Someone else online misspelled my name (two in one week!), so I decided to make a list of all the variations I’ve seen. Watch this space for future updates!

David Barr Curtley
David Barr Curtly
David Bart Kirtley
David Barr Kirtly
David Barr Kitley
David Barr Kirty
David Barr Kirtlye
David Barr Kurtley
David Barry Kirtley
Donald Barr Kirtley (in a ToC! Bonus points!)
David Karr Brimley (this one’s actually kinda badass)

This is Simon Singh, a British science writer:

British libel laws are so insane that if you lose your case it might cost you millions of dollars and if you win your case it might cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. This essentially gives wealthy organizations unlimited license to terrorize people who are telling the truth and make them shut up. The British laws are so bad that, for example, a Saudi company might sue an American blogger in British courts just because the laws are so unfair there. This is known as “libel tourism,” and it’s gotten so bad that Congress is seriously considering a law to just immunize all U.S. citizens against British libel cases.

There’s currently a campaign underway to get Britain to fix its broken laws. You can learn more and maybe add your name to the petition at the Libel Reform Campaign website.

I finally have enough short story art to make a rainbow:

My new poster:

Anyone going to ICFA this year? If so, be sure to check out this session:

Alpha grads made a particularly strong showing in this year’s Dell Magazines Award, with Rachel Sobel claiming first prize and Rebecca McNulty, Rachel Halpern, and Lara Donnelly all placing in the contest. Congrats!

The deadline for Alpha 2010 is March 1st. Author guests this year are Holly Black, Timothy Zahn, Tamora Pierce, and Mike Arnzen.

Added a “Cats in Victory” info page to my site. Here’s a synopsis of the story:

    The catmen and dogmen have been at war for centuries, and Lynx, a young catman, has always been taught that in the last days Cat the Nine-Lived, lord of creation, will return to earth to lead his people to ultimate victory. But when Lynx finds himself present at Cat’s return, it’s not at all what he expected.

From “Cats in Victory”:

    Father Cougar sighed deeply. “As I thought.” He leaned forward, his gaze steady. “How many times must I tell you? Curiosity is the gravest of sins. And now you see what your curiosity has cost us. If you had avoided detection, we could have easily located these dogmen and captured them. But now they’ll be expecting us, and will move on. The danger to those who track them is greatly increased. And what if the dogmen should slip away? You may very well have cost us the great Victory we have awaited so long.”
    Lynx felt ashamed, despondent. Everything Father Cougar was saying was absolutely true.
    Father Cougar shook his head. “Well, there’s no helping it now.” He turned to the scribe and instructed, “Go to the inn. Fetch the templars.” The scribe nodded once, and hurried off.
    Lynx felt awe. “Templars?”
    “Yes,” Father Cougar said. “They arrived this morning. Two of them. Pursuing these dogmen you saw. They’ll want to question you.”
    “Of course,” Lynx agreed at once, his shame quickly giving way to excitement.
    Templars! Holy ones, invincible warriors of Cat. In ages past, their order had eradicated the frogmen, the birdmen, and the monkeymen, and now only the dogmen remained.
    The scribe returned a short time later, leading the templars. They were the tallest, most muscular catmen that Lynx had ever seen. Both wore long white tabards, and upon their surcoats were embroidered the holy form of Cat.
    Father Cougar gestured to them. “Lynx, these are our templar friends, Lion and Tiger.”
    The templars nodded politely. Tiger was brawnier, stern and dignified, with gray in his fur and black stripes around his eyes. Lion had a great tawny mane and seemed almost to vibrate with barely restrained energy. And he was younger, perhaps only five or ten years older than Lynx himself.
    Lion said quickly, “Tell us about the dogmen.”

I added a “Family Tree” page to my site. Here’s a synopsis I wrote for the story:

    The tree-dwelling Archimagus family is bitterly divided between the descendants of Franklin and the descendants of Atherton. Simon, the Franklin clan’s most talented wizard, long ago separated himself from his troublesome relatives. But when he hears that Meredith, the Atherton side’s greatest sorceress, has returned home, Simon finds himself drawn back into the tangled web of family politics. As schemes and rivalries swirl around him, Simon must ask himself: Can he defeat Meredith? And does he want to?

So the other day as I was out on a walk, I noticed a car stopped at a green light after all the other cars had driven on. In the car were two well-dressed elderly women. The driver was talking on her cell phone. It appeared the car had broken down. I wandered over to stand beside the driver side window and waved, and the woman opened a door a bit, and I said, “What’s wrong with your car?” and she said, “It won’t start.” I said, “I could try pushing it around the corner there.” She gave me a blank look and closed the door almost entirely and kept talking on her phone. I couldn’t tell from this whether she wanted my help or not, and I really wasn’t sure what to do. I stood there baffled for a while, then started directing traffic while I tried to decide what to do next. (This intersection is three lanes wide in both directions, and the stopped car was in the middle lane, so it was creating an unbelievable mess as people tried to pull around it on either side.) A guy from the nearby P. F. Chang’s wandered over and called, “You want help pushing it?” (He thought it was my car.) I said, “Uh yeah, that’s what I was just suggesting, but…” He came over and waved at the passenger side window until the woman opened the door a bit. He said, “Hello, ma’am. If you’ll put the car in neutral we’ll push you out of the way here.” Apparently he got the same sort of non-response that I had, and the door closed again. We both stood there, perplexed, trying to figure out what to do. Five minutes passed. Ten. The women in the car still didn’t acknowledge us in any way. Finally the guy tried talking to them again. From where I was standing I couldn’t hear was said. Afterward I said to him, “So what’s the plan?” and he just shook his head and shrugged. He said, “They’re on the phone with AAA.” Finally, after about twenty minutes, some guys from the kitchen came out the first guy was somehow able to convince the women that we were going to push the car, and we pushed it through the intersection and onto the shoulder. As we were walking away I said to the first guy, “So what was going on that whole time?” He was fuming mad and muttered something about how the women had been trying to direct AAA to the intersection, but had been giving completely wrong street names, and he had tried to give them the correct information and then they had started arguing with him and telling him he was wrong, even though he was pointing at the street signs which were plainly visible from the intersection. I don’t know. The whole thing was really weird, and I think it did just sort of leave all of us good samaritans feeling like it was probably a good thing there was no cliff nearby or we might’ve been tempted to just push the car off of it.

