It’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting here listening to Chibo Matto and Regina Spektor, trying not to regret last night’s culinary adventure. This is what I ate: Actually before I start, it’s probably worth pointing out that I have this obsession with bad fast-food from places that do their best to try and replicate the […]
Off to the Gold Coast again today, in order to learn how to be a PhD student. One might think that after so many years I’d have worked out how by now, but one would be mistaken (said without snark – there’s been a gear-shift in the process recently, and I’m the kind of driver […]
For a week now I’ve been sitting down at the computer thinking “must write a blog post soon” without ever getting around to it. I open a post, stare at it for a few seconds, then put it off until later. I can see only two ways out of this deadlock – youtube or lolcats. […]
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 […]
Allow me to introduce you to the great redundancy in my flat: 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, […]
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 […]
There’s been a bunch of debates about Gender and SF of late, all of which seem to end up with someone defending themselves with a variation of “I filled all the spots on project X with men because I was choosing on the basis of quality, not gender.” This answer flummoxes me every time it’s […]
I hate it when things creep up on me, but I like having a full to-do list that I can work through. On today’s list: Get a big chunk of wordage done on the thesis draft – last week saw things start lagging behind again, and I really shouldn’t let that become a habit. Clean […]
I think my office may be under some kind of curse. I say this because I’ve just lost my second office chair in the space of a few months to breakage and this one was brand new (unlike the previous chair, which was a mega-comfy seventies steel-and-vinyl job that I’m pretty sure my parents liberated from […]
Things Disney’s Three Musketeers film has in common with the original Dumas novel: Character names Swords Hats France Things that seem remarkably different upon re-watching the film for the first time since reading said novel: Everything else.
1) Cinnamon-flavoured breath mints are *not* candy, and inhaling an entire pack like they are will leave your mouth feeling swollen and mildly burnt for 48 hours at least. 2) I’ve broken down and started writing a short story alongside the thesis. I wasn’t going to do that, but the reasons for not doing it […]
It’s been rather hot here in Brisbane, and my flat has a nasty tendency to be one of the warmest places I’ve found in the city unless the breezes’ treat me favourably (of late, they haven’t). I don’t know the exact temperatures, but I do know that I burned myself with *shampoo* when I had […]
