http://windling.typepad.com/blog/2013/05/into-the-woods-tunes.html

I'm running late this morning as I'm a bit under the weather today, but here are the Monday Tunes at last: some music from the woods and wilds in order to keep to our woodlands theme. These songs come from Soundcloud rather than YouTube because I couldn't find video performances of the pieces I particularly wanted to play this morning....

First up, "Home" by the Michigan alt-folk trio Breathe Owl Breathe, gently calling us out of the house and out of doors:

Next, "On Trees and Birds and Fire," a magical little tune from I Am the Oak, the band of the Dutch singer/songwriter Thijs Kuijken, based in Utrecht:

Third is "Furr," a charming story of woods, wolves, and transformation from the Oregon alt-folk band Blitzen Trapper:

Next, "The Wild Hunt," a rather upbeat song about death and the Wild Hunt legends of northern Europe. It comes The Tallest Man On Earth, which is the stage name of the Swedish singer/songwriter Kristian Matsson:

And last, here's the English alt-folk band Matthew & the Atlas, calling us back from the wilds again with their utterly gorgeous song "Come Out of the Woods":

 

 

The drawings above are "Tree Nymph" and "Beauty as the Beast" by the always-amazing Virginia Lee, no stranger to the wilds herself.

Hi - My convention roommate won't be able to attend at the last minute due to a medical emergency and asked me to find out if there were some way to turn over her membership to someone (or get reimbursed for it)? She's not online so I'm asking for her. What's the process (if any)?

Don't worry, I'll be there; but me and the usual roommate double-booked.

http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-extraordinary-engaging-in-ordinary_19.html

Jimi shaves

Iron Man lives again! And so does this podcast!

Welcome back, my faithful friends! When last we met, Andy and I promised you that a podcast crowing about The Avengers would be up "in a few days." Oops. In our defense, Loki destroyed that recording: the file was corrupted and, believe me, that was DEVASTATING. It was such a good time! Loki, you're such an asshole (love you anyway!).

Other things happened too. But we're back, and with at least one of the Avengers to boot! Behold, our episode on Iron Man 3:

[You'll have to listen at the post proper, as my audio player doesn't work here.]

Download is available. Runtime is 41:11. It should be up on iTunes at any moment.

Things you should know: THIS PODCAST IS FULL OF SPOILERS. No, seriously. Don't listen until you've seen Iron Man 3, unless you like listening to people ramble in random detail about unfamiliar franchises. If that's your thing, go on with your bad self. Also, we have cats AND THEY TOTALLY CRASHED THIS PODCAST. Because cats, much like Loki, are assholes.

Right, I think that's it. Enjoy!

(And review! And tweet! And chat with us about the podcast! We're garrulous geeks, as you may have noticed.)

Note: Thanks, as always, are owed to Jonathan Coulton, whose generous adherence to Creative Commons allowed us to use the first few seconds of his “Sucker Punch” as interlude music. If you’d like to hear and purchase the rest of the song, check it out at over at his site.

[identical to post of same name at Dreamwidth]

Join me in the Concourse pool (third floor) at 8:30am on Friday and Sunday.

It's pretty short for laps, but there's plenty of room for movement which feels great! No gravity! No falling! No sweating!

I've got a water-walking, -running and -stretching routine I'm happy to share.




And if you have issues with some of the words in the title, come to the panel on

Taking Our Slurs Back
Saturday 10:30 − 11:45pm
Assembly
The panel for fatties, crips, sluts, bitches, whores, crazies, old farts, queers, and more. Who is reclaiming language and how? How can we address intergenerational conflicts about reclamatory language? What about tensions when it comes to who is 'allowed' to use it?

Today's song is "I've Been Waiting" by Matthew Sweet.

1) Decoding the Range: The Secret Language Of Cattle Branding.

2) If you’re going to deface a textbook, this is how to do it. (Although I’m dubious about the adverb “geniously”)

3) Funny, mean reviews of Dan Brown’s Inferno.

4) Banned SF/F novels.

5) Girl makes jacket out of Ziploc bags, wears sandwich and snacks where ever she goes.

6) Why Manhattan’s Green Roofs Don’t Work–and How to Fix Them

7) Theres a Question Mark Hanging Over the Apostrophes Future. (I see what you did there.)

Mirrored from Twenty Palaces. You can comment here but not there.

