1st Poetry Publication

I am so proud this morning that my poem, "The Beginning Poet" has been published on the CZP website. It is my first poetry publication!

Funny story: I wrote this about 18 years ago but could never find a suitable market for it...then CZP, famed horror publishers, announced that they wanted to mark National Poetry Month by publishing Horrible Poetry...so naturally I submitted three of my poems. (They have since clarified the call for submissions to mean horror and dark fantasy genre poetry....but, you know, still shitty.)

Kiwanis Festival and A New Composition

Tigana, who turned 15 a few days after, took four firsts, a second, and a third in the Kiwanis Festival this year, and was selected to represent Lethbridge in the Provincials in May in her category. Here are her singing performances:

Sabben Crudelle

To Lo Sai

I was very pleased with her progress, especially given that she had had to switch music teachers in January. Since starting with her new instructor, Janet Youngdahl, she has made incredible progress both in her performances and in her understanding of theory.

She also did very well in recitation. Unfortunately, the video for my favorite piece didn't come out: the opening lines got cut off. In this one she missed a couple of words, though I like that she was sufficiently smooth that the two missing words were not immediately noticeable:

Emily Carr's "Doctor" from The Book of Small

Coincidentally, the same week, Kasia (age 9) composed a song, which I then pestered her into performing for your viewing pleasure:

My Best Enemy

Nanowrimo Summer Camps, etc.

I have a couple of times tried to write during National Novel Writing Month, but November is a busy time of year for me, so I've only managed to meet the 50,000 word quota once. Now, The Office of Letters and Light has introduced Summer Camps in April and July. By complete coincidence, my wife had organized a 21 day writing retreat for me in late April and early May, so I had already planned to devote much of April to my own writing. Synchronicity demands that I therefore sign up for the April Camp Nanowrimo.

I probably won't take advantage of many of the writing supports offered by Nanowrimo, as I suspect the various forums would serve more as distraction than stimulus, and also because I'll be away on retreat and therefore offline for most of April. But I really appreciate the daily deadline implied in the word counter and the calculation of how many words one has to do each day to make one's target. The summer camp has the advantage of allowing one to set one's own target. I think I need about 30,000 words to finish off the first draft of my first novel, so that's what I am aiming for. Once I finish the first draft, I can grind away at editing at my leisure.

So am really looking forward to April, though that puts a lot of pressure on rest of March to clear the decks by finishing everything else off.

Meanwhile, I currently have five short stories (around 23,000 words in total) in circulation; target is to get another seven out before New Year's for an average output of one a month. As usual I am behind, partly because of usual responsibilities of job and family, partly because I had taken on way more editing jobs than I had proper time for. But these great manuscripts keep dropping into my lap, and it is very hard to say 'no'. My publisher has insisted on taking some of these off my hands before my slowness ruins the press' reputation for promptness, but I have been equally insistent on keeping some of them to myself, being convinced that only I can see what needs to be done to have them realize their fullest potential. So at last count, I have six science fiction/fantasy novels on my desk that I have to get to before I start on my own work. In my view, it's not fair to hold up others' writing careers to attend to my own writing. Once I can send their work to press, or at least off my desk and back to the author for the next round of rewrites, then I can turn to my own work with a clear conscience.

I did get three nonfiction pieces out this year as well, but those count for the day job so fall in a different category in my mind. I gave a co-authored paper at a Miami conference and took "Best Presenter" award; I had an article published in Obsolete Magazine I was rather pleased with, and I have another one sitting with a new journal, so will see how that goes.

At some point, will have to manage to work in some leisure reading. Someone asked me about my favorite reads for the year, and the trouble was I really hadn't read anything other than the books I was editing. Some of those were very good indeed, and I wanted to recommend them, but couldn't really until they are published. (Indigo Time, The Runner and the Wizard and My Life as a Troll come immediately to mind, but there are a lot of great books that come across my desk. Candas Jane Dorsey's Black Wine was absolutely brilliant, for example, but I didn't get to edit that past the acquisition stage because it basically didn't need anything, either because it was already thoroughly edited when originally released by Tor, or just because she's just that good. (Why Tor never reprinted it is a complete mystery to me: the damn thing had sold out even before its official Canadian book launch, so that ought to have told them that there were more sales to be made....Not that we're complaining! More for us!) So I certainly get to read a lot of great books in my editor's hat, and increasingly they are by my favorite authors (Dorsey and Duncan, for example) as our press grows and attracts bigger names. But sometimes its nice just to read a book without going into editor mode. Though, if I'm honest, there is nothing better than being an editor, because whenever I hit something in a book I don't like, I get to change it....

