It's been a very nice, bum-around sort of weekend. Yesterday morning the weather was too perfect, so we strolled along the bay and out to the beach and had a relaxing breakfast at Seaside Cantina. Great place to watch waves and people.

Returned home after wading in the surf and caught a showing of Iron Man. I don't think I liked it quite as much as some people, but I really enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance, and the suit was totally neat. Sometimes superhero movies turn into CGI cartoons in the last half hour, but there were enough shots of Tony Stark's face behind the helmet that I never felt I'd lost contact with the character and shifted into a different movie.

Stopped at the market on the way home from the movie for sandwich fixings, came home and quickly assembled a picnic, and then headed out to sit on the sand by the bay and munch. I even snuck a beer out there, which you're not supposed to do anymore on account of the hundreds of drunken knuckleheads who rioted last Labor Day. I quietly drank my beer and did not riot.

I've already gotten some feedback on the novel from very-first readers, who caught some stupid things I thought I could get away with, some dumb decisions I made with pacing, and various and sundry. Trying to fix some of that today.

Now, however, I am sleepy.

Working from home means I can play all the goddamn Journey I want.

Driving up to Los Angeles in a bit. Most likely we'll be hitting the LA Times Festival of Books on the campus of my alma mater, UCLA. I've never been to the LA Times Festival of Books. I'm hoping to find books there, people engaged in all things books, and parking. I'd hope for fried chicken, because I used to love the fried chicken at the Treehouse, which I would order with the mashed potatoes and gravy and chicken-fried potatoes, and then the cashier would say, "You sure you got enough starch on that tray, sport?" and I'd mumble something grumpy and incoherent as I was wont to do when I was a college student and dig into my chicken while trying to dodge the calcified chicken feathers. But there won't be any fried chicken, because the Treehouse is long gone, alas.

Plans afterward include an outing with friends to an Irish pub and a stage play. Then, tomorrow, we'll drive my parents around so they can buy things like cheese and cat food and whatever else they need. Then, back home and write and write and write.

Or, we might spend the entire weekend in traffic. Heat wave in Southern California might mean everyone flees to beaches and air-conditioned shopping hangers. I need to find the subterranean express road. Then I'd just have to shoot Morlocks.

I just cleaned the bathroom.

We have the worst bathroom in the world. I've been in all of them, and ours is the worst.

It's small and cramped and no matter how many toxic, cute-animal-killing chemicals I throw down the pipes, the tub never drains, and all the surfaces are grimeophiliac.

When we move this summer, a better bathroom will be high on the priority list.

Until then, I will be complaining about our bathroom in at least six journal posts per day.

You're welcome.

DIE YOU FUCKING ANTS EVERY SQUIGGLY ONE OF YOU DIE DIE DIE DIIIIIIIIIIEE!!!!!!!!!

***

Other than that, though, it's been a rather excellent day. One of the best things about moving from Phoenix is now there's a whole entire city to discover. A whole city! With stuff in it! That I don't know what it is or where it's been put! Previous to coming here to live, my experience with San Diego was limited to a few family trips to Sea World or the zoo and a couple of Comic-Cons. But it's turning out to be so much more than Shamu and asphyxiation from too many Doom Patrol fans.

Today we had lunch (me with a pork chile Colorado and a Negra Modelo, Lisa with a lobster enchilada/fish taco combo) in University Heights, yet another nifty neighborhood full of neat coffee joints, restaurants, and cottages. Back in the early 1900's, the area was an ostrich farm, so there's lots of ostrich iconography all about. All the houses are built upon an ancient ostrich burial ground, and so on.



Afterwards we made the short drive to Midtown for snackage and work at Eclipse Chocolat, where I had a latte with super-special caramel made from sugar imported from the Hollow Earth.

I read the last 50 or so pages of my book, and though the last ten or so are rocky (major characters introduced and lots of exposition to get across), I encountered nothing fatal, so I just have to keep on writing.

