Syndicated feeds broken again
Oct. 26th, 2009 | 07:38 pm
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Oh yeah, LJ
Oct. 19th, 2009 | 08:07 pm
mood:
busy
I didn't post all that often to Livejournal before, but now it seems I'm posting even less, as Twitter (I'm @mkcurry) and Facebook are getting most of the brief posts that I was putting here. Some of what I've posted about there in the last few weeks:
- I'm now reading slush for Fantasy Magazine.
- I've been to excellent concerts by Vienna Teng (with The Paper Raincoat) and brilliant fiddle player Brian Conway.
- The new album by The Paper Raincoat is awesome.
- The Yoshida Brothers are also awesome: http://is.gd/3HqHb
I think that's a representative assortment of the parts other than me gushing about new novels and short stories by various talented writers.
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More Worldcon Montreal [part 2 of 2]
Aug. 13th, 2009 | 09:42 pm
mood:
tired
Sunday: Started the day with an excellent warm cinnamon bun with apples at Steak Frites, plated as though it was a dinner entree. Given all of the great food I had over the long weekend, I don't know why something so simple impressed me, but it did. Attended the "Neil Gaiman and Gary K Wolfe in Conversation" panel, which ended up simply being a fascinating conversation between Neil and Gary which ranged over all sorts of interesting topics. I think it was probably the best of the four Neil events I attended. Later I went to a kaffeeklatsch with
Next up was the string of Hugo events. I was at part of the rehearsal, which was an interesting look behind the scenes. Then I got to attend the pre-Hugo reception, where I met several people, including Neil Gaiman. Thanks again for introducing me,
Monday: This was the day for driving back, but before I headed out there was time for a very tasty lunch in Chinatown with
Some of the people I was glad to have the chance to talk to but didn't mention yet:
People I meant to mention but didn't: If I knew that, I'd have mentioned them.
Chances of me going to Worldcon 2010 in Melbourne? Slim to none.
Chances of me going to Worldcon 2011 in Reno? Even less.
Overall, I had a great time, and Montreal is definitely a great city. Hopefully it won't take me 10+ years to make it back there again this time.
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Madness?! This! Is! Worldcon! [part 1 of 2]
Aug. 12th, 2009 | 11:36 pm
mood:
sleepy
The short summary (in no particular order): Talked to a lot of great people; ate a lot of great food (usually with some of the aforementioned great people); drank a modest amount of excellent alcohol; attended a really moving wake for the late Charlie Brown; attended the Hugos for the first time, got to see
The longer summary:
Wednesday: Hours of driving, including a stop in Vermont for a very tasty elk burger, followed by much construction in Quebec and arrival at the outskirts of Montreal just in time for rush hour. Doh.
Thursday: I got my badge and attended "Question Time with Neil Gaiman," which was both entertaining and interesting. It ended up being my only panel of the day, since "In Conversation: Paul Krugman and Charles Stross" got moved to the evening, when I was scheduled to meet up with
Friday: The day with the most panels, as I managed to make it to "The New Media," "From SF Reader to Economist" (Paul Krugman), and "The Campbell Awards (Not a Hugo, Honest!)." They were all well worth going to, but the Campbell Awards panel was the most entertaining, as
Saturday: I started the day eating excellent dim sum with
To be continued in part 2.....
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Photos from the last KGB Fantastic Fiction
Jul. 8th, 2009 | 10:04 pm
mood:
tired
Mary Robinette Kowal & her dinosaur:

Brian Francis Slattery & the band:

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Readercon
Jul. 8th, 2009 | 09:03 pm
mood:
excited
Tomorrow evening I'll be at a Vienna Teng concert.
That is all.
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Upcoming Vienna Teng CT/NY area shows
May. 29th, 2009 | 08:32 pm
mood:
tired
From viennateng.com:
19 Jun 09 (Fri) 7:30 pm Housing Works Bookstore Café in New York NY
Solo show. With Diane Birch. Part of the Live From Home benefit concert series for Housing Works, Inc.
http://www.housingworks.org/events/detai
9 Jul 09 (Thu) 8:00 pm Infinity Hall in Norfolk, CT
Solo show. With Seth Adam.
http://www.infinityhall.com/events/vienn
15 Jul 09 (Wed) 8:00 pm Watercolor Cafe in Larchmont, NY
Solo show. With Katie Herzig.
http://www.watercolorcafe.net/
19 Jul 09 (Sun) 8:00 pm Towne Crier Cafe in Pawling, NY
Solo show. With Ari Hest.
http://www.townecrier.com/acts/teng.htm
20 Aug 09 (Thu) 8:00 pm Highline Ballroom in New York NY
http://www.highlineballroom.com/bio.php?i
I've got tickets to the Infinity Hall show already, but I don't think I'm going to make either the Watercolor Cafe or Towne Crier shows. The Highline Ballroom show is a definite possibility, and the Housing Works show a slight one.
Anyone else on my friends list planning on being at these? woj? Meredith? Beuller?
