Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Rereading the AG log entries, in Dream Trade, and enjoying them anew.
  

    
Lioness--did you order your copy of Dream Trade from NESFA?  Or were
you fortunate enough to know someone who was there?  I'm just wondering
if they've shipped the orders yet...

Saw Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (again), Hedwig and the Angry Inch,
and O, Brother Where Art Thou? tonight.  Enjoyed them all...Hedwig is
faboo, isn't it?  The dialect coach on O, Brother should have been
shot, but they got a surprising amount right for all that, and the
soundtrack....well.  I grew up on bluegrass and country, and despised
it the way all kids despise their parents music.  I've learned to
respect country since then, and bluegrass just breaks my heart.  I'm so
homesick it ain't even funny.  *Must* own that soundtrack.

<<goes off, singing, "Come, come, angel band...>>
  

    
Michelle- Those are strands of your actual hair dyed in those lovely,
vibrant shades of blue and red, correct? Is there any such thing as
*permanent* hair dye in pretty, non-natural hair colors? Like, for
instance, green? With the help of a friend, i dyed my hair with Special
Effects' "iguana green" on thursday, and it is, very unfortunately, a
temporary dye. S'posed to come out within 24 washes or something like
that, which means, with my hair, i'll be lucky if it lasts more than a
week and a half. The color really looks nice; kind of a leaf-green in
some places, deepening to a moss green in the areas where my hair was a
little darker. It really looks neat with my coloring: blue eyes, pale,
freckled skin, and green hair. But it's already washing out! *cries*

Erynn- I think that's just the way of full moons. They always put me
in funny moods, whether or not weird stuff also happens. And Europe, o
Europe! Yes, you must go. I'm constantly scheming to find a way to get
back, after one trip to Germany with my Da when I was 13, and then
another trip before my senior year of college with my college choir.
Unfortunately the second was cut short (i went to Rome, Venice,
Florence, Salzburg, and Prague but missed Vienna and Budapest) because
Da got sick and ended up dying a week later. Whew, that was one hell of
a summer... I'm hoping that my boyfriend (who's planning to go abroad
next year no matter what) ends up somewhere in Great Britain or in
Europe so i have an excuse to cross the Atlantic.
  

    
Erynn--saw a fax last week for 7 days 6 nights, rental car, B&B
vouchers and airfare to Ireland for $679 in March.  That's the lowest
I've ever seen it.  It *can* be done.  Go for it!  Who cares if you're
not staying in the best hotels?  You won't be in your room anyway,
except to sleep 3 or 4 hours a night ;-)

Annie--I want green hair!  I've always wanted to dye mine green for
some reason.  Good luck!

My choir director showed a few of us the itinerary or Italy today.  We
leave Dec. 26th for 11 days, 7 in Roma, the rest in Florence, Assissi
and Milan.  I probably won't go--between money, and the 50% chance that
I'll move to Connecticut to be closer to my mom, I'm thinking there's
no hope.  But a girl can dream......

OK, must take out trash.  It's been here so long, it's almost
sentient.  
  

    
Feature length Gromity goodness? Yay!!!

Erynn - Go to Europe. Full worth it. Not that I don't love the bay
area - it's why I live here - but Europe... mmm... 

Linda - re: spontaneous travel - I didn't think of reading it any
other way until you pointed it out. Actually, it reminded me of when I
was in England (Erynn, are you still paying attention?) and we saw a
sign in a window of a travel shop, and two days later we were on a
plane to Crete. (2 days was about as spontaneous as we could get
without a car or money to waste on taxis to everywhere)

Pam - I did have fun with the photographer. Actually, if I ever head
down to his neighborhood, I'll be taking more (unrushed) photos. As for
tattage, I'm still patiently waiting to get the lower back piece
finished. *That* will be time consuming and expensive (not only because
I have to go up to BC to get it done either).

Erynn - I don't know about cycles of the moon, but I know my past week
has been more than exhausting (mentally *and* physically) for me, so
you're not alone in your odd week.

<ancillafelium> - My hair is way too fried to use dye any more - the
bottom 2 inches have probably gone through (does math on fingers and
toes) 9 or 10 heavy duty bleachings, not to mention the dye jobs on top
of the bleach. Nope. All extensions. Currently I have purple and blue
extensions in. Haven't decided what to do next. Any suggestions? As for
temp dyes, they'll stay in a lot longer if you use even just a tiny
bit of bleach on your hair first (just enough to lighten one or two
shades, or the equivalent of a summer month in the sun). Green is
pretty, but it always turns to blue on me.

squeaks, who really must be getting to sleep now.
  