Higgins Update

So we signed the papers to officially adopt Higgins.

Mary liked Higgins right away, but was reluctant to confirm the shift from fostering to adoption because Higgins had a few issues at first. He bit me, for example, deep enough to require a quick trip to emergency, and he bit Tigana on the neck, and we couldn't keep Kasia from constantly putting her face an inch from Higgin's teeth because she had gotten so used to Jackie, our other dog, who would never bite her under any circumstances. But I discounted my bites because I definitely deserved to get bitten (I was behaving stupidly with a new dog) and after Mary calmed down when Tigana was bitten, we were able to reconstruct that we had heard a yelp before the dog bit her, so we're pretty sure that Tigana must have accidentally hurt him, either by unknowingly leaning on some part of him that was under a blanket, or perhaps scrapping him with her dagger-like nails (teenager!). And it was not a serious bit, so under the circumstances showed a lot of restraint.

Higgins was a bit tentative about us at first too: besides the usual adjustments to a new home, he was from San Deigo and here I was dragging him out for walks in 40 below weather, so pretty sure he was looking at me with a "why are you torturing me like this?" expression. The weather is milder this week (unseasonably so) but I think Higgins will be okay if it gets colder again. He has been working hard to figure out the new routines and he already trusts me enough to come sit on my lap, so no worries about further biting, unless one of us does something careless again. The one problem with Higgins is that previous owners seem to have trained him not to growl, which is of course extremely stupid because you want a dog to warn you off if you are provoking him to bite. Higgins gives no verbal warning, so we have to constantly watch for body language. But he seems generally relaxed with us already, and gets along with our other dog really well, so we are satisfied he will fit in. Our dog now.

Happy 10th Anniversary

Just realized that January 15th was the 10th anniversary of this blog. So I probably should have done something specialish on the 15th....

But well...who blogs anymore? I get relatively few readers and fewer comments here, whereas if I post something random on Facebook, I'll often get 20 comments within the hour.

Not that Facebook is doing that well, either.... My students are abandoning it for timblr or even pinterest (people go to Pinterest less frequently but browse it longer). And Twitter, of course. I mostly try to avoid Facebook et al during the day, lest it suck the time out of my life, but I do check Facebook and Twitter on my phone whenever I have to kill time waiting, e.g., picking up the kids from school or standing in line at a good restaurant. I find typing on my phone a pain, so I mostly just read what others have to say, take note of current trending issues among my friends and colleagues, or take advantage of the clipping service Twitter can be. A lot of my Twitter feed is course-related, people tweeting about breakthroughs in science and technology I can refer to in my cyberculture course, for example. Turns what used to be dead time to productive use.

I notice I'm not alone. In line at Cora's the other day, all but two of the thirty or so people in line were on their smartphones. Made me wonder if people are more patient than they used to be--no, I mean, more tolerant of delays and waiting because they can do something productive, or productive-like, while they are forced to wait. I suppose it actually makes people less patient in the long run, less able to deal with periods of forced inactivity. I know I go slightly bored now when I forget my phone or have to hand it over to the 9year old to keep her entertained in line. Research from PEW a while back commented that 26% of Americans said they could not manage without their cell phones. I never used to get bored because I could always write the next scene of my novel or etc. Now I read Twitter.

