I’ve got a vague obsession with industrial and/or safety signage; having passed this one a number of times on my way to and from work recently^[1] I thought I’d grab a snap because, taken out of context (say, by an alien who couldn’t read the words and didn’t culturally associate green with safety), it could be quite sinister.

Imagine that the label read ‘extermination point’. See what I mean? Sinister.

Yeah, OK, so I’ve been working a lot this week.

Writing about music

Still very little action on the music reviewing front, as there’s still a few weeks before the promos on my shelves are due for release and I’ve been taking advantage of the slack in my schedule to do other stuff. Next week, however, we’re back in action.

It’s very interesting to note that since the beginning of this year I’ve had more review requests from obscure or unsigned bands through The Dreaded Press’s contact form than I did in the whole of last year: eight already, compared to three in twelve months. The times – and the industry – are a-changin’.

Speaking of music reviews – it looks like I may be starting to write for a rather different and unexpected venue some time in the near future. More news at eleven…

Album of the week

No fresh material to plug this week, so I’ll mention that I’ve been rinsing Saturnalia by The Gutter Twins in the last week or so. I got a copy last year and liked it well enough, but it’s not until you really get to know it that you realise how staggeringly awesome it is. Mark Lanegan’s vocals and lyrics are always a winner, but the addition of Greg Dulli’s wailing angst is simply inspired. Moody, dark but strangely redemptive – thoroughly recommended.

Writing about books

Nothing complete, but the assemblage and collation of notes, post-its and scribblings on Mind Over Ship is proceding slowly but steadily; I intend to get the bulk of it done this weekend, during the course of which I hope an underlying theme for the review will emerge…

Freelance

As announced earlier in the week, Alex Bell’s new website – or The Project Formerly Known As t’Other Project – is now up and running, and I’m very chuffed with it indeed (as is its owner).

The Big Project is still on hold pending customer input, but lots of little things have popped up to keep me busy in the last few days^[2], and there appears to be a raft of new work looming on the horizon, too. Which means it would be really helpful if I could actually get a solid termination date at the day job… just sayin’.

Starting to put some new plans in action over at PS Publishing, too, the most visible and interesting of which should be our new monthly competition in which you can win free special edition books. How do you enter? You just have to sign up for the newsletter emailing list; easy as that. Go take a look!

Futurismic

Last week’s hosting woes appear to have been successfully cured by the caching plugin, so that’s one major worry (and potential expense) out of the way.

Gareth L Powell’s guest-post series on marketing has aroused a little polite ire, but rather less than I expected it to; whether that’s a good thing or not, I remain undecided. I think I was hoping for a little more lively debate on the matter, but I can only assume that no one has ever felt quite as patronised by an F&SF renewal notice as I have^[3]. Selah.

Oh, and it looks like we’ve just decided on February’s piece of fiction, too! So it’s all go, especially with my efforts to double my blogging output over there; do let me know what you think, if you’re following along.

Books and magazines seen

A good haul this week. First, magazines – we have poetry from Obsessed With Pipework, and what has to be the most deliciously-covered Interzone I’ve ever seen:

I know that’s hardly an original statement at the moment, but the fact that so many people have pointed it out as an outstanding art/design combo has got to be a positive sign. I wonder how much of it is down to the layout breaking out of the usual vertical grid, and how much to the artwork itself? Whichever – it’s a stunner, and there are stories by three friends and one hero on the ToC. Can’t ask for much more than that.

And now, books. True to their word, Pyr have sent me the first and second volumes (Bright of the Sky and A World Too Near) of Kay Kenyon’s The Entire and the Rose series to fill in the gap in front of the third volume that I got before The Holiday Season.

So now I have a whole trilogy to add to my “oooh, I would really like to get on and read that” pile^[4]… as mentioned before, that concrete day-job termination date would be a very comforting thing to have right now. *sigh*

Props where props is due, though – Pyr make handsome books with a consistency that a lot of their bigger rivals can’t seem to manage.

Coda

A hectic but productive week, all said; didn’t quite meet all my targets and goals, but I got pretty close and I’m pleased about that. Onwards and upwards, and all that.

As mentioned before, I spent most of last weekend seeing an old friend, which was a lot of fun. In the name of honesty I should confess that I had a couple of glasses of wine as a result – which put a minor ding in my teetotality pledge for the year – but it was a special occasion, and I’ve not had any alcohol since (despite going down to what was possibly the most anarchic pub quiz ever presented on Wednesday night).

And here we are at the end of the cycle again, which means it’s high time I got myself something to eat before cracking on with the handful of tasks I need to have done before I can relax for the evening. So, on that note, I’ll wish you all a good weekend – take care, folks!

[ ¹ - I varied my route slightly to stave off ennui - walking can be a bit tedious, and I still haven't fixed the puncture on my bike. ]

[ ² - It feels like a sort of administrivia whack-a-mole game some days, to be honest. ]

[ ³ - Hey, phone-call from the fifties for ya - they want their marketing copy back? KTHXBAI ]

[ ⁴ - This pile is a subset of the "to be read" pile, which is sometimes more conveniently described as "my flat". ]

No, Mr Brown. You are a weasel, a fearmonger, a small man in a big man’s expensive suit, and – like your predecessor, and many others – a panderer to corporate interests and waning governments with imperial ambitions which mirror that collapsed edifice which Daily Mail readers still feel should stretch around the globe by dint of nothing more than divine grace, stiff upper lips and unbridled paranoid bigotry based in a fundamental fear of otherness.

No one in the world ever has nor ever will do as much to curtail the freedoms I was fortunate enough to born with, Mr Brown, as you and others of your ilk. You wield fear like a whip, but you turn it on those you claim you are elected to serve.