The last couple of days have been good, too. Had burger and beers and ice cream shakes at Hodad's in Ocean Beach with the visiting Jackie and Chris, and then got to hang with Jackie more at Rebecca's. It's nice to be social. Even with Jackie.

I think I'm going to eat some wings now, washed down with hooligan beer.

Hope your Saturday's been good!

Finally, somebody, somewhere, understands my needs: Possibly the world's biggest coffee cup.

My synopsis still needs some work.

I need to go downstairs to the laundry and see if my pants are dry.

What do you need?

A couple of blocks from the Starbucks I've been going to, down at the end of a little nondescript side street, is a tiny little park. I'm not even sure if it's officially a park. There's no sign, for one thing. It takes up maybe fifty square feet, just enough for a single bench and a paved ledge over the ocean.

Maybe there're places like this in LA, but I never found them. I wanted to. The LA coast has fewer cliffs, and they tend to be occupied by bazillion-dollar beach houses. There are plenty of houses like that here, but if you look, you can find modest little holes and nooks and parks between them.

From the bench at this little nameless park or whatever it is, you can look out across the ocean miles. You can see islands that I think are actually in Mexico. If you stand at the rail, you can see pelicans roosting on Bird Rock (which is where the neighborhood gets its name). You can be by yourself.

I like going down there and leaning over the rail, watching the waves roll over the rocks. I like closing my eyes and listening. It feels like a secret place, and it's one of my favorites.

This morning was eaten by the DMV, where I finally got around to getting my California license and registration. Even though I haven't had a California drivers license since 1993, I was still in the system, and when the clerk saw my old picture (taken when I was 17, I think) she omg-ed and turned her screen around to show me. I looked at that boy's face and laughed. Since then, I've gained seven inches in height and lost my starter mullet.

It'd be so easy to make fun of that boy, but for some reason I'm feeling kindness towards him today. He made a lot of mistakes before and after that pic was taken, but he wasn't such a bad kid, really.

#

Speaking of being a grown-up, those comic books that came with the 45-rpm recording of the narration that we had some discussion about in this post were called PowerRecords, and blogger Rob Kelly has been posting complete scans and MP3s of some of them.

The pages are very media-heavy and take a long time to load, so be warned.

No Star Trek yet, but he does include my fondly remembered Escape From the Planet of the Apes.

This, this, this is what the Internet is for.

#

And speaking of kids, today is the birthday of the brilliant, beautiful, talented, and luminous Heather Shaw! Happy Birthday, Heather! You are just SO awesome!!! :-D

Greetings from the floor. About nine or ten years ago I hurt my lower back helping a pregnant co-worker move large objects that I had no business trying to move. Yesterday morning I was thinking that it had been a long while since I'd seriously re-aggravated the injury. But the universe hates smugness, so of course I re-aggravated the injury, somehow, yesterday afternoon. Looks like today will be heat and ice, pills of some kind, maybe liquor, and inertness. Might as well write since I won't be good for much else. I'm on an airplane tomorrow, so my goal is complete recovery by then. That's a pretty modest goal, I think.

***

How to Survive Writing a Graphic Novel, an illustrated treatise in 13 panels by Grady Klein, all applicable to writing a regular old prose novel as well (via Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog).

We're moving to San Diego at the end of July!

Why?

Perhaps the 3-day forecast will provide some indication.

Tempe:



San Diego:



Also, Lisa landed a really awesome teaching position, and San Diego has an ocean, and we'll be closer to friends and family, and in case I forgot to mention it, San Diego has an ocean!

Lots and lots and lots to do before the start of August: find a place to live (David's been really helpful in telling us where the fun neighborhoods are), figure out my own employment situation (currently a consultant with a dried-up contract), find a new kung fu school (waaaah, I will miss my kung fu school), and pine over the people and places and things I'll miss about Arizona. Because despite my complaining, there are definitely people and places and things that I'll very much miss about this place.

But for the most part? I have been dancing with excitement and renewed verve.

:-D!!!!