Constantly amazed at how many people have no idea how to use Twitter. So many authors just tweet the same "buy my book" line every few hours. That's not information, that's spam. I delete such people immediately from my feed; when Twitter suggests new people to follow or someone follows me, I often take a look, but as soon as I see self-advertizing, I move on. The occasional tweet about a book launch is okay, because I might want to know what they are doing and if not, I can ignore the occasional commercial. But repeating the same tweet over and over is just stupid. So many authors I respect seem to do this. But the authors who get to stay in my twitter feed are the ones who tell me interesting stuff. Things they've notice in the paper or books they've found by other people or the research they are doing for their book that turned up some interesting fact, or something funny. Those are people worth reading. Don't care about whether you are having coffee or a bath, don't care how your cats are doing, don't want to hear about your neighbours unless you can make it funny.

The funniest guy on Twitter is Tim Siedell @badbanana. E.g., "If we do mint a $1 trillion coin we should intentionally make a mistake on it so it's worth even more to collectors." or "Going to a concert tonight. Doors open at 7pm, according to the ticket. That's a pretty impressive opening act." Brilliant stuff. I bought his book.

So I mostly blog now to keep track of stuff for myself, an on-line diary. I'd do more entries but the best source material is about the kids, but unfortunately they are now old enough to read the blog, so I mostly can't write about the really good stuff any more. Still, life in the old blog yet. Hopefully.

Comic book writer Mark Shainblum once observed that "I often feel like a character in someone else's story. I want my writer to be Alan Moore, but I frequently think it's Phillip Roth. Sigh."

And I thought, that would make a great party game, or one of those annoying-Facebook quizes: If your life turned out to be just a character in a novel, who would your author be?

I can't come up with an author for my own life though: I need an Russian author's attention to pointless minutia and a Canadian author's themes and obsessions, but tempered with an American mass market author's optimism. Who is as verbose as a Russian novelist, has a Canadian's characters and lack of action, but is still upbeat? Can't think of anyone to fit the bill.

For me, the realization has now slowly dawned on me that instead of the hero in the novel, I'm just one of the background characters (you know, not really fully developed, just sketched out in broad stereotypical strokes) in my daughter's or wife's or even student's stories. Here I thought my life was entirely about me, but now reached the age when realize I am just going to be "annoying professor" or "neighbour with loud dog" when the credits roll....

Though, you know, being Canadian, I'm mostly good with bystander role. Adventure is unpleasantness that happens to other people, and actually, not being the hero is all to the good. "Neighbour with loud dog" is a satisfyingly stable life, and "annoying professor" gets some of the better lines in the book. IMHO.

Higgins

I have previously mentioned our dog Jackie. Much as we love Jackie, she is not cuddly. Well, she thinks she's a lap dog, but at 60lbs, this does not work that well for us. Having dislocated my wife's arm and having dragged the 9 year old down the block, even walking Jackie is a challenge. So recognizing that my wife desperately missed Pooka, her departed shih tzu, I gave her a certificate for the rescue dog of her choice so that we could adopt a dog Mary could cuddle and that Kasia could safely walk. Having reviewed hundreds of dogs through the local and Calgary dog rescue agencies, we today brought home Higgins, with a view to adopting him, provided he and Jackie can work things out.

So far Higgins and Jackie seem to be getting along, Mary seems to like him a lot, and the kids are fairly enthusiastic. So we'll give it a couple of weeks, but I think this may be our new/second dog.

Shakespeare for Slackers

Recently, I was editing John Poulsen's Shakespeare for Reader's Theater and was looking around to see what other books might represent competition to our series, when author Mike Plested turned me on to the Shakespeare for Slackers series by Aaron Kite. I picked up the softcover Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet for $7.99; Macbeth is only $6.99. And they are absolutely brilliant. They work on so many different levels its hard to know where to begin.

(Well, I began by showing it to my 14-year-old daughter, who immediately fell out of her chair laughing. She's taken my copy and won't give it back. Instead she took it to school to show her equally nerdy friends. They too all immediately fell in love with it. I can't tell you how great it is to see a group of teens sitting around reading Shakespeare aloud to each other! If I were still teaching high school English, I would drop copies strategically around the school, then post signs forbidding students to use Shakespeare for Slackers to complete their assignments, to ensure that all the students read it cover to cover.)

