Gay SF

When I was a wee little pansy boy in the swamps of Texas, I would read anything, but my favorite genre was science fiction. The public library in the unimportant burg where I grew up had a smallish s.f. section of about four shelves and although I never set myself the goal of reading all of it, in the end I think I did. Everything from the florid wasteland of Lovecraft to the thinly veiled anticommunist gibberish of the 1950s through the post-apocalyptic grinds that popped up during the Vietnam war. I love Asimov, le Guinn, Clarke, but I was perfectly willing to plow though the tons of mediocre tripe that traveled with them.

Somewhere along the line, I decided I was too sophisticated for scifi and let it slide off my radar. Maybe the level of tripe just overwhelmed me. I returned to it a few years ago and now I’m back to reading almost nothing else. Escapism! Yay!

The biggest change has been around the edges; wild ideas that seeped in from actual science are now a given, things like parallel universes and wormholes allow authors more and more complicated plots, but underneath them all, they’re still mostly cowboys in space. The best, obviously, are the rare birds who rise above that. You know who’s great? China Mieville, even though I don’t know hot to pronounce his last name. His style is grim and dark, but filled with sometimes beautiful writing. He tends to a little to much excrescence, but I’m willing to hold my nose, so to speak, and revel in his mastery.

Also, Lois McMaster Bujold who wrote the Hugo winning Paladin of Souls which is peopled with charming, vivid characters and presents a fully developed world.

Anyway, the point is, I’ve run across a gay men’s science fiction and fantasy book club and I’m joining it. I’m nervous since I don’t really like groups and “gay sci fi” sounds like the members (unlike me) will be something out of a John Waters’ movie, but I’m going anyway. What I’d really like is a Gay Brazilian Porn Stars Who Put Out Sci Fi Club, but I can’t find one. Imagine my disappointment.

Cause What's Funnier than Dinosaurs?

I ran across this over at Dinosaur comics . Have I mentioned how much I love Dinosaur Comics? They are frequently the high point of my day. Ryan North, the brilliant, brilliant writer of D.C. included this in today's entry:

Leonard Richardson's short story, Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs.


"Why would a dinosaur need a gun?" asked the shop owner.

"Self-defense."

The owner's gaze dropped to the three-inch claw that had chipped his display case.

"These are killing claws," said the dinosaur, whose name was Tark. "For sheep, or cows. I merely want to disable an attacker with a precision shot to the leg or other uh, limbal region."

"Uh-huh," the owner said. "Or maybe you figure humans shoot each other all the time, but if someone turns up ripped in half the cops are gonna start lookin' for dinosaurs."

Tark carefully pounded the counter. "There used to be a time," he said, "when gun dealers would actually sell people guns! A time . . . called America. I miss that time."

Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs.

Palmmy

I’ve been thinking about this shot I swiped from over to Miss Janey’s for a couple of reasons. First, it’s always hard to take a picture of tall palm trees without some stupid power line getting in the picture, so congrats to the Janey for pulling this off.

Plus, it reminds me that in the common American parlance, palm trees are a symbol of exoticness. And yet, I have never lived any where that they didn’t thrive as a part of the landscape. Houston, New Orleans, San Francisco, they all got ‘em littering the joints. It’s like feral parrots and a complete lack of snow: it’s the norm for half of the country, but in the popular imagination, it’s like they’ve never been seen.

And don’t get me started on tamales.

Stop the Madness

O dear god, is there no end to it? First Farrah, then what’s-his-name, then Mrs. Slocombe, and now this:

OSCAR MEYER, the wienie king, is dead. The man who made the world safe for bologna has passed. A giant who walked among us, who gave his all to the processed meat universe, is no more.

I don’t know what I’m going to do if anybody else dies, my mourning veil is getting all tatty as it is.

Overload

I had promised myself not to mention a thing about that Jackson person since there certainly seemed to be plenty everywhere else.

But then I ran across this notice from our computer guys:

"Shortly after noon EST today—Tuesday, July 7 2009—the capacity of SBA’s computing infrastructure was drastically reduced due to the overload of employee viewing of video footage related to the funeral of Michael Jackson. This overload compromised SBA’s ability to deliver business services to staff and citizens.
To alleviate this overload, OCIO has temporarily blocked video streaming. If you are using YouTube or other video streaming websites, you will be unable to view content for the duration of this business day.
Videostreaming access will resume on Wednesday, July 8 2009 accompanied by OCIO technical monitoring.
Thanks for your patience while we work to assure appropriate use of the SBA network infrastructure."

The federal government brouight low not by terrorists, but by pop fanatics. The mind reels.

To calm myself down, I had to go look at houseboy Gordea Zathustrus's nipples.

Full of Gin and Will & Grace

While R man was off being all lawerly in DC, I spent an amusing evening at the theater, enjoying Leslie Jordan’s show “Full of Gin and Regret.” Jordan played Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace, the guest star whom Karen would regularly dismiss as “that Keebler elf queen…”

The show was a raconteur’s tour de force. Jordan came out, launched into a string of memoirs (up to and including briefly sharing a jail cell with Robert Downey Jr.,) frequently interrupted himself to wander off track, and did it all in a thick Southern accent. It was, in short, very much like spending the evening in a bar in New Orleans, albeit a very nice one, and with a very funny Big Mess.

There is a common element in Southern life of telling long, involved stories, and doing so in as self-deprecatory and funny way as possible. I’ve got it, all my friends have it, Jason over at Night is Half Gone has it in spades, and so does Leslie Jordan.

Of course it’s important to tell these rambling vignettes in as thick a Southern accent as you can muster. It’s just funnier that way. Leslie Jordan hit the stage sounding like Aunt Pitty Pat from Gone with the Wind and never wavered. Naturally, my own accent, long moribund, rebounded. I cain’t hep it, as soon as I hear those twanging vowels, my own match them drawl for drawl. All I have to do is step off the plane in the Houston airport and suddenly I’m the lead in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Also, because I am Not a Nice Person, I took some pleasure when Miss Jordan (repeatedly) assured the audience he was 54 years old, exactly the same age as me, but looked easily like he had 15 years on me. Just shows you, that fast, glam life is rough.

Cat Bed

R man returns tonight from his conference in DC, and I say yay, big time, because I've missed him terribly much. I've also missed having my own bed. Saki, the adorable and evil cat, always sleeps with R man and while he's been out of town, it's become obvious that I am the back-up sleeping location. How can such a small cat take up so much bed real estate?

I am a very restless sleeper, it's one of the main reasons R man and I have separate rooms, that and the wholly ridiculous myth he maintains that I snore. While I'm sleeping quietly (AND NOT SNORING) I tend to toss and turn like a Black Flag mosh pit. I have woken up with the bed linens twisted completely sideways. Some people go into REM, I seem to enter a spin cycle. All this irritates both Saki and me; him because he just wants to lie there, goddamit, and me because I'm pinned down by a nine pound lump 'o cat.

We're both looking forward to having R man back where he belongs.