I remember, time and time again, to try to live in light

Girls, what's my weakness? Memes

2009-07-13T12:08:36Z

Leave me a comment and I will give you a letter.
Then, write 10 things that you love starting with that letter.
Post the list in your journal.
Give out letters to your commenters in return.

inghean_macleod gave me an "H".

1. Hair (long hair in particular; on me and on my partners)
2. Human-powered transport
3. Hamburgers
4. Hummus
5. House M.D.
6. Lou Harrison's music
7. The Haloverse
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book, TV show, radio show, movie, in roughly that order)
9. Hard trance
10. Home

Headlong into the heartland

2009-07-11T14:14:19Z

The other night, previous plans having fallen through, I went to see the Duhks at La Fete de Marquette in the neighbourhood. I think I saw them ages ago, in Goderich, when they were called Scruhj MacDuhk, and were a fairly standard-issue Celtic rock outfit. In the meantime they have become much more eclectic, bringing in bluegrass, zydeco, and Cajun from elsewhere in the continent, and salsa and Afrobeat from farther afield. Banjo and fiddle continue to be front and centre, with strong percussion. The crowd danced surprisingly readily for Madison.

About half-way through, as the band ran through a set of jigs, a train came through - not twenty feet from the stage. Rather than be annoyed by the noise of the horn, they decided to turn around and play to the approaching Wisconsin & Southern freight train. The driver waved out the window. It was an enormously cheering tableau; something out of a Kim Stanley Robinson utopia, something you'd see at a party after a long day of tearing up parking-lots. (Of course I didn't have my camera.)

Two squared times three squared

2009-07-08T15:16:42Z

Coming up in the not very distant future, Monday August 3rd, is my 36th birthday. My last couple of birthdays have been very low-key, and if I can manage it, I'd like to have a bit of a crowd for this one. The plan in its current state is to go to the Nitty Gritty.

Here's a thing: I know there's a bunch of you in Madison that don't know me too well, as yet, although we are mutually friended. In large part this is because, even without excitement like getting hit by a pickup truck, my job keeps me late in the evening, and most social events that you might see me at are scheduled for early-mid evening. Couple that with my car-free state, and... yeah. Now, this may be presumptuous of me, but let me state clearly: if you can read this, I like you, and I want to get to know you better, and this invitation is extended to you, and your SOs, and anyone you feel like bringing ("Any friend of yours is, well, a friend of yours! But we're sure they're just fine."). Not merely extended, but I would actually really like it if you came to my party.

(If you are not in Madison and fall into this category - well, I would really like it if you came, too, but I understand that's a much bigger thing to ask!)

Feeling less testy this year, I suppose..

2009-07-04T23:46:36Z

I posted this on the Fourth of July, 2007, and it still seems to fit.

Independence Day
Wendell Berry

Between painting a roof yesterday and the hay
harvest tomorrow, a holiday in the woods
under the grooved trunks and branches, the roof
of leaves lighted and shadowed by the sky.
As America from England, the woods stands free
from politics and anthems. So in the woods I stand
free, knowing my land. My country, 'tis of the
drying pools along Camp Branch I sing
where the water-striders walk like Christ,
all sons of God, and of the woods grown old
on the stony hill where the thrush's song rises
in the light like a curling vine and the bobwhite's
whistle opens in the air, broad and pointed as a leaf.

Also

2009-07-03T21:53:59Z

So, yes, I played guitar in both Amy's set at the Friday night concert at Apollocon, and in her GoH concert. I haven't posted about this, because everytime I sat down to do it I was all OH GOD THAT TIME I GOT ONE BAR OUT OF SYNCH OH GOD. But in general I think it went well, and having listened, prepared to wince, to the recordings, the mistakes are there but hey, it's folk music, and people had fun. So.

At the Friday night concert Amy did a setting of "The Lady" by Urban Tapestry (not the Sandy Denny song), and I did a fingerpicked accompaniment, pretty simple with just a little twiddly bit for the lead-in. For the GoH concert I accompanied her on "Summertime", Tom Lehrer's "Irish Ballad" - which I strummed rather than fingerpicked, turning out to be a little tricky because I had a hard time hearing her singing over the strumming! (There was no sound-system in the small room.) Finally there was a set of fiddle-tunes, which you can hear at Amy's MySpace page; scroll down to "Reel Set, Petronella" in the music player. That's me on guitar.

I sort of never write con reports and I guess not doing a real one for Apollocon won't break tradition. I had fun, and performed music for an audience for the first time in 10ish years - the last time being that Divina et Femina evening concert where I ended up drumming.

Why did I ever stop playing tabletop RPGs?

