Up betimes to the office, to write fair a laborious letter I wrote as from the Board to the Duke of Yorke, laying out our want of money again; and particularly the business of Captain Cocke's tenders of hemp, which my Lord Bruncker brought in under an unknown hand without name. Wherein his Lordship will have no great successe, I doubt. That being done, I down to Thames-streete, and there agreed for four or five tons of corke, to send this day to the fleete, being a new device to make barricados with, instead of junke. By this means I come to see and kiss Mr. Hill's young wife, and a blithe young woman she is. So to the office and at noon home to dinner, and then sent for young Michell and employed him all the afternoon about weighing and shipping off of the corke, having by this means an opportunity of getting him 30 or 40s. Having set him a doing, I home and to the office very late, very busy, and did indeed dispatch much business, and so to supper and to bed. After a song in the garden, which, and after dinner, is now the greatest pleasure I take, and indeed do please me mightily, to bed, after washing my legs and feet with warm water in my kitchen. This evening I had Davila brought home to me, and find it a most excellent history as ever I read.
I think it's interesting to see how what was once white, clean Bauhaus architecture is now a decaying, crumbling grey mass.
( <img src= )
This is the bones of the talk I gave at Dundee University last month. Didn’t have time to write a full formal paper. I get massively extemporaneous when I do these things, moving in and out of the notes, so this isn’t everything I said. But what the hell. I was writing on the assumption of a mostly academic audience, so I recapitulated some old thoughts and re-used the old Harvey Pekar line I’m so fond of trotting out. Also, this was all written in pencil, in my hideous chickenscratch, in a notebook, a couple of hours before I took the lectern. Anyway. Here it is.
Hello. Forgive me from working from notes. No time to write a full talk in the end. Because I’m a working writer in a deadline business. Which is why I’m here.
I think I’m supposed to be talking about my career in comics, providing some kind of summation to a conference about the relationship between comics and time. To which I’d first offer this, inscribed on a stone plaque embedded in the courtyard wall of the hotel across town I’m staying at:
"God give the blessing to the paper craft in the good realm of Scotland."
That stone was cut in 1870.
120 years later, I’m in Glasgow with Scots comics writer Grant Morrison, who’s just scored some brown acid off Bryan Talbot and is explaining to me how time works in comics. He explains to me his discovery that any comic is in fact its own continuum, an infinitely malleable miniature universe from Big Bang to heat death, and that in reading it you can make time go backwards, skip entire eons, strobe time itself, re-run geologic-scale periods in loops… reading a comic is in fact controlling time from a godlike perspective.
He was, of course, very full of hallucinogens at the time. This is why people were warned about the brown acid at Woodstock.
That said, we can now thank Grant for solving the mandate of this conference while in the grip of profound psychotomimetic hubris, and move on.
What I do is the Paper Craft, and there are few better places to talk about it than here in Dundee, where ink has run in the town’s blood since even before 1870, but thick and dark since 1905, when DC Thomson was founded, Britain’s oldest continuous publisher of comics… making this place the storied city of Jam, Jute and Journalism.
I’ve been writing comics since the 1980s — grew up reading Alan Grant (who was in the audience) — and doing it full time for approaching twenty years. I do a lot of other things too — first novel a couple of years ago, journalism, animation, anything that looks like it’ll pay a bill. Because I’m a working writer. But comics were my first love, and I still spend most of my time writing them. I love visual narrative, and comics are the purest form of visual narrative.
I’ve worked in television, and there are a hundred people between you and the audience. I’ve worked in film, and there are a thousand people between you and the audience. In comics, there’s me and an artist, presenting our stories to you without filters or significant hurdles, in a cheap, simple, portable form. Comics are a mature technology. Their control of time — provided you’re not intent on reversing universes (or even if you are) — makes them the best educational tool in the world. Hell, intelligence agencies have used comics to teach people how to dissent and perform sabotage.
When done right, comics are a cognitive whetstone, providing two or three or more different but entangled streams of information in a single panel. Processing what you’re being shown, along with what’s being said, along with what you’re being told, in conjunction with the shifting multiple velocities of imaginary time, and the action of the space between panels that Scott McCloud defines as closure… Comics require a little more of your brain than other visual media. They should just hand them out to being to stave off Alzheimer’s.
