by wjw on December 4, 2013
. . . or. if you prefer, orchids.
This picture was taken in the National Orchid Garden in Singapore, where hundreds if not thousands of unique orchid varieties are on display. Some are named after politicians or celebrities who visited the gardens. (The one named after Margaret Thatcher looked quite spiky. I suspect political commentary on the part of the hybridizer, or whatever it is you call people who invent new orchids.)
This is one of the photos visible in our new calendar for 2014, which costs a mere $18.99 and featured pictures of Singapore, Yorkshire, Jacksonville, Sulawesi, and other locations visited over the last twelvemonth.
I don’t make any money on these calendars, I just create them for the amusement of my friends, and of myself.
And you’ll need a calendar, so you might as well buy this one. I’ve seen it, and it’s pretty, and it features not only US holidays, but those of our friends in Canada, Mexico, and Great Britain.
Check it out.
by wjw on December 1, 2013
It’s the First of December! Which means that applications are now being accepted for Taos Toolbox, the master class for new writers of fantasy and science fiction!
I have a feeling there may be a flood of early applications, so get yours in soon!
by wjw on November 28, 2013
We’ve got a lot to celebrate this week: Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, festivals of light, family, and food. So SpongeBob and I wish you the best of the season!
SpongeBob, I hear you ask?
You see, I was unaware of SpongeBob’s significance to the holiday season until I went to Singapore, which was already decked out for the holidays in the middle of November. There was Santa in his sleigh, there was snow, there were reindeer. To my Western eyes this seemed incongruous in the blast-furnace equatorial heat, but the Singaporeans, many of whom have never seen actual snow in their lives, don’t seem to notice any incongruity.
But wheresoever there was Santa, was there also SpongeBob.
Here you see the display at the Changi airport (motto: “We named our airport after an infamous concentration camp!”), with Santa’s log cabin and its snowy eaves, and behind it SpongeBob waving from his, um . . . giant underwater pineapple? I can’t really tell.
The display features sleigh rides, a bouncy castle (“Krusty Krab Pit”), topiary in the form of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and other holiday delights.
Let us therefore be merry! And light our candles! And eat vast quantities! And maybe, remembering SpongeBob waving from his underwater lair, have a little pineapple.
by wjw on November 24, 2013
Today was a miserable cold day, so I decided to spend it indoors, catching up on the movies I missed while I was away. So I saw THOR: THE DARK WORLD, which was pretty good as Thor movies go— lots of action, twisty story, some nice comic turns, and each actor had a scene to call his own. But after a while, I began to sense a problem in Malekith’s cunning plan to wipe out all life in the Nine Universes. No one else, so far as I know, has noticed this little flaw.
I illustrate thus:
Let’s assume, for the moment, that Malekith has succeeded in his plot. Thor, Odin, and the Asgardians have been wiped out, and all life on the Nine Worlds has been extinguished, with the exception of Malekith and his Swart Elves. Let’s eavesdrop on this clutch of villains at the moment of their victory.
SWART ELF #1: Thor, Odin, and the Asgardians have been wiped out!
SWART ELF #2: All life on the Nine Worlds has been extinguished!
MALEKITH: Except for us, my children! We alone survive to repopulate our devastated world!
SWART ELF #1: Glory to you, my peerless leader!
SWART ELF #2: Let’s travel to Swartalfenheim and celebrate!
SWART ELF #1: Roll out some barrels of wine, invite some chicks . . .
SWART ELF #2: Yeah, let’s get this repopulation business started!
SWART ELF #1: Man, it’s been five thousand years since I’ve seen an elf maiden!
SWART ELF #2: They won’t be maidens for long once we get ahold of them. Ha hahahaha!
SWART ELF #1: AHAHAHAHA! BRING OUT THE GIRLS!
SWART ELF #2: Yea! O glorious Lord Malekith, reward us for our victory by bringing forth the elf maids!
MALEKITH: [silence]
SWART ELF ARMY: [chanting] ELF MAIDS! ELF MAIDS! ELF MAIDS!
The chanting gradually dies away.
SWART ELF #1: My lord?
SWART ELF #2: There are elf maids, right? I mean, we did bring some with us?
MALEKITH: Well . . . guys . . .
SWART ELF #2: I mean, we’re supposed to repopulate Swartalfenheim, right? Surely some girls were in the plan somewhere?
MALEKITH: Well, you know, the plan was really complex. The Aether, the Aesir, the Conjunction . . . I got a little distracted . . . some details slipped my mind.
SWART ELF #2: Details!!!
SWART ELF #1: Are you telling me that you devised a five thousand-year plan to wipe out all life and repopulate the Nine Worlds with Swart Elves and you forgot that we’d need FEMALES?
MALEKITH: Well, y’know, it was my personal ship . . . I just took my drinking buddies.
SWART ELF #2: No girlsI No girls EVER???
MALEKITH: I’m sorry, guys. You don’t know how embarrassed I am . . .
We FADE on a scene of growing chaos and violence.
***
So yeah, they forgot to include girl elves in the story. You can tell a bunch of boy-fans wrote this movie, right?
by wjw on November 23, 2013
I’m the only person who saw this nudibranch, and no one was able to identify it from the photo. I couldn’t find it in any of the reference books, so maybe I discovered a new gastropod! Or not. I’m good either way, but if the former, I think nudibranchia hardwired would make a good name.
This is larger than life size: the actual heterobranch was about half this size.
Today is the first day since my return that I’ve felt normal, or at least as normal as I’ll ever cop to feeling. I’ve accomplished a fair amount: filling out French tax forms; contacting my late agent’s office; resolved a weird problem where I wasn’t getting someone’s email, and it wasn’t getting stuck in the spam filter (because paging through over 2000 spam on a non-searchable file is such good fun!); updating my ebook page to reflect the publication of The Rift and the new editions of Implied Spaces and The Green Leopard Plague, and editing and improving the mass of photos I took while in the Eastern Hemisphere.
It also occurs to me to be thankful for the number of bullets I dodged while I was away. Literal bullets in the case of the LAX shooting, which I missed by a day. Then I missed the worst typhoon ever, and on the day I flew out I missed the two volcanoes that blew in Sumatra and shut down air traffic. So I was lucky for a change.
Now if only I could get the Tax and Revenue Department off my neck . . .
