If it rains today, it’s my fault.

I just washed and waxed the car.

We went to Parkersburg today to visit my brother. It was a nice visit–we talked about politics and it’s good to know that despite the fact that he’s an accountant, he hasn’t turned to the dark side.

I did, however, forget one of my cardinal rules, which is, “Never get into a car with Brian.” I swear, he’s a magnet for trouble.

We went out to lunch, and on the way back, there’s a tremendously loud BANG followed by a strange crackling noise. I turn around and the passenger’s side rear window is completely shattered. Right beside Michael’s head.

We look back and there’s a guy weed eating along the side of the road. He must have kicked up a huge rock and flung it straight at the window.

We were lucky. The rock didn’t go through the window, and Michael wasn’t cut by the glass. Also, the guy with the weed eater was very friendly and said that the woman whose property it was would take care of everything.

Interestingly, we could see and hear the glass continuing to crack for the next five or ten minutes, which was quite interesting, although the sound of glass falling onto the seat as we drove was mildly disturbing.

If you’re interested, I put up two pictures from the day, including one of the car.

The Shadow Roads ‘The Swan’s War Book III’ (2004) Sean Russell

Finally! The book was in the mailbox when we got home, and I devoured it last night.

Good. Very good!

Read More about The Shadow Roads

If you’re curious as to why I haven’t been writing as much, it’s because I’ve been reading. A lot.

Tales of Mithgar (1994) Dennis McKiernan

Still looking for books to tide me over, I turned to another favorite, Dennis McKiernan. I picked up Tales of Mithgar because it’s a collection of short stories, and I love short stories.

Read More about Tales of Mithgar

For his post on the danger of sticks.

The Innocence Project is teaming up with WVU’s Forensic Department.

The WVU project is the first such effort for West Virginia prisoners and their families, and will be the first in the country to combine a university’s law school and forensic science program, its organizers say.

That’s really a great thing for WVU to be involved in, and I’m glad to see it. I wonder how much of this came from Barry Scheck’s visit to WVU in 2004.

Starship Dimensions. The navigation on this site, at least using Mozilla, is unfathomable.

More Conservative Idiocy

Marx, Hitler, Mao, Kinsy, Dewey.

And John Stuart Mill gets an honorable mention!

I neglected to mention that I saw the aftermath of this mornings excitement at HSC. Somehow a deer managed to break into the Health Sciences Center this morning. When Michael dropped me off at 8, the security guard warned of “a deer in the mammogram center.” When we pulled up to the building there were crowds lining the sidewalk in front of the green space between the Pavilion entrance and Family Medicine. When I got out of the car I noticed the four security guards standing in the green space, and then I noticed the broken window they were all staring at.

I considered stopping to see if I could see anything else, but decided there were enough people standing around already, and so settled for walking slowly into the building. As I went into the Pailion entrance, I could see two broken windows in the Breast Care Center–and by broken I don’t mean cracked or shattered, but big gaping holes that looked like something deer sized had gone through the pane. (Mind you, these are wall-sized panes of thick glass that I can’t imagine something going through once, no less three times.)

And then I was down the hallway and walking past the crowds of people huddled in small groups discussing what they’d just heard.

When Tom, the maintenance man who checks his e-mail in the lab, came in, he had some more details: somehow the deer had gotten up by the building, and had gotten startled or frightened and started going through windows. The deer was injured so badly it had to be put down, which, considering the broken windows, was not a surprise. When Michael came up for lunch the security guard said 5 windows were broken, but we could only find three boarded up and not a shard of glass to be seen. (Pretty quick they were I must say.)

So I missed everything, which doesn’t make for good story telling, but the last thing the security guards needed was one more person standing around in danger of getting hurt. Sensibility over excitement.

The TV crew wasn’t there until 5–I saw them standing in the green space, filming the boaded up windows. Hardly seemed worth the trip.

The only other thing was that when Kim and I walk at lunch, we walk along the outside of the building. As we were walking past the Cancer Center between HSC and Ruby, I suddenly noticed that the ground was covered in reddish dots. Lots of them. As if a creature bleeding from multiple cuts had come that way. The trail stopped suddenly, and not in a large smear, but as if the deer had gotten confused by the corner and run back the way it had come.

I don’t know if it was blood on the ground, and I don’t know if the deer even made it down to the cancer center, but it seeing those drops–covering the sidewalk for a third the length of the building–that somehow made the whole thing seem even more real than the broken windows. And somehow made it all the more depressing. Imagining how a wounded and frightened animal came careening down the hard and unfamiliar walk, to be even more confused by strange walls blocking its path, surrounded by strange creatures blocking its way wherever it went. What a terrible way for any creature to die.

Swordspoint (1987) Ellen Kushner

While waiting for the last book in Sean Russell’s ‘The Swan’s War’ to arrive, I decided to indluge in a book I’ve read fairly recently and loved.

This book is just as gorgeous as I remember. The writing is absolutely lovely, drawing my into the story from the first sentence. The story is excellent, but it’s the writing that I love so much.

And as a bonus, there are additional short stories in the back of the book, so not only do you get to read just a little bit more, the book gets to surprise you with its ending, as you don’t realize it’s something. (Which is one reason why I like books with previews in the back. Not because I read the previews–I don’t–but because they allow the end of the book to sneak up on me, and there’s something satisfying about that.

Now I just have to find something else to read while I’m waiting for ‘The Shadow Roads’

Read my First Review of Swordspoint

Dear Brother:

Happy Birthday to YOU!

Happy Birthday to YOU!

Happy Biiirthday Dear Briiiiiiaaaaan!

Happy Birthday to you!

And…

Happy Birthday to Gina!

Today is Memorial Day.

This is the day we are to remember those who fought for our country. This is the day we remember those who fought for our freedom and for justice. This is the day we remember those who gave their lives to so that we might now have:

freedom of speech….
freedom of religion….
freedom of association….
freedom of the press….
the right to keep and bear arms….
the right to keep the military out of our homes….
the right to be secure from illegal search and seizure….
the right to a trial by jury….

Main Entry: freedom
Pronunciation: ‘frE-d&m
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being free: as
a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : INDEPENDENCE
c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous (freedom from care)

The absence of coercion. Liberation from slavery or restraint. The state of being released from something onerous.

Memorial Day
The history of Memorial Day
US Census site for memorial day
Remember
The Constitution and other historical US documents

The latest flower pr0n.

Although my other day lilies are still budding, my lemon lilies are blooming. If only they bloomed more than once over the summer.

ADDENDUM the First: Check out Tom’s latest Flower Pr0n. The peony is especially pretty.

The Science of Consistency: On fictional universes and the fans who rationalize them.

The fictional universes depicted in movies like the Star Wars or Star Trek series tend to get very complex (for beginners: the former features Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the latter Captain Kirk, the Enterprise, and a loyal crew made up of people like engineer Scotty; if you get them mixed up, you are worthless). That complexity means that—inevitably—the occasional “continuity error” occurs. In normal movie parlance, a continuity error means one of those embarrassing moments when, say, the bandage on an actor moves from the right hand to the left hand between scenes due to a mistake by the makeup department. For science fiction fans, though, continuity refers to the overall logical and historical coherence of our beloved fictional universes.

Enjoy…