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Torture
Apr. 17th, 2009 | 10:16 pm
mood:
sick
There are two choices, President Obama. Prosecute them or be complicit in their crimes.
Do your part. Ask Attorney General Holder to appoint a special prosecutor by signing these petitions [ACLU -- FDL] and write to your Senator, your Congressman, and President Obama.
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Goodbye Furl, hello Delicious
Mar. 19th, 2009 | 08:23 pm
Originally published at Wake Up. Please leave any comments there.
The death of Furl.com, which is what I’d been using to provide the headlines that sit at the top of the left column, has finally motivated me to switch to something else. The headlines are now coming via my bookmarks at Delicious.com, with the added benefit of clippings when you hover over a headline, and the front page loading doesn’t crawl along anymore while Furl eventually gets around to working. I think it’s definitely a change for the better, especially since the headlines tend to be the most active part of this blog.
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Readercon
Feb. 9th, 2009 | 07:57 pm
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Change you can believe in
Feb. 4th, 2009 | 09:52 pm
Originally published at Wake Up. You can comment here or there.
It’s been a stellar week for Obama on the economic front.
Start with his decision to tap Senator Judd Gregg as his new Secretary of Commerce, a guy who voted to abolish the Commerce Department back when Clinton was President.
So, Judd Gregg will become Commerce Secretary, and a Republican will keep Gregg’s seat in the Senate. Gregg’s lifetime Progressive Punch rating of 10.08 out of 100.00, and 6.91 “when the chips are down,” should make him a much needed right-wing champion for the Commerce Department. Gregg should also be a useful voice during cabinet meetings, making sure that President Obama and the other radical liberals there don’t over-reach.
Then there’s the stimulus bill, where, despite Obama’s willingness to give the Republicans all sorts of concessions, there apparently still aren’t enough votes to get it through the Senate. The likely solution? More concessions, because that’s the bipartisan way.
If that comes out of spending and not tax cuts - and since Republicans and moderate Democrats are driving the boat on this one I assume it will - then the bill will be completely unable to accomplish its goals on job creation. It may provide a temporary boost, but won’t do what’s needed to stop the bleeding. The recession will continue for years and maybe slip into depression.
Lastly, there’s news that Obama and his administration are working on a bailout plan that will attempt to keep the shambling corpses of the big banks moving around for a while longer by letting the taxpayers guarantee huge amounts of toxic paper. No pesky nationalization for him, despite the many studies that show that’s the way most likely to actually work.
The Obama Administration, if the Washington Post’s latest report is accurate, is about to embark on a hugely expensive “save the banking industry at all costs” experiment that:
1. Has nothing substantive in common with any of the “deemed as successful” financial crisis programs
2. Has key elements that studies of financial crises have recommended against
3. Consumes considerable resources, thus competing with other, in many cases better, uses of fiscal firepower.
The Obama Administration is as obviously and fully hostage to the interests of the financial services industry as the Bush crowd was. We have no new thinking, no willingness to take measures that are completely defensible (in fact not doing them takes some creative positioning) like wiping out shareholders at obviously dud banks (Citi is top of the list), forcing bondholder haircuts and/or equity swaps, replacing management, writing off and/or restructuring bad loans, and deciding whether and how to reorganize and restructure the company. Instead, the banks are now getting the AIG treatment: every demand is being met, no tough questions asked, no probing of the accounts (or more important, the accounting).
Oh, wait, there were also the newly-announced executive compensation restrictions, which couldn’t be more obvious an attempt to appease the proles even as billions more of their dollars are spent trying to save zombie banks.
I was hardly expecting Obama to govern from the left, given the fact that he’s a center-right technocrat and all, but this is getting ridiculous and it’s only February.
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The post-partisan era
Jan. 28th, 2009 | 07:53 pm
Originally published at Wake Up. You can comment here or there.
What happens when you make concessions to the Republicans so you can have “bipartisan” support for the stimulus bill? This:
The stimulus package just passed the House, with the billions in corporate tax cuts, without the money to re-sod the National Mall, without the money for family planning for poor people, and without one Republican vote. Without one. Final vote was 244-188 as 11 “Democrats” crossed over.
It’s the exact same result Obama (and Pelosi) could have gotten by pushing a better bill through without any concessions at all.
As the Rude Pundit put it:
We don’t know what Barack Obama actually said to Republican members of Congress in his closed-door meetings with them yesterday regarding his stimulus plan. But we do know one thing for sure: it accomplished nothing. This is the way it’s gonna go, and if you’ve paid attention at all, you know the steps: Obama will concede shit and Republicans will ask for more (even though they already got more tax cuts than anyone fucking needs), Obama will concede more shit and Republicans will ask for more (even though they’re gonna get the family planning funding taken out), Obama will concede more shit and Republicans will ask for more, and then when the vote comes, Republicans will vote against it, saying that no one listened to them and fuck that Obama for lying about bipartisanship. Yet the legislation will have passed in a watered down form from the deep infrastructure and other spending so desperately needed to, you know, create jobs, which will, you know, create taxable income, which will, you know, help actually pay for shit some day.
