LibriVox

More readings I've donated:

"Edward, Edward" - Traditional
"If" - Rudyard Kipling
"Ozymandias" - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Check Hernandez's "Stale and Mate"

It's juicy goodness:

"Stale and Mate"

Acceptance: "A Breath of Power"

My story, "A Breath of Power", will be appearing in the February / March issue of AlienSkin.

LibriVox

I got two chapters of Pinocchio done and uploaded. I hope to do another tonight.

It turns out this is one of the classics you'll be disgusted by, in that puppet boy and his old man are so annoying and hateful you want to reach in the story and choke them. I can't believe this is a classic children's book.

Also, I'm told if you know the Disney version, the original will completely blow your mind. But I strongly suspect, not in the fantastic Grimm's Fairy Tales kind of way...

Cast Your Crumpets

So, knowing I couldn't avoid it any longer, I turned on the news and heard 'Prime Minister Stephen Harper'.

I actually threw up in my mouth. No fooling. That's not a metaphor. Just an involuntary visceral reaction to the appalling level of shame and disgust I feel in my country.

I tried to prepare myself, with the polls, but you just can't. You want to believe people can't be that hateful or stupid. Ever. There's always endless proof that humanity isn't decent, or even sane, but still. Sometimes, it hits you with fresh surprise just how out of reason they can go, what kind of sickness and cruelty they can embrace, and for what ridiculous excuses.

I have a friend who grew up in Sask who tries to tell me the West are not raving loons. She insists that they vote for utterly scary hate-spewing whackjobs because the whackjobs say that West has been ignored too long, and they'll vote for a vicious zombie who is gnawing the flesh off eveyone's bones, even theirs, as long as he promises they'll be special as he destroys them. It's the same ol' thing as Quebec and the Bloc, where the braintrusts say they vote for the Bloc, but, no, it's not a vote for separation. The bad stuff will never happen! They don't mean it!

Accept it. Ontario and Quebec will always have the power, because they have the population. The rest of us, will stay the rest of us. Of course, Quebec refuses to believe they're special ENOUGH, but that's whole 'nother chunk off the fruitcake.

But. Oh you wanted change, oh you'll get it. You'll choke on it. If Harper can get the Bloc on his side, but since they want to destroy the Federal government, no matter who's sitting on it, that might prove a tad trisksy.

Oh, we've had some dipwads in power. And yeah, Martin was one of them. He was a creep who got power by Richard-the-third-ing his way to the seat. But if you're annoyed at your butterknife, the solution is not to throw yourself--and others--into a woodchipper.

Fuck.

Way to go. Throw a chilly yet rabid fanatical fundamentalist homophobic racist in, that will teach 'em! We haven't had it this bad since, well, ever. Except for William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was the fun insane dude who threw Japanese Canadians into camps.

I'd move, I wish I could, but where would I go? Bush owns the world, and now he owns my country too. We're going to be #2 butt-monkey. Blair will always be #1, and we have no military, but Bush and Harper will be frenching by noon.

I wonder if I can convert the shed into a bomb shelter...

Phone In

I got my Grimm's orphan done while waiting for the phoneline repairman, who, for the fourth, or maybe even the sixth, consecutive time, did not bother showing up. ARGH.

Yes, my phone line, and thus also the internet, is still broken. Now gone past 2 frickin months.

But the upside of the unending seething rage, and the loss of work, and sleep, and the uber crap that is today, is that I got 2 chapters and a poem recorded today for Librivox. So, yea me!

Librivox

None of my readings are live podcasts yet, but to build up your anticip......ation, I've done:

-Anne of Green Gables (c19)
-The Owl and the Pussycat
-Fairy Tales, Grimm (Lily and the Lion)

And I'm now working on Pinocchio.

For those of you who don't know, Librivox is a group that provides free audio books. They're read and served entirely by volunteers.

AHOP 2 Review

They say some fun things to say about my novella over on SFReader.

I don't think I've ever been called "Pungent" before. At least not as a compliment.

System Down

My net continues to be hideously broken; my isp continues to not remotely care.

It's bite into live flesh frustrating, but it's SOP on the island. Pretty much every business here operates with the unbelievable nasty attitude that comes with knowing you have no competition. They talk to you in a way beyond insulting, they don't show up for appointments, they don't return phone calls, and IF they actually DO anything, they do it wrong or ridiculously sloppy--and they do it all with the smug FU of knowing you have no options, so should be boot licking grateful for whatever you get.

And you're PAYING them for that!

Good times.

Of course, adding to my joy and productivity, I'm getting system problems on the other end--headache, sore throat, dizziness, and a fever that should allow me to cook supper by holding it directly to my skin for 0.27 seconds. I'm getting to the level of functional where flaking out on the couch and watching out movies I've seen a bazillion times may be too much for me.

