Can I just say how sick I am of gorgeous actresses "dressing as men" and allegedly passing? Yeah, just put your hair up and wear a tie, and everyone's going to think you're a dude. It's that easy.

This morning, reading back over LJ entries from this day in years past, following links, links from links, I came across this headline: "Can We Save the Tastiest Fish in the Sea?". Now, this is actually on Discovery News, a more or less respectable source for science news (March 4, 2010). Just seeing the headline – "Can We Save the Tastiest Fish in the Sea?" – my reaction was something like, "Yeah, because that fucking matters, worries about saving what tastes good to humans while the world's fish populations and marine ecosystems collapse, while an essentially fishless ocean by 2050 has become a very real possibility...let's worry about the tastiest fish." Which, by the by, turns out (no surprise) to be Bluefin tuna. The article is actually a short piece on declining tuna stocks, Japan's role in pushing the bluefin towards extinction, and efforts employing the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITE, drafted in 1963) treaty to try to ban commercial fishing of the species internationally, at least until we see if bluefin populations can recover. Two years later, key nations – those who profit the most from tuna fishing – continue to block legislation to protect the fish, while stocks plummet perilously. And so it goes.

---

Yesterday I felt like one of those directors who's always rewriting the script on the set, while actors and cameramen and whatnot sit around twiddling their thumbs. I have so rewritten Alabaster: Wolves #5 that it's beginning to look like the original script only in its broad strokes. No one asked me to do this. My editor requested fairly minor changes. But, suddenly, a couple of weeks back, I decided that I could do a lot better. And that's what I'm trying to do. At the very last fucking minute, even as Steve draws #4, and Rachelle finishes coloring #3, and #2 is on the shelves, and #1 is on eBay, and...

Anyway, that's what I did yesterday. Today, I need to make an end to this. Complete this second version of the script so my editor can have it on Monday. Oh, and I also proofed the inked pages for #4 yesterday. Spooky sent a mountain of corrections for The Yellow Book (FREE with the limited edition of Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart) to Subterranean Press, all to "Ex Libris," which we discovered, reading it aloud on Wednesday, was fairly riddled with mistakes.

And, also, production on the audiobook for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir is finally complete. It's thirteen hours long, and I'm having to listen through the whole thing, so that I can sign off on it before release. It's great be given genuine creative control on projects. Final say, et al. But I've only made it through about an hour and a half, so far. And I'm listening to it out of order. But, I have to tell you, hearing 7/7/7, I almost cried. Spooky, too. It's that good. I chose a very good reader.

Only eight days remaining until -08. Holy fucking fuck.

Last night, Spooky and I began reading The Return of the King. Poor Pippin has no idea what he's gotten himself into. I also spent about an hour and a half yesterday on a virtual jigsaw puzzle (yes, I finished it).

Gonna go take the blue pill now. I think, ironically, we call it Red Bull.

Superannuated,
Aunt Beast

• Thu, 12:16: Toure, WTF are you talking about? Disco wasn't like homophobia or politics or whatever. Most disco music SUCKED. & you were 5 yrs old
• Thu, 12:34: "You never know...it's a moving target." Is that the BEST you can do, @mitchellreports ?? @msnbc
• Thu, 12:41: Andrea Mitchell says she should talk to Halperin "in the break". Yes, plz never put the good stuff ON THE AIR. This is why she's boring
• Thu, 12:41: Other journos like Andrea Mitchell. I'm sure she's a great dinner guest. She just sucks on tv
• Thu, 12:46: I hate tumblr-to-twitter posts that say "Photo: (link)". WTF about that makes me want to click? Use some WORDS, people.
• Thu, 12:48: RT @wonkette : George W Bush Writing Alternate History SciFi Book Where He Knows How To Run A Country http://t.co/qryxfroY
• Thu, 12:50: Here's the thing, @LizMair You can say 2 words now & there's STILL instant recognition. Demon. Sheep. (followed by laughs)
• Thu, 12:55: It's cute that Liz Mair thinks Demon Sheep didn't hurt Carly Fiorino. Counsel like that might be part of why she lost though.
• Thu, 14:27: RT @saletan: Now that white babies are a minority, will Pat Buchanan come out for affirmative action? http://t.co/NdJFixG9
• Thu, 14:34: "I'm not precisely aware of what I said, but I stand behind what I said, whatever it was". Mitt Romney, summing himself up. @BashirLive

( Read more... )

....that there's going to be an Annual Booksale when I get back from WisCon, as there are giant boxes of books all over my house again.

You have been forewarned!

Also, I will be doing an r/Fantasy (that's Reddit) Ask Me Anything on June 5th. Questions may be posted all day in the appropriate thread, and I will answer them in the evening.

Because y'all don't get enough of a chance to listen to me babble...

Hi guys. I'm after a UK children's novel that I read in the 80s. It was mainly about 1st and 2nd generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants in London and them integrating (or not) in UK culture. There was a lot of social commentary and lots of stuff about traditional Afro-Caribbean life and beliefs.