I have a black eye!

Only it's almost invisible. It's only slightly black, and I've got dark circles under my eyes anyway. It's from a ridge-hand I took across the face Tuesday night in sparring. I was hoping for a much blacker black eye.

Maybe I'll have more luck next time.

***

I've got a Sunday deadline to finish my novel for the Blue Heaven workshop. About 7k or 8k or so left to go, consisting of Ragnarok and some denouement. I just did the battle between Loki and Heimdall in fewer than 50 words. I don't know if that's good or if it's lame cheating. I'm too tired to tell.

Today I'll be writing in airports and other interstitial places, and also the new Rush album totally kicks ass. I was kind of enh about it on the first two listens, but now it rocks. The bits and bytes must have moved around on my computer over night. It fills me with great rock happiness.

***

My sparring has been shit this week. I say that not because I've been losing rounds (because there aren't really winners and losers in the way we spar at my school, unlike other systems in which points are scored and there are definite winners and losers), but because I've been sluggish and unimaginative in my rounds.

On the other hand, I've gotten Tiger Descends Golden Mountain memorized, and I'm not totally lost yet on Sea Dragon Cane. But the sparring? Suckage. If it keeps up I'll talk to my instructor. He'll probably recommend more Tai Chi and Chi Kung. He may make a believer out of me yet.

***

Go Golden State! (Only not more than Go Suns!)

I'm aiming to make this a productive yet relaxing Sunday. I've already had one work session at the coffee joint, but I still need another 8 or 9 pages to hit my writing goal today. But I also need to give myself time to hang out by the tree and grill burgers and chicken, and there's Suns vs. Lakers (Kobe sucks!), so I'll be keeping my laptop handy while the TV's on.

Right now, I've got cheese puffs and beer for my second breakfast. I am so happy.

Airplane seat pockets are not my friend. I left my copy of Throne of Jade in my seat pocket last week, which wouldn't be a big deal, but I also lost my favorite bookmark, this little leather strip with a frog on it that, for some reason I can't even explain, never failed to make me laugh, sometimes hysterically.

Gosh, losing my frog bookmark made me sad. I once left my iPod in an airplane seat pocket, and that didn't make me anywhere near as sad as losing my frog bookmark.

Ah, well. Maybe my frog bookmark will enjoy a grand adventure.

***

The writing went sluggy this morning. Not even a donut could help. (The donut was actually intended to help with rapidly sinking blood sugar, but I figured it couldn't hurt the writing.)

I was going to write this whole thing about kung fu and writing and whatever, but this afternoon the weather was perfect, blue and breezy and in the low 70's, so I sat in the shade of a friendly tree and grilled a tri-tip and BBQ'd some chicken and drank Pacifico and ate it with yummy salad and baked beans that Lisa fixed, and now I'm all buzzed on beer and protein, and all else pales in significance.

Also, the Suns beat the Lakers. Life is good.

(Writing did occur.)

I'm gonna throw a horse question out there:

Considerations of strength and endurance aside, could a very large horse ride three adults bareback?

I mean, the adults -- the human adults -- would ride the horse. Not the other way around. I know horses don't ride people. Not bareback, anyway. Should I have said "Could a very large horse seat three adults bareback?" I don't even know the right terms here!

***

A weekend that includes pizza, burgers, kung fu, writing, new comic books, and a late afternoon stroll through the alien landscape of an urban park leaves little room for complaint.

I'm liking Buffy Season 8 quite a bit so far. It's doing things that wouldn't work in television, but it captures much of the tone (if not quite the spirit yet) of the TV series, but it is its own thing, and it works very well as a comic book.

I almost didn't get to read it at all, since my friendly neighborhood comics shop was all sold out, and I was sad, very sad, slumping around the mall like a kid who dropped his ice cream cone, but Lisa dug through the unsorted Jugheads and X-Whatevers at the bottom of the magazine rack at B&N, and I ended up happy and skipping.