Which is sad, because I've been playing Resident Evil 4--which is still no frickin Silent Hill, you pathetic critics / reviewers are bloody delusional--but I had just stormed the castle, and I was getting a laugh from saying over and over 'Have fun stormin' the castle!' because that's the kind of lame twit I am.

ps. Supernatural. I'm lovin ya, really, I am, but you're so OBVIOUS. Writers, please, can you try, like, _surprising_ somebody here or there? Just a bit? Thanks. I got a big kick out of the copying the X-Files shots though. The umbrellas? Genius. Oh, and the CN shoutout. Okay, screw up. But I loved it anyway! I haven't seen a train in years; where did you find it? Go Canada!

pps. It took me about 2 hrs to make this post *shakes fist of rage at isp*

'Bunches'

© 2006 Marlo Dianne

Original Painting
(pixelation brought to you by Picasa)

'Peek-a-Boo'

© 2006 Marlo Dianne
Original Painting
(pixelation brought to you by Picasa)

'Sleep Sweet'

© 2005 Marlo Dianne
Original Portrait Photography
(pixelation brought to you by Picasa)

This is Not Computer Generated

What with my wonky net connection, I just finally got to see the contributor collections at Winterfest, and saw mine were not in 'art', but under 'computer-generated'.

Sigh.

You know, that insult was old when pixels were named. I've said it before, and it remains true: I have never gone to bed, woke up, and discovered my computer had made a painting.

Really.

I make them, and I make them exactly the same way I'd make them with a paintbrush and a canvas. Because I *do* make them with a paintbrush and canvas, sometimes they just happen to be digital tools. Whoop da frickin doo.

I play in any medium I can get near; I'll do any genre that suits my fancy. I've noticed this somehow, bizarrely, offends people, but frankly I don't really care. Go find your own joy, and stop trying to kill mine.

I've noticed these people never say a Van Gogh is 'oil-generated', but then they have a thing for oils, a serious thing. They sneer at acrylics just as much as pixels. I'm an asthmatic and an environmentalist, *of course* I use acrylics. And you know what? The Masters would have too! They just didn't have better, and didn't know they were using potent toxins. Knowing better is not a mistake. Having options is not a setback. Times change, times *improve*. Move the freak on.

Oh, and if you read a book in the past twenty years, even if it was a 'classic', go call that 'computer-generated' as well. There isn't a writer or a publisher that isn't creating with a keyboard.

Shakespeare would have scrawled in Word, Gutenberg would have had a POD, and Twain would have ruled the internet with podcasts from his overclocked dual Athalons.

So, for the love of tuckered toast: Suck it up, Princess.

Winterfest 2006 Begins!

Although it would a LOT more fun if my net was working. Sigh. Dang you Sympatico...

Join us: Winterfest
2006

'Floofy'

© 2005 Marlo Dianne
Original Photography
(pixelation brought to you by Picasa)

Oscars....whaaaaa?

So, I'm watching the Daily Show last night, as always, and Jon says he is
going to host the Oscars. Whaaa?

Whoa.

This means I might have to actually watch them this year.

The Polls

No, no, not the depressing ones, that say Horror Harper is going to win, and make me want to cry in hopeless despair until raw heart leaks out out my nose.

I mean the Preditors & Editors 2005 Readers' Poll.

On no, the tension: Ralan or Miss Snark? I can't decide. But everybody wins! :)

'Fancy Face'

© 2005 Marlo Dianne
Original Portrait Photography

Midnight, one of my very favourite people. The sweetest family you can find--and always with the most enthusiastic happy to see you I've ever gotten, from anyone, anywhere. :)

I would totally smuggle him home in my luggage, but, you know, I think Lynn might object a little...;)

(pixelation brought to you by Picasa)

'Getting To Know'

© 2006 Marlo Dianne
Original Digital Art
(pixelation brought to you by Picasa)

Hal-Mother

Around Boxing Day, my computer slipped past deranged to truly coo-coo coco puffs.

Honestly, I provoked it. See, I got this new spiffy digital tablet, and it and win98 SE--although they were supposed to work together swimmingly--were in fact eyeing each other in that sideways sly pissed way cats do, just before they thrust at each other and try to taste a fistful of raw entrails.

So, maybe it was being loopy on powerful antibiotics, but I got talked into an upgrade, which, it was sworn in blood to me---really, I have the faded parchment right here--would be so frickin smooth I wouldn't even notice the change.

Yes.

I am a fool.

The computer went completely Hal-Mother, and had to be scrubbed down several times with harsh soul-consuming abrasives, and I had to reload from scratch...I think it was three times, although it could have been more, the insensate homicidal rage might have made things a tad hazy. Every damn program fought me--Photoshop, Firefox--they all turned on me, the gentle understanding woodland creatures now rabid and hungry.

I finally got the thing up yesterday, sort of, trembling like a finch with a nerve disorder. I'm still finding new surprises. Just now, the computer refuses to recognise my camera--and they've been best friends for over a year. I don't think I've ever so passionately wanted to hunt down anyone with any connection to microsoft, possibly resulting in carving with a dull spoon.

Or maybe I'll just plug them in to a non-compliant USB...

Listening To: Green Day - American Idiot
Playing: Indigo Prophecy

Working on: Various submissions