Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Dan--Had some trouble getting the pictures on your website, but the
ones I did see were absolutely adorable!!!!!  How very cute.

I'm glad you had such a fun time at Tori.  I'm already so excited. 
She's been playing such amazing setlists.

Rick--How cool on meeting Neil, finally...sometimes I wonder what
those pushing fans hope to accomplish...

Angelina.
  

    
Dianna--The art of bonging a Tim Tam is somewhat like the art of
stuffing Gumbles into jam tins. It's all about consistency. The
squishier your Gumbles, the more that fit into the tin. The squishier
your Tim Tam, the faster you need to cram it into your mouth before it
all collapses in a ghastly mess into your tea. Judgement of these
things come with time and experience.

Oh dear, I hope no one asks me to elaborate on this one. It may get me
into more trouble than the bondage marsupials...

Neil--As you can see, of course what Dianna said about the jam tins
makes perfect sense!

Mary--Ooooh! I scored a mention in a song! YAY! Thankee very much!

Tree
Who would like to vote for "Who are these people, and why won't they
go away?" as the next topic.
  

    
Tree~I'm not posting any more stories until I either get:
A. A lot more feedback, so I know what people think, and whether I
should give it up as a bad idea; that means you too, Mr. Neil;
B. World peace;
C. Some of these Tim Tams y'all keep talking about.
JaNell
Now holding her own blogger hostage!
  

    

Meet and greet with Tori! I'm jealous.
And feel like an idiot. I'll bet if I had pestered my father properly he
could have gotten me tickets. I didn't think of it. Ah well. Next time.

I like "Who are these people, and why don't they go away?", but it's a bit
long, no? I like my topic names to fit on one line in pico. Not sure what I
like better, though. "I am not a lawn gnome" perhaps?

Miss-mousey, the only weekend I have plans between now and November is the
weekend of the 27th. So any weekend between now and then is great for me for
seeing the stagewalking production...
Anyone who went once already interested in going again?
  

    
Hey!  I want some Tim Tams too!  But since I don't have anything to
hold hostage, I suppose I'll just order myself some...Tree, any
suggestions on a type to start out with?

Angelina (who is now going to reiterate her love for "Who are these
people and why won't they go away?" now that a couple other people seem
to agree with her.  hehe.)
  

    
Angelina -- Yah, my server is having some problems of late.  Its
bandwidth has fallen off the low end, so the server crawls.
     Tori's set was amazing.  It was funny, I had my binoculars so at
one point I checked out the mixing board thingie station and saw a copy
of the playlist sitting on it.  And I got all psyched.  And then Tori
started playing the songs out of order, and she stopped mid-Leather and
laughed and said "I need glasses I think; I can't even see my
playlist."  In the end, she played every song on the list except for
"Purple People", which she skipped.

I like all of the topic names that have been suggested thus far.
  

    
Oops. I was supposed to say "hi" to everyone here from Neil, because
I also got to shake his hand and say hello at the MIT lecture
the other night.  But it was 2am when I finally got home, 
because I knew far too many other people at the lecture who I hadn't
seen in too long, and then had a brief surreal and freezing chat
 afterwards with some slightly intoxicated MIT Jews who were 
having a party in the MIT Sukkah at one in the morning (it's currently
the Jewish holiday of sukkot, where you are supposed to 
eat in a temporary structure called a sukkah, to recall the time 
that the biblical jews spent wandering around in tents in the desert)
and they were this strange mix of slightly intoxicated, yet
trying very hard to be welcoming to anyone interested in learning
about the holiday or in remembering that they were Jewish and hadn't
done anything in a Sukkah since they were a kid, or whatever. 
(no, the holiday doesn't expect you to do it at 1am, normally.)

anyway, now that I have finally sat back at my computer, I
did see Neil and meet him when he was signing, and he remembered
that I'd posted on the Well before despite my utter unremarkability,
and he asked me to say hello to the rest of you.

I must also gloat that the poem "Crazy Hair" was wonderful and I
hope it gets published sometime before I have children.

In fact, it was so wonderful that I turned my SO after he finished
it and said "I think I want to rent Neil to be the father of my
children."  [pause] "er, I didn't mean that the way it sounded." 
(I meant that I wanted *my* hypothetical kids to get that kind of 
poem in an e-mail from their dad now and again when they deserved
 it for being extra good or extra bad.  Really. )
  

    
E-mail from The Other Glen:

I believe synchronicity is the appropriate term.  

I was at Dar Williams concert last night where she said her song "O
Canada Girls" was inspired by some of Jane's music, making references
to "Above The Treeline."  