The basic concept is simple: the original Shakespeare text down the left hand side of the page, while the right carries the 'translation'.

Much of the humor in the updated Romeo & Juliet stems from seeing Shakespeare's poetic language and flowery delivery translated into the brutally direct and limited vocabulary of modern teens. Benvolio's:

"Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the East,
A troubled mind drove me to walk abroad
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward reetheh from the city's side
So early walking did I see your son:
Toward him I made, but he was ware of me
And stole into the covert of the wood:
I, measuring his affections by my own,
That most are busied when they're most alone,
Pursued my humor not pursing his,
And gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me.

becomes Ben's:

I saw him this morning, by the woods. He seemed pretty bummed.

Presenting one random excerpt doesn't do justice to the cumulative effect of reading lengthy passage after passage, closely followed by the ten word translation. It was fascinating watching my daughter's group of teens reading out the original Shakespeare in full Shakespearian theatrical projection, and then the usually briefer, always more direct Americanization in the clipped delivery of modern cinema; followed immediately by gales of laughter at the breathtaking inaccuracy of the translation. But the thing is…you can't get the joke unless you sort of work at understanding what Shakespeare actually said. The translation may focus more on the connotations than the actual wording, but in terms of conveying meaning, the result is actually a big improvement over editions that merely define/explain words and phrases from the original.

Consequently, much of the humor comes from actually understanding what's going on, especially in the first half of Romeo and Juliet. A lot of Shakespearian English is now obsolete or at least too obscure for modern audiences, and the original comedic bits often too hard to follow when read aloud without accompanying footnotes. Here the 'footnotes' morph into the entire speech rewritten in a way that recreates the original jokes, satire and ludicruoius situations. There are several excellent cinematic versions of Romeo and Juliet that capture the whole 'rival gang' theme in a contemporary setting, for example, but none of these seems to have been able to really convey that much of the first half of the play was written to be funny. Gregory and Sampson are clowns in the original Shakespeare, but are usually portrayed as just angry teen gang members in contemporary renditions. (Okay, admittedly it's a fine distinction, but the original dialog was supposed to be funny.)

And, if you're 14, the third element of humor is that the naughty bits are translated into recognizable, explicitly naughty, "you didn't really just say that, did you?" bits.

So one's initial reaction is to laugh a lot. I was frankly surprised that this wasn't a one-gag concept, that I kept laughing as I kept reading. But it's Shakespeare: reading the original dialog is continually uplifting--which makes the accompanying pie in the face funny, every time. We're continually reminded that Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare because he had good plots or ideas, but rather that it's all about the poetry of his language. Because the same story told in modern dialog is so lame or ludicrous or obvious that the contrast is funny, every speech.

On the other hand, I grasped the educational implications immediately. These volumes take Shakespeare out of the classroom and place him back in the gutter, where he belongs. As the back cover explains:

You want to know something cool? Back in the day, Shakespeare wasn't considered elite. Oh sure, his plays were performed for royalty, but they were actually written for tradesman, shopkeepers, average Joes, anybody who could pay a penny for a ticket. Mostly he wrote plays for the common man, using the language of the times.
Times have changed. . . .
In Shakespeare for Slackers . . . you get what a few of us think he probably would have written if he were still around today. (And if he sat around watching a lot of television.)

I know that a few of my English teacher colleagues (or parents) will be highly offended by this attempt to knock Shakespeare off the pedestal upon which they have placed him, but I think most will appreciate not just the humor, but the serious intent to make Shakespeare both accessible and relevant to modern teen audiences. Ironically, the completely over the top translations manages to convey the essence of the original without watering down the content or speaking down to the audience. Puzzling out the meaning of a passage based on footnotes is a painfully slow and discouraging activity compared to the riotous readings that result from this romp through Romeo and Juliet. Let's face it, every kid already knows the story of Romeo and Juliet by the time they hit high school, so if we don't do something to make them fall in love with the language, then there is simply no point to requiring them to read it. By vandalizing, brutalizing and outright demolishing Shakespeare to the language of our times (to paraphrase the back cover), the author has forced the reader to really pay attention to language and imagery and iambic pentameter and really appreciate the unique richness that was Shakespeare's. The volume reintroduces the playfulness of language, which is really what English courses are supposed to be about.

