute. A pair of voices that make magic together. They're intending to debut at Conchord, and I strongly urge anyone who's able to be there to go listen. There's talk of trying to get a CD out by then; if not, it won't be long after. I am trying to get them to go to OVFF, but there are financial issues; they'd have to be at least partially covered. Anyone interested in helping to sponsor a kick@ss new band to OVFF, please let me know. Meantime, though, please help me give a warm welcome to Rosegold!- Mood:excited
 - Music:Ray Phoenix, "Nevada"
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| In looking back on the 'Ruddygore' run, I can't go any further without reflecting on the folk who make up the CESP. ( Read more... )Well, I *think* that is all I can usefully say on the CESP 'Ruddygore' run; if anything more occurs, I will surely be setting it down here before long. | |
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| My Free Will horoscope for the week:
"CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). I'm issuing a too-much-of-a-good-thing warning. Soaking up too much pleasure could dilute the value of your bliss. Expressing too much personal power could scare away valuable allies who are competent but not entirely confident. Pushing too hard on behalf of your creative pragmatism could subtly undermine the labor of love you've worked so hard on. Therefore, Capricorn, please accept my invitation to enjoy a period of rest and assimilation. You can return later for another round of pure intensity."
I am choosing to take this as permission to go to BayCon and not stress out about all that writing that I 'should' be getting done during the long weekend. No, what I 'should' be doing is attending panels, trying on corsets at Timeless Trends, trying to sell enough CDs that I can justify buying a Seal of Gallifrey necklace to go with my earrings, talking about Doctor Who, giving a kick-ass concert, and squealing at all those people that I haven't seen since last year. I can resume with the crazy on Tuesday.
So there. | |
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| Had trouble sleeping last night, and realized that not only did I have an
earache, but that I'd had it for at least a day. Still have it; called
Kaiser and now have an appointment at 3:00 to have it looked at. I assume
it's an infection of some sort.
Went out for a 40-minute walk and found that it was just a little more
exercise than I should have had. Grumblegrumblegrumble.
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| catalana and I are heading out to Marcon (by way of Ada, Ohio) shortly. Wish us luck! And we'll see some of you there... | |
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| ...for Friday and Saturday for definite, and Sunday probably (I need to be leaving at 0430 to make my flight, so I may just go 'heck with it, we ARE having a serious Dead Dog' :)
Non-smoker, snores occasionally (can be silenced!). | |
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| If you still haven't booked a room for Contata, you now have till June 2nd. That's all for now. | |
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| Tuesday night, while killing time before Vixy's flight touched down, Chris and I decided to invade the Fremont Half-Price Books, which we hadn't visited in ages. (By 'Chris and I decided', I really mean 'I decided, Chris elected to go along with it, because it was at least amusing'). This meant calling Rob to check the Internet to tell us where it was; luckily, Rob is a very dear and tolerant man who loves me enough not to view that sort of thing as reason to declare a blood-feud. Love the Rob dearly. Especially because his directions worked.
There are three Half-Price Books locations in Northern California. Two of them -- Concord and Berkeley -- are close enough to me that I visit them almost weekly. Seriously, the staff recognizes me. The staff saves things for me. The staff congratulated me on getting a book deal. My relationship with my used book stores verges on the obscene. This makes the fact that I get to visit the Fremont location every six months or so a very big deal, likely to inspire bouncing and squealing and the vigorous clapping of hands. Yay books! Yay a horror section that hasn't been picked over like roadkill in a region with a high corvid population! Yay continuing the inevitable collapse of my shelves!
We descended like locusts, splitting up to hit our inevitable touchpoints. Now, I have a few things I always check for, and a few things I'm currently checking for. To whit:
* Tim Powers, anything in standard paperback (always).
* Jane Lindskold, the early years (always).
* Wordsworth reference dictionaries (always).
* Oxford reference dictionaries (always).
* Mercedes Lackey's Fairy Godmother series (current).
* Edward Lee's bad horror (current).
* The 1985 paperback edition of IT (always).
* Richard Laymon's not all that bad horror (current).
* Janet Kagan, anything she's ever written (always).
* Anything by Permuted Press (current).
* Anything by Joe Brown (current).
