friday morning varietals

Writing group survived, practically painless and always helpful. We love our writing group.

I thought Kerry nailed it, unexpectedly, hit it out of the park, etc. et. al. I didn't mind the fact it was a little bit rushed (though I do agree that it's bullshit that a presidential candidate has to worry about the networks cutting away from him) -- I hate when every other sentence is interrupted by applause. I don't think Lincoln or many other great speech givers had to cope with that rhythm. Plus, it reminds me of a former life, and having to count those applause breaks. Go over to the Bloggers at the DNC aggregator and see what they had to think. I've not followed any of the pol blogs at all, except Slate and the Washington Post, but I'm going to poke around there later.

Later on today I also plan on taking the Mumpsimus Cultural Concurrence Index, as should you.

Jed Hartman, one of the editors of Strange Horizons (you're reading it every week, right?), left my favorite comment ever yesterday on the YA list entry, so I'm once again bumping him to the front page. It made me laugh.

So apparently one way to get on Gwenda's book list is to start your title with a pronoun, tack on a verb, and end it with "the Castle." Proposed future additions to the list:

They Became the Castle

You Wander Around the Castle

She Blew Up the Castle

Y'all Better Steer Clear of the Castle

...Agreed that the notion of a film version of the Jackson book is a kinda scary idea. I'm thinkin' buckets of blood, a chainsaw murderer, and a climactic scene in which a giant magical whirlwind appears and sweeps all the surviving characters off to hell. Merricat will be played by one of the stars of _I Know What You Did Last Summer_ and will wear less and less clothing as the movie goes on.

--jed, who has thus far successfully avoided both movies of _The Haunting of Hill House_

Y'all Better Steer Clear of the Castle is priceless.

And, for now, I'm going to leave you with more Eduardo Galeano. I'll probably throw up something over at HydraCentral later today, too, but probably not more Galeano, so lucky you. This one seems appropriate as an end to the DNC and is also from THE BOOK OF EMBRACES.

THE CHALLENGE

They didn't succeed in turning us into them," Cacho El Kadri wrote to me.

It was in the last days of the military dictatorship of Uruguay. We had eaten fear for breakfast, fear for lunch and for dinner, fear. But they had not succeeded in turning us into them.

worm "Comfortably Numb," Scissor Sisters

namecheck George the Dog