I well remember taking Shakespeare in high school. It was a painful process even for those of us who loved Shakespeare, because everyone in the class had to take turns reading out, and some of my peers could not yet read Dick and Jane fluently. Listening to them struggle with Shakespeare was as torturous for the listener as humiliating for them. What was the point of that? What was the lesson the majority learned: that Shakespeare wasn't for them.

I once had the opportunity of listening to a recording of an archival interview with the administrator responsible for introducing Shakespeare into the Canadian curriculum, and he explained why he regretted that decision. He explained that when he'd made it, only about 20%-25% of the population attended High School, so it was the equivalent of university today. Those students could easily cope with Shakespeare, so for them it had been a positive experience. But, he explained, by the time he had retired, high schools had become mass institutions (a good thing), and many of the students being exposed to Shakespeare were not sufficiently strong readers to properly decode, let alone enjoy, reading Shakespeare. The possibility of their enjoying seeing the plays was being undermined, he felt, by their prematurely being asked to read what should have been a dramatic presentation.

Here, then, is an approach that turns that potentially slow, dry, angst-ridden process of decoding Shakespearian text into a riotous deconstruction. The contrast between the two texts presented in this volume forces students to think about language; about deconstruction; about the differences between classical theatre and cinema; about what makes Shakespeare, Shakespeare. And isn't raising those issues, even implicitly, what including Shakespeare in the curriculum is really about?

I cannot conclude the review without at least mentioning the brilliant cover, seen above: half Shakespeare as he was, half as a modern punk rocker, complete with piercings. This book should be on the shelf of every drama teacher, every English teacher, and every Shakespeare fan. And the cover image should be available separately as a poster.

Highly Recommended.

National Novel Writing Month

Have registered for NaNoWriMo again, though an dubious I will be able to manage much. I'm at a conference this weekend, out of town again next weekend, have a major report to deal with this month, etc. etc. But I've reread part-1 of my novel (NaNoWriMo 2007, plus another 70,000 words since) to where I've left off, and will try to start moving it forward again. Another 50,000 would definitely finish it off.

Living in an Art Gallery

As a speaker at the 2012 Toronto SpecFic Colloquium, held this year at the Gladstone Hotel, I elected to stay at the Gladstone for four nights. I knew it to be a boutique hotel, and that it was artsy, but I didn’t really appreciate how artsy a hotel could be until I got there.

I did know that every room is different, designed by a different interior designer. (See rooms) You don’t just book a room, you book a particular room. Each one has its own photos online, and a video interview with the designer(s) who did that room explaining why they made it the way it is. Mary booked me into 403 because it had a kitchen, so it is one of the more sedate rooms: lots of wood, utilitarian, not distracting--a good space for writing.

Getting to the room, however, is an entirely different experience. When you register, for example, you have to sign that you won’t take any of the artwork home with you. And just to let you know, everything in the room is artwork: No you can’t take that map of Toronto with you—it’s part of the decor of the 'map' room.

[You also have to sign that you won’t take the Samsung tablet computer that’s included in every room. You’re encouraged to take it with you everywhere you go while you’re staying in the hotel, but you have to leave it when you check out or--you initial--have the $500 extra added to your bill.]

Then there is the “cowboy” elevator, built in 1907, that seems to come with an operator. Its pretty cool, but I generally take the broad, creaky wooden stairs up the four flights rather than summon the operator, not sure whether it is permitted for me to operate the elevator myself. (And it was usually filled with chairs or artwork or catering on it's way to one or other floor anyway.) But I also preferred the stairs because the walls of the staircase are lined with art--some of which is owned by the hotel, but most of which is for sale. At least a couple of pieces were by residents of the hotel. Not cheap: the lowest price tag I saw was $800, but most was a good deal more.

Each floor has a large lounge area before you get to the guest room corridors, and these also double as art galleries. I don’t just mean that there are some paintings on the wall; I mean there are full-fledged installations, and that they change every three months. They were changing as I was there, which is inordinately strange, because while I have occasionally wandered into a gallery during set up, I’ve never before been living in a gallery during set up.

