And We Shall March

Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Man Who Hates Pluto (And Hilariously Takes Down A 2012/Planet X Audience Member) With Robert Crumb, Anna Devere Smith And So Many Others

WARNING! If you click on *any* of the links below, the video will automatically launch with a commercial and you cannot stop it until the commercial is over. This is profoundly irritating. On the upside, the site breaks down the whole of a talk into snippets available below each video, which is nice if you know exactly what you're looking for and want to send just a taste to a buddy.

Anywho...

I have just discovered FLORA.tv, a place overflowing with fantabulous stuff, such as this interview with Robert Crumb & Francoise Mouly, and this one with Helen Thomas, and this one with Harry Edwards, and this one with Richard Dawkins, and this one with MOFO Anna Deavere Smith, BEEYOTCHES! (If you click on none other, click on hers. She throws down on art, race, fear, honesty and so much more.)

Yeah. I'm gonna be wandering around this site for quite a while.

But I pull the entirety of NdGT talk from when he was in LA recently, but I couldn't go due to demands elsewhere. It is informative, delightfully hilarious, and makes me feel even worse that I couldn't make it. I'm not sure if my fave part is when he starts reading from the Pluto Resolution that our state Assembly passed, or the part where he takes down a Plant X query from the audience, or describing his Pluto hate mail or how astrophysicists name things, but the entire thing is glorious! I love how he gets hyped up and excited as he talks about certain things. One! Of! Us! Total geek. TOTAL Geek!

Based on how he's leaning so far, I think the eldest nephew is on track to grow up to become something along the lines of Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I shall do all within my Aunt Power to encourage this. Which is why his 2009 Christmas packet is a collection of Tyson & Sagan stuff.

Yes, quite a bit of that is due to my fantasy of the eldest nephew growing up to be some sort of scientist who terraforms Mars and names a city there after Me. I'm thinking Pamopolis. IF THAT'S WRONG I DON'T EVER WANT TO BE RIGHT.

(If I ever met Anna Deavere Smith in person? It would probably be like meeting Sherman Alexie in person - call security and bring on the defibrillator...)

Living Library Project

New Bobby!!!

He showed up for the first time earlier this week. I hope he sticks around, because I kinda miss Bobby. His butt's a little smaller than Bobby's, though.

Hampton / Holding

“She called me in and said, ‘You’ve got a choice, dear, now,’ ” Mr. Hampton recalled. “ ‘You can write this play over and over again for the next 40 years, and it’ll probably get a little better. Or you can do something completely different.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m thinking of writing a play about the extermination of the Brazilian Indians.’ And that set my course, really — which was to start again, every time.”

Heh.

People, THIS Is What I Have To Put Up With. Every. Day.

Blog's on autopilot for most of this month while I'm busy elsewhere, giving me an opportunity to clear out posts that have been held hostage in the drafts bin for one reason or another.
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This is what the keyboard looks like from where I sit.

It's either wiggle my hands under him (fortunately I don't need to see the keyboard to type), or shove him to another part of the desk (which means risking the complicated piles of papers), or pick him up and throw him onto the couch. The problem with the couch option is blah opens to round of ! yay it's the throw me on the couch so I can bounce and run back so you can throw me on the couch which means i get to bounch run back and have you throw me on the couch again because you know what i could do this all day !

I fucking hate that game.

I was hoping that the pillow I made him out of his fave blanket would help, it did a bit, until he decided he liked his home perch better. He's like this with the sewing machine, too.

Sometimes I can get him to center, occasionally I can get him to sit on my lap while I'm working, as PsychoKitty used to do, but if he's on my lap and not being petted, he whines. If you've ever heard a Himalayan whine, imagine that for three hours straight. If you've never heard a Himalayan whine, then think of the cutest yet most irritating baby you know. What that baby sounds like when hungry? That's what this cat sounds like when he whines.

Yes, that's a keyboard attached to the laptop.  This is because the keyboard on the laptop stopped working for no reason other than All Tech Hates Me, and it went down  So I grabbed . Thing is, I *love* this shiny keyboard! It's quiet, it feels good to lam, it's pretty. The only downside is bbb so I've got to get a skin for it. I'm also not too sure it can take extended hammering.  Some people have lead feet, I have lead fingers.

Goonan, a.k.a. The Author of 'In War Times' Makes With The Blog

Excuse the drive by posting, but Kathleen Ann Goonan has actually started posting on her blog! Go looky.

Okay, back to rewriting these damned sonnets. God I hate writing poetry.

If What This Guy Is Saying Is An Accurate Summary Of Events, English Majors Everywhere Should Run For Their Lives

Foreign producers of Shakespeare like Groß and Wilms evidently don't find his work alien to their own experience, and, given the popularity of the plays around the world, the same may be said of theater audiences everywhere. As far as I can tell, the only people intent on questioning the timelessness of Shakespeare's plays today are literature professors in the English-speaking world. In recent decades it has become increasingly fashionable among Shakespeare scholars to deny that there is anything intrinsically great or universal in his plays. They view Shakespeare as a product of the narrow horizons of his own day, and label him a distinctly English phenomenon. Indeed his greatness is often treated as a cultural construct, something invented or even manufactured in England. His plays are said to be the product of a culture industry, which first imposed his works on England, then on the English-speaking world, and finally on the whole globe, as if he were a skillfully marketed commodity, the Guinness Stout of the Renaissance.

