Random Observations

The Tangled Bank

PETERMBALL Journal , , , ,

A very cool open-call for a fiction anthology, put together by clarion-peep Chris Lynch:

This year marks 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin, and 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. To mark the anniversaries, submissions are invited for The Tangled Bank, an e-anthology of speculative fiction, artwork, poetry, and comics exploring the legacy of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution.

Illuminate — or obscure — the line between the real and the fantastic. The fiction may be of any speculative genre or cross-genre; demand to be included by the quality of your submission. Artwork and poetry need not be strictly speculative in nature, but must engage with Charles Darwin or evolution.

Submissions for The Tangled Bank open May 1st and close June 30th, 2009. The Tangled Bank will be published by Tangled Bank Press in late 2009, and an advance on royalties of 20 per cent will be paid to all contributors. For submission guidelines and more information, visit

Not a writer? Then allow me to distract you with the view of yesterday’s brewing storm from my study window, around sunset:

Storm, around sunset

You know, for a person that doesn’t really like photographs (whether I’m in them or not), I’m starting to dig having a digital camera handy.

In which I overcomplicate the notion of furniture.

PETERMBALL Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking ,

Allow me to introduce you to the great redundancy in my flat:

Couch Redundancy

The redundancy, for the curious, comes in couch form (and possibly the desk in the lower foreground since I’ve already got two others, but the desk is awesome and thus excused from such considerations). My lounge room can seat six or seven people, yet it’s rare that I’ll ever have that many people in my place. I’m a little weird about letting people into my space at the best of times, and I’ve filled all three couches only twice in a two-year period (and that was for gaming purposes, the one exception to my I don’t invite people around weirdness). Therefore the primary purpose of having three couches is so I can do horrible things to my back while falling asleep in front of the TV – swapping between the two-seat couch and the three-seat couch on a daily basis keeps the kinks from settling in one part.

I’ve spent a large portion of today wandering around my flat and wondering why I really have things. Realistically I could move my TV into the bedroom and replace the couches with a nice dining room table without any real loss of functionability (in fact, the dining room table would see more use, being more convenient for eating and table-top gaming than the couch/coffee table combo).

And yet I remain oddly attached to the couches. It’d feel odd not to have them around.

But the other part of me wants to embrace the simplicity and pay attention to the things that I actually use.

The things you forget

PETERMBALL Journal , , ,

First real day of classes today, which basically meant I spent seven hours running around like a mad rabbit trying to explain things without a break. Am now thoroughly exhausted and good for nothing, but feeling that warm accomplished glow that comes from returning to work.

But, oh god, I forgot exactly how tiring first year classes are.

I shall do very little tonight that is not television, reading, and picking up a meal from Subway.