Life at No. 10

Still trying to sort out the practical matters: you know how much patience I have for that (>_<) but my M-Bag has arrived with its wealth of goodies. No fun waiting around for the postman to arrive when there's no internet at home! I have some brief video from Newgrange (before the batteries ran out >_<) but I have to splice it together which I should have been doing with all that free time but I only remembered it now. More anon!

The Little Video of Calm

In the midst of the mad swirl of our lives, we all need a little moment of calm. Lacking The Little Book of Calm, I try to conjure up soothing images of relaxing situations. Because I love mudlarking along the Thames, I took this video to remind me of those moments of calm.





Of course sometimes I try to relieve stress by simply doing very silly things. Recently YouTube introduced new programs where you can make animation of whatever you like. Yes, if this sounds rather like the video I made for the Women's League of Ale Drinkers, well, it is very much like that. In an idle moment, I decided to animate the lyrics to The Fall's "Dice Man" [based on the cult novel and NOT that crap 'comedian'] and it looks like this:





Silly: but sometimes that's just what you need, right? Well, sure -- some people write poetry -- but I seem to only be able to write asinine poetry. In the meanwhile, I find there is so little time, so much to do.

This is Spring?

It's snowing here. First full day of spring?! Ay yi yi. Looks like Persephone is still struggling to leave the underworld, eh? I had some deadlines to meet and a few places to be over the weekend; consequently I have not yet managed to wrangle my photos online, so enjoy this video that visits the Borghese Gallery and gives you a close up of Caravaggio's and Bellini's works.



Did I remember to mention my new page at SoundCloud? A new place for readings and podcasts.

Bella Roma: the video!

Seeking Crafty Women

Hey, Vicky tells me we're getting some great submissions for the inaugural issue of the Journal for the Women's League of Ale Drinkers, but we haven't got much in the way of crafty things. There's still plenty of room for lovely photos of your crafty projects: knitting, crocheting, needlepoint, sculpture, food -- the possibilities are endless!

The photo from Cake Wrecks is just to spur you on!

Here's the skinny and the general call once more: do please consider sharing your work with the world!

"Passion. Vision. Daring. Humour. Any alone will be intriguing--but to have them all is to be sublime."

That is the mandate of the new journal for the Women's League of Ale Drinkers, for which I am editor. We seek only work that meets these criteria, the output of creative women who may feel that their vision and passion has been overlooked elsewhere, that their daring has brought only disapproving stares, that their humour has met with stony silence. We delight in work that crosses traditional genres. We do not ask for your credentials, awards or publications. We ask for your heartfelt work.

The inaugural issue will be out for Halloween. The full colour PDF format will be a showcase of talented women.

DEADLINE
September 21, 2010

FORMAT

Writing: fiction, drama, humour or non-fiction up to 5k; poems up to 100 lines total; submit as RTFs (or paste into an email).

Images: scans of paintings, drawings, multimedia, etc. or photos of handicrafts, sculptures, etc. or original digital designs in JPGs (resolution of 300dpi).

Music, Sound and Video: via links to your site or host site (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

And if we select your work for WLoAD, we ask that you wear the badge proudly -- link to our site and your fellow artists, promote the journal assiduously and celebrate this forum (i.e. comment on the issue and your colleagues).

Submissions should be sent to VICTORIASQUID@GMAIL.COM

Be sure to include links to your website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc., in the email with your submission. Thank you!

Unikirja Book Trailer

Here's my new video, featuring the beautiful music of Ulla Suokko, whom I'll be celebrating this week over at The Women's League of Ale Drinkers, part of the month long festival of creative women. I'm trying to focus the rhetoric of these trailers on opening up the sometimes obscure titles of my books to give a sense of the flavor of the stories. You can tell me whether I'm succeeding.

I've kind of had the feeling lately of needing a dump truck to unload my head, so it's been good to work on a few things that use a different part of my brain. Some days just need to be without words.

Imagining the Worst

Necon is: Mini-Golf

I got my best ever score: 43! It was only one point off the winning score, although there were I think four people who all got 42, so I probably won't win a medal. But we sure had some fun! Phil and Anya were entertaining, as always.










Tonight, the traditional game show and the traditional talent show have been mashed together. No one's quite sure what will happen. Afterward, we'll have the roast. As usual, not a peep about who might be the victim -- erm, honoree.

Wet Cat

And again, I have more reasons to curse the squirrels. They're back -- and they've brought fleas. Argh.

Pelzmantel Book Trailer

Magus: The Alan Moore Conference (Day Two)

Here's another one of Adele's photos: just out of shot to Alan's left is me holding Melinda's glass. One of these days, I'm going to remember to take a picture with them. But don't they look sweet together? More on thee two later. I left London on the same train as I had the day before, but bank holiday weekend engineering works made sure that I was late. The cab dropped me off just after the time slated for panels to begin; fortunately, things were running slightly late, so Andrés was just introducing Gary Lloyd when I arrived, waving a belated hello to Adele.