Also picked up Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3: Torn, which I've read half of and am enjoying so far.

It's been too long since I've wallowed in comics. I've missed it. Maybe when I finish this @#$&ing book I'll try to write a comic book script, just for practice. And some short stories, so that 2008 isn't a completely bleak publishing year for me. And the weird beach YA. And CBT modules for structured critical thinking training and maybe some for assessment and measurement, because that sounds fun, doesn't it?

***

( cup/page and weird rocks pics below the cut )

Woke up, got to the coffee joint, wrote, went to kung fu, sweated and huffed, came home, went out for burgers and sweet potato fries, got a haircut, back to a different coffee joint for more writing, bopping my freshly shorn head to "Hump de Bump" by the Chili Peppers, maybe we'll rent "Children of Men" tonight, maybe we'll go to the comic book shop for Buffy, who knows how we'll roll.

( Cup/page pic below the cut )

Via Warren Ellis, who think it's "glorious," M John Harrison on worldbuilding:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

It's not that I'm a particular fan of worldbuilding per se, and it's not something I tend to focus on in my own little stories (sometimes to their detriment), but I don't think Harrison's mild rant against worldbuilding is particularly glorious.

If worldbuilding is dull, then so is character. So is theme. So is action. Anything that's done dully is dull. So, maybe Harrison's saying that worldbuilding cannot be done well. Which is, well, a weird thing to say. I like Moorcock's worldbuilding. I like Maureen McHugh's worldbuilding. I like China Mieville's worldbuilding. I bet if they engaged in dull worldbuilding, I wouldn't like their worldbuilding. But they don't, so I like their worldbuilding.

Harrison says that worldbuilding "literalises the urge to invent." Maybe it does, but I don't see how this is criticism. Is there something wrong with invention? Is character development bad because it literalizes the urge to saw open people's skulls and dip their brains out with an ice cream scoop?

Harrison says that worldbuilding is "the great clomping foot of nerdism." Again, maybe it is, but I don't have a problem with that. I was in marching band. I take kung fu lessons. And like Harrison, I, you know, write science fiction. I'm a nerd. Actually, I use the term "geek," but insisting that I'm a geek and not a nerd is the equivalent of saying I write speculative fiction and not scifi, which will do nothing to prevent the cool kids from laughing at me. Which is okay. They can laugh. I can take it. So telling me that worldbuilding is a form of "nerdism" doesn't help me understand what's wrong with worldbuilding.

I get that dull worldbuilding is dull. But if Harrison's saying all worldbuilding is dull, he's like people who say science fiction sucks because it offers only wooden, stereotyped characters, when it would be more accurate to say that sucky science fiction sucks.

So, if done well (I repeat, if done well), what's wrong with worldbuilding? I must be missing something. What am I missing?

At first I thought they'd given me the best mug in the joint today, but when I look back, Knott's Berry Farm was my least favorite of the Southern California amusement parks. The train robbery used to scare the shit out of me, and the fake '49-ers would get snippy with me for my lack of gold panning skills. It's like, buddy, I'm five years old, give me a break, maybe when I'm a grizzled old alkie like you I'll befriend a mule and get really good at this.

I was much more interested in the alligator farm across the street from Knott's. My grandmother kept pointing at the big gators, and I was sure one would leap up and chomp her arm off.



***

And while I'm feeling nostalgic, Malls of America has a nice post about Old Towne Mall, formerly of Torrance, California. It was a goofy place, really, styled like a turn-of-the-century Main Street, USA, but I loved it.

In the late 70's, a big Friday night for my family might involve a trek out to Old Towne, with dinner at the food court (pizza for me), a trip through the cheesy dark rides, some smash'em up in the bumper cars, and if I was really lucky, a foray into the comic book shop, the only one I knew of at the time. I remember spending birthday money on Warlord #1. At ten bucks, it was easily my biggest purchase to date. (Later I'd buy the Rankin-Bass illustrated version of the Hobbit for an astronomical $30. Fortunately, I had bookstore gift certificates.)

