I added some more photos (including ones of me) to my dad’s site.

Behold the stupendous awesomeness that is my dad’s new website. My mom and I put it together for him as a present. She registered the domain and I did all the layout and coding.

One of my resolutions last year was to read more short fiction. I did pretty well, making it through about 300+ stories. Looking over the list, I’m struck that there’s really a lot of great stuff out there. Here are some of my favorites from what I read in 2006:

Daniel Alarcon, “Lima, Peru, July 28, 1979” Steve Almond, “How to Love a Republican” Peter S. Beagle, “Two Hearts” Aimee Bender, “End of the Line” T.C. Boyle, “The Swift Passage of the Animals” T.C. Boyle, “Tooth and Claw” Kevin Brockmeier, “The Ceiling” Tobias S. Buckell, “Manumission” Judy Budnitz, “Dog Days” Anton Chekhov, “The Kiss” Matthew Corradi, “Journey to Gantica” Albert E. Cowdrey, “The Revivalist” Jefferey Deaver, “The Weekender” Cory Doctorow, “Anda’s Game” Dave Eggers, “Quiet” Jeffrey Ford, “Boatman’s Holiday” Theodora Goss, “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm” William Hope Hodgson, “The Voice in the Night” Daniel Hood, “Pavel Petrovich”

James Joyce, “An Encounter” Andrea Kail, “The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom” Stephen King, “Quitters, Inc.” J.T. Leroy, “Meteors” Jonathan Lethem, “Super Goat Man” Kelly Link, “Stone Animals” Bruce McAllister, “The Boy in Zaquitos” China Mieville, “The Tain” Rick Moody, “The Albertine Notes” H.H. Munro (Saki), “Sredni Vashtar” Richard Parks, “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge” Tim Pratt, “Hart and Boot” Stacey Richter, “Island of Boyfriends” M. Rickert, “Journey into the Kingdom” Jason Roberts, “7C” Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Body-Snatcher” Greg Van Eekhout, “Anywhere There’s A Game” Carrie Vaughn, “Of Swords and Horses”

Check ’em out.

Got my contract today from Realms of Fantasy magazine for my story “Save Me Plz.” The contract indicates that “Save Me Plz” will be appearing in the June 2007 issue. The issues seem to come out a month or two before the stated month, so watch for “Save Me Plz” around April-May.

Here’s a joke I just heard:

A guy goes to a restaurant and orders soup, but drops his spoon on the floor. Instantly the waiter is there, offering him another spoon. The guy takes it and starts eating. He says to the waiter, “Wow. How did you know I was going to drop my spoon?” The waiter says, “We had an efficiency expert come in and give us some tips. One thing he said is that 30% of patrons will accidentally drop their spoons, so now I always carry around a spare in case that happens.” The guy notices a string hanging out of the waiter’s pants zipper and asks what it’s for. The waiter says, “That’s another one of our efficiency measures. The string is tied to the end of my penis. Now I can pull my penis out to pee without touching it, which means I don’t have to wash my hands afterward. It saves a lot of time.” The guy says, “Oh, that’s clever I guess.” Then he thinks for a moment and asks, “But how do you get your penis back into your pants?” “Oh,” the waiter replies, “I usually use the spoon.”

Just got word that the audio rendition of my story “Blood of Virgins” will be making its appearance on Escape Pod probably “within the new few weeks.”

Check out this present I got:

That’s right. A laser-lighted frisbee for night games. Sweet.

Just saw the Table of Contents for the upcoming anthology The Dragon Done It, which will include my story “The Black Bird.” It’s a stellar lineup, including contributions by two of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe. Really looking forward to that.

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday yesterday. Some of you may know that I’m somewhat superstitious about my birthday, due to a long string of unfortunate events stretching back to elementary school, and I generally try to lie low during it and not attract the universe’s attention. It’s actually pretty easy not to attract much attention on your birthday when it falls a few days before Christmas. I managed to make it through yesterday with merely a quick, all’s-well-that-ends-well trip to the emergency room, so I was relieved.

Anyway, I decided to introduce some variety to my livejournal and deploy a few more userpics. From now on, you’ll have a rough idea of the nature of a post based on the userpic, falling into one of the following categories: David Barr Kirtley = “So here’s what I did last weekend,” Prince Lir = “So here’s my opinion on some pressing issue of the day,” Guybrush Threepwood = “Whoa, want to hear a weird story?,” and Bleys of Amber = “So here’s some news related to writing.” Or something like that.