    
Mary- If we go, we plan on staying in hostels. I found one in the
middle of London for 15 pounds a night, breakfast included. Wee! I'm
all for it...now I'm trying to talk my husband into it. I should go to
Italy too, as all of the Italians I work with would kick me if I
didn't. I saw 'o Brother Where Art Thou on my birthday last year, but
one of my friends was having some kind of nervous breakdown and kept
crying. T'was an interesting birthday. I should rent it again. Get the
Hedwig soundtrack too! It's so much fun to sing along to.

Annie- Sorry about your dad...
I died my hair bright red a few weeks ago, but it quickly faded to an
ugly pink. yuk. So now it's a color called Midnight Ruby...though it's
more like 10:30. I wish colors, particularly red, would STAY in my
hair. 

Squeaks slipped-Hmmm.... *Thinks about getting hair extensions and
spontaneous travel before going to sleep*
  

    
Hi Neil and others

Thought I just drop by and say hello to all you good people (again).

...so, hello.

Been (still) too busy to follow the topic properly... BUT managed to steal
some time to do an update to 'Jouniac's online storage of small oddities'.
(a short note for newbies: the adress is
http://www.geocities.com/jouniac/picts.html )

The story behind the pic is that I was watching Teletubbies (which is the
only TV-program that catches Joonas's attention) with Joonas (a short note
for newbies: Joonas is my 7 months old son), and just started to think
what's REALLY happening in there...

I have also idea for part 2, so if you like the first one, let me know and
I'll try to do the second ASAP.


Neil -- So P. Craig Russell will do Murder Mysteries, eh? When is it going
to be out? For some reason when I read the story nowadays I 'see' it
illustrated by Ted McKeever... but Russell's cool...

Jouni (who ate his first sushi about a week ago and was pleasantly
surprised - it tastes as good as it looks)

PS. Did you notice that Hayao Miyazaki won the Golden Bear -award with his
new film. Yee-ha!
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
E-mail from johanna:


The House of Clocks website has finally gone live!
It's not totally done, but the important bits all work.  Comments and
criticisms welcome.  http://www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com/

Souveneirs of Boskone:
http://www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com/things/neil.laurel.me.small.jpg
(my baby sister at her very first con)
http://www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com/things/agirlneedsaguitar.small.j
pg
(Emma Bull posing with her air guitar after the Flash Girls concert)

And I bought a copy of The Arbitrary Placement of Walls and read it
immediately and I still have bits and images from it floating around
in my head.  I liked it very much.
  

    
Johanna--*love* the website!  Priceless!

Neil--never noticed your stunning resemblance to Alan Cumming until
now......

<<giggles, ducks the book Neil threw at her head, and dashes off,
chortling>>
  

    
Mary, I got my copy of AITDT from Greg at Dreamhaven Books; they brought
some back with them from Boskone. So I probably got one before the mailed
copies went out, maybe even.

I hope you get yours soon.
  

    
Always buy things from Greg at Dreamhaven Books.
  

    
I bought Warning: contains language from Greg at Dreamhaven books when he
was at Boskone, and succeeded in getting myself on the not-wasteful-of-
paper version of their mailing list while I was at it.   Yay for Dreamhaven!
  

    
More or less home, battling with very dodgy computers and exploding
Dell power cables and so on... hundreds of e-mails behind and concerned
that the two programs that have died to the point where I can neither
uninstall them or reinstall them are Norton Antivirus and ZoneAlarm.
(running Windows 2000 in Safe mode to post this.)

No idea where Amazon got their Coraline listing from. You should be
safe ordering it: there will be no abridged version of it, ever, so one
will never be sent to you by Amazon or anybody else. I record the
normal version toward the end of the week. Stephin Merritt has handed
in his music for it (the rats' song from the text, and an original one
called "You're Not My Mother and I want to Go Home".

Current release dates have all gone wobbly -- it should be:

Audio: Mid May
US edition July 2nd
UK edition Mid august
  

    
At least I haven't clogged up your mailbox!

I just a couple days ago had to buy a new laptop to replace the three-year-
old geriatric one.  Somehow I decided not to get a Dell.
  

    
What is it about electrical things exploding lately? One of my friends
recently had his monitor actually flaming a bit out the back. And then
yesterday my bathroom fan sputtered, shot a small ball of fire out the
grill, and then proceeded to spit out 3-4 inch flames until I attacked
it with the fire extinguisher. (everything's fine: I think I'm more
upset with having to clean up extinguiser-dust than anything - though
that was difficult as it's the only room without an opening window, and
the fan is the thing that exploded)

Can't wait for Coraline! (Actually, can't wait for a lot of things - I
being abnormally impatient lately)

Martha - I don't know if I'd call it entirely geriatric... mine's
still happily humming away and pushing 4. My printer however... Hrm. I
guess it's about time I start saving up and looking into newer and
better things again.

squeaks, who will TAKE PHOTOS of the quilt before mailing it out this
time...
  

    
Oh, generally I milk my computers _much_ longer than three years.  But a
three-year-old computer is pretty obsolete.  (And mine was starting to go
insane.)
  

