The Recorder, a California legal newspaper and online source, had a correction to its news article about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s latest propaganda on the legal system:
Correction
Due to a reporting error, Thursday’s story about a survey ranking state liability systems incorrectly stated that survey participants included in-house counsel at companies with at least $100,000 in annual revenues. Actually, the attorneys worked in companies with annual revenue of more than $100 million.
Oh, man. Where to begin.
The current-but-outgoing vice president of the SFWA wrote a barely-coherent tantrum about the evils of a) artists who give away their work FOR FREE!!! b) on THE INTERNET!!!!. Because it interferes with a good, old-fashioned, wood-chopping way of life where if you want to call people idiots, you have to hike uphill in the snow to do it, by cracky, without all this fancy bloggery.
Or something. I told you it was barely coherent.
Anyway, to mock his spittle-flecked insulting of other writers as ‘scabs’ and ‘pixel-stained technopeasants’ who dasn’t use a woodstove like He-Man Hendrix, Jo Walton has declared today International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!
In honour of Dr Hendrix, I am declaring Monday 23rd April International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. On this day, everyone who wants to should give away professional quality work online. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a story or a poem, it doesn’t matter if it’s already been published or if it hasn’t, the point is it should be disseminated online to celebrate our technopeasanthood.
Jo will be posting links in comments. In the meantime, I offer my own non-professional-technopeasantry, in the form of a short story originally written for Subterranean’s “SF cliche” issue (edited by John Scalzi).
The literary scene has been agog about Kirino’s newer book, Grotesque. It didn’t appeal to me much, so I picked up her earlier book, Out.
It’s hard to read. There’s a deep current of despair; this isn’t the slick, techno-clever Japan of an Isaac Adamson or William Gibson novel. The protagonists are women who work the night shift at a boxed-lunch factory. The happiest of the group lives in a loveless marriage and has a son who won’t speak, which should tell you about how well off everyone else is. One of them commits an impulsive crime and the other women are, one by one, drawn in. The “feminist” blurb makes it sound like they’re in some kind of protective sisterhood, which is exactly not the case.
The ending didn’t work too well for me, but the characters and the plot twists are believable and very real.
Chris Clarke has some helpful suggestions for gentlemen who wish to discuss sexual harassment, gender on the Internet and stalking in a rational, dispassionate manner.
Well, not really; Reno’s in the high desert. But I will be at trial camp all week and probably blogging even less than usual.
Since I needed to spend some time lying around, and there are only so many unoccupied computers at once in our house:
Daughter of Hounds is kind of a sequel to Low Red Moon. I was a little iffy about picking this one up, especially since the cover art looked like an attempt to sell to the Anita Blake fan market, but what the hell. It’s hard to review this without getting into spoilers, but it’s an interesting look into the world of the ghouls without making you feel like you picked up something by White Wolf. It’s also not as scary or disturbing as Low Red Moon. Granted, that’s a high bar, but even the ghouls aren’t half as scary as Narcissa Snow.
I’ve been finding Patrick Califia‘s latest stuff disappointing. I don’t mean disappointing in the “not my kink” kind of way (okay, that too) but just…not as well written as his previous work. There’s nothing in Boy in the Middle that’s as gripping or well-written as the stories in No Mercy. He’s started to fall back on explaining and exposition rather than just showing us, or getting inside the heads of his characters. If you’re one of the people who still can’t get enough of vampires, you might like it.
I bought a food processor many years ago just so I wouldn’t have to prepare this by hand. (Dates are sticky.) This is kind of a Sephardic/New World mashup, adapted from a recipe in Nina Rousso’s The Passover Gourmet. Ashkenazic charoset is pretty bland stuff. I don’t even remember what the charoset I had growing up tasted like, and I’m pretty sure that was because it wasn’t made by my Egyptian uncle.
Charoset (חֲרֽוֹסֶת)
Put everything in the food processor. The dates will stick to the blade, so don’t put them at the bottom. Chop in pulses, stirring in between so that it more or less gets cut up equally, until is is the consistency you want. If you blend it too long it will be a paste rather than a chutney, but some people like that. Serve with matzoh or other bland crackers. Cover and refrigerate the leftovers.
If you don’t have a food processor, I’m afraid you are just going to have to cut everything up into small pieces and mix it together in a bowl. Rinse the knife blade with water frequently so the dried fruit sticks to it less. You’ll have the food processor next year.
Lynn at Noli Irritare Leones has a very thoughtful post on the tension between the perspective of privilege and the perspective from where you sit.
While the rest of you are eating your chocolate bunnies and jellybeans and picking out pastel stuff to wear to the Egg Hunt, we’ll be talking about how our ancestors were slaves in Egypt, and were freed after our god visited plagues and death on our oppressors.
Also, there will be lamb.
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