Here, Michelle Baily is installing her wax and yarn piece, “Growth”. (Part of the "Hard Twist" exhibit.)
“I’m sorry,” I apologize, “But it makes me think of Harry Potter.”
“That’s okay,” she sighs, “that’s what my Mom said.”
(if you look behind her shoulder, you can just make something vaguely like the 'sorting hat'. It's clearer on her website)

The second floor seems to have a permanent gallery-gallery, which also serves as function space. The second night they seemed to have an event hosted by Kobo, which I was severely tempted to crash, but there was something artsy or literary happening there every time I passed by. The auditorium on the first floor similarly had a succession of poetry readings, lectures, etc. And their lounge/pub had a band or poetry readings happening too.

The hotel bills itself as 'ground zero for the arts in Toronto", and I'd have to say that was indeed my impression. All of the guests and patrons just looked, well, artsy.

So, not a bad environment in which to write. I did some editing, and reworked a short story I had let sit for four years because it wasn't working – finally fixed the problem (I hope), and reread my novel to where I left off last year, in preparation for NaNoWriMo.

[I couldn't get the wifi to work in my room, but that’s maybe just as well to keep me focused on my editing and writing tasks, not distracted by facebook, twitter, email and so on. I checked email on my phone when necessary, up and downloaded files I needed in the lobby or at dinner in the café, where wifi was fine. Mine was the corner room on the top floor, so I believed them when they said the wifi worked everywhere else, no problem…and they spontaneously deducted $50 for my troubles, so I am well content.

The room was cold when I first arrived but warmed up by the second day; the thermostat claims it’s hotter than it feels, but maybe that’s just me.

I also notice the room seems to come with earplugs, presumably for the traffic noise, but the heating fan pretty much drowns out everything, and I left it on because I’m always cold and because with Hurricane Sandy on the way, they were telling me the power might go off, in which case, I wanted some heat built up in there first.]

Of Cannibals and Mice

My 14 yr old daughter has a test tomorrow over which she is slightly freaking out. As I understand it, the issue is that there is a small risk she might only get, say, 95% on the test unless she stays up for the next two hours studying, as opposed to the 98% which is her stated goal for the average in this course. I give my usual "it's not about the marks" speech, and order her to bed so she will be well rested for the test, but she is still freaking out. Half-way through my second "work/life balance" speech (it's remotely possible that I have a tendency to address my children in professorial lecture mode), she confesses that the proximate cause of her attack of nerves is that a fellow student has shown her a viral YouTube cartoon featuring cannibalism and it is now freaking her out (though she had not thought anything of it at the time).

"You're not seriously telling me you're afraid that cannibals are going to break into your room and eat you, are you?"

She holds up her thumb and index finger separated by a hair. "Little bit."

She allows that the fear is irrational, but that there is nevertheless no chance of her getting to sleep tonight.

I recognize that the cannibalism motif is simply the lightening rod for a generalized existential panic brought on by ridiculous amounts of homework (she is in the pre-IB program) and too much extra curricular activity (three hours of rehearsals every evening, including weekends), and the social challenges of adolescence and high school. So I sit down on the edge of her bed and start to talk her down by taking her fears seriously, and pointing out that (a) we have a good alarm system that will alert security if any cannibals attempt unauthorized entry into our house; (b) we have a large black dog that would likely eat any such cannibals first, and that (c) I will be sleeping right upstairs.

She allows how this is all true and reassuring and starts to show signs of thinking about calming down and going to sleep.

At which point the aforementioned large black dog bursts into the room, smashes into the wall, and begins tearing the shelves apart. She puts her forepaws through a wicker basket, plunges her head inside, and generally goes psycho-killer on Tigana's doll collection.

This, I think, may not be entirely helpful in improving the tone of the evening.

A moment later, a tiny jet-black mouse makes a break for it and sprints across the floor and out the door, while the dog gives murderous chase. From behind me, standing on the bed, I hear my daughter shrieking, "I knew there was something alive in here!"