2009-07-03T19:35:27Z

DM of the Rings reminds me why. With so many groups, lots of G, not so much with the RP. My Bartle quotient is pretty high on Explorer and not so much on everything else.

"Nothing more to say/report on, Benet?", you cry. Or maybe you don't. Anyway, no, not really. Not much happening since returning from Apollocon.

Home again

2009-06-30T12:33:55Z

Back from Apollocon. It went well and was lots of fun, but I arrived home completely out of cope, and not really up to facing any of the crap we have to deal with (getting desktop computer fixed again, for instance.)

Green shoots

2009-06-28T16:38:57Z

The area around Houston Airport is as concretified as that of any city, but behind the hotel was an intriguing, over-grown wasteground, from which the wind bore scents of strange flowers and the sounds of dozens of never-heard-before insects. I ventured in at the cost of considerably scratched legs, and found some interesting things...

Bumblebee!

Some kind of mound!

Flower!

Apollocon pics

2009-06-28T16:23:50Z

Here. Not quite up to a report threading them together.

Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket, Houston

2009-06-26T17:35:21Z

So we are finally here at Apollocon, after:

- waiting 6 hours to leave Madison due to storms in Detroit
- a night in a Detroit airport motel with no hydro (but with beer and pizza and soft beds)
- an early morning flight which had a horrible moment of getting a maintenance crew out but then actually arrived on time.

Have to get to work and make up for the missed morning. Laters!

Completely random things

2009-06-25T13:23:22Z

- I saw a guy at Duckon wearing a T-shirt reading "I speak fluent Canadian". I asked him what a double-double was, and he couldn't tell me.
- While doing the dishes this morning, I was thinking - as one does - about LL Cool J. And how it is short for "Ladies Love Cool James". How many other people have names which are also declarative sentences of which they are the object? And how can you even make sense of declarative sentences denoting something besides their truth-value?

In the air

2009-06-25T13:13:53Z

Today Amy and I are off to Apollocon in Houston, where Amy is the Music GoH, and I, somewhat nervously, will be playing guitar in her concert. This'll mark my first time on stage in nearly 10 years, and that time I was just banging a drum.

Also I will get to see kgkofmel! And mark another state as visited... strictly speaking, I've flown through DFW, so I have been to Texas, but I don't count airports.

I rode to Saturn yesterday

2009-06-21T13:31:51Z

Well, in a manner of speaking. The UW Space Place, as one of its International Year of Astronomy events, has set up signposts along an area bike trail for the Sun and the old-school nine planets; the distances between signposts are to scale. It takes a few minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth, but Pluto is in Mount Horeb, 20-odd miles away. (The original idea was for them to be sized to scale, too.) Saturn is near where the Southwest Commuter Trail goes over the Beltline Highway, and around then I realized (a) I was a bit out of condition, and (b) my chain is in serious need of replacement. So I turned around and went to the Lakeshore Preserve for a walk, instead.

Where it turned out to be the time of year for many, many little toads crossing the path! There was a sign warning you to step carefully, which I tried to do. Here's one:

and a full-grown one, sitting quietly by a log looking worn-out by all this talk of migrating.

Oh my God, it's full of savings

2009-06-16T14:36:18Z

The Inn on the Park's marquee sign, that finger on the pulse of downtown Madison, that faultless guide to who exactly will be clogging the lines at Ian's Pizza, today welcomes "Bowman Systems". This produced an immediate vision of the alternate ending to 2001, where HAL worked just fine, and Dave Bowman returned from Jupiter in one piece somewhere in mid-2002, and then after the lecture circuit palled, went into the HVAC business and started going portly and balding.

Sorta thinky and review-y

2009-06-16T12:50:21Z

In the middle of one of the Penny Arcade podcasts, Gabe laments that there haven't been any new Star Wars books for a little while, but at least there's still Alastair Reynolds, whose books reliably have either a spaceship or space-station on the cover. "So he's got your back?", says Tycho.

Right now I'm simultaneously reading the most recent Star Wars Expanded Universe - Outcast by Aaron Allston - and re-reading Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series. Which, spaceships and space-stations notwithstanding, are fairly different beasts, but with some interesting things in common.

I've become pretty fond of the Expanded Universe books, which form a large, reliable supply of decent if not always great space-opera, but I also have some long-standing kvetches about them. Chief among these is the way they insist on harshing my squee about the Jedi. Okay, I get this: in the original trilogy, with things being so bad under the Empire and no actual Jedi around, they must seem like a totally awesome symbol of the way things never used to suck quite so damn hard all the time. While in reality, Force and all, they must be an institution made up of fallible people, which can go off the rails like any institution can. But man! Can't they be awesome and wise and guardians of peace and order at least some of the time?