Although I think a headline of "Grant Morrison staves off dementia" might be a little premature.
The line I always quote in talks like these, the one I want you to take away with you, is something the comics writer Harvey Pekar said: "Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures."
And the nice thing about comics, the blessing of the paper craft, is that there’s really no-one to stop you.
© Warren Ellis 2009 all rights reserved etc etc
So, now, my careful plans are turning into a "catch as catch can." Any LiveJournal folks who happen to be free on SATURDAY AT 2:00 P.M. - let's meet at the Concierge Desk at the Marriott. I suspect we'll hang out at the desk for about fifteen minutes, before we find some place to chat, drink coffee, whatever... And if you *know* you're interested in joining us, comment here or send me a message or email, so that we'll look for you!
Mindy, who *used* to be organized!
Attend! Details of our favourite avant-decadent print fetish object can be found here at this electrical information-bridge. Click elegantly, spawn.
So I can’t light a cigarette in a bar in Arizona, but you can walk into one with a loaded gun, get completely trolleyed and be fully defended by a state law that doesn’t remotely consider this a dangerous and inevitably tragic situation.
Around 80 people die by gunfire per day in the United States. That’s about fifteen deaths per one hundred thousand people, per annum. In 2005, the number of children killed by gunfire would have filled 120 public school classrooms. Since 11 September 2001, somewhere in the region of 220,000 people have died by gunfire in America.
So I didn't post a con report for CONvergence ... and now that' it happened over a week ago I find bits of it to be a bit fuzzy. Ah, well. I'll do the best I can: we drove. We met up with old friends. I finally got to meet Lyda Morehouse. I told Patrick Rothfuss not to get herpes. I had pictures taken with lots of fish (which will hopefully be posted soon). I drank beer. I hung out with writer friends. I was amazed at costumes (apparently CONvergence is like a three-day Halloween party for geeks). I attended a Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog showing that was modeled after Rocky Horror (there was no toast, but there was lots of singing and booing and cheering). We drove home. I had a great time and I can't wait until GenCon so I can do it all again, except I'll be on panels and signing books and otherwise Playing Author.
Oh, yeah: got 1000 words on TDP yesterday. Here's hoping I can get that tonight, too.
- Location:Ken's den
- Mood:
content - Music:silence
The Masters Thesis client wants another revision.
The business class has some papers that are required but not until Sunday.
I stayed up all night Sunday until Monday morning doing that Algebra. And then I did it again on Monday night and finished it up this afternoon.
I'm exhausted.
Of course, in a day I will again worry about money. Especially since I have to send out stories and put my stuff back up for sale on Ebay. But for now, I'm tired.
I think I'm going to take a nap now. Tonight I will do other work. Other type of work. No homework for an evening. Maybe I'll catch a midnight showing of Harry Potter. Most likely not.
Sleep now.
They were making fun of The Hills.
The fucking Hills. The most boring asinine show on television and Seth McFarlane devoted practically the whole fucking episode to that damn thing. Brian dates teh girl from the Hills; she's really intelligent and she does to Brian what Brian does to everyone else including the ex-girlfriend (intellectual superiority and correcting). They show clips from the Hills. The Hills is really a lot of editing of scenes around Los Angeles. The people on the Hills are ugly.
The fucking Hills. I am already praying that every employee at MTV dies of a lingering and painful death that will first make them lose all motor function because of this show.
But I expect Family Guy to have at least something of an edge. I know it's no longer in its glory days, but it could choose a better target than the Fucking Hills. Making fun of the Hills for being stupid is like telling people that war is dangerous and smoking is bad for you. We know. We all fucking know.
Amusingly enough, this is why I stopped watching South Park - not the Hills, but they had that Paris Hilton episode. No real reason to make fun of Paris Hilton. You only make her stronger. I didn't watch South Park for many many years after that.
I think I'll pursue a similar policy with Family Guy. If it's still around in a couple of years, I might check it out. But I can't take another episode where they make fun of The Hills.
And next person who recommends I watch one of those "Real Housewives" shows gets punched in the nose.
A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own.