Obama has done good work so far when he’s been able to do things directly, like starting the process of closing Guantanamo, lifting the gag rule, and reviewing the idea of letting states set emissions standards that are tougher than the federal governmen’s. Apparently though, everything he learned about how to play things in Congress he learned from the same Democrats who failed to get much done for the past two years. Here’s hoping this episode teaches Obama that the Republicans have no interest in compromising, no matter how much the new President wants this to magically be a post-partisan world. He should do what’s right, rather than responding to Republican hissy fits with concessions.
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Cinematic Titanic (aka MST3K) on tour!
Jan. 19th, 2009 | 10:03 pm
mood:
exanimate
http://cinematictitanic.com/wpmu/121/
UPCOMING SHOWS
FEB 13-14–MARINES MEMORIAL THEATRE - San Francisco, CA
FEB 20-21–SOMERVILLE THEATRE - Boston, MA
FEB 27-28- HANNA THEATRE - Cleveland, OH
MAR 7- PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Austin, TX
MAR 13-14- KING CAT THEATRE - Seattle, WA
1. PRE-SALE begins on MONDAY (1/19) at 10AM (local time to the venue)
2. The PRE-SALE CODE is: MST3K
3. We will be performing a different movie each night per city - titles TBA
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A Palestinian father’s anguish
Jan. 17th, 2009 | 10:25 am
Originally published at Wake Up. You can comment here or there.
From the L.A. Times [via Informed Comment]
Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:
“Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children. . . . Could somebody please come to us?”
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“They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.”
Jan. 5th, 2009 | 08:48 pm
Originally published at Wake Up. You can comment here or there.
Via Informed Commment:
CBS News broadcasts an interview with a Norwegian physician on the scene in Gaza.
He says he has seen one military casualty come into the hospital. Of 2500 wounded, 50% are women and children. Doing surgery around the clock. There are injuries you do not want to see– children coming in with open abdomens, with injured legs, we had to amputate both of them. This is a war on the civilian population of Gaza. It is a very young population. They cannot flee. They are fenced in. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.
[Warning: Disturbing images]
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Anticipation (aka Worldcon 2009)
Dec. 27th, 2008 | 08:31 pm
mood:
mischievous
So, who else is going?
And who among you wants to buy me a drink? ;) [ETA: At Worldcon!]
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Transformation or just more triangulation?
Dec. 19th, 2008 | 09:50 pm
Originally published at Wake Up. You can comment here or there.
Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head yet again, reminding those who have apparently forgotten the Clinton years (and ignored the Democrats in Congress during the Bush years) that Obama’s whole post-partisan shtick is hardly new:
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Bill Murray!
Dec. 10th, 2008 | 08:21 pm
mood:
amused
At your subway station! http://gawker.com/news/diary/bizarre-sub
At your karaoke! http://drhastings.livejournal.com/58116.h
Bill Murray!
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Bruce Campbell, Live!
Nov. 12th, 2008 | 09:42 pm
mood:
pleased
The basic premise of My Name is Bruce is that a desperate small town called Gold Lick kidnaps B-movie actor Bruce Campbell to save it from Guan-Di, the angry Chinese god of war (and protector of bean curd). As one might imagine, hilarity ensues, as the movie (directed by Bruce himself) pokes fun at both the actor and B-movies. This is not a piece of high cinema, but it's a lot of cheesy fun, especially if you're a Bruce Campbell fan.
The main reason I was there wasn't the movie though (which I would have otherwise waited to see on DVD), it was the chance to see Bruce himself in person. I wasn't disappointed. Bruce was funny and sarcastic as he answered questions about the movie and his career, with the occasional cutting retort for those in the audience who were trying to be witty at his expense. He was also appropriately horrified at the young women who had drawn pictures of him riding a unicorn. Yikes. It was a sold out show, and I think everyone went away happy, except maybe those people who apparently thought Bruce would be doing signings in addition to three Q&A sessions every night.
Bruce is heading down toward the Mid-Atlantic states next, then taking a swing through the upper Midwest before hitting the West Coast (full calender here). If you're a Bruce Campbell fan, buy your tickets in advance and go see him! You'll be glad you did.
(x-posted from Of Two Minds)
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Bruuuuuuuce!
Nov. 7th, 2008 | 10:43 am
mood:
excited
He's out doing a promo tour [see dates here] to promote his new movie, My Name is Bruce.
Barring union strikes, hurricanes, flat tires or diptheria, I will be personally appearing at each of these cities to introduce the film and do a spirited Q&A afterward. Please bear in mind, this isn't a "signing," so I recommend that the only thing you bring is your smiling face. I will be doing the 3 major show every day - roughly the 7:00, 9:30 and midnight screenings I look forward to seeing you all there!
Right now Bruce is in the Northeastern U.S., and then his tour will be moving through the Midwest before heading to the West Coast. If you're a Bruce Campbell fan, I'm pretty sure you don't want to miss this. I've got my tickets for one of the Hartford shows on Sunday!