"Well, it's gone now," I begin, in what I know is likely to be ineffectual damage control, but before I have even finished the sentence, the dog is back, ripping open the wicker basket once again. I pick the basket up and make to move it outside, chiding the dog that the mouse has now gone and what she is smelling is just traces of the departed mou-- But of course, I only make it two feet before I see another (this time grey) mouse racing frantically round the basket as I inadvertently tip it, and I--hero protector that I am--shriek loudly and drop the basket. The dog plunges her head back in and proceeds to smash the remnants of the basket to kindling in an attempt to get the creature. She suddenly snaps her jaws shut, and as Tigana shouts from behind me, "Don't let her kill it! It did nothing wrong!", the dog trots out of the room with the deliberate gait of an executioner. As I mumble something about mouse trespass and the death penalty to Tigana, I follow the action outside the bedroom in time to watch a bullet-fast mouse (I am unclear if this is a third individual or one of the previous two somehow escaped from the jaws of death) scuttle under the sitting room piano -- and my 60lb dog kamikaze into same nanoseconds after. As I call the dog back from battering the piano pedals, I'm thinking my little night-time pep talk could definitely have gone better...

Normally, this is where I call in Mom to take charge of hysterical children, but she's away, so the best I could do as move the kids upstairs while the dog and I slept downstairs in their (apparently mouse-infested) bedrooms. It was restful for no one that the dog persisted in patrolling the floor against further incursions for most of the night, though I suppose it did manage to draw attention away from the cannibal threat.

This is not, I am sorry to confess, the first problematic encounter with mice in the house. About a month ago I had set a few traps to catch suspected intruders in the kitchen, with reassurances to the children that it was a 'catch and release' program. This worked relatively effectively, with my actually setting a few mice loose in the coulees, until I noticed that one trap had inexplicably disappeared. Assuming I had just misremembered where I had placed it, or that the dog had nosed it away somewhere, I forgot about it. A couple of days later I'm playing with my 9 year old in her room, when she reaches behind her into her stack of stuffies to pull out--you guessed it--a dead mouse. Why the mouse dragged itself and the trap all the way across the house to my daughter's bedroom and buried itself in her stuffy collection, I will never know, but Kasia's reaction was predictably 'upset'. It hadn't helped that we actually have three stuffed mice included in her collection and that we both sat there starring at the dead mouse for 10 seconds before realizing that this one was real. (Well the trap attached should have been a give away.) On that occasion I was able to hand my daughter off to spend the night with mom, but it took a couple of days to convince Kasia her room was now mouse free.

Still, could have been worse. Could have been cannibals.

Today's Spam

Okay, I mostly just delete spam without opening it, but this one from Mrs. Amal Nasri caught my eye:

Muslim Brotherhood Random Selection Approved

As-Salamu Alaykum

Muslim Brotherhood random selection approved your email along with 199 others to benefit from the revolution gift, this is organized in London Early this year, it's organized to encourage the Muslim world and appreciate their support, and to those who have lost their love ones in the revolution, your compensation amount is Two Million United States of American Dollars (USD $2,000,000.00),

CONTACT MR. ABDUL MUSA
Contact email: XXXX
Regards
Mrs.Amal Nasri.
Arab Revolution
WebRep

It was recently explained to me that spammers are not stupid, and that the complete lack of credibility in this sort of email is not sloppiness or lack of research. Fooling you is a waste of their time if, after the initial email hooks one, the intended victims suddenly says, "Hey, wait a minute! That doesn't make any sense!" when asked for one's bank account password. No, they send out deliberately ridiculous emails hoping to hook that one in a million really stupid person who will fall for anything, and so can be relied on to follow through.

The other key to a good con, I learned from some movie or other decades ago: the victim must think s/he is doing something illegal/immoral themselves so that they are then disinclined to report their victimization, once they eventually realized they have been fleeced.