Gary had worked with Alan on Brought to Light—not one of my favourites among the CDs, but an important work nonetheless. I was interested to see what he would talk about as his title "Moore and Music" could cover a lot of ground. It was fascinating to hear him talk about working together and how Alan has 'perfect pitch' but a voice so deep his falsetto doesn't sound like a falsetto. He was amusing, too, illustrating his talk with imaginary charts (all of which worked in an off-hand reference to SKIZZ), Homer Simpson eating a donut, and his six year old nephew's drawing of Watchmen, a drawing that showed superheroes like Spider-man, Batman and Hulk at the bottom of a cliff crying for help and Rorschak simply saying, "No."

Cyril Camus of the University of Toulouse traced the many ways in which Neil Gaiman had been inspired by Moore's work, often quite directly and how the friendship and influence of Moore helped shape Gaiman's career.  U Northampton's Jasmine Shadrack presented a lively discussion "V Versus Hollywood: A Discourse on Polemic Thievery" with a V mask hanging from the podium.  She traced her unexpected reaction to the movie version of V for Vendetta, which had been a singularly affecting novel for her on first reading it.  While the film changed much, there was still a great deal to celebrate.

I chose to go to the film panel after the break, perhaps perversely, because most of the films made from Moore's material have been so exquisitely bad. Stephen Keane, also from Northampton, covered "Watching the Watchmen: From Panels to Frames in Watchmen" which he warned us would be a loose presentation, more preliminary than final and it was, but he had a few interesting points to make from film studies approach.  Aine Young from Queen's University Belfast, examined "From Hell: The Adverse Journey from Page to Screen" and how Moore's carefully constructed Victorian landscape (among other details) was flattened and homogenized by the filmmakers.  The Hughes Brothers may have wanted to capture the grit and the slums, but in the end could not escape the Disneyfication of the project.  Ian Dawe of Selkirk College spoke about "The Moore Film Adaptations and the Erotic-Grotesque" as a way of measuring the success of the film versions, as he found those that removed that quality from Moore's texts were sure to render a bland product.  While it seemed an intriguing concept, I couldn't really agree with his declaration of From Hell as the best adaptation.

Then it was lunch and more chat with Adele and with Marc, whose paper I had missed (but it went well, he said). As I was getting yet another cup of tea, I suddenly found myself handing a tea bag to Alan. I wasn't sure he'd remember me, but he did and we chatted a bit as we made our teas, mostly about what a strange thing it was to have a conference all about one's work.  But then as he said, "I've had a weird life, so this is just one more bit."  Since I hadn't met Melinda before, he made a point of taking me over to introduce us and she's just as delightful in person as she had been on the phone (and gave me a nice compliment too, "We love your writing!"). Yes, I made sure to introduce Adele, who snapped that lovely photo. We all went in for the Q&A, which Paul Gravett was hosting. I brought my new Flip camera and managed to video most of the session, while Paul talked with Alan and then Melinda and then they both responded to audience questions. But the session went long (no one complained!) and my camera ran out of memory, so I'm missing the last bit.

I hope to put up the video on line, so let me just mention a few things that came up at the end, including Alan's comment that "art is a kind of possession" and that "I'm a very possessive person!"  Most people in Northampton seem to know him (and judging by folks at the conference, have stories to tell about him), except for some employee at Sainsbury's who threatened the "scruffy guy" with calling the police if he came in again. I loved how Melinda described how we should all realise we're mushrooms who seem to be separate, but under the ground we all share roots. Referring to some of the people who claim him as an influence, Alan suggested that all they had picked up was the idea that "more sex, more violence, be incomprehensible" was what created "that Alan Moore feeling." Subjects ranged form Lost Girls, Jerusalem, Dodgem Logic and Melinda's autobiographical project to upcoming appearances by Alan on Radio 4 with scientist Brian Cox and in the newly opened catacombs under Waterloo (with musicians in July – argh!)  They were both generous enough to stick around for a good while chatting with people and signing things, though Alan said it was really just an excuse to mow through the buffet table. I shared a cab back to the train station and the trip to London with some colleagues chatting about the conference. Everyone seemed delighted.

While Saturday had been rainy and grey, Sunday was gorgeous though blustery, perfect for cycling over to Battersea Park to check out the boating. Baby coots, ducklings and goslings abounded and an entourage of ducks followed the boat quacking loudly for the apple bits I tossed behind me. Pub lunch was a nice roast dinner—yum!  Monday coming back from shopping I got caught in the midst of the pro-Palestinian protestors who gathered at the entrance to Downing Street and lay down in front of the bus I was on. Good thing I didn't have any ice cream in my bag of groceries.

Today I'm off to see a matinee of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at the Old Vic with Toby Stephens. Can't wait!

