Zombie Lapdance

so a random google alert sent me to this site where a geek who apparently does nothing but insult things makes fun of a series of death star cakes.

as this:


and this

attests, there’s apparently an entire cultural movement behind death star cakes.

this cake:

which gaygamer.net (worth the link just for the gay gamer of the week feature) reports was made with red velvet cake to "represent the blood of the independent contractors who died." this cake also seems to have ignited a stupid boingboing controversy.

is it really such a delicious-seeming war machine?

It’s been taking me awhile, but I’m working my way down the list of Bollywood flicks I want to see. I had high hopes for this last one, and oddly enough they weren’t crushed.

I saw this trailer for Chak De within moments of walking into my very first big-screen Bollywood experience. If anything, it had as profound an impact on me as the movie that followed. In the long minutes of sitting in the dark, as girl hockey players yelled and shook their sticks, I knew that I was a fan of Shahrukh Khan and that I always would be.

A sports epic about an Indian field hockey team is not the sort of thing that I thought I would enjoy, let alone adore. There are no musical numbers (whatever the trailer night lead you to believe). There is no glitz and most of the actors are unknowns.

But that’s not to say this is a simple sports movie, the sort where a gruff but loveable coach teaches his ragtag group of misfits how to come together and become a team.

I mean, that is what the movie’s about, but serious issues are grappled on that hockey field, and then body-checked mercilessly. The girls themselves, as members of the all-India team, represent a nation of profound cultural and political differences, and at first it looks like they can’t unite any more than the disparate Indian states.

The roles of women in society come up, and then are bashed over the head with a folding chair on the patio of a McDonald’s during an old-school hockey brawl.

And Shahrukh Khan plays the role of coach perfectly. He embodies every sports coach I’ve ever met, complete with whistle on a string and stringy forearms. He’s a disgraced hockey player who blew the final shot of the India/Pakistan game, and only the performance of his team of girls will prove his love for his country.

There’s some religious overtones to his persecution (it’s not just the great love that Indians have for field hockey that enrages the crowds). And when you see this Muslim character, played by a Muslim actor, growing teary-eyed at the sight of his nation’s flag, you can only admire the emotional load this movie carries.

Will there ever be an American movie with a Muslim protagonist played by a Muslim actor crying at the sight of the Stars and Stripes?

And will he play hockey?

I’ve mentioned the awesomeness that is the Drabblecast before on this blog. Well, I harassed Norm Sherman and his drabblecasters until they broke down and read one of my stories on their podcast.

The story that Norm Sherman accepted is called "Eggs." It’s a story about an apartment filled with thousands of tiny, parasitic worm eggs that get closer and closer to falling into someone’s mouth.

I had given up on trying to get this one published, even though impartial witnesses frequently referred to it as the most persistently disturbing story I’ve written. I put "Eggs" on the ‘dead’ column of my submission spreadsheet, and I even commissioned my friend Ms. Kim Hill to make an illustration so I could vanity publish the story.

After you listen to the story that image will totally make sense.

I think that "Eggs" is less a science fiction story than it is a chronicle of a personal freakout. Before on this blog I’ve mentioned my checkered history with leeches, but I haven’t yet told the story of how back in 2003, when I was just beginning to discover the tools of writing, I went to clean out the litter box and I discovered a pile of cat turds filled with flecks of white rice. Only the rice was pointing and waving around like spaghetti.

So I freaked out. I spent two weeks in the library researching parasitic worms, which was absolutely the worst way to find out about the common cat tapeworm and the chances of human contamination (basically you have to eat a flea that grew up eating infected poop). The books at the library were either all medical textbooks showing the worst case photos of exotic parasite infections (there’s a roundworm that grows to six feet long and lives in the cavity where your left kidney used to be) or they were dire warnings written by people having a similar worm freakout (apparently you should not eat any fresh vegetables, especially foreign ones).

After I hit a saturation point of worm knowledge, I channeled my freakout into a series of three stories about parasites. "Eggs" is just the first and the most personal.

And for the folks on the Drabblecast message boards, I assure you, Gloria got what was coming to her.

It’s pretty hard to figure out what a sci-fi market is looking for when you read through their guidelines. You take a mag that publishes goony sword and sorcery and one that only publishes stories where orbital mechanics are the center of the plot, and both will ask for "well-crafted" or "character-driven" pieces. They can’t say they don’t want either, not if they want any sort of cred when they hang out in the secret editor club and swap stories about people we’ve rejected.

