shaken & stirred has moved

New URL: http://gwendabond.typepad.com/

New RSS feed: http://gwendabond.typepad.com/bondgirl/index.rdf

pssst! follow me...

Blogger's been working my last nerve for the last bit, so I'm working on a move over to Typepad. It may happen very quickly, and I may completely botch the importing of posts and comments from here in such a way that this site disappears. If so, check in at:

http://gwendabond.typepad.com

Or hell, check in over there anyway. It's purty.

p.s. All right, let's just bite the bullet and do it. Maybe some kind soul will help with importing the old files (should they still exist). See you over there. Change your blogrolls!

p.p.s. Gilmore Girls Gossip Circle convenes there this week.

p.p.p.s. Seriously, I'm not moving for a looooong time -- because this costs money and stuff. Plus, it's so nice. Drop in and say hi.

wow

Jonathan Lethem just won a MacArthur. (Thx to Reechard, for the heads up.) Holla!

monday hangovers

And once again, she vows some real posts this week. (Possibly even later today -- possibly.)

• Matt Cheney reveals his LBC nominee for this quarter, which was my own favorite (running a close second would be the Stern, but I must admit sheepishly that I didn't flat-out adore any of the books): Our Napoleon in Rags by Kirby Gann. I believe several of us will be dialoguing on this book the week of October 10.
  
• And speaking of MC Matt Cheney, he has a review at SF Site of Rick Bowes' From the Files of the Time Rangers, something that is very much on my TBR list.
• More Veronica Mars goodness: from Abigail Nussbaum and Chris McLaren. (I'm adding a UPN affiliate today.)
• The most useless quiz in the world, via Brutal Women.
  
  

interrogating australians

It's not as ominous as it sounds. Jeff VanderMeer interviews several Aussie writers, including Grace Dugan, Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld, Anna Tambour, K.J. Bishop and Geoff Maloney over the course of several posts. I'd excerpt, but you should really go over there and work your way through the whole thing. Excellent stuff. Although I'm disappointed no one said oi, let alone oi oi oi.

Start here and work your way through.

surely in a stack of magazines

... or a fancy database, it exists.

Christopher has to write his first paper this weekend. It's on the title story from Chris Offutt's collection Out of the Woods. We've spent several fruitless hours today at various libraries looking for the Spring 1999 issue of Bookforum, which has a Rick Moody essay on the book. This seems to be the phantom issue. Does anyone have access to this in a way you can email/scan/fax? His paper is due Tuesday, so it would have to be this weekend.

Anyway, y'all are magic, so I figured it was worth a shot. Shoot me an email if you can help.

weekend hangovers

• I'm really liking the new Sigur Ros. And second Jonathan Strahan on the Eels' double album. I've also been listening quite a bit to M83's double album. It's the year of the trancey double album! Except that in terms of sound of the year for me personally, it may well turn out to be She Wants Revenge.
• Strahan also posts some more SF opening lines, but this time not from short stories. (p.s. for Mr. McLaren: you might want to scroll down a few entries; there's something about a new Tim Powers...)
• Meghan McCarron posts some delightful lyrics from her "lesbian musical short," inspired by (H)Al Duncan's Musical Interlude.
• Joss Whedon to guest on Veronica Mars. (Via Didi.)
• "The Big Chill in 30 second with bunnies." (Via Jeff.)
• Congratulations to Cecil on the debut of her first feature film HAPPY IS NOT HARD TO BE. Have you read her novel yet?
• Mark's excellent entry on the inherent dangers of bicycling. Especially when people mow down bicyclists (sometimes on purpose -- I know it strains credulity, but it's happened several times here in the past couple of years) and drive away.
• And finally, the GilmoreGossipCircle regenerates. Yay!
  

Back later, now for the bathing and writing.

another title revealed!

The Rake posts about a nominee for this round of the LBC -- and the author has some SF connections.

I do still promise more substantial posts, btw, probably over the weekend. New glasses worked out fine.

now that is a basketball player

Meet Kara Lawson of the Sacramento Monarchs. She's a joy to watch on the court.

This is basketball. Y'all can have the NBA.

(Pssst... the second finals game is on right now. ESPN2.)

