The Two Days

December 21 & 22

Saturday

11:30 a.m.

Strange days. Filled with missed connections and incorrect expectations. Dinners canceled due to stolen debit cards. Briefly thinking I'd discovered my 3rd-grade spelling bee nemesis online -- only to find out, no, this woman beat a different Tim Pratt in the final round of a 3rd-grade-spelling bee, in Missouri instead of North Carolina. It seems we Tim Pratts are destined to come in 2nd at 3rd-grade spelling bees. Going shopping on Telegraph Ave. last night (4 shopping days until Xmas!) and finding everything mostly deserted, realizing then that all the students are gone for the holidays; thus, my shopping was incredibly quick and efficient. It took me longer to walk from BART to Telegraph than it took me to finish all my shopping. Strange. And then I wrapped most of Heather's presents in deceptive boxes, to fool her. She opened one of the presents last night (at my insistence; I love giving gifts!) -- The Fantasy Writer's Assistant, Jeffrey Ford's story collection. I inscribed it: For Heather, a book of luminous, enigmatic stories, not unlike those she writes herself.

Anyway. Onward. Or backward. I received an envelope overflowing with copies of Star*Line 25.5, the first issue edited by me, only 3 months late (but 25.6 is done and should mail sometime next week, and we should be back on schedule with 26.1). It looks good. Good good good. I have to mail contributor copies, I think, though someone else will mail the checks. I discovered that the last line of a poem by Charlee Jacob got dropped -- I missed it in my proofreading. Sad. I have to run my first correction in the January issue. So it goes. I'll proof her poems with extra care in the future, that's certain.

Soon Heather and I will leave to see a matinee of the new Lord of the Rings movie. The new überplex in Emeryville is showing it every hour, on the hour, so we're going to brave the traffic to catch the noon show, and be back this afternoon in time to buy stamps and do some other small and necessary things...

Last night Heather met me at Au Coquelet after I finished my shopping, the first time I'd been to that beloved café in weeks, it seems. I had an Au Coquelet burger -- mmm. And the fries were especially divine. And the coffee was perfect. I read the new issue of The Third Alternative. Gods, it doesn't get much better than that, I must tell you.

Sunday

11:30 a.m.

Another Saturday gone away, another Sunday well begun...

We went to Bay Street in Emeryville yesterday, the new open-air mall that looks strangely like the main street of Yuppietown. Parking was horrid, and it wasn't even all that crowded. What with the difficulties of parking (it took us longer to find a spot in the garage than it did for us to drive there from home) we didn't make the noon movie, so we had to wander around for 45 minutes, after buying tickets from the incredibly surly attendants (the theater's been open for 3 days! What do they have to be surly about already?). Went to the Apple store, which has many lovely computers, but the store design is very much out of the Gernsback continuum -- it's all white and translucent and curved, like a 1970s vision of the year 2000. We also went to Pottery Barn (AKA "Seat of the Homogenous Hegemony"), where we bought some glasses, as many of ours have been broken lately.

There are gorgeous views of the Bay and the bridge from the parking garage, which seems to me a terrible waste.

We went to see the movie, The Two Towers, and it was gorgeous, of course, and the special effects were marvelous, the monsters monstrous, the wargs wargsome, the sets stunning. The story, of course, suffers from all the inevitable flaws that come from being based on Tolkien's trilogy (prone to heavy-handed moralizing, overly earnest, depressingly simplistic good/evil dichotomy), and Elijah Wood isn't really much of an actor, certainly not up to conveying the rather subtle nuances his role requires (though Sean Astin keeps surprising me; he's pretty good). At least Tolkien's lousy, rambling prose doesn't figure into the movies; that alone makes the films far better than the books (come on, even those of you who love the books, have read them a million times -- don't you skip over vast swathes of wordage, at this point, to get to the good parts? Rest assured, I believe there are good parts, many of them! They're just buried in a lot of dross). More screen time for Gollum is a good thing, especially since he's nearly the only character who isn't absolutely good or absolutely evil. I always enjoy villains more than heroes in literature, but I just don't care about any of Tolkien's bad guys -- they're all so boring! But anyway, it was very enjoyable, and beautiful, a feast for the eyes. And the ents looked as cool as you'd hope.

So then we crept out of the garage, which was even more crowded by then, and we wound up getting home 5 hours after we left. Too much wasted time -- would've been much quicker to BART to Berkeley to see the movie. So I doubt I'll be going to Bay St. again soon, despite the presence of a California Pizza Kitchen and some really nice views from the food court...

Back home yesterday I got some work done, answered a bunch of snail-mail Star*Line submissions, and gathered addresses for contributors so that they can get paid. Cleaned my room a little, though mostly I just shoved stuff to the edges to make more room in the middle. Heather and I had a sushi date with a friend for Sunday, but it got canceled, so we decided to get sushi ourselves last night. Went to Drunken Fish and ate until our tummies groaned in contentment. Mmm, sushi. Then back home, where I read a bit of Abarat (not bad, as good as The Thief of Always, though much less dark, at least in the first quarter). We watched a German movie, Viktor Vogel: Commercial Man (which was inexplicably and inelegantly re-titled Advertising Rules! in America (it's the ludicrous exclamation point that really irks me)), and it was pretty good, though there were some teeth-gnashingly annoying moments when the characters just behaved stupidly. I thought the ending was understated and courageous (not unlike -- if you'll forgive me a vast cross-medium stretch -- the ending of Kelly Link's "Flying Lessons", where you don't actually see how things ultimately turn out, but have a good idea of how they will), though on the DVD there was an "alternate ending" that was much more conventional. Glad they chose the less sappy ending...

I think that's about it. Saturday was a lazy day, filled with staring at screens. As opposed to my busy days, which are filled with... staring at screens. Hmm.

Guess I won't post this yet, in case something of moment happens that I want to post about...

Oh, yeah. My story, "Little Gods". Probably the best thing I published this year. So maybe if you haven't read it, you could go read it! And if you're a SFWA member, and you think it's worthy, maybe give it a Nebula recommendation?

And that's the closest I can bear to come to "campaigning," I think...

A little PSA: Other magazine is looking for submissions. Details are here: www.othermag.org/contribute.html.

Nope, nothing of great importance to say, here at almost-bedtime. I wrote about 700 words of the collab with Mike and sent it back to him. Walked up to Piedmont with Heather, wandered in the comic shop, got a fruit smoothie, bought a couple of cheap used books. Pretty pleasant day. Now, some reading, and then bed.

Words written since February 1, 2002: 194,300

Words written since last entry:
700

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