H.G. Wells, British Writer [The Salvaging of Civilization] (1866-1946)
Book #24
I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Sloane Crosley
Nonfiction; humor; short stories
230 pages
This debut essay collection is full of sardonic wit and charm, and Crosley effortlessly transforms what could have been stereotypical tales of mid-20s life into a breezy series of vignettes with uproariously unpredictable outcomes. From the opening The Pony Problem to the hilarious Bring-Your-Machete-to-Work Day (which will ring true for any child of the early 1990s who played the first Oregon Trail computer game), Crosley is equal parts self-deprecating and endearing as she recounts her secret obsession with plastic ponies and the joys of exacting revenge via a pixilated wagon ride. In less capable hands, the subjects tackled—from unpleasant weddings of long-forgotten friends to horrendous first jobs—could have been a litany of complaints from yet another rich girl from the suburbs. But Crosley, who grew up in Westchester and currently lives in Manhattan, makes the experiences her own with a plethora of amusing twists: a volunteer job at the American Museum of Natural History leads to a moral quandary, and a simple Upper West Side move becomes anything but. Fans of Sarah Vowell's razor-sharp tongue will love this original new voice.
I have mixed feelings on this book. On one hand, there were quite a few humourous short stories that one could easily relate to. However, I found Crosley to be quite unlikeable, honestly. She just seemed like she was quite the snob and I had a difficult time empathizing with her in certain stories. However, I did love the short story "The Ursula Cookie" because I was in a similar job situation and know how nerve wracking so mean bosses can be. That being said, I am glad that I read this book, but I am also glad that I borrowed it from a friend instead of buying it!
Books read this year: 24/50.
Pages read this year: 9025/15000
A piece I am working on for a contest. I wanted to create somthing envoked by the likes of Rocketeer. This is the result. She used to have a jet pack but I ditched it as it was messing the comp up.
Page 357. Two chapters remaining.
Protein helped with the exhaustion. Memo to me: you do really feel better when you eat the red meat, even if you'd happily go vegetarian on most other grounds.
- Mood:
exhausted - Music:The Cure - Why Can't I Be You?
Best Collection
Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, John Langan [16th place]
Best Short Story
"A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" by Catherynne Valente, Clarkesworld Magazine [11th place]
"The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black" by Jay Lake, Clarkesworld Magazine [15th place]
Best Magazine
Clarkesworld Magazine [9th place, moving from last year's 14th place]
Fantasy Magazine [19th place]
In terms of online markets making an impact, we actually saw more, with two in the novella category, and five in the short story category, out of seventy-one, representing 10%. This is actually quite an increase against last year, and can be attributed to Tor.com weighing in. It'll be interesting to see how this further plays out, this year.
Nick Harkaway just turned this up on Twitter: hfradiospacewx. It’s "Space Weather and Radio Propagation Information," as provided by these people, who apparently could use a dollar or two through Paypal to keep going.
It’s complete gibberish to the untrained eye:
Warning (1591): Geomagnetic K-index of 4 expected… Solar Wind: 519 km/s @ 3.0 protons/cm3… Flares: 6h hi (none) 24h hi (none) …No space weather storms are expected for the next 24 hours…
It is, in fact, The Shipping Forecast for space.
How brilliant is that? All it needs is an equivalent for "Sailing By" to precede it. Maybe a bit of Eno.
There are a few things about Readercon 20 that I forgot to mention. For example, during the "Meet the Pros(e)" thingy on Friday night, when all the authors in attendance have sheets with peel-off stickers, and each sticker contains a single sentence the author has written. Con guests roam through the crowd, asking authors for sentences. Some authors exchange sentences with other authors. I gave lots away, but only received three stickers this year (I wasn't asking for them in return for my own). One reads, "Obsessives, doubters, workaholics: When the world ends, we will die, too." The second reads, "'We wage our deadliest battles,' Gundack said, 'against ourselves.'" Finally, the last reads, "Our words are the death masks of dreams." A theme is immediately apparent, and that I received these completely at random makes it all the more curious. I do not know who wrote these sentences.