So this one comes close to perfect on both counts. You'd have to be both spectacularly stupid and a traitor to your right-wing prejudices to fall for this one. "They randomly selected my email to give me $2 million dollars? Yes, that makes sense! They randomly blow people up, so naturally, they must be equally random in everything they do! They are insane, so this makes total sense!" Someone questions why they would have 200 X 2 million dollars to handout -- no problem: "Those damn arabs have billions! That's just chump change to them!" And, you know, handing out billions to random emails is way more cost effective for the revolution than say, I don't know, buying armaments. And they probably do use US dollars, because that's what they would use in London, right? "And anyway, they think I've suffered a loss for the revolution. So all I have to do is pretend to be Muslim revolutionary and I can collect big time!"

What bothers me is that spammers can find enough takers to make it worth their while to clutter up my email stream. That there are more than four guys who could fall for this is a condemnation of Social Studies teachers everywhere. That the people who fall for this are eligible to vote for Mitt Romney is the flaw in the democratic system.

Son of Dwarf by Jeremy Mason

Attended a production of Jeremy Mason's Son of a Dwarf this evening.

The play is part satire of the fantasy genre, part decent fantasy adventure. Although there are a number of pure pythonesque moments, and some brilliant shots at basic fantasy tropes that scored well with the audience, the central story is allowed to retain sufficient sense that the story hangs together for its own sake. Indeed, this is one of the plays' strengths, since a common error of satirists--deftly avoided here--is to get so wrapped up in jokes and one-liners that the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own silliness. This got pretty silly, but allowed the characters to retain a central dignity that saw them deliver their dialog as if they meant it.

I have been following the work of Jeremy Mason for some time and am pleased to see him branching out from children's plays to, well, sophomore plays. The same principles of frantic action and comedic commentary that served Jeremy well when writing for 5 year olds kept the 1st and 2nd year university audience I was sitting with howling with laughter. My 14 year old laughed throughout even though she has only just started Lord of the Rings, has never engaged in fantasy gaming, and probably missed a third of the references. And even at my advanced years, I pretty much enjoyed the whole thing.

It's hard to know where Jeremy's writing left off and the inventive direction of the Accidental Humour Company took over. The creative use of multimedia screens required split second timing, but allow the production to include astounding special effects: an arrow shot at the evil wizard turns into a dove; magic mirrors talk back; tiny gnomes climb in and out of hero's backpack; forcefields shimmer to prevent the heroine entering the magic cave; explosions shoot from the wizard's staff; and so on. Great stuff for a live play! The battle scenes were fantastic: actual armies of--well, I might have missed what they were exactly, but they were very creepy in a hilarious sort of way -- evil minions threaten our heroes, as great choreography has the actors Harry Wooing across the stage in slow motion. Fabulous stuff!

I will absolutely seek out any future productions by Accidental Humour Company. Pure comic genius!

I give the play four out of five stars.

See trailer here: http://vimeo.com/46451916

Curious if True: The Fantastic in Literature

I had the honour of writing the foreword to this collection of essays on science fiction, fantasy and magic realism written by a talented group of up and coming scholars. The major thrust of my foreword was that these-kids-today have no idea how hard it was to have SF taken seriously when we were younger. So I just provided a couple of examples of how far SF scholarship has come in just one generation. It really is quite astonishing, when you think about it.

The collection is edited by Amy Bright, the reviewer at Girl to the Rescue and the up and coming author of Before We Go (from Red Deer Press). Amy's academic work can be found in the Journal of Children's Literature and Studies in Canadian Literature. Contributors to Curious if True include Luke R. J. Maynard, Gaelan Gilbert, Mary Eileen Wennekers, Elisa Bursten, Amy Bright, Max F. R. Olesen, Laura van Dyke, Erin Dunbar, Tessa Mellas, Shannon M. Minifie, and Thomas Stuart. Cover art is by comic artist Betty Liang.

Curious if True: The Fantastic in Literature is being launched this month (July, 2012) by Cambridge Scholars Publishers.

"Split Decision" Reprinted

Pleased to hear that my short story, "Split Decision", originally published in the Tesseracts 15 anthology (August, 2011), has been picked up by Imaginarium "best Canadian SF of the year" anthology (July 2012).