Month: January 2008

I’m glad it’s not just me

AN EXCUSE FOR NOT RETURNING THE VISIT OF A FRIEND Do not be offended because I am slow to go out. You know Me too well for that. On my lap I hold my little girl. At my Knees stands my handsome little son. One has just begun to talk. The other chatters without Stopping. They hang on my clothes… Read more →

Freestyle Friday

And here you have: My favourite Clash song when considering performances by the Clash. (I.e. I’d rather hear the Clash perform this than any other song. But, I’d still rather hear Danny Michel do Lost In A Supermarket.) Warren Zevon‘s Hollywood tragedy. I love a song with a story, especially if there’s enough vagueness to allow me to make up… Read more →

Ambivalence

On the one hand, I am really looking forward to being home. On the other hand I am really not looking forward to the process of getting home. My flight leaves Melbourne in two hours, then it’s 7 hours to Singapore, a 2 hour wait, then 14 and a half hours to London, then a 6 hour wait, then 7… Read more →

In Passing: Vlado’s

I had no connectivity at the hotel last night, have been working full-on all day today, and am shortly going to head out for my (apparently) annual trip to Vlado’s. Since I start heading back home tomorrow, I’ll also have to pack tonight, so the odds are good that even if the Internet connectivity problem is sorted, I won’t have… Read more →

It’s like a movie plot

Did you see this bit on BoingBoing? Adrian says: According to the Swedish daily newspaper Expressen.se, police suspect that a team of thieves operating in Sweden are using little people hidden in hockey bags and placed in the cargo holds of buses to loot passengers luggage while in transit. They link to the original story in Swedish, which does me… Read more →

Jargon and Communication

Speaking of Scotsmen, let me say that as a general rule I am quite a fan of Hal Duncan’s blog–especially those gigantic blog entries where he intellectually swashbuckles his way through certain philosophical issues with verve and panache, using academic jargon like Mrs. Parker used wit. In particular, I have been intending for a while now to write an appreciation… Read more →

Pay Attention

I have always known That at last I would Take this road, but yesterday I did not know that it would be today. Ariwara no Narihira (translated by Kenneth Rexroth) A strange old man Stops me, Looking out of my deep mirror. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (translated by Kenneth Rexroth) The mists rise over The still pools at Asuka. Memory does… Read more →

If I Were Nebu-lord

For what it’s worth, if I were picking the winners of the Nebula Awards right now (not the ones I think will win, but rather the ones I thought were the best) from the preliminary ballot the winners, according to my arbitrary and would be: For novel, either Hal Duncan‘s brilliant mess Vellum, or else Peter Watt’s “no, this is… Read more →

The word ‘knell’ is in a lot of his stuff.

Extracted from The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore, Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes. As by the shore, at break of day, A vanquished chief expiring lay, Upon the sands, with broken sword,        He traced his farewell to the free; And there the last unfinished word        He dying wrote, was “Liberty!” At night a sea-bird shrieked the knell Of… Read more →

Religion Bashing For Thursday

OK, let’s close some tabs. First off, let’s start with our old friend, the head Inquisitioner, Pope Benedict. It appears he’s been a naughty fellow. A BBC documentary has exposed that Pope Benedict XVI, aka Cardinal Ratzinger, played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests. In 2001, while he was a cardinal,… Read more →

We’re Living In Science Fiction: Street-Level Nanotech

There’s certainly something to be said for wild and crazy, “the universe is my canvas”, science fiction ideas–things with broad scope that seem tenuously plausible but highly disconnected from our day-to-day lives. Ever since 1982… or 1986, if like me, you first read Burning Chrome after the Mirrorshades anthology gave you a startling eye-opening. though, we’ve also known that there… Read more →

So far, so good

So, I did manage to travel half-way around the world between Friday and Sunday, popping in on London and Honk Kong before settling down in Melbourne. My days have been pretty work-focused so far: Monday I essentially worked all day, returned to the hotel ate dinner, and was asleep before 9. Yesterday (Tuesday) I worked all day, then went down… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.