In this view, Shakespeare is the ultimate Dead White European Male. He was canonized by the cultural establishment of England and then used to impose English values around the world (especially throughout the British Empire). In their efforts to cut Shakespeare down to size, and find something contingent, even arbitrary, in his reputation, Shakespeare scholars sometimes speak as if the cultural establishment could have taken any one of his contemporaries—say, Ben Jonson or Thomas Middleton—and through clever packaging and marketing built him into the world's most famous poet. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! The only reason the general public pays attention to Shakespeare scholars is for their help in understanding his greatness, and yet some of them are now actively engaged in debunking that greatness as a cultural myth.

Since outsiders may have trouble believing that the literary critical establishment is so cavalierly shooting itself in the foot, I need to quote some examples.

I dunno. For all this 'active debunking' he's rallying against, the cited examples  seem a bit dated. A book published in '95, another in '92, a conference in '91... Something is fishy about this piece (even as it reminds Us of one of our Favorite Sites Ever). I'll read this again when I have time.

Shh! Mat Johnson Is Speaking

Hey, remember the guy behind the upcoming Vertigo book Incognegro? Well, he wrote an essay about self-publishing over at his home port of Niggerati Manor. Here's a small excerpt:

And at the end of that four years, I would probably have several books, having written them in a month or two to expand my product line. And with no real time for craft and my attention completely focused on the market, each would have sucked roughly as much as the first one. Having spent the bulk of my energy on the commerce instead of the art, I would have remained the same shitty writer I was when I started. The moment I chose to self-publish, I would have ceased to make substantial growth. I would have virtually calcified.

For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, click on that link and read it. Share it with your friends. He's focus is on issues of blackitude, but what he's saying applies across the vast wasteland of self-publishing, I think.

An explainer, as I've come to understand I need to do at times because of the crossover here, self-publishing in comics is a different beast than self-publishing in prose. Though equal amounts of crap come out of both, it is 'more okay', philosophically, to self-publish in comics than it is to do the same in prose. Why that is is complicated and I'm not about to attempt to get into it.

Because When It Comes Right Down To It, Eventually You Are Going To Die. Yes, YOU.

Which is why if you are a creator, no matter what medium is your chosen form, you should make specific provisions for what happens to your intellectual property once you have gone gently into that night which is alleged to be good.

In the wake of the passing of his friend John M. Ford, Gaiman tapped a lawyer friend of his to create a template will that also covers your creative estate after death.  An excerpt from Gaiman's post:

He's not the first writer I know who didn't think to take care of his or her posthumous intellectual property. For example, I knew a writer -- a great writer -- separated from and estranged from his wife during the last five years of his life. He died without making a will, and his partner, who understood and respected his writing, was shut out, while his wife got the intellectual property, and has not, I think, treated it as it should have been treated. These things happen, and they happen too often.

There are writers who blithely explain to the world that they didn't make a will because they don't mind who gets their jeans and old guitar when they die but who would have conniptions if they realised how much aggravation their books or articles or poems or songs would cause their loved ones (or editors, anthologists or fans) after their death...

Clicky above. Read the whole post. Download the downloadable bit. Act. We don't think about these things, but as the man said, we should.

Because the internet(s) are vast and wide and not everyone spends their lives exploring its tubes, if you have a creator friend/loved one in your life who will probably never stumble across this FREE template created by an actual lawyer, send them an email to Gaiman's post alerting them. Or call them and read the important bits to them. Or print out the template, write a cover letter, and mail it to them.

And if they respond along the lines of 'nobody cares about my stuff,' remind them of the words of one of the Great Ones: Nobody Knows Anything. It's no secret that sometimes creators suddenly become valuable once they're dead, irregardless of their profile during life. Whomever is left grieving does not need to deal with that morass. A little consideration now will make that person's life easier down the road. This is a kindness you are in a position to provide while alive.

I think the only difficult part in the template is trying to figure out who should be given control over your creative estate. It's a lot of responsibility, and in some ways, a significant burden. Lots of trust involved. Lots of responsibilities handed over. This person would have to be someone who knows you well enough to know what you would want. Common sense warns that a true heart conversation or two would have to be held with the person you identify BEFORE you fill out their name on a legal document of this type. Just putting that out there. The devil is in the details, after all.

To Quote Al Swearengen: @$#%^^%#$#%%$

What happens when you're behind on going through the lis emails? What happens is you miss the notice about this that was sent out weeks ago!

Wed, Nov 01, 7 PM
David Milch
Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills

In conversation with William Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West 

The creator/executive producer and cast members of HBO’s “Deadwood” discuss the themes and motivations that run through the series – gold, Custer, betrayal, profanity – and the remarkable accidents of history that created the wildest town in the West.     

The only way I can express my extreme disappointment is here.

I suppose it's for the best. There's probably going to be spoilers, and I'm still on season two.