ZOMG WANT TO GO TO THIS SO BAD:

I just finished watching the 4-part PBS documentary In Search of Shakespeare. It’s really in-depth and well-done, as host Michael Wood scours England for every instance of Shakespeare’s name popping up in the historical record. (If you have Netflix, it’s an instant download.)

Here’s one story from the movie: The Earl of Essex was hoping to overthrow and replace Queen Elizabeth. Theater was the popular entertainment of the day, and was heavily censored because of its power to incite the mob to violence. Essex paid Shakespeare’s company a large sum of money to resurrect Richard II and to add in a key scene making explicit that a bad ruler should be deposed. The plan was that at the end of the play Essex would march out on stage and call for an uprising. Unfortunately, when the time came, he spent too much time trying decide which shirt to wear, and by the time he finally appeared and made his rabble-rousing speech, the crowd had mostly dispersed, and Essex was promptly arrested and executed. Shakespeare’s company was hauled before Elizabeth’s inquisitors, and the players all took the line that they were just simple actors who had been hired to put on a play and they didn’t know anything about any plot. Elizabeth knew they were lying, but by that point — elderly, unpopular, and without an heir — she didn’t much care, but just to send a message and scare them straight she commanded that they perform their seditious play again — just for her. Talk about stage fright.

Wow, I was just reading the Wikipedia entry for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and there’s a whole lot of WTF going on here. A sampling:

Lucas initially suggested making the film “a haunted mansion movie.” Lucas first introduced the Holy Grail in an idea for the film’s prologue, which was to be set in Scotland. Spielberg did not care for the Grail idea, which he found too esoteric. Lucas completed an eight-page treatment entitled Indiana Jones and the Monkey King. The story saw Indiana battling a ghost in Scotland before finding the Fountain of Youth in Africa.

Spielberg hired Menno Meyjes to begin a new script. It depicted Indiana searching for his father in Montségur, where he meets a nun named Chantal. In the denouement, the Nazis touch the Grail and explode; when Henry touches it, he ascends a staircase into Heaven. Chantal chooses to stay on Earth and marries Indiana. In a revised draft the Nazi leader is a woman named Greta von Grimm, and Indiana battles a demon at the Grail site, which he defeats with a dagger inscribed with “God is King.”

ETA: I interviewed Dan Carlin for Episode 15 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

Avatar in 3D is a must-see spectacle for science fiction fans. The story is familiar, predictable, and unnuanced, but still solid and enjoyable, I thought, and the actors give appealing performances. But the visuals here are just stunning — $300 million worth of gunships vs. dragons vs. robomechs in a bioluminescent alien jungle in 3D. Wow. Be warned though, this is one LONG movie, so you might want to bring a meal — or two — into the theater with you.

At long last (and I mean, long, long, LONG last) Realms of Fantasy magazine has updated their website. It’s a completely new design and looks really spiffy. Check it out.

Peter Watts, author of Blindsight, reports on his blog that he has been assaulted by US Border Patrols agents and now faces felony charges and ruinous legal fees. More on boingboing.net.

Vera Nazarian, who has had some really hard times lately, largely due to the vile Bank of America corporation, has just released her latest book Mansfield Park and Mummies. “Our gentle yet indomitable heroine Fanny Price must hold steadfast not only against the seductive charms of Henry Crawford but also an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh!”

I even illustrated it, and basically did everything short of chewing up the pulp to make the paper it was printed on.”

Check it out.

I just saw the terrible news that highly-respected fantasy author Robert Holdstock has died from E. coli, at just 61 years old.

For a few days now I’ve been meaning to post something about the new documentary Food Inc., which relates in sickening detail how hazardous our food has become. The film profiles a young mother whose toddler was killed by eating an E. coli-contaminated hamburger. This woman subsequently became a consumer protection advocate and has struggled for years to enact common-sense legislation that would restore to the FDA the power to shut down facilities that repeatedly produce deadly food. According to the film, the agro-business industry is so massively rich and powerful that they can stifle any regulation, sue anyone who says anything the industry doesn’t like (even Oprah Winfrey, who lost a million dollars in legal fees defending herself against them), and is even agitating for laws banning journalists from taking pictures of modern factory farms — and it’s easy to understand why, when you watch some of the revolting footage in this movie.

Now that is a cool-looking jetpack: