What I did on my weekend… – Page 4

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Adventures in Cat-Sitting, a Play in One Act

Peter sits at the table, trying to work. He is grumpy and irritable after being woken two hours early by a deranged cat yowling at the bedroom door. The Cat jumps on the table and sits on the computer keyboard. Peter moves The Cat. Peter: What do you want, cat? The Cat: Feed me, mortal. Peter: Dude, I fed you ten minutes ago. You ate. There is no more food. The Cat: FEED ME. Peter: No. The Cat: I stare at you. Peter: Totally cool with me. The Cat:I stare with mighty stareness. Peter: Huh. The Cat: FEEL THE WEIGHT OF MY DISPLEASURE Peter: Got it. Trying to work. The Cat: I savage your toe. Peter: Fuck. Shit. Rack off, I was using that. The Cat: FEEEEEEEED ME! Peter: TRYING TO WORK. The Cat: Holy shit, there’s birds in the yard. Peter:They’re chickens. They’re there every day. You know this, because I pull you away from their pen every morning.

PeterMBall 11/07/2010

Journal

Bad Ideas and Cat Fights

Last night, because Jason Fischer is a bad influence, I wrote out the notes for a Blaxploitation-esque story set in the 70’s version of the Miriam Aster universe. I then put it away because I realised there’s absolutely no way of writing it without being horribly offensive or utterly driven by pastiche. Such are the dangers of not having any deadlines looming, major or minor. Fortunately there are days when I stop myself before doing stupid things and today seems to be one of them. The notes go deep into the “write this when you can afford to get punched in the face” file, at least until Jason lives up to his threat to kidnap me and go all Kathy Bates until I write the damn thing (if anyone hears about Jason acquiring a pet pig, please let me know). In other news, there are twenty-four days remaining before I am free of cats. Or, more specifically, the cat, since there

PeterMBall 09/07/2010

Journal

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

I’ve been distracted of late – either by trying to get the latest version of Cold Cases ready or hole-in-my-head drama depending of the day – and I somehow managed to miss a whole heap of stuff happening around the traps. 1) The latest edition of the Terra Incognita Podcast is up, featuring me reading my story Black Dog: A Biography that came out in the Interfictions II anthology last year. Unlike most of the previous podcasts of my work this one actually involved me recording the reading myself, an experience that forced me to realise exactly how inarticulate I am in the verbal form (seriously; apparently I drop the consonants out of words and rely on vowel sounds and inflections to get things right, and we do not speak of how many times I had to restart things in order to avoid this). 2) Angela Slatter’s Brisneyland by Night is the feature story over at the Twelth Planet Podcast at the moment, which

PeterMBall 22/06/2010

Journal

Sleep

I went to bed around 9:30 last night and got up around 9:30 this morning. Partially this was a response to getting up around 5 in the morning to take my sister to the airport*, partially its a response to my inability to sleep for longer than an hour at a time since I had the cyst cut out. Near as I can tell, the twelve hours I spent in bed equated to about seven hours of fitful sleep. The rest was all tossing and turning and getting out of bed to make sure that my nightmare I’d just had about the stitches pulling open and starting to bleed really were just nightmares. Obviously, I am not a good patient. Me and bleeding have never been a good combination. And I really, really want to wash my hair. Now I have to go and make up for lost writing time. There is stuff that needs doing, and I’ve been slack

PeterMBall 13/06/2010

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

So my day’s been fun…

How was yours? This post is dedicated to my parents, who immediately asked whether they were going to see such a less than flattering portrait go up on the blog.