The other part of a guideline that’s not very informative is the pet-peeve section. Most markets have this, and I’m convinced that they represent common slushpile themes at the time the editors wrote up the guidelines. Strange Horizons takes the pet-peeve section and expands it into a full out vendetta.

As the SPACE SQUID slushpile reader I definitely come across recurring themes. It’s probably not fair to hold the author’s responsible for the pack they run with, after all, they have no idea what’s sharing the slushpile with them, but I thought I would share with you some plots that have popped up multiple times.

-Aliens abduct someone, usually a total redneck, and then there’s a twist. The twist usually involves either sodomy or cannibalism.

-Aliens invade and then there’s a twist. Usually this is riffing off "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Either the aliens or the humans behave in a very silly manner. Cannibalism might be involved.

-The aliens have already conquered the world and then there’s a twist, sometimes involving cannibalism.

Now, there are some mighty fine stories out there involving aliens, cannibalism, and sometimes sodomy, but you have to realize that those stories are not just standing on their own merits, they’re competing against all the other stories out there that I’ve already rejected.

On the whole though, I think SPACE SQUID is fortunate in it’s surprisingly high-quality slush. We’ve become what we’ve always intended to become, a gutter that collects all the weird un-definable category-violating stories that much better markets have rejected. The problem with alien-cannibalism stories is they’re very definable, so if they make it all the way down the market slope to SPACE SQUID, then there’s probably a reason for that rejection.

Last night I competed in the Austin Grilled Cheese Invitational. And I won third place in the dessert sandwich category. The idea for the "tiramisu" grilledcheese came to me late at night, the night before the contest when I should have been in bed. Instead, I was experimenting with making a creamcheese filling flavored with scotch, and trying to perfect a technique to adhere molten brown sugar to the outside of ladyfinger pastry. The proof of my success is in the results. I am a winner.

I found out about the contest from my friend Ms.Hill, who emailed me a tip. I registered at the last minute, mainly because I got this incredible idea for a sandwich that would incorporate spicy mango pickle, one of the most eye-opening tastes in the world. But then, in a moment of panic, I entered all three categories:
-For the "Missionary" or plain grilled cheese category I made the "McBoring", a blend of sharp cheddar and fresh mozzarella between two slices of sourdough bread, and fried in olive oil (which I believe creates a crisper bread than slathering the sandwich in butter). The fresh mozzarella doesn’t melt per say, but does create a gooey wad of cheese with the stretchy characteristics of bubblegum, only hotter and greasier.
-For the "Kama Sutra" category I entered the sandwich with a tangy layer of spicy mango pickle, smothered in a blend of fresh mozzarella and queso fresco, and a few yellow pepper slivers to give it a crispy bite.
-The dessert or "Honey Pot" category was the winning "tiramisu" sandwich. I’ve shown you the trophy, right?

What I think I like best about the trophy are the googley-eyed cats being ridden by godzilla.

Anyhoo, the GF and I arrived at the competition, and we were barely out of the car when I caught sight of a couple people wearing assless chaps. "Ah," I thought, a clarity of understanding snapping into place. "This is a burner event." (It turned out that I was only mostly right, this was an event heavily supported if not organized by the "Flipside" crowd, a smaller Texas version of Burning Man.)

Note the MC who is wearing typically silly burner attire:

The GF and I set up at our grilling station, drawing stares as the only people who seemed to have assembled their sandwiches ahead of time.

The organizers were actually organized. Before the event, they had stapled ballots to paper plates, which allowed the public to vote on their grilledcheese sandwich samples.

They also made up these nifty paper hats with the Grilled Cheese Invitational logo on them.

The other contestants set up,

including these folks who all showed up with matching clothes and matching goggles:

Somehow, a significant amount of the general public thinks that grilling sandwiches is a spectator sport:

As the night progressed, the line for judging samples grew huge, stretching out into the parking lot.

Pictured here are Josh and Chris, who made a dessert sandwich from fried angelfod cake. Inside, they had a blueberry pie filling, banana slices, and a cheese goop made from blended mascarpone and cream cheese. It is only by the capriciousness of the judging public that my "tiramisu" scored higher.