Although I like both artists, I wouldn't have made the connection if
she hadn't mentioned it.

- The Other Glen

=====
"I am the others" - Dar Williams
  

    
Dar's on tour?  I need to keep track of these things.
  

    

Abbe- uh-huh. Sure. WE know what you meant.
  

    
I love Above the Treeline.  i don't know much about Dar Williams
except that i'm told i should listen to her. 

i feel so wombly.  i just got back from my first-ever visit to an
acupunturist.  crazy crazy crazy...
  

    
For any who might not get the SciFi.com newsletter, they have posted a
passel of 9/11 tributes, one authored by our own Mr. Gaiman. Get thee
there. http://www.scifi.com/tribute/nightfall.html

Mmm, Tim Tams. *whimper* JaNell, I'm not sure what's worse, never
having tasted them, or having tasted them and then not having any more.
It's a tossup.

Adriana, my mom absolutely swears by acupuncture. At least as a
supplement to standard medical care, as she ended up with back surgery.


Bill^2, enjoying the new pseud courtesy Salon.com.
  

    
Hey, this actually looks like it's working. Cool.

JaNell, as Bill^2 will tell you, it is possible to coax those thingies
who have access into sending TimTams ....

We have even been known to commit repeat postage upon bribery.

Jo

who _finally_ got around to getting her own Well account (yay!)
  

    
You can mail order tim tams, too... from the australian catalogue
company.  :-)

Moving poem,...
-K
  

    
Janell - sorry if this is a silly question, but how does one get to
your blogger? 
  

    
Warning, engaging SF/gamer geek mode!

Just had another example of the small, weird world we live in, and
thought I'd share.

I'm on a number of mailing lists, primarily centered around computer
animation, but I also keep up with a science fiction list that
primarily deals with futuristic military subjects and games (I used to
spend a lot of time playing science fiction roleplaying games). 
Sometimes, the list will go for weeks without anything particularly
interesting on it, but then somebody will bring up something about
astronomy or SF books/films, and I remember why I'm still subscribed.

So, this list is composed of a lot of military/political/policy
experts and scientists, and has a somewhat "rightward leaning"
political feel because of the military angle that is only partially
balanced by the numerous Canadian and European members.

One of the topics of conversation lately has been "Enterprise", the
new Star Trek series, and tonight one of the astronomers on the list
lamented the changes that have been made to the Klingons since the
original Star Trek series - not just the physical changes, but the
sociological changes, as well.  In this vein, he mentioned a "brilliant
but now-out-of-continuity" novel entitled "The Final Reflection",
by...................John M. Ford!

I had been aware of the book when it came out, since I was pretty
active in gaming and even owned the then-current Star Trek roleplaying
game, but I confess that I never picked it up (sorry Mike!).  I do,
however, think that I own at least a couple of SF roleplaying books
that Mike contributed to (IIRC, he did some writing for the Traveller
RPG and also for the Paranoia SF/comedy RPG - please correct me if I'm
wrong, Mike).

It's just such a weird crossover, I had to bring it up!  I guess I
shouldn't be surprised, though, since back in the days when Neil was on
GEnie, people were known to call his topic "The Source of All
Knowledge" - since Neil's writing attracts such a wide variety of
bright people, you could literally ask any question in the topic and
expect to get a very well-informed answer.

Just one more reason why we are "the people who won't go away" - Neil
attracts an interesting crowd :^)
  

    
Hi y'all, It's later,..well much later then i thought. Started the
wonderful new job, wore theg wonderful new clothes, gave up the MIT
thing for the new job :sigh: 
I have walls!!!!! Three of them at least. I have overtime,.....however
lots and lots and lots of it. :earth shaking yawn: I need sleep,....I
have Tim Tams though so life will be good.
But I got Areosmith and Tony Bennet tickets,......
Jinx who really was mad when she had a friend give up MIT tickets by
choice.
  

    
     Rick -- yeah, Traveller, Paranoia (including the comic series
from Marvel, which was killed in development for reasons nobody seems
to understand), and these days GURPS and G:Traveller.
     It is of course true that, while REFLECTION is long diverged from
continuity, it's still in print.  Paraquat may not know much about . .
. well, much, but they recognize a profit stream when they see it.
  

    
Dar Williams is pretty interesting, Ariadne. Someplace around here I have
some of the extra photos from a cover story for Lavender, when Dar was part
of Lilith Fair. Lemme see if I can find the URL, and if it's still around
someplace on a dusty corner of the Web....