Basically a family bought a pregnant racing greyhound and were planning to sell the puppies to support themselves. However the father went to a Voodoo priest to get a traditional Caribbean blessing on the pregnant dog, as with all good magic blessings/prophecies/spells in books it provided exactly what they asked for but not what they expected at all. They only got one puppy, but it turned out to be the best racing greyhound in history. After some mishaps and misadventures they ended up comfortably well off.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

1. Day off tomorrow, yay! :D

2. Payday today, yay! :D (Well, tomorrow really, but I don't work tomorrow, so I got mine today, and it's direct deposit anyway, so I checked my bank and it's already gone in.)

3. It's halfway through the month and I feel like I'm pretty much on track to making the goals I set myself for May.

Crossposted from http://kanata.dreamwidth.org/1558118.html. There are currently comments. You can comment there anonymously (please sign a name) or using OpenID if you don't have a DW account.

This book is set in 15th (maybe earlier?) China. Basically, the moon goddess has been kidnapped, and her pearl necklace was broken. The pearls "fell" to earth and sort of became reborn as these girls.

The narrator is from a more rural part of China, and is sold by her stepfather into slavery. Her dad had been a general/military leader, but after his death, the mom was forced to remarry, and the girl is sold off. She's considered striking, but not beautiful, and when she's sold to a brothel, her big "thing" is that she's a singer and poet. The madam specifically markets her to a more bohemian crowd than some of the other girls. She makes friends with another girl named Baby, who's gorgeous but whose slavers cut out her tongue. They become a two part act; Baby dances and the narrator sings/plays a stringed instrument/recites poetry. 

This narrative is interspersed with a discussion from the gods' POV, as folks start to realize the moon goddess is lost.

Eventually, Baby and the narrator need to run away. I THINK that the narrator thought another poet she loved was going to buy her from the house, but it turned out either that he couldn't/wouldn't, and so she ran. Baby goes with her, and they travel as sisters. Baby guides her to a rural town (I think the narrator wanted to go home?) and I think it turns out that she's pregnant, or something. There's also the implication that Baby has SEEN some SHIT and DONE some THINGS; at one point, they're running, and Baby stabs someone to protect herself and the narrator, and the narrator realizes that her own experiences of slavery have been gentle in comparison to Baby's. 

The ending involves Baby either giving birth, drowning while giving birth, and both her and the narrator being revealed as the missing pearl necklace bits. Once they die, they return to the moon goddess' jewelry box, and the goddess meditates on their stories.

I think.

I know for sure that one scene had the narrator talking to another slave who was a doorkeeper, and who'd known her father. He describes him lovingly while peeling an orange in a way that resulted in one long orange peel. 

I read this in the late '90s, and the cover was pale peach/melon. I'm pretty sure the author was a white woman. 

When I was in middle school, sometime around 1995-1998, though possibly earlier, I voraciously read everything I could get my hands on-- books below my reading level, above my reading level, anything. So sadly, I cannot tell you if this lost book was an actual children's book or a young adult book. Leaning toward young adult though. Also, this book was likely NOT written in the timeframe I read it in.

In this book, a middle school aged girl wrote a letter to the President regarding her dislike of his plan to change up the American Flag. When, for some reason, she couldn't mail the letter she decided to hand deliver it by walking across a few states. A bunch of other kids join up with her.  They stopped in a lot of diners and gas stations on the way, and at one point, there is word of a "rival" group of kids also marching on DC, but supporting the flag changes.  She eventually does get to deliver her letter, and the American flag is saved.  ...I think.

Other details: This was not the only book this character was in, there was at least one before that. One of the adults in the book, a male, was absolutely obsessed with either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this obsession played a part in the previous book.

This is the same book I'm thinking of, though they did not get an answer when posted.  I have googled every combination of the details of the book I can think of, with no success. 

FOUND! The book is The Fragile Flag, by Jane Langton.  Thank you SO much! Time to scour my used bookstores~

Hi, I lost a book I had read about a few years ago. I forgot the name of the title and even the characters in the book. The sad part is I didn't even finish the book... and so I need some help in retrieving the book so I can finish it. Thanks in advance.

It's about this Vampire who lived in San Francisco. He owns a business in New York. Had a human butler, who he help rescue and employed the fella. This vampire longs for a real woman's touch. He has been with many women but none of them can make him unleash his inner self. Until he met this girl (forgot her name). I believe if my memories serves me right... she is a writer or something. She just got a new job in San Francisco. She went out for Chinese food with a co-worker... walking back home in the ally someone was following her and chasing her. She started running for her life and the first house she saw, was of that vampire. That Vampire was waiting for a stripper. It happens to be his birthday and his friends had hired a stripper for him. When she knock on his front door, he thought it was the stripper. He open the door and saw that she was drench in the rain, all wet. He welcome her in and as he was checking her out. He felt something that he hadn't felt in a long hundreds of years. Thinking to himself that no stripper has ever made that kind of effect on him. He was expecting a show but he felt she was a bit shy for a stripper. She on the other hand thought she had ran away from a killer to a mad man. She tried to run and get away from him but he wouldn't let her. His friends finally showed up with the real stripper and he then felt very dumb. He apologize to her and had his butler sent her home. He couldn't get her out of his mind, He wanted to get to know her and taste her. He had his butler gather information about her and set up a date. 

That is as far as I got in the book. I hope someone can help me find the title so I can get a hold of this book again and finish it. Thanks.