Of course if it hadn’t, then I wouldn’t be a winner.

I think having podcasts in my life is making me a bit over-stimulated. At work I’ve become a sort of defacto entertainment director. I hook up the super-cheap media player to the super-cheap boombox in the corner of the bakery, and for the next seven hours or so it’s just non-stop background entertainment. In the course of the shift we can chew through about a quarter of the player’s memory capacity. When I punch out, I have to stand staring into space in complete silence until I can wrap my mind around my own brain again.

So in order to keep up with this entertainment demand I’ve been scrounging for new podcasts. I appropriated several of the links that Joe offered up, and used them as a springboard for new sources.

UC Berkeley Astronomy Courses — It’s apparently not uncommon for University’s to post lectures from intro-level courses online. The main disadvantage of this course is that I’ve already taken the material back when I was in college, but it’s a not-too-bad review for all that.

SETI presents Are We Alone?— Dude, this totally rocks. I’ve only listened to two of their podcasts so far, but one covered the end of the world and the other covered the singularity. The hosts conduct interesting interviews with experts in the field, and link the interviews with silly skits. Looking down the list of their podcasts, it’s pretty much all cutting-edge and dramatic subjects.

Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know? — This is a radio program produced by Wisconsin Public Radio. It’s sort of like a less-funny "Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me" with the regionalism of "A Prairie Home Companion." There’s a separate podcast that only has Michael Feldman’s opening monologue, a recitation of fake news headlines that has the awesome unfunnyness of a Jay Leno monologue. This podcast stream has bits of the show proper, an audience quiz where the host interviews people in the audience and insults their reasons for wanting to compete in the quiz. It’s really the strongest part of the show. For three years I lived within two-hundred feet of where they broadcast this free radio program, yet I never bothered to attend a show, so that kinda illustrates my hometown apathy toward "Whad’Ya Know?" Or as my co-worker Johnny Motard put it: "He seems like a nice-enough guy. It’s good for a sympathy listen."

NPR’s Science Friday — I have an Ira Flatow mask that I pull out whenever I need a costume on short notice. People in Austin know this show as the perfect example of what we could be listening to if that bastard John Aielli weren’t hogging up the bandwidth with all his hot air.

To the Best of Our Knowledge — Probably the best thing available from Wisconsin Public Radio other than their stellar state politics reporting. This is a weekly program that interviews people who have written books about the subjects of their books. Sometimes it gets a little crackpot, but most of the time the subjects are pretty interesting.

Star Trek: Lost Frontier — This audio drama has no business being as awesome as it is. It is probably far better than any of the actual series or movies with the obvious exception of the Wrath of Khan. It’s performed by Darker Projects, the same folks who did the Dr. Who series I mentioned earlier. This has translated to audio far better. Which is only to be expected, since as you will recall if you think about it, nearly all the Star Trek series and movies (with the exception of Khan) were all about people explaining things to each other ("Sir! We’ve been hit!" "How bad is it?" "It’s 30% bad!"). This series takes place in a near-future far-future where the entire federation has been fragmented by plague and civil war. The remaining vestiges of Star Fleet put together a new Enterprise to put everything back together.

The Byron Chronicles — Also done by Darker Projects, this audio drama is about an immortal in Portland who fights vampires and zombies. Sort of an "Angel" meets "Dr.Who" meets "Sandman." The main character is the strength of the series, responding to most every situation with a deliciously droll disdain.

Best of Natural History Radio — A BBC podcast that’s currently only playing a program that only features migrating animals. You have no idea how dull this is. I keep expecting the calm British correspondent to start narrating something far more interesting than what they’re actually mumbling on about: "The osprey is flying overhead right now, I can see its white underbelly. Quite the majestic bird. Now it’s diving. It seems to have attached itself to my face. Oh, my. It’s remarkably painful the way it’s digging its beak into my eyeball. It has it’s talons locked now. It’s actually picking my eyeball out of my face. This is extremely remarkable behavior for osprey, which we normally think of as fish-eaters."

Best of Friday Night Comedy — The BBC "comedy" podcast directory has a number of feeds that describe themselves as comedy or as hosted by standup comedians. The vast majority of these are clones of those American "morning zoo" style radio programs. You know, the ones where two obnoxious dumb-asses yell a series of unfunny vulgarities. The British seem to have the same institution, only they have a different version for each of their major incomprehensible accents. Now, the Friday Night Comedy podcast is actually funny. Two weeks ago they had a quiz show with droll Brits being genuinely droll. Now they’re featuring the "Now Show", a topical news sketch program with Goon Show humor sensibilities, and it’s every bit as entertaining as it sounds.