Also, my thanks to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
readingthedark, who gave me a copy of Placebo's Battle for the Sun the last day of the con. And there were other people I met for the first time, and that was cool. Catherynne Valente, for example, and Jeffrey Ford, and, gods, I forget. My mind is a sieve. Only, it's a selective sieve, which is the way of most sieves, now that I think on it. I expect there are other things I wanted to mention, but now I can't recall what they are. Oh, I did, once again, arrive at the conclusion that I will never be considered a "great" sf author, because I'll never concede that ideas are more important than characters, and I'll never be a technofetishist, and I'll never confuse the purposes and nature of literature with the role and nature of science.I got the news yesterday morning that Charles N. Brown, co-founder and editor of Locus magazine (begun in 1968), died in his sleep on the way home from Readercon. I didn't know him well. We were once part of the same little dinner gathering in Chicago (2002), but that was about it. Nonetheless, his passing leaves a peculiar void in the world of sf & f publishing, and I was stunned at the news.
As I said, not much to yesterday. We had to make the drive back down to Spooky's parents' place in South County to check on things. Things were fine, except for a catbird trapped inside the netting that covers the blueberry bushes. The netting is there to keep the catbirds out. We call this irony. Spider cat was getting grumpy from all his time alone. More and more, I wish we'd rented a place in Kingston or Peace Dale, instead of Providence. Anyway, Spooky's parents return from Montana on Thursday.
What I was supposed to do yesterday was rest and recover from the weekend, and that's what didn't happen.
So...I have about a billion things to do today. Okay, maybe only about thirty, but still. Too much. July is swamped. Turns out, there will be a re-relaunch of the website later this week. It'll retain the same look and minimalist feel, but there will be a bit more content, especially relating to The Red Tree. So, please keep a weather eye on the website. And there's an interview I have to do, and a mountain of email to answer, and some promo stuff I need to get to for my editor, and preparing to shoot the book trailer, and I have to get started on Sirenia Digest #44. It really is a bit of a train wreck, is July. I didn't think it would be so bad. I was wrong.
Oh, and I should say, it has been decided that my next novel will be only 140-characters long.
Postscript (2:28 p.m.): Thanks to Franklin Harris for bringing this Readercon write-up ("Some important things/people that I saw/met/learned/heard about at Readercon" at Time.com) to my attention. I quote: "I didn't talk to Caitlín Kiernan, but I watched her swanning around in a tentacled mask and grey lipstick, and I felt awe. It is so important that cons have freakish people at them." I'm going to take this as a compliment. Did I "swan" around? There is an Old English meaning of the word, "to wander about without purpose, but with an air of superiority." So maybe I did swan around. Bjork and I, we swan. Also, the lipstick was green. Regardless, good to be mentioned, and yes, I am a freak, and I'm pleased the author included the fada in my name.
- Location:Pityusa Rupes
- Mood:
busy - Music:Placebo, "Kings of Medicine"
Click here for more.
Profile
- lossrockhart
- Ross E. Lockhart
- Hares Rock Lots
Page Summary
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
pepysdiary : Saturday 14 July 1666 [+0] ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
urban_decay :: adam_is_klingon : Southern Tel Aviv, 13.7.09 [+0] - warrenelliscom : Comics And Time: Dundee, 28 June 2009 [+0]
- warrenelliscom : I Declare This “Rocket Porn Month” [+0]
- mindyklasky : RWA Nationals - LiveJournal Get-Together [+1]
- warrenelliscom : COILHOUSE 3 Nearly Here [+0]
- warrenelliscom : Places I Won’t be Going Back To, #3359 [+3]
- kelly_swails : Better late than never [+0]
- marlowe1 : Burn Out [+0]
- marlowe1 : Remember what I said about mocking vacuous celebritieis? [+0]
- grendel1031 : A quote worth saving [+0]
- booktards :: make_meabird : I Was Told There'd Be Cake [+1]
- nihilistic_kid : Even Time Magazine went to Readercon [+3]
- anachrotech :: andy_w : Pulp Aviatrix [+0]
- matociquala : bad luck streak in dancing school, down on my knees in pain [+5]
- oldcharliebrown : Locus, July 2009, Poll Results [+1]
- warrenelliscom : The Shipping Forecast For Space [+0]
- greygirlbeast : "My weakness laid bare, as people stop and stare." [+21]
- oldcharliebrown : Locus, July 2009, New and Notable [+0]
- oldcharliebrown : Magazine Death Pool: Prime death candidates for second half 2009 [+0]