(Justine's in San Miguel de Allende -- someone's gotta post about sports.)

Updated: So, the Monarchs totally blew it in overtime, but what a game. The third game on Sunday will be back in Sacramento and I can't wait.

thursday hangovers

Sorry that none of the promised Actual Posts have materialized. It's been a week of tiny annoyances. Yesterday morning, I realized that one of my contacts was torn. This created way more angst than it logically should, I know, but the fact remains: I am blind as a fucking bat. My contacts cost a fortune and last approximately a year. It takes two weeks to get a new one made. My glasses are huge and thick and make my head hurt if I wear them too long. I have had contacts since I was in third grade and have never torn one.


Argh.

So, visit one to the eye doctor (a new guy): yay, good news, my previous prescription was wrong. (Unless this one turns out to be. Oh, life, you have a sick sense of humor, should it be so.) Did I mention that those guys charged about three times what the new guy charges? I wasn't able to actually get a new pair of glasses to tide me over -- or even order contacts -- until today, because we had to leave early for the first night of the class C's teaching. And hey, I don't even have the glasses yet. I go pick them up in twenty minutes or so. Cross your fingers.

Should these glasses make me able to actually see without creating a sense of vertigo, I'll write some posts. Swear and double swear.

A few linksies in the meanwhile:

Visit the new semi-quarterly review of poems and such (and submit) Garbanzo. Their editorial policy is thus:
Editorial content is not the responsibility of the editors. Now that's a tune I can dance to...

Brazilian superheroes make me happy, when skies are blue. (Via Alan, who's got things to say to Mr. Keillor about his late nonsense (Remember a few weeks ago when that Ky. public radio station briefly dumped his poetry thingies for content reasons? Oh, the irony...).) There's also superheroes from lots of other countries on that site, including The Golem from Israel.

Birnbaum vs. George Saunders. Yay! If the current Birnbaum didn't do such a great job, I'd say the world needs more Birnbaums.

The link between methheads and arrowheads?

Niall Harrison on Vellum.

Christopher makes with the stumping with a fine collection of old and new first lines of great SF and fantasy short stories. How many can you get?

Lastly: Go Monarchs!

read this!

And the fall LBC Read This! pick is announced (along with plans for the coming weeks): The Angel of Forgetfulness by Steve Stern.

I'll have more to say later today. For now, go read Dan Green's recommendation.

help some kids

Frequent contributor to Bookslut Colleen Mondor writes with news of a very worthy relief effort she's involved in. Support it if you can:

I am working with a group in Baton Rouge who are helping children sheltered with their families at Southern University. We have put together a couple of wish lists of books and games that the folks at Parkview Baptist Church will happily deliver to the SU kids and other area shelter kids.

Colleen will also take direct donations and get them to the right people, so if you want to contact her directly shoot me an email and I'll pass along her contact info.

lesser known editing marks

I like the hatchet and the wishbone best. Via the birthday girl at Number One Hit Song.

the new & improved gilmoregossipcircle

Getting up to write at 5 a.m. = HARD

Anyway, it's a whole new season. Let us gather and be merry. Remember, the last lines of the previous season were: "Will you marry me?" "What?"

Tonight's ep is "New and Improved Lorelai." The WB sez:

Picking up on the same night as last season's finale, Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Luke (Scott Patterson) begin making plans for their future, but Luke (Scott Patterson) is embarrassed when word spreads that Lorelai was the one who proposed. Still hurt over Rory's (Alexis Bledel) decision to drop out of Yale and move in with Emily (Kelly Bishop) and Richard (Edward Herrmann), Lorelai tells her parents that they can take care of Rory from now on. Richard hires an old friend and respected attorney (guest star Robert Foxworth, "Falcon Crest") to help Rory get an easy sentence for stealing the yacht, but the judge gives Rory 300 hours of community service. Logan (Matt Czuchry) throws Rory a "felon" party.

Yanic Truesdale, Liza Weil and Sean Gunn also star. Amy Sherman-Palladino wrote and directed the episode.

Discuss after.

tuesday hangovers

I woke up in the middle of the night with She Wants Revenge's "Out of Control" worming its way through my head. That is some catchy shit.