London on Video

Here's some quick videos (courtesy of my new Flip camera) just to give a flavour of my day Thursday, a quite wonderful day. I had lunch with Adele and Mark from UnBound, then Adele and I made our way from Victoria toward Soho, stopping at a couple of pubs that looked interesting and saying hello to squirrels in St. James Park. We met up with some of the book bloggers that Adele knows who were gathering for a big signing at Forbidden Planet.

I headed off to see Four Lions, Chris Morris' new film at the Curzon which was followed by a Q&A with Morris, one of his co-writers and a couple of cast members. The film treads an uneasy line between comedy and terrorism with a good bit of success. There's a normalising influence from the comedy of the story, yet there's no shrinking from dealing with the lethal nature of the bombing plans. Because I was hanging out with Hamilton and Hind, who seem to know just about everybody, we also chatted with Morris after the Q&A. In contrast to his edgy image, he's a real sweetie.

Afterward we (H&H and friends) went to the pub (of course) and had the usual post-film discussions and wandering of to all kinds of topics that nights like this generally involve. After the pub closed, we headed to Leicester Square and a late coffee. A fun day, but also long, so Friday has had to be a work day (writing, writing). Hoping to catch a matinee on Saturday. More news as I live it :-)

BitchBuzz: Hate Facebook?

My latest column at BitchBuzz.com:

It's the end of the world as we know it! Where's Buffy?! She's averted several apocalypses (apocalypseé? apocalypso?) already. Cameron's behind this somehow, or Goldman-Sachs, I bet. Oh, wait -- it's only Zuckerberg?

For a minute there, I was worried.

Yes, as the guys at Wired have warned us, Facebook has you in its sights on the path toward world domination:

"Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed."

Yes, it's true: the forced public option is a bit of a bastard. Settle down, tea-baggers, we're not talking about that public option. But to hear some tech folk talk about it, you'd think we were. And yes, something "open and distributed" would be wonderful. Hop right on that, will you? On your own time, with your own funds and support, too, okay? Because I'm not paying for it. There's the rub, as someone once said. And until we do actually get some socialists in charge, we're stuck with the evils of capitalism...

As always, read the rest at BBHQ. I managed to work in a reference to both Buffy and EL Wisty, so I am pleased with myself. Loads of things to do and I am making my way through the (cough) hundreds of emails in my campus inbox and there are a few things that MUST be done before I go (like laundry, sob!). Yeesh -- back to it now.

As long as you're idling your time on the internet, go check out the video I made for The Women's League of Ale Drinkers: talking robots!

By the by: thanks Todd, for inadvertently setting me off on this column's idea by emailing me the Wired link just after I was watching an old Buffy episode and -- the rest is history as they say. This is what happens when you know a writer; we use everything! The world is our buffalo.

My Students: Full of Awesome

Two grad students who are doing independent studies with me also made music videos to go with their projects. I don't think I can link to Kira's video on Facebook (a mash-up of Tipping the Velvet and the Brandi Carlile song "I Was Made for You"), but I can link to Caitlin's video for Lady Gaga's "Teeth" that encapsulates the argument for her paper on the appeal of much-maligned series like Twilight and Flowers in the Attic for young female readers.



They inspired another student to make a fan vid (go, Annie!). Now I'm itching to make a book trailer for me! I've made some for a friend, but haven't got around to my own yet.

Conceit: Ashes

Since Blogger has put the kibosh on FTP-fed blogs [no, don't worry if you don't know what that means] I had to kill Radio Wombat, home of my podcasts (though old posts remain because it's on my webspace). But it made me realise I didn't really need a separate place anyway. I can put podcasts here! So here's my latest conceit:



As you can see, it's actually a video. This came about because sometimes an idea just hijacks my brain. Advice to a friend became a status update on Facebook, which was then refined by the input of my fabulous friends, then somehow hearing about the death of Malcolm McLaren made me hear the words in a kind of Grace Jones monotone.

So, what could I do? I hastily recorded a version on GarageBand, adding weird loops of sound, then made a video with iMovie by splicing together pictures of Mt. Auburn Cemetery and Canterbury, and of course, capping it off with an official Cult of Kaity logo as designed by the fabulous QoE.

If only my MacBook didn't make it all so easy, I might have gotten some work done instead...

Jane Quiet Moves!

Yes, obvious parallels to "Garbo talks!" will strike a handful of film buffs (and likely no one else), but here's the latest Jane Quiet fun stuff, courtesy of Elena's playful skills and her son Doozie's music:



Half snow day today; yeah, that's going to be effective. Surely my afternoon students will come in for the end of The Lion in Winter. Oh, irony of that name, eh?

UK Videos

A little taste of the Thames on a sunny (albeit windy) day in June. Sigh.



Coming soon: some pictures from the Banksy exhibit in Bristol, but in the meantime, enjoy a brief video of one of the objects in the show:

Playing Kantele

A rather utilitarian video of my playing, Little My, one of my five string kanteles. The instrument shows up many times in my short story collection, Unikirja.