    
One of my coworkers was rather alarmed a few weeks ago when after
someone (i.e.: not me) installed an airport in her Titanium Powerbook..
the processor caught on fire. Smelled smoke, grabbed the guy who had
just installed it who opened the case in time to see the processor
glowing redly before bursting into flames.

So it must be an epidemic.

I think I'll pre-order my Coraline from Dreamhaven anyway... and let
Amazon lie for now... 

Martha - Three years sounds about right for me.. but the techno lust
alone keeps me on a three year upgrade schedule. the tough thing is
going to be the next update with OS X, which I love here at work, but
is going to force me to upgrade all my software at home.
$hit.

I need a sugar mommy.
  

    
I don't even know what I need for my computer. Things keep
mysteriously breaking and fixing themselves. I know I need a new
monitor, though. Mine keeps flashing strange colors at me and I have to
beat it into submission like an old car. 
I don't know much about computers, but I know this: Never ever ever
buy a Gateway. They tend to start going wonky exactly one week after
the warranty ends. It's a conspiracy. 

Yay! Coraline! Like Dan, I'll be ordering mine from Dreamhaven. Today
I recieved a strange e-mail from Amazon. They somehow managed to send
items I didn't order to an address I don't live at. I'm starting to
think that the people handling my order are none other than the hotel
receptionists in Mostly Harmless. I may write them and ask. 
  

    

My extremely elderly Win '95 computer will be limping out the door shortly 
because my sweetie bought me a new hot rod for my birthday!!  Woohoo!  

It must be nice to have a job.  I hear such nice things about paychecks, 
something I only dimly remember.
  

    
Is anybody from this mob going to be at Minicon in a few weeks?
  

    
It's really weird to hear about all these problems with Amazon - I
order from them nearly weekly and have never had a ghost of an issue
with them. They always send me exactly what I want, super fast, and in
excellent condition. Maybe it depends on the competence of the
distribution center from which your schtuff comes - I assume they have
multiple warehouses in specific regions. I don't know.

I finally got a new laptop. My Toshiba Satellite had a meltdown about
nine months ago, and as much as I wanted a notebook, I just couldn't
afford one at the time. My new one is being shipped to me this month.
Woohoo! My PC is extremely out of date, but I'd rather have a new
notebook than a PC.

Michelle, I've never had a computer explode on me, but I completely
empathize with you on the bathroom fan front. What the heck is going on
up there that can cause a fireball to come out at you? Mine just makes
dreadful noises, and unfortunately it's one of those that flips on
with the light. We were leaving the lights off to use the bathroom for
everything because it was so bad, but it's a little difficult to put on
liquid eyeliner in the dark, so we plugged in a bunch of lamps until
one of my handy-man guy friends came and unwired the fan for us.

My fish Rusalka seems to have some terrible disease. She's this really
really big black goldfish, and I hope she doesn't die because I don't
know what I'd do with her. What do you do with dead goldfish? She's too
big to flush, I think. I'm giving her medicine, but she looks like
she's heading into the light.
  

    
Lioness: No, not Minicon, unfortunately.  But I'm planning on Wiscon
and World Fantasy Con.

Maure: Sending big happy-fish wishes toward Rusalka, who has too cool
a name to leave us.  

Okay.  So this might be a weird place to ask this, but there are a lot
of knowledgeable people here... Does anybody have any clue where I
might find information about Fair Usage rules for using artwork in
collages?
  

    
All this talk of exploding computer parts is reminding me that I owe
my brother lots of money for a brand new computer that's been sitting
at his house for months now... oops.

Erynn - Go the extra mile. Get a flat screen. If you can really scrimp
and save, get a rather large flatscreen.

Dan - You know, had you caught me before the last boy did, the
position of 'sugar momma' would still have been up for grabs, but then
that boy happened and I don't think I could go back to sugar momma
status if I wanted to. On the bright side, he didn't make me pay for
the massive scratch I put on his bike - had it been anyone else, they'd
be out $250. 

Lioness - not going anywhere until Burning Man, and even that trip
will be cut up a bit, so I'll still have enough left over for an
extended trip to MN for World Fantasy Con. (and then somewhere in all
the end-of-the-year-spending, I still have to manage to save enough
aside for the trip to Australia - oy, work is going to love me!)

Maure - Best fishes for Rusalka's good health. No suggestions on what
to do if the worst happened tho' - I've already told my rats they're
simply not allowed to die because I wouldn't know what to do with them.

squeaks, eating pistachios so Tree doesn't have to.
  

    
lioness - no Minicon for this fashionable ready-to-wear.  Next cons in
my pipeline are Baycon and ConJose.  I will be heading to the midwest
for a sweetie visit later this year, but I'm not sure when.  Oh, and a
trip to Boston in November.