Day: November 15, 2007

“I’m not the kind of man who tends to socialize
I seem to lean on old familiar ways…” – Paul Simon

I’ve been toying with the idea of attending next year’s World Fantasy Convention in Calgary (just as I toyed with the idea of attending last year’s in Austin and this year’s in Saratoga). A lot of what I’ve read online makes it sound like great fun. Of course, it also makes it sound a lot more like a reunion, something better suited to past attendees and World Fantasy Award nominees. It’s not as if there’s a sign on the door that reads, “Newbies not welcome,” but still, I’ve been thinking it might be better to start with something different, and smaller — like maybe Readercon in July, for instance.

(I’m also slowly trying to put together a trip to Los Angeles with friends for next fall, so that could eat into my already limited vacation time and disposable income.)

And then I read something like this, and I think: he’s never attended before, and he had fun… So I don’t know.

How many months does it take to get a passport?

This is a shame, because I actually sort of like my local Border’s:

A new strategy at Borders will reinforce the message that its stores are not just about books: the company has been installing 37-inch flat-screen televisions to show original programming, advertisements, news and weather.

Apparently the screens are “not designed to be intrusive,” but it’s difficult to see how they could be anything but and still be effective.

Via Ed Champion, who, not surprisingly, is more upset about it than me.

This is interesting, especially in wake of the ongoing Writer’s Guild strike: Spike cancels The Kill Point.

Okay, the cancellation itself isn’t all that interesting (or probably even unexpected), but what Spike’s spokesperson had to say was:

“We are out of the serialized one-hour business. We need programming that we can repeat.”

I don’t know if this was intended as a dig at the writers or not. The one problem is, reality television does consistenly lousy in repeats — as opposed to, let’s say, one-hour dramas.

I never watched it, but I gather that its not being a reality program was not The Kill Point‘s real problem.