What have you ever suffered or lost through the choices made by others on your behalf, Mr Brown? What have you given up to defend what you believe? What do you really know of fear, beyond the thought of losing the privilege you have amassed? Evidently not enough; as it has always been, the people will reap what the suits have sown. I hope that one day we will all turn around and feed it to you until you choke.

“Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant and I declare him my enemy.” – Proudhon

We now return you to what passes for regular programming on this channel.

Writing about music

Another slowish week, but that’s not at all unwelcome. Festival season means the PRs are all tied up promoting things I’m not yet a big enough wheel to be of assistance with*. I can deal with that.

Album of the week

Not a great deal to choose from, really, so The Offspring take the crown easily with their eighth album Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace.

Writing about books

The Love & Sex With Robots piece is all but finished; last few paragraphs and a brisk polish, and that badboy should be ready to roll out of the warehouse, so to speak.

I’m about a fifth of the way into Schmidt’s The Coming Convergence; it should be a swift read, because I seem to be a lot more technoliterate than the reader it is designed for (so I can skip a lot of the passages telling me stuff I already know).

Futurismic

The new Futurismic bloggers are settling in nicely, and by the end of this evening I should have fixed over 380 dead incoming links that got broken when the old Moveable Type installation collapsed on us – which I hope will boost our PageRank and SERPS somewhat, and bring with it a boost in passing traffic.

The other good news is it seems the Project Wonderful ad slots are starting to mature nicely, in that advertisers are recognising their worth and bidding competitively on them. I’m hoping for more growth in this area over the next six months – especially if the dead link fixin’ mentioned above has some effect.

Freelance

The tweaking of websites and the publicising of publishers continues at a steady pace; nothing substantial to show off yet, but there’ll be solid results by the close of business this month.

Books and magazines seen

It’s a lit-crit double whammy this week!

First off we have my long-awaited copy of Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics Of Fantasy – courtesy the author herself at last weekend’s AGM meet-up – which I have been looking forward to reading since hearing the framework of its taxonomy explained by Brian Stableford at last year’s Masterclass – bloody hell, a year ago.

Secondly I have my second review job for Foundation, namely The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (eds. Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman) – which, as far as Amazon is concerned, has been out in the States since 2005. So either it’s getting a relaunch on this side of the pond, or Foundation’s reviews department makes me look like a paragon of organisation and productivity**.

I couldn’t resist it, basically, though I wonder if maybe I haven’t bitten off a little more than I can chew – I’m even less qualified to talk politics than I am lit-crit***.

But Ms Le Guin’s blurb praises the book as not just a good and valuable examination of her famous novel, but refreshingly jargon-free, so maybe I’ll be OK. One thing’s for sure, there’s gonna be plenty of food for thought in there.

Aside from those two heavy-hitters, some fantasy titles from Orbit are all for which we have to thank the deities of the postbox this week.

Coda

So, on the surface of it – and by any metric of meaningful use beyond the confines of my own emotional landscape – it’s been a pretty good week, if not as productive as I’d have liked.

However, things haven’t been entirely peachy; I shan’t go into details (because this isn’t LJ or MySpace) but I’ve been an emotional wreck for no clearly discernible reason, and have consequently been shitty to people who didn’t deserve it – so there’s a nice nugget of guilt for me to chew over the weekend. Mmm, tasty guilt.

Couple that with a growing panic about next weekend’s impending Masterclass (for which I’ve still yet to read anything from the reading list that I hadn’t read before receiving it), and a certain degree of riding herd on my new bloggers at Futurismic****, and it’s obvious with hindsight why I’ve been sleeping badly and unable to concentrate on anything. Hence nearly being assassinated by a blind taxi driver while cycling to the day job this morning tipped me into a state verging on hysteria.

Thankfully my line manager is a good person, and listened to me gibber for a bit before recommending I use some of my vast backlog of annual leave allowance and take some extra time off next week. End result: I’m working a two day week from Monday, giving me two clear days to attack the Masterclass material while clearing down all my other work; then I return to work the following Tuesday. Signing the leave sheet was such a tension-release that I almost wept. I suspect I’ve been letting things get on top of me a little.

But hey, it’s the weekend! And there are few ills that The Friday Curry doesn’t at least provide the illusion of healing. After which I may go and listen to hideously loud rock music in a side-street pub, if I haven’t already fallen asleep. Enjoy your weekends, folks – hasta luego.

[ ** Under-qualified like a toddler with dentist's tools, then. ]

[ *** Only kidding, Andy. ]

[ **** No discredit to them, by the way, they're doing great; it's just one of those jobs that eats waaaay more time than you ever expect it to before you start. ]

Here’s a shot of the Castle Road end of Western Parade in Southsea. Western Parade has a special place in my memories, for an assortment of reasons. The setting for a lot of good times back in the day – and a few bad times too, but what’s life without contrast, eh?

My photography is still pretty lame. Maybe I’ll hit up Jeremiah for some tips and tricks … Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging: Western Parade”

Following nicely on from the future hazard signs I found the other day, here’s something even less serious, but even more amusing:

We can thank the cephalopod-obsessed PZ Myers at Pharyngula for pointing that one out. Click on the image to be taken to the originating site – the original version is *much* larger than my reposting of it here.

As a side note, what is it about Cthulhu that makes Him so popular on the intarwebs? Maybe He has awaited the coming of this technology for spreading his influence far and wide – sometimes the signal gets a little scrambled, though.

These are, quite frankly, brilliant:

Continue reading “Hazards of the future”