Anyway, one of the themes someone raises in the early chapters of Outcast is repentance and redemption: while it's all very well for a Jedi to declare that someone has truly atoned for their crimes and turned to good, how are they supposed to convince someone who isn't in touch with the Force? Like the cops? I'm fairly hard-core about procedural justice, myself, so despite the squee-harshing I had to admit that this was an awfully good point.

Redemption is a big enough concern in the Revelation Space books that, in fact, books 3 and 4 are called Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. The thought-experiment here is primarily with life extension: a prolonged life is a lot of time to do really bad things, but also a lot of time to work at becoming a better person.

Exploring how technology (or simply radically different circumstances - not sure the Force is 'technology', as such) affects basic human emotional processes is not why I read SF. I read it because of the spaceships and laser beams! But it is amazingly interesting.

Spoons, I am out of them

2009-06-15T02:43:34Z

Back from Duckon. Utterly exhausted. I ordered pizza. I guess I could've Twittered that.

Marley was a Rasta, Moses was a Jew...

2009-06-09T03:00:50Z

I never blogged about it, but a few weeks ago commodorified, fairestcat and I went to hear Pat MacDonald, formerly one-half (and later a smaller fraction, as they added members) of Timbuk3. If you never heard Timbuk3, back in the late 80s and early-mid 90s, they were that interesting variation on the one-hit wonder: the act who were well known for one song, which was really unlike most of what they did. That one song was "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades", which if you're a 30something dork like me you probably recall from that one episode of Head of the Class.

Anyway, it was a fun song, but didn't quite exemplify the mix of Americana, unusual sounds, and odd fixations that Timbuk3 brought to the table: the best example, in my opinion, is "Sample the Dog": a loopy, laconic song about, among many, many other things, recording a dog's barking on a sampling keyboard. Timbuk3 have been gone for awhile, but apparently MacDonald moved back from Austin, TX to Wisconsin, where he's from - a bit of a shock, since there always seemed something very Texan about the dry wit and off-centre bluesy feel of his singing and playing. Shows how much I still have to learn about my wife's people, I guess.

Those three elements are still in play: more Americana and less sonic weirdness, but, bless him, MacDonald's songcraft is as oddball as ever, and the compositions for a one-string cigar-box guitar he calls the "purgatory harp" are pretty neat, with a bit of a West African feel. It's somehow reassuring when someone has a brush or two with fame, laughs, and goes on doing their thing regardless.

"Book" vs. "media"

2009-06-03T13:37:46Z

Since Wiscon I've been chewing a lot on the cultural divide which, for want of better terminology, people are still calling "book fandom" and "media fandom". These terms are hideously inaccurate and yet they clearly point to a thing which is widely perceived.

This post by resolute foregrounds several unspoken axioms that I have never heard stated outright, but which, as someone who definitely grew up in "book fandom", I immediately recognize:
- that there is a pure form of sf
- that this pure form is for the readers of science fiction, not the mundanes or those who read genre-blending works or watch television or movies
- that all those who do not read sf are fearful of science and the future
- that self-publishing was inevitably poor quality work that didn’t make the cut to real sf
- that genres with primarily female audiences are not in any way sf
- that real sf can only be read in books and physical anthology magazines, not the internet

What other axioms did I absorb? Let me add to this:
- television and movies, comic books, costuming, and gaming are fine things in their own right but they are peripheral to the core defining activity of a fan, which is reading SF/F. A fan who reads SF, watches Battlestar Galactica, and plays D&D is a person of diverse tastes; one who just reads SF is a bit of a purist curmudgeon; but one who only watches BSG is probably an unlettered barbarian.
- big-tent general-interest SF conventions are tolerant spaces with room for all of these things and many more, unless they are arbitrarily deemed by the Programming Chair, who ought to know, to be ridonkulous. By contrast, special-interest conventions are unhealthily obsessed with some particular niche, and by sucking time, energy, and attendees from big general-interest cons they are actively a Bad Thing. The reason for all those grey hairs at established cons? Anime and X-Files conventions are leading young fans who ought to be there, learning the True Way at the knees of their elders, down the primrose path of dalliance with ephemera.
- media conventions are also evil because they are run on a for-profit basis, sucking money out of pockets in exchange for heinously overpriced signed photographs of actors. Who don't even create content, so why are they even interesting? Clearly Star Wars would be just as much fun if the first fifty people from the phone-book had sat around a kitchen table reading the lines from the script, not moving. Anyway, by contrast, real cons are run by fans for fans, out of the goodness of their hearts.

