World Fantasy feels like it happened at least a hundred years ago. Say...was that a kiss? seemed very well-received--and btw, for those contributors who haven't gotten their money or their copy yet, both are coming soon. Review copies to follow for, duh, reviewers. (A coworker just came in and chirped, "The trees are lovely." Oh-kay.) It was great seeing many, many great people though, and buying excellent reading material. Speaking of which...

Read Gary Wolfe's essay in Conjunctions this morning. The nongenre genre story, eh? Listen very carefully --

Is that Dave Truesdale's head exploding?

I kid. Good essay, definitely worth reading.

I felt like I needed something interesting, something fun for today, so I searched what is obviously the coolest word ever: curiosities. Curiosities. Let it roll off your tongue, or at least around your mind. It's a wonderful word. It can be used to describe so many things, almost all of them fascinating. You've got your curiosities of biological nomenclature. Your curiosities of cartography and just in general. But then there are the true curiosities, like the Everly Brothers Curiosities or freaky cats. There's a whole world full of curiosities out there, and that's a pretty damn good thing. This message brought to you by the brighter side of things.

I thought enough today of that Liz Waldner poem The Calculus of Readiness to go look it up. I don't think you have to register to look at it, but if you do, it's worth it. Having a notebook at the Academy of American Poets is a good thing. Remember, "I would not call the stars generous."