Wow. I didn't find it, but I did find a really neat thing... Sometimes a
person doesn't know when they're giving somebody a gift of great value to
them, and I am extremely pleased to read Jane's story of the photo shoot
with Dar and how good a thing it was for her.  (It's at

http://members.tripod.com/BluesJane/music/dar_pics.htm

and I'll look a little further to see if I can find the actual magazine
story and James Flames Milton's photo, which was really lovely.)

  Nope. The Lav archive is down. Oh, well. I've got the article around here
someplace. (ObMutterHappilyAboutRetainingCopyright,Yay.) Not that I can find
it, though, at the moment.

The coolest moment of that whole story was when I was doing the interview by
phone, in advance of Lilith Fair itself, and I started off by asking Dar how
it felt to find out that her song "Are You Out There" had just hit number
thus-and-such on the charts, to which she said, "Oh! Oh! *That's* why there
are messages from so-and-so for me to return!" It was the first she'd heard
of it, and it was a definite fangirlthrill for me to be the unwitting bearer
of good tidings.

<elise waves hello to all and sundry, and you notice she looks somewhat
haggard, but amiable>
  

    
E-mail from The Other Glen:

Martha - I know what you mean, I some times forget to check out who's
on the move.  I would have missed the fact that Jane Siberry will
arrive in Philly the day after Thanksgiving, if people hadn't
mentioned her here.

If you'll go to Dar Williams' website you'll see the tour is moving
westward.  If I'm not mistaken that means you haven't missed her yet.
 I saw her just outside of Philadelphia and by the 20th she's in San
Francisco.

- The Other Glen
  

    
Jenny B. ~ My blogger is at www.xanga.com/JaNell; that one has more
personal gossipy stuff and stories and such; I created a new one at
www.xanga.com/Excentrica that is only for my poems and stories.
If you follow the 'Absolutely Barking Mad' blogring link - located on
the lefthand side of 'JaNell' - you'll find the blogs of at least three
familiar names...
Really, though, between doing three people's jobs for ConCat this
year, and the war, I've slacked off with the writing. I actually would
prefer world peace to even Tim Tams and feedback, and would gladly
write my brains loose to get it if that would help...
  

    
Mike - Thanks for the confirmation!  I actually went to eBay and did a
search for Paranoia RPG to see if my memory was correct and, sure
enough, there was your name (in fairly large letters) on "The Yellow
Clearance Black Box Blues".  The seller had a pretty good scan up, and
the back cover proclaimed something to the effect that "this adventure
is so good because we had a REAL WRITER do it" :^)

Pity about the Paranoia comic - that could have been great fun.  What
have you written for G:Trav?  I have a number of the books, but not
handy at the moment.  Honestly, I don't like GURPS for SF (it's not
metric!), but I do like all the background in the new books.

Glen (and others) - I'm marginally familiar with Dar Williams' music,
and haven't seen her in concert, but I did see her in "The Vagina
Monologues" in Northampton.  She was quite funny and did very well in
the company of two actresses who have been on tour for a while with the
show.

By the way, as long as you're a fairly secure male (and I think I'm
safe in assuming that the men in this topic *are*, as a rule), that's a
fun and, uhm, educational show.  Very much worth taking your S.O. - I
took my wife to see it for her birthday.  Just be prepared for a
female:male ratio of at least 20 to 1 :^)
  

    
Rick~ The Traveller stuff - do you have any of the books from the
mid-eighties? With illustrations by Bryan Gibson? There's an
illustration of my one-and-only gaming group, in a hovercraft or
somesuch, in one of those, I believe... it's been so long. I did figure
out that I lack the patience for roleplaying, unless it's a LARP,
which is almost impromtu theatre...
  

    
JaNell - If it's a mid-eighties Traveller book, I probably have it
somewhere :^)  Bryan Gibson's name certainly sounds familiar - do you
remember anything more specific about the illustration (what the
characters were, etc.)?  It would be interesting to track it down.

And to be honest, I very rarely actually *played* RPGs - I was more
interested in the whole "world creation" thing, which was one of the
strengths of the Traveller RPG.  You could spend hours/days/years/a
lifetime just designing star systems, starships, aliens - I know I
spent a very large portion of my youth doing just that, since the "real
world" around me wasn't the most pleasant place to be.  

I so wanted the Third Imperium to exist, just so I could live in it,
explore it, see the sights, meet the beings.  Still don't like being
stuck on this one planet, pretty though it may be...................
  

    
Rick~ I'll have to ask Ziggy, who was part of that group and is
actually still around... I seem to remember all of us shoved into a
hovercraft of some sort... it would be after 1984... and Bryan didn't
work for them for too long; he had a problem with deadlines.