I'm at the Borders café, where an Asian man has been talking on his phone in his (I presume) native language (Chinese?) at an admittedly annoying high volume.

Across the café, an elderly white man shakes his head in dismay. "Only in America," he says, loud enough for me to hear through my headphones.

I'm not sure exactly what he means by that, but I think I've got a pretty good idea.

A woman walks up to the Asian man and asks him if he can keep it down. The Asian man nods apologetically and lowers his volume, then ends his call.

"Keep it quiet!" the white man then hollers from about 20 feet away, "or you're gonna be out on your ass!"

This is probably where I should turn up the volume on iTunes and focus on my work. Instead, from about 20 feet away, I turn to the old white man and say, "You can ask someone to keep it down without threatening them. That's completely unnecessary."

The old man stares death at me.

"And you know, threatening someone is actually a crime? Do you know that?"

He doesn't say anything. He just stares at me. I stare at him. The old man balls his fists. Hot rays of crispy death radiate from his eyes.

He's thinking that if he was 30, 20, maybe even 10 years younger, he'd jump up and wrap his hands around my skinny throat. He's thinking, It's not racism, I don't care if that guy is Chinese or white or black or green, I'd still tell him to shut up or get tossed on his ass, and who are you, you punk, talking to me like that? You don't know what kind of man I am, what kind of life I've lived, how dare you assume anything about me.

Maybe that's what he's thinking.

White or black or green, doesn't matter. Maybe it really doesn't to him.

Only in America.

We continue staring at each other for another few seconds before I put my headphones back on and turn back to my laptop.

My hands are still shaking as I type this. I fucking hate confrontation, I really do.

I'm sure one of the chief benefits of writing for a science website is occasionally you get to write headlines like this:

Gorillas Gave Humans 'The Crabs'

***

Heading out of town this afternoon to celebrate my friend Todd's big 40. I've known Todd longer than anybody outside my immediate family. Most of the Rush concerts I have attended were with Todd. I was best man at his wedding and logged many thousands of miles with him in his Toyota Tercel, cruising the streets of LA because we didn't have girlfriends and nobody invited us to the cool parties. He was there when I was almost run over by Run-D.M.C's Jam-Master Jay. We used to drink tequila shots with Tabasco sauce and dine on pizza pups at Fedco (not at the same time). We once had a dirt clod fight and I accidentally brained him with a rock. I still remember the thock sound it made when it impacted his skull. Ah, good times. :-)

***

One of the tricks I've used in the novel is that, when I'm stuck, I bring in this one pair of characters who know everything, whose dialog is easy to write, and who always vex my protagonist. I brought them in again, and now they're just sitting there, staring at me.

Unreliable little bastards. Maybe I kill them now.

Sometimes I think I'd like to own my own property. Nothing big, maybe a nice townhouse or something. A little office upstairs where I can push my desk up against the window and watch people push their prams and walk their dogs. Space in the back for a couple of chairs, a little grill, some potted plants, maybe a pariscope arrangement so I can spot my enemies creeping too close to the vine-threaded wall. A weather vane on the roof prone to attracting lightning to power my experiments.

Not that I don't like my current living situation, a spacious enough apartment in a professionally managed complex. It's the professionally managed part that I particularly appreciate, because today I sat on my ass eating leftover pizza while a guy fixed the toilet and shower in the guest bathroom, and now I can flush without having to plunge my hand down into the tank and pull up the flapper, and it cost me not one extra cent. I can always use electric eels for my experiments.

***

Can I just say, I absolutely love it when friends have good news? sallytuppence and others, it just makes the world a damn cool place in which to conduct operations and maneuvers.

***

Staring at bubbles is so much easier than writing. Next time somebody asks me what I do, I'm going to tell them that I stare at bubbles. "Are you rich yet" they'll say. "Any bubbles I've ever heard of? Will I find your bubbles in the airport shops?"

"You vex me," I will say. "Leave me and my bubbles in peace."