NB: HTTP 1.1 seems to be a magic engine for sucking overtones from text at times, so let me just state explicitly that I don't actually hold to these axioms, anymore, but that they were very strongly inculcated in me and I sometimes find them lurking at the back of my head influencing my opinions and actions. And I thought hauling them out into the light of day might be worthwhile and possibly even interesting.

Wiscon 33

2009-05-28T02:57:48Z

Memo to F. Olding Benet: if I don't liveblog, forget putting together a coherent narrative ex post facto. At least, take notes next time.

That said, high points as they surface in my mind:

- the "Racism, Classism, and the Singularity" panel - which I was on, along with the formidable minds of Geoff Ryman, Ian Hagemann, and Cliff Winnig, who also did a superb job of moderating. The audience was engaged and had lots of great input. Summarizing it is still beyond me, but watch this space. Shorter panel: you must not deny the body.
- the Beer & Marmalade party. I missed, alas, the now-famous keg stands, but there was energetic discussion of The Knife of Never Letting Go - and of the Nisi Shawl stories, which I confess I haven't yet read - and good conversation and good music and an general atmosphere of amiable, literate debauchery.
- hanging out at the Dane Sunday evening and then sloping back to the Dead Cow for more conversation, and Scotch. I could've hung out for hours more; but I felt myself beginning to fray; and wished to avoid an incident like last year's, where I stayed at con just a bit too long, and bit someone's head off, quite without justification, and then felt terrible for months and months

And lots more. People are putting up such thoughtful reports, and at the moment I'm not sure I even have it together enough to link!

Yet more proof that I am 12. Or maybe 6.

2009-05-22T18:53:34Z

Colleague: So are you going to Brat Fest?
Me: Nah, I hear it's a total sausage party.

How to sell me stuff, once anyway

2009-05-16T18:43:55Z

Staring at me from a shelf at the Jenny Street Market last night were several bags of cassava chips bearing the name and likeness of Sir Joseph Banks. How could I not buy one? Joseph Banks!

However, in the final analysis: they don't taste noticeably different from potato chips, of which I'm not the biggest fan, and also they are made from cassava, the root containing so much latex it needs to be boiled like 6 times before being suitable for human consumption, and I couldn't banish the worry that they might neglect this with the odd batch.

But doubtless next month someone will put Gilbert White's picture on a bag of organic pretzels, and I will helplessly fork over cash for them.

ReformaTories gun for Ignatieff, insult basically everyone

2009-05-14T12:09:45Z

Yeah, so I'm sure Stephen Harper didn't actually mean to dis: Canadians who live and work abroad, Canadians who drink espresso, academics, and, uh, rootless cosmopolitans, if you know what I mean, in his series of attack ads on Michael Ignatieff, but, what the Hell, you guys?

Met Agona Stephanos

2009-05-09T18:53:11Z

"My brother Fairchild, avid of a martyr's crown, has taken his children to the Canadian National Exhibition. I think of him from time to time, and I have exquisite pangs of self-congratulation because I am not with him."

-Robertson Davies, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

Est' takoi kofe

2009-05-04T18:15:07Z

This is too tangential to post in the comments of pecunium's thoughtful post on translations, but his translation of a Russian poem reminded me of one of my favourite conversations ever, with my old office-mate Siberian Alex.

Alex: I see you have coffee.
Me: Yes. (probably my third one of the day, mid-morning sometime)
Alex: Do you know that poem by Mayakovskii - "When I think of Lenin, I think of the Party; when I think of the Party, I think of Lenin"?
Me: No. Though I do remember that one about opening volumes of Marx like windows in a stuffy house. I kinda liked that one. It doesn't translate well.
Alex: Anyway, that poem reminds me of you, only with coffee instead of the Party. And you instead of Lenin, obviously.
Me: Thanks.

Oot and aboot

2009-05-04T03:17:24Z

This is the first weekend where there's been (a) really pleasant weather and (b) time and spoons for me to get out. Yesterday I went to the Arboretum; where I went into the Leopold Pines for the first time, and that tunnel beneath the Beltline Highway. Today I went north to Cherokee Marsh - I can't help feeling that they've added an extra hill to the route since last time I went, but it was still worthwhile. Even as a soundscape it is splendid: chorus frogs, any number of birds I can't identify, water lapping against the shore

Jewels of the city of decay: millipedes in a fallen log, Leopold Pines, UW Arboretum

Between land and water, Cherokee Marsh

Early spring flowers (wild ginger and violet), Cherokee Marsh

Bait and switch! This is actually from a waste-ground in my neighbourhood, but posted because I think it came out well. Don't know what it actually is yet, Newcomb's is being uncooperative.