PeterMBall 10/06/2010

Journal

My to-do list

At some point today I’m planning on making cupcakes, which means I have to clean the mixing bowl, which means I have to eat the salad currently sitting in the mixing bowl as it occupies a shelf of my fridge. And I frickin’ hate salad. There is no reasonable excuse for lettuce. At some point today I’m going to continue going through the Cold Cases draft, engaging in all the chapter-by-chapter tinkering that needs to be done before I hand the manuscript over. I am still unsure of this book, but that doesn’t bother me too much. I am unsure of everything I write that’s longer than 1000 words. At some point today I’m going to vacuum the seemingly endless carpet of shed hair that covers the floor of my house. On the plus side, that’s not going to be a problem for the next few months. There is some pretty simple math that gets done when your lazy, your

PeterMBall 31/05/2010

Journal

In Which Deadlines Make My Life Very Tiny

It’s one PM on a Monday. The rejection count has risen by one (6 for the year). I’m spawning new projects at a rate of knots instead of toying at the tangled web of problems that is the novella I’m meant to be finishing. I took this morning off to listen to Jeff Buckley’s Grace and watch the latest episode of Doctor Who. All in all, rather standard for the last-week-of-a-deadline rush. I’ve noticed that deadlines make my life very small and non-bloggable. I’m leaving the house today – just heading out to pick up groceries and check my PO Box – and I’m unfeasibly excited about the prospect of seeing other people for the first time in about ten days (I try to avoid this kind of non-contact, but last week was a mess of social engagements that got cancelled for various reasons and I didn’t have the energy to scrounge up replacements at the last minute). There will

PeterMBall 24/05/2010

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Stacking Books in Piles

It seemed like a slightly manic goal when I set it back in July of last year, but my question to read 104 books in the space of a year may actually work out. I finished Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own this morning, which brought my reading total up to 74 books, then put together the final thirty books I’m planning on finishing between now and July 31st. They now live on my bedside table, a pile of words that can be beaten down day by day until I finally clear the whole damn thing. To make the goal I need to clear three books off this pile a week, which is a little less daunting than it should be because of my bad habit of reading half a book and getting distracted (and cherry picking stories out of anthologies and collections). There’s a lot of bookmarks already in that pile, which should cut the reading time down

PeterMBall 17/04/2010

Journal

Seven Thoughts for a Tuesday

1) On the grand list of bad narrative decisions that cause me to dislike things I should have loved the decision to have the first half of Veronica Mars, Season 3, to use extreme feminists as one of the key antagonists is right at the top. The first time I watched the series it was a moment of pure WTF and it seriously hasn’t made any more sense on subsequent viewings. 2) Someone has created inhalable coffee as a consumer product. The jet packs and self-driving cars are surely on their way. 3) Part of my beef with the decision mentioned in number one? The writers of Veronica Mars have a seemingly magical ability to create empathy with the antagonists. *Every single arsehole* in the show – from the self-involved Sheriff Lamb to killer Aaron Eckles to frat-boy Dick Casablancas – has a redeeming moment or two in amidst their grating evil. There was depth to them. The “evil feminist”

PeterMBall 23/03/2010

Journal

Feelin’ just a little bit sleepy

The short answer to where I’ve been for the last week: sleeping. The slightly longer answer goes something like this: Last week there was the return of the tooth pain and the right-hand side of my face swelled up like I was using my cheek as a storage pocket for a golf ball. Bugger, says I, that’s not really normal, and so I hie myself off to the dentist in order to do something about it. The dentist takes one look and agrees with me – definitely not normal. Turned out I had myself an acute dental abscess – which largely translates as cavity infection that has spread into other nerves. His first impulse is to pull the infected tooth out, but since I take moderately good care of my teeth (despite what this post may suggest) the decision is made to try and save it, and so I get my first-ever root canal. Oddly, this wasn’t the bad part.

PeterMBall 16/03/2010

Journal

Bleh

February has become the month we do not talk about, so I won’t. Embrace the mystery. What I will point out, somewhat belatedly, is the impressive scale of the recent Australian SF Snapshot which collected 90 or so interviews from members of the Australian Spec Fic scene (my interview would be over yonder). Now I’m going to go clean the house, answer two weeks of e-mail, and do my best to rejoin the rest of the human race by some point late this evening.

PeterMBall 26/02/2010

Tag: What I did on my weekend…

Adventures in Cat-Sitting, a Play in One Act

Bad Ideas and Cat Fights

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

Sleep

More recent reading

So my day’s been fun…

My to-do list

In Which Deadlines Make My Life Very Tiny

Stacking Books in Piles

Seven Thoughts for a Tuesday

Feelin’ just a little bit sleepy

Bleh

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