There are a few others, but that gives you an idea of the sort of things I tend to be digging for. As a rule, 'current' means 'I need one copy and then we're good', while 'always' means 'if I find it, it's mine, what do you mean, there's such a thing as having enough copies?'. So the list changes pretty reliably. Generally, I can find one or two things off my list at any given store, with reasonable pauses for restocking.
On the discount paperback spinner (everything's a buck!), I found several lousy horror novels and four out of the first five books of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality. I used to be a huge fan of his work. I got over it, for the most part, but I still have a soft spot for the Incarnations books. Issue: they, like so many other books, were lost when my mother got rid of all my personal possessions (I was fifteen). So yay! I wound up grabbing the one missing volume from the standard-price shelves. Total win.
In the romance section, two MaryJanice Davidsons. In the mystery section, a Susan Connant and a Jan Coffey. And then...
Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles...
A near-mint copy of the Tor edition of Janet Kagan's Hellspark. I've never even seen the Tor edition before. I mean, seriously. I look for this book every time, but it's the sort of dedicated doggedness that leads to people compulsively checking for four-leaf clovers. I didn't really think I'd ever find it. But there it was. And now it's mine.
Behold! My karma is vast. Also, I win. | |
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| I have to run some errands (and also see if I can think of another audio joke or two, although I suspect it might be where I want it to be), so I'll have the full posting tonight... but here's a little song that probably
Sounds Familiar....
ETA: Took the link down, as I'm working on the final version. Yeah, there were a few more jokes in there. :) | |
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| browngirl just posted a fun one. Pick a non-surgical scar and tell us how it happened. Here's the comment I left in her LJ. Actually, I've told this story online as a comment where people have talked about the joys of metallic sodium, but here it is with its own post for the first time: When I was in my teens, my brother, bigbumble, a young adult by then, got his hands on a nice chunk of sodium metal, kept in kerosene, because it is highly reactive with air--it will oxidise before your eyes--and especially with water. I recall that the reaction with water was Na + H 2O --> H 2 + NaOH. The hydrogen would sometimes catch fire in the air and burn, of course, the NaOH (sodium hydroxide) is lye. He'd take little tiny shavings and drop it in water and let it fizz around. He'd drop a chunk down the storm sewer, and watch the smoke come up when it ignited. He let me have a piece to cut my own shavings from. Eventually I decided that I'd had all the fun I needed, and put the whole remaining chunk, maybe a cubic centimeter or so, into an empty paint can. I stood back ten or fifteen feet with a garden hose, spraying water in from what I thought was a safe distance. *SNAP* The sodium exploded, sending a spray of water along with bits of sodium and sodium hydroxide all over the front yard. I was hit by a fragment about an inch below my left eye. It hurt like hell, and did not heal well. The scar is still a visible lump on my cheek. What's your scar story? | |
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| I checked my calendar today and saw that I have an appointment with a ... Dr. I. Jones this afternoon. Hee! | |
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| BayCon 2008 is just around the corner! Are you wondering where I'm going to be? Well, wonder no more, because I've got what can only be termed 'the inside scoop'. Which is really a good thing, since otherwise, I'd be wandering merrily into a major convention with no living clue what I was supposed to be doing.
Saturday at 11:30 AM, you can catch me on the Sex, Lies and Publishing panel. I'm not one hundred percent certain what we're going to be talking about, although I expect it to include a) sex, b) lies, and c) publishing. I just sold a trilogy, I've had sex, and I once told my mother that the frog was put in our bathtub by magical angels from the moon, so hey, I've got something to say about all three elements of the panel! Failing that, there's always zombies. Show up to show your support on my first real 'post selling those Toby books to DAW' panel as a genuine to-be-published genre author.
Also Saturday, at 1:00 PM, I'll be appearing on the Iron Poet I panel, with Kevin Andrew Murphy (and other people, but that's who I can say for sure is always there). I won't be writing poetry, but will, instead, be discussing it, and helping other people write it. For the win! It's a really fun, interactive panel event, and the poetry that our participants write on Saturday will be presented and judged on Sunday at 2:30 PM, when we reconvene for Iron Poet II. This panel has a low chance of zombies, but a high chance of recitations of 'The Tragedy of Lillian Kane, Princess of Neptune'.
