welcome to the rest of your life (updated)

Starting with 2005. Hey, we all made it. Cool, huh?

1. Mr. McLaren is finally reallly back, after his cold, cold Canadian adventures. He leaves the following comment about Oban on ye olde entry mentioning and calling for his back-up:

Oban!

One of the six Classic Malts.

In 1890 a cave was discovered behind the Oban distillery containing Mesolithic human remains. I am not making this up.

I did not know this, but now we all do.

In another post at his own site, he brings the good news that the same people who put out the beautiful Complete Far Side are now doing a beautiful Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Want.

2. Beatrice points to some Mundane SF resources, including an interview with Geoff Ryman where he talks about it quite a bit (an interview I'll be linking to when I review Air). If Ryman's latest novel is an example of what Mundane SF is, I'm in. It's brill.

3. Mad Max Perkins offers up his year end review and survey results and wishes he had more publishing types than writers reading. The writer results are as follows:

THE REAL CRISIS IN PUBLISHING IS THAT WRITERS

* have too much time on their hands;
* aren't working hard enough;
* need to find some new hobbies;
* all of the above.

I firmly believe that procrastination and time-wasting are part of the process.

4. Maureen McHugh has a fascinating post on what it was like to be one of the writers of ilovebees.

5. Dan Green ruminates on Justine and Scalzi's recent conversations about how little money most writers make from writing, and why this may be so.

We had a lovely New Year's. Went out for a fabulous dinner, where we toasted the New Year in Paris and then Casablanca while a really talented and snarky singer sang appropriate (read: foreign language) songs. I took pictures, especially of the foursome we suspected were swingers -- man in a bolo tie, woman in see through garment with tacky white underthing to make sure you noticed -- and may post them later, here or at Flickr, depending on whether I can figure out how. The proprietess, Natasha, was stern with me and kind to Christopher, and convinced me to try the most fabulous dessert ever, which is something they do on cruise ships called a Drunken Sundae. The Melissas came over to share the actual New Year turning with us, which was also lovely if accompanied by possibly a smidge too much champagne. Yesterday was spent in the company of other pleasant people, eating too much, nursing a low-key hangover and playing Guillotine while marveling at Simon the Wonder Cat. An auspicious beginning. My resolutions are private, because I like to pretend I'm not actually making any. But I'm all for hearing yours.

Go team.

Oh, well, one of my resolutions is not so much New Year's-related as holidays-being-over-related, so I'll talk about that one. I have to dig into all these research books that are lying around for the next book, which is already begun. (Yeah, yeah, I do it backwards.) Anyway, a spectacular couple of sentences from an old play that is one of the texts:

With clamorous gesticulations he calls on all to witness that this is the great god that has blessed them in former times. He points to the sky, his gestures indicate the wide earth and the sea, the birds that fly through the air, all animals that creep and run--these with outstretched arms he offers as thankful gifts to the idol, all done in silent pantomime to the organ accompaniment.

That is some kick-ass pantomime skillz, right there.

UPDATE: 6. Sarah's back with a linktastic weekend round-up. The blogosphere is stable. I repeat: the blogosphere is stable.

REUPDATE: 7. Hank Stuever's in and out list for 2005 is up. He kicks it off with: 2004 = vote or die, 2005 = vote and die.