Jennifer Crusie (who I really have to read sometime; too many smart people are into her work for it not to be good) on planning a career as a writer. (Via Stephanie Burgis.)

Buy a Friend a Book Week, coming October 1. (Via Morrow Planet.)

Abigail Nussbaum on The Baroque Cycle.

Jeff Ford on Anna Tambour's Spotted Lily.

Sarah on being a good panel moderator.

Cynsations has a short interview with the wonderful writer MT Anderson, on his new book Whales on Stilts (want!). (Excerpt here.) How can you resist an interview which ends thus:

Frankly, I can't stand rendering fats in the cold of the Antarctic. That intense chill just makes me want to return to my sleigh and flee to someplace warm, like the jungles of Thailand -- a pung-ward pang, or even, I suppose, a pung-ward, Ping-ward pang.

As you can see, if there are any psychological challenges to writing, I am clearly not up to them.

froggy

You are Kermit the Frog.
You are reliable, responsible and caring. And you
have a habit of waving your arms about
maniacally.

FAVORITE EXPRESSIONS:
"Hi ho!" "Yaaay!" and
"Sheesh!"
FAVORITE MOVIE:
"How Green Was My Mother"

LAST BOOK READ:
"Surfin' the Webfoot: A Frog's Guide to the
Internet"

HOBBIES:
Sitting in the swamp playing banjo.

QUOTE:
"Hmm, my banjo is wet."


What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Via E Lockhart.)

she's back

Well, that was nice, so nice that I'm cutting my hiatus a couple of days short. Why? Because I love. Because I would not miss the first GilmoreGossipCircle meeting of the season (tomorrow night). I don't know that posting levels will spike around here this week, but I do plan posts on:

• The Girl in the Glass by Jeff Ford
• Twins by Marcy Demansky
• Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow
  
• The process of reading for the latest LBC pick, due to be announced Thursday, with the other nominated titles divulged shortly thereafter (lots of exciting posty goodness plans for this round, so really, tune back in and hopefully you won't be disappointed)
• Abraham Lincoln's drinking habits
• Etc.
  

(oh, to be in new york no. 210)

To see this exhibit.

(Photo caption:
"The Medium Ferihummer With a Materialization," 1923, by an unknown photographer.)

Watch the slide show.




p.s. We got cell phones. Send us your numbers if we don't have them already.

(yay!)

Michael Dirda reviews Paul Park's latest:

A Princess of Roumania progresses slowly, but Park has much he wants to show us along the way. Virtually all the characters are surprisingly complex, true mixes of light and dark, often unsure of what they're doing, suffering both mischance and, less often, good fortune. In the end, just the wrong person comes into possession of Kepler's Eye, an amulet imbued with a shocking power.

Miranda's story will continue next year in The Tourmaline . In the meantime, A Princess of Roumania should be enough to soften the blow of summer's end. At the least it provides an escape from -- or is it to? -- the "real" world.

Oddly for Dirda, the review is mostly spent in plot summary. So I actually just suggest you read the book for yourself rather than the review.

Now I go back to reading Jeff Ford's wonderful new The Girl in the Glass. (An Editor's Choice in this week's NYTBR.)

(The parentheses around the post heading mean I'm _still_ on hiatus, only whispering to you every now and then when I can't stand not to.)

one year ago today

(Back to hiatus.)

break time

I've been burning the candle at both ends lately, working too hard, not getting enough sleep or rest, or writing done, etc. Today I had a scary fainting spell from dehydration at work (long story: don't worry, I'm fine and taking in mucho fluids). I'm officially taking that as an edict from my body to slow down and take some time off. So I'll be back posting here mid-month, in time for the next LBC pick. I reserve the right to poke my head in every once and awhile, but I need a blogcation, to get other things done and just take a general break. Not that I've been wowing you guys with the great posts lately. I'm sure I'll see you around the backblogs and I do plan to actually respond to email for a change. If anyone is desperate to guest blog, drop me a line.

Meanwhile, just like everybody else, I urge you to give what you can to Katrina relief.

ETA: Popping in just to say, check out the Antigeist's analysis of the comparison between 9/11 and Katrina.