personal

Wednesday

They grouped in the road at the top of the rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.
– Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Happy birthday, Mr. McCarthy, sir.

My own day was largely uneventful, at least until my evening commute when the train car I was in flooded. I didn’t notice it for the longest time — long enough that my bag, which I make a habit of placing under my seat, got wet, and then so did my pants leg when I lifted the bag off the floor. I hoped at first that somebody had just spilled a large drink, but when I stood up before my station I saw that it was down the entire length of the car, a long puddle of water. At a guess, the toilet in the bathroom (which, as it happens, was in that car) overflowed.

There’s nothing quite like overflow from a communal toilet underfoot to liven up your evening commute.

Have I mentioned lately how much I don’t like the LIRR?

Beyond that, it was just a typical day, although I did manage to get a fair amount of work done, which was nice. And I finished reading John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I decided to read it after seeing the trailer for the upcoming new movie version. (It was already made into a miniseries starring the late Alec Guinness.) I liked it a lot…but also didn’t. It can be kind of boring and obtuse at times, although I think somewhat deliberately, since it suggests that’s an awful lot of what spycraft is, sifting through old files, making connections, ferreting out the truth. There’s a lot to really like about the novel, which is full of inventive jargon, often suspensful, and often quite dryly funny. But my opinion’s split.

I do think I’ll watch the miniseries and movie, though.

And that was Wednesday: mass transit toilet water and Cold War espionage.

Monday

An uneventful Monday. I honestly can’t think of a single thing to say about it. So I’m just going to share a quote from today’s Writer’s Almanac, from author Elizabeth Gilbert:

Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it’s not something where — if you missed it by age 19 — you’re finished. It’s never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world — at any age. At least try.

Sunday, so it was

So let’s see what I did this Sunday…

If you count very early Sunday morning, before I even went to bed on Saturday night, I watched the second episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day. I can’t say I liked it as much as the first. As I wrote on Twitter, I thought it had some terrific ideas, but was weighed down by odd, mistimed comedy, so-so action, and lengthy exposition. There were moments that I liked. Eve Myles and Kai Owen are quite good together, and Bill Pullman is doing some interesting character work, with a character that can’t help but be reprehensible. And I like that the writing has the courage to really explore the ramifications of the show’s premise in full, even if Beentsy suggests its a premise that’s been done before, by Jose Saramago. (I haven’t read this, or any, Saramago books, so I couldn’t really spot the differences for you.) I’ll certainly keep watching, although at this point I’m unconvinced it can sustain itself for ten episodes.

It’s no Children of Earth so far, I’ll say that.

What else? I did the Sunday crossword and watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix while I did it. I haven’t talked about the recent Netflix price hike here, a price hike I’m still pretty ticked off about, since it’s going to almost double my own monthly fee, but that will maybe have to wait for another day. When I haven’t been quietly, mildly fuming over being expected to pay double for what’s possibly going to become more limited service — the market’s getting splintered, and lots of studios are pulling content out of Netflix streaming — I’ve recently been watching some Trek on it. Particularly Enterprise, which I never really watched when it was on the air. I’m a little surprised at how much I like the show, considering that’s it’s not exactly what I’d call…well, good. It does some interesting things within the confines of being a prequel show, but I think I’m being more than generous when I call it flawed. And yet, I like the characters, so I’m kind of liking the show. That theme song…well, not so much. I understand what they were trying to do with it, like with a lot of the show, and can even respect it. But it’s still pretty awful.

The most recent Harry Potter movie, though, is actually pretty good. I don’t think it works as anything other than a fond final farewell to characters who have become something like friends over the years — you’d be lost and bored if you’ve never seen one of the movies before — but as that, it succeeds quite admirably. Genevieve Valentine has some interesting thoughts about the movie and the series as a whole, and rightly points out some of the best smaller moments.

Okay, enough unfocused rambling about television and movies. Here’s something I wrote in my weekly free-writing group:

They had turned the castle into a makeshift hospital, but the wounded and near-dead had begun to out-number the living. Those who were left standing had little more than a first aid kit and a box of adhesive bandages that one of the tour guides had scrounged from a desk somewhere in the basement. There was no attempt at triage, or even much hope for the injured, since anyone who had been bitten was in the same boat. Those who were left knew, deep down, that they were lucky to have survived even this long with both a doctor and a gun.

Although the truth was, Dr. Butler was not looking very good. Both Diane and Peter had tried, without success, to get him to sleep, if just for a couple of short hours, tried getting him to think of anything other than Beth, his wife, lying unconcious on an Army surplus cot in the other room. The Butlers had honeymooned here in Scotland forty years ago, long before even the first hints of an outbreak, and Diane and Peter had taken the older couple under their wing since the first leg of the bus tour. But as protective as they both were of the old man, they both knew they needed him sharp, needed him focused, needed him to get what little sleep he could.

The gun, on the other hand, was looking just fine, if a little light. Barton, the bus driver, had it now, tucked in his belt, and although he was naturally reticient to use it, he had already proven himself a trained shot when the trouble began. “We dinnae want’a waste the ammo,” he told them. Security had been tight, following the most recent scares, but the castle’s one guard still hadn’t carried much in his clip.

How many had they killed? How many more would they need to put down, even before the ravenous horde outside breached the walls? No one wanted to think about it. To think about it was to invite the answers, and only sorrow and madness lay in that direction.

“We could enhance our chance of survival if we could contact some kind of authority,” said Roger. “The government couldn’t have toppled already. This outbreak was bad, the worst yet, but they’ve had warnings. They’ve had time to prepare. They…”

But that had been nothing compared to the number of zombies out there now.

Not sure it has any legs to it, as it feels a little shopworn and doesn’t really get inside any of the characters. There’s no plot, per se, and the plot that’s suggested seems awfully familiar. But I enjoyed it, if only for the exercise, the sentence-crafting and such.

Anyway, that was Sunday.

Saturdalia

I spent a good chunk of the day working on Kaleidotrope, namely formatting and layout for issue #12. With luck, it will be printed and mailed within the next couple of weeks, just barely making the July date. (I’m actually putting “Summer 2011” on it, though I don’t expect anyone’s going to raise a fuss.)

On the one hand, I’m going to miss layout, which I used to do in Word and have for almost half the issues done in Publisher. It makes the whole process feel more like editing and publishing, crafting something rather than just reprinting it. On the other hand, though…god, it’s a nightmare. Not this time so much, since I only have three contributors — the cover art, a novella, and a long-form poem — but in general it’s often tedious work. Lots of cutting and pasting and kerning and typefacey-like things.

I’ve more or less finished. I just need to plug in a revised bio from one of the contributors, then tweak and/or write the regular horoscopes. Then I’ll figure out what I’m going to do about printing. Luckily, there’s fewer copies that will need to be mailed out, since there are only those three, and with the move to put the zine online I haven’t really been pushing for new subscribers. Again, with luck, I’ll have all the copies I need printed by next weekend and have all of those mailed by the weekend after. That’s still July, with a whole day to spare.

Other than that, the day was pretty quiet. I watched an episode or two of Burn Notice and the first of Torchwood: Miracle Day. I’m not yet sure the latter continues Torchwood‘s trend of getting increasingly better. (The first season was a mixed bag, largely bad; the second was mixed as well, though mostly quite good; and the Children of Earth miniseries was some of the best damn television I’ve ever seen.) But I liked this new one and I’m looking forward to more.

And that, plus some reading of Kaleidotrope slush and a quick trip to the bank, were mostly it for Saturday. It’s amazing what can fill up a day.