Saturday at 4:00 PM it's time for the annual excitement of Evolution of Dr. Who, where we all get together to talk about what everybody's favorite Time Lord has been doing with himself. Past debates have included 'true love or puppy love?', 'Romana or the Rani?', and -- my personal favorite -- 'is Paul McGann canon or not?' (since answered absolutely by 'Family of Blood'). Since we're in the middle of a series, we're about to go into Tennant's year off, and we've just changed executive producers, there's going to be a lot to talk about. And, if all else fails, there's always insulting the special effects to get a good brawl going. Be there!
Of course, for a lot of folks, it's all about the music. That's why you should join me Sunday at 10:00 PM for my BayCon 2009 concert! With Paul Kwinn and Tony Fabris trading off guitar duty, Michelle Dockrey and Maya Bohnhoff on backing vocals, and Beckett Gladney on harmonica, this is promising to be one of the most awesome concerts to date. I'm not willing to post the full set list, but I will tell you that you could hear some of the songs from the upcoming album, as well as at least one pendant-prompt song, one Firefly song, and several songs made of so much pure awesome that they make my heart hurt. Join us! You won't be sorry.
Eric Gerds will have copies of both Pretty Little Dead Girl and Stars Fall Home available throughout the weekend; they will also be available directly from me, if he runs out or the dealer's room is closed. Remember, they make great gifts! Thirteen, by Vixy and Tony, will also be available either from Eric or direct from the source; the album is fabulously well-worth it (and I don't just say that because I got to perform on the title track).
See you this weekend! | |
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| I'm in the process of calling and talking to movers - I'm really only choosing between three and am pretty close to deciding on one of them. I really don't plan to do this because I would probably be wasting their time and mine but I am so tempted by one just because of the name: Bubbies Moving. For those in need - a definition. Maybe it means something else but I just love the image. :) - Mood:amused
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| ... to filker0!!! Have a great one!!
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| I find that there are times in our lives when the karmic wheel of fortune just seems to only land on the zingers.
Like life - turned all the way up to "11"
Tim gets this Amazing great job!!!!
My work says I can transfer and become a US employee - no problem!!
We get an offer on the house in two days!!
Widget dies - with no logical explanation.
We go to Seattle and find a house we all three love...and it's in our price range!!! We go to arrange financing and make an offer!!
Even though Tim TOLD he mortgage broker he was Canadain...the guy didn't process that that meant he WASN'T American - and did not have a social security number. We can't get a loan.
That's ok - I make an ok living and *I* have a social security number - maybe I can qualify for the house on my own! (they approve you for a ridiculous amount of your income)
Ah, well actually - see, my company is downsizing, and well, my position seems to be affected.
No house. No loan. No job for the Troodle - with no explanation as to why, other than lots of assurances that I'm the best employee ever. I can't look for new work here - we're moving. If the conditional offer on our hosue doesn't firm up and I have to stay here with the house after Tim leaves...I'll have no job.
Life - turned all the way up to 11.
We found out about the no house no loan no job all yesterday. We've started looking at rental houses in Seattle.
And I'm just plain sad today. I know, I know - bright side, things will look up, and maybe even "it's not all that bad and it could be worse." I'm still really REALLY low.
The tavern this weekend just fells like a burdensome committment - not the fun it was going to be if I'd been able to get excited about it.
At least mr quicktonguedoesn't have to hate me for my good fortune anymore. Things average out to being fine - we are not ill, we can eat, and still afford a place to live, etc. I'm just in the natural funk that comes when you've just lost things that you really didn't want to lose. - Mood:sad
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| Well, I've had my last exam, and apart from a couple of small bits of coursework, university is finished for the year. And I'm at home with a stinking cold, so seems like a good time for a muse! It's been an amazing year for musical development; I have done so many things that I could not have thought I could do, and do well. Year highlights * Running my own ladies' choir in Sutton, planning all the repertoire, teaching and conducting them and getting them to move to harder music. (By the end of term 2, I had them doing It was a Lover and His Lass by John Rutter!) * Learning to conduct from scratch, doing well in conducting class. * Being a soloist in the university's chamber music concert of Part's Passion of St John, and being complimented afterwards. * Going to Liverpool to sing in the cathedrals with the university women's choir, and making more friends at uni through this. * Nailing my end-of-term piano recital ( http://highstone.livejournal.com/234039.html), and it now appearing plausible for me to start working towards an ABRSM diploma. * Finishing a dissertation on a subject I loved, and although I won't get the mark for some time my superviser says she may want to discuss with me how to prepare/edit it for publication! * Various Erato challenges as second (often, but not always, lower) soprano. Bizarre as the part I sing in the university chamber choirs is second (lowest) alto. * Archery fun. ( more musing )Now I just need to get rid of my cold. | |
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| Was reminded this morning of cflute's jubilant post announcing
that she'd "gotten
her brain back".