Glaswegian: "I'm just going to get changed into a shirt and that'll be me."

Me: "What! Your shirt is not you! You are not a shirt!"

Glaswegian: "The shirt you wear is like a promise you make!"

Me: "Gasp! No! Don't break that promise! Don't -- don't become -- "

Together: "JOHN SHIRT!"

It's been a while since I've done a bookish update, so thought I'd fill you in.

In a less than a week, I'll tell you about the short story just finished for the Ministry Initiative. As part of the blog hop to promote the Kickstarter, I'm giving away some steampunky goodness. Keep your eyes peeled!

Also, I am working on a novella set in the Unnaturalists universe, which should be available in e-edition only sometime this fall. No title yet, but it involves a certain Mr. Waddingly, for those of you who may wonder more about the nefarious Charles. ;-)

Lastly, you'll see me in Casper, WY this September for the Equality State Book Festival. More on that to come!

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

The Nebulas Awards banquet was held last night in San Jose, and usually, I’d have been there. But this year, I wanted to attend the the March George Formby Society Convention in Blackpool, and so something had to give—which meant the Nebulas as well as this year’s World Horror Convention in New Orleans were out.

So I amused myself this weekend by looking back two years to my photos from 2003 Nebula Awards weekend and sharing them on Twitter, but thought I should gather them together here as well.

So get ready to flashback to a gentler, more innocent time …

Scott Edelman (with butterfly) and Bill Shunn

( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Or rather, kings and queens and the lands they rule.

As you know, dear reader, the River of Souls trilogy and its associated stories are epic fantasy, so there's a lot of talk about kingdoms and empires and political intrigue. I've written about Ilse and her own personal story in last week's post. This week, I wanted to cover more about the world she lives in.

( Read more...Collapse )

Congratulations! You're almost halfway through your pregnancy - only 91,422 weeks to go!

At 24 inches and 73 pounds, your baby is about the size of a widescreen TV. He's got a long way to go - remember, a healthy full-term baby will be about the size of the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale major metropolitan area. However, all his major systems and organs are already formed! Your baby has the ability to kick, roll over, wallow in his own urine, suck his thumb, and whine for crackers. Now his organs just need to grow larger and mature. And you may ask yourself, if everything is basically formed, why does he have to mature on the INSIDE of my abdominal muscles? I can totally create a warm and welcoming environment on the outside of my body, I will order some cute goddamn wall decals from Etsy or something. And the answer is, ahahahahaha sucks to be you, that's why.

Incidentally, if you ever plan to be pregnant and you want to keep that shit under wraps as long as possible - which you shouldn't have to, that's totally up to you, but especially if you plan to keep working people do treat you differently once they know you're pregnant and there can definitely be some advantages to keeping it to yourself, like for example not getting demoted from something like project manager to something more like head of stationery organization - do not even mess with empire waist blouses and crap like that until you are in your third trimester, when you won't have much choice anyway. The reason being that they make you look like you're in your third trimester when you're not even pregnant. What you want are some long loose cardigans of the kind that don't fasten at all but just have drapes in front. Basically you want to look like you have enormous labia down the front of your entire torso. You can totally hide a three months' belly behind that.

I went to the Junebug's daycare on Friday and like half the mothers of kids in his cohort are pregnant. The other half already have more than one kid. I guess it's that time - about two years apart. Nice to be painfully predictable, but at least we can greet each other with a grim fist in the air and a "Be strong, sister."

(Crossposted to http://metaphortunate.dreamwidth.org/47247.html with comments.)

http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2013/05/in-crowd-1.html

Buddy Holly (far right) watches Elvis 

http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2013/05/they-were-item-164.html

Dee Dee Ramone & his wife, Barbara

http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2013/05/civic-portraiture-42.html

Kurt Cobain

A Momentary Taste of WisCon, the con's official daily newsletter (available in dead tree and PDF), is looking for submissions! Do you have an event you'd like to promote? An announcement that needs a wider audience? Want to share your thoughts on that really great panel or reading or party you attended? It's all welcome at the newsletter. Email your submissions to newsletter37@wiscon.info.

The deadline for Friday's newsletter is 6pm Wednesday. During the con, the deadline is 6pm each day for the following day's newsletter. Please note that due to space limitations, we ask that you keep your submissions relatively brief.