The Archers — In a throwback to the golden age of radio, the BBC still has two daily radio soap operas. This one is about a Brit family with a farm. At the moment there’s tension about who gets the farm when the dad dies, tension that has resulted in the premature birth of a grandaughter.

Silver Street — is the more interesting of the two soap operas. It’ advertised as an urban and multi-cultural soap, which is to say that most of the characters are foreigners (that’s why the soap airs on the BBC Asian network). It’s an interesting premise to have an ethnically diverse cast on a radio program, because you can’t tell that they are ethnically diverse until they say things like "So I was wondering if, you know, if before we got married, if you would like to see me without, you know, my headscarf?"

Science with Dr. Karl — A BBC program where people call up and ask questions of Dr. Karl, a man who apparently knows everything.

Love Bollywood — If this interview/gossip show were about Hollywood I would hate it. But it isn’t.

News from Lake Wobegan — I grew up on A Prairie Home Companion, and even as a small child I thought, "If only there were some way to only listen to the monologue so I wouldn’t have to suffer through this crappy baby-boomer music." Well there is a way to do that now. I’ve found that listening to four of these monologues back-to-back elicits a nearly debilitating feeling of sentimentality. I spent the first four years of my life in Minnesota and I have no real memory of them, but when I listen to Garrison Keillor, it brings me back.

Pretty soon I will have worked through all the back-casts of Escapepod and the like. My podcast downloader ("Juice" it’s called) promises to erase old podcasts if so instructed, so I have this plan of listening only to new and topical podcasts. Not sure if I’ll ever get to the point of having no backlog, but it would be neat to have my podcast entertainment totally automated.

I just heard from Simon Cooper that a story of his that went across the Space Squid desk has recently been published in "Postcards from Uranus." It’s called "Little Marvin’s Private Dancer." He says that some of the comments we sent helped with a successful rewrite, although officially Space Squid recommends that nobody ever take our advice, mainly for medical reasons.

I have to say "Little Marvin’s" is an awesome story, it’s got drugs and sex and Cronenbergian biology. And the best thing about it, the conceit doesn’t violate the principle of conservation of matter and energy. I hate it when stories do that, it’s just stupid.

as a legacy of a previous revSF fiction editor, the fiction guidelines says that we accept hypertext fiction. to my knowledge, despite the complex description of how to submit such a thing, no one has actually done so. and i have no idea how we would actually deal with it if they did.

a little while ago, one of my online chess buddies handed me a link to some hypertext fiction that he had done. you should have your sound on, like MYST, it’s a non-linear sequence of images and sounds. except you have to read stuff.

just a couple hours after mr.myers posts this link on the revSF list about windblown dutch sculptures, a friend sends me video footage of a quadruped robot that walks on ice better than most texans, you’d think the thing was born in minneapolis.

I’ve been trying to catch up on all the good podcasts, which means listening to the nearly 150 short stories and whatnot on Escapepod. Now what should I find as I get toward the end of the queue, not one, but two RevolutionSF fiction stories posted on Escapepod!

This is great, I thought We have both "Pressure" by Jeff Carlson and "Edward Bear’s Long Walk" by Ken Scholes. I thought the Escapepod version of "Edward Bear" was probably the better way to experience that story, just because it’s told from the point of view of a simplistic narrator and that goes over better verbally than as the written word. The Escapepod version of "Pressure" I didn’t feel converted as well, since there’s a long text-messaging segment and a good deal of technical explanation.

But then the stories ended and I realized that not once did Stephen Eley, the editor of Escapepod.org, mention RevolutionSF.com! Sure, they were reprints by the time we got them too, but considering that the stories appeared in successive episodes on escapepod.org, I have to say that I was more than a little hurt by Stephen Eley’s oversight.

Just a sec, I have to wipe away some bitter tears.

Okay, I’m back. So, I would like everyone on this site to join me in my self-righteous moral outrage and condemn Stephen Eley and the lax publishing-history-posting policy of escapepod.org.

Don’t stop listening to them or anything, they still rock, just be all huffy.