It occurred to me that I seem to be finding my heart, sometime this
year, or at least getting re-acquainted with it. This is sometimes a
painful process -- we appear to have been strangers for nearly six
decades, and we have a lot of catching up to do.
Watch out for the mood swings, though. I don't guarantee that I'll stay
particularly sane through this process.
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| It hasn't been a terribly productive day. Decided to stay home sick
mainly so that I could take a nap if I started to fall over in
mid-afternoon. And did lie down for about an hour, though I didn't
actually sleep.
Watered my nose three times so far, plus once in the middle of the night
last night. Will do it again before bed. It's roughly as effective as a
dose of sudafed, but doesn't dry out my throat.
Had a great phone call this morning from cflute, who'd seen my
morning post and
offered to sing lead on a couple of songs in our concert Friday night.
Quickly rejiggered the setlist, adding crypto, alphabet, rrprayer, and
lcm; and removing heaven and demon, which is too much of a vocal stretch
for me right now. Many of the remaining songs have Joyce on unison, so I
can lean on her for support and sit close to the mic. Yay for cflute getting her brain back! Glad somebody has a brain right now
-- I don't. More on that sort of thing later.
The setlist is still running a little light; about 50 minutes. That's
what it's supposed to be, of course, but as it's the last concert
we can run over a little. I'll plan to make it up on patter.
Joyce and I had a short practice session - basically ensuring that we had a
good grasp of the additions, and going over the few remaining rough spots,
mainly "The Toolmakers" and "I Have a Song to Sing, O", which
we're still pretty shaky on. The melody line is tricky. I copied the sheet
music at work on Monday, which helped a lot.
Skipped my walk today in favor of the aforementioned lie-down, and had hot
buttered rum with honey instead of my usual gin.
Basically a wasted day otherwise. A little reading (re-reading
Mount Analogue, which I haven't read for a while), LJ, and
ripping CDs. Including tracking down many of the CDs that had been ripped
before but not marked. I'm putting little sticky dots on the spines now
so I can keep track. I'm up around 200 disks now. Useful, in other
words, but totally mindless. Of all the things I've lost...
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| It's 50th anniversary season in the space geek world. Last October was Sputnik's 50th, and Sky&Telescope had an article about NASA's 50th coming up. The hobby of model rocketry was in the works before Sputnik, but it tool off in 1958. This summer is NARAM 50, and since NARAM 1 happened when the NAR (National Association of Rocketry, the big model rocket nonprofit organization) was one year old when it held its first NARAM out in Colorado, this year is the NAR's Golden Anniversary. So to celebrate, rocket geeks around the country are making "Golden Scouts," which are sort-of reproductions of the first model rocket kit from Estes Industries.
Tonight we built some at the HUVARS meeting. For a change I actually finshed the build at the meeting, except for paint. Hmm. What color should I paint it?
For the record, model rocketeers are equally as geeky as filkers.
The only problem with the Scout is that it uses a notoriously unreliable tumeble recovery system. The theory is that the engine is kicked backwards, but is caught by a metal hook before it leaves the rocket. That shifts the balance of the rocket back, so that it becomes unstable, and tumbles harmlessly to the ground.
Except half the time the engine kicks completely out and the thing just augers in. So there was this exciting scheme to have a mass launch of these things at NARAM this summer. Whee! Darts!
Last I heard, they called off the mass launch. But I built a rocket tonight. Yay! | |
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