My name (David) is ridiculously common. I was once in a guitar class where four out of the twelve students were named David. I’ve gotten to the point where if I hear someone call out “Dave!,” I don’t even bother to look, since it’s probably not for me. I’ve also gotten to the point where I always introduce myself as “David” rather than “Dave,” because “Dave” doesn’t seem to contain enough consonants for people to be able to tell what you’re saying. (“What’s your name?” “Dave.” “Jay?” “No, Dave. “Ray?” Etc.) And of course, as soon as people grasp what your name actually is, they want to know, “Do you prefer David or Dave?” For some reason that I’ve never understood, saying, “You know, I just really don’t care at all” doesn’t work, they’ve got to have a preference. Then, no matter which one you choose, they repeatedly call you by the other one and then apologize. Fortunately, it seems that fewer young men will have to endure these tribulations, at least according to this list of popular baby names for the year 2006, where David scores at a shockingly low #45, below names I’ve never even heard of before, such as “Brayden.” (Being named “Brayden” probably comes with its own set of problems, but that’s a topic for another day.) Anyway, props to new parents of America for unleashing fewer Davids on the unsuspecting public. (And new parents of America, I hope you’re happy to accept this accolade, since I’m not going to give you props for anything else you’re doing.) The fewer Davids the better. In fact, really, there can be only one.

My dad has a temporary research position at Stanford, so my parents are living in Palo Alto for a few months. I just drove up to visit them over the holiday season. They told me that a week or so ago, a woman with a little girl came to the door of their apartment and said, “Hi. I’m your upstairs neighbor. I’m selling candy to raise money for my daughter’s school.” My parents gave her nine bucks. The candy was supposed to be delivered a few days later, but never arrived. A few days ago, notices were placed in front of every apartment warning residents that a woman who does not live here has been going around pretending to sell candy, and that if you see her you should call the police.

I heard a weird story today. Is it true? Who knows? Who cares? The story is this:

A guy came in to see the doctor. The guy was all messed up, with a dozen bleeding scratches all over his face and arms. He explained that he’d hit a raccoon with his car. He’d stopped the car and gotten out to check on the raccoon. He’d found it alive but badly mangled and apparently near death. He’d decided to put the poor creature out of its misery by strangling it. This had not gone well.

One of my wonderful friends from New York, Elizabeth Glover, just made her first ever fiction sale, to Realms of Fantasy magazine no less. Congratulations!!! I can’t wait to read the story. Perhaps we’ll share a Table o’ Contents.

Last night I went over to UCLA to watch Kevin Smith interview Stan Lee in a charity event to benefit the Hero Initiative. I somehow never really got into comic books (though I try to check out the essentials — Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Sandman, Dark Phoenix Saga, etc.), but I seem to always really enjoy discussions about them. It was fun hearing about the often arbitrary origins of so many famous characters. For example, the Incredible Hulk was originally gray, but the printing process had trouble with gray, so they changed him to green. I’ve participated in a fair number of panel discussions, and I know that it’s not always easy to keep a crowd engaged for an hour. These guys effortlessly kept things going for over three hours. It was pretty cool.

My story “Blood of Virgins” will be appearing in an upcoming episode of the Escape Pod podcast. Escape Pod is currently the 21st-ranked “Arts” podcast over at the iTunes store, and has recently featured work by writers such as Nancy Kress, Robert J. Sawyer, Kevin J. Anderson, and Mike Resnick. My story will probably come out sometime around February/March 2007.

I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve had a bad cold, and have been pretty much out of it. I got sick the week before last, then shook it, but then had a fairly party-intensive weekend, and that put me down for the count.

Before I got sick, I went to a party at JJ’s apartment in Venice. (He got evicted as a result of this party. Always a sign of a good party.) While I was there, JJ mentioned that there were banners all up and down his street advertising a Magritte exhibit at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). He and a friend had gone to see it, but then were told that the exhibit didn’t open for another week. I joked, “And then you’re like, ‘We’ll wait!’ And then you’re camped out in front of the museum in your bowler hats.”

I actually went and checked out the exhibit yesterday. It was pretty cool. The whole floor was covered with a Magritte-esque blue-sky-and-white-fluffy-clouds carpet, and all the security guards were dressed in bowler hats. One of the pieces, a tribute to Magritte, depicted a snow-covered peak, and over it was written: “LION IN OIL.” I was like, “Why does it say lion? There’s no lion.” My friend Drew exclaimed, “I see it! You have to stare for a while.” I stared for a while. I said, “There’s no lion. Maybe sort of a face, but it’s not a lion’s face. Maybe like a skull.” We consulted the text accompanying the exhibit, which talked about how the artist combines text and images that have nothing to do with each other in order to make a point about words and their meaning. I said, “Aha!” Drew shrugged and said, “I saw a lion.”

Holy crapmonkeys. 300 definitely has the most kickass trailer I’ve seen in a long time. (It’s a retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae.)

I’ve been enjoying George R. R. Martin’s new podcast. (Scroll down to the bottom right corner of the page.)

Just sent off my ecopy of “Save Me Plz” to Realms of Fantasy for typesetting. During my final bout of paranoid fact-checking, I actually caught something significant. Throughout all my months of revising, I had the country “Liechtenstein” spelled incorrectly, as “Lichtenstein,” like the pop artist. Not too surprisingly, no one who read the story caught this. It’s a small point, particularly in the context of this piece, but I’m glad I got it cleared up, especially in advance of my next project, “The Warrior Gods of Liechtenstein.”

SWEET! The just announced that my short story “Save Me Plz” will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine.

Here’s a teaser page for the story. As soon as I have any info on which issue the story will be appearing in, I’ll post it there.