I’m still around. Been busy. Too much stuff has happened recently to even summarize, so I’m just going to give up and move on. Maybe I’ll get back to it later.

I finished a new story that I’m delighted with. A lot of the time, writing a story consists of just sitting your ass in the chair and struggling to add something significant to what you’ve already done, at which point you call it a day and go out for a walk and wonder what the hell you’re going to add to it tomorrow. But then occasionally you get a story that just comes alive and sweeps you away, where everything falls into place, where every scene is a joy to write, where there’s nothing you’d rather be doing, and where every interruption takes on apocalyptic proportions. The last story that really happened with for me was “Seeds-for-Brains” (way back in 2002, geez). This one was another. It was going so well I seriously considered skipping class to work on it, and I did skip bar night. I was also quite prepared to skip both parties I was invited to last night to work on it, but I finished it in the afternoon, so I did make it to one of the parties. (Once I found out the first party had a hot tub I couldn’t drag myself away to go to the second party.)

Note that there’s not necessarily any connection between how powerfully a story seizes the writer and how good it is. Some stories I really struggled with, like “Veil of Ignorance,” are among my best. Others that I loved writing have never seen the light of day. I certainly hope this new story is good, but even if it’s not, just the experience of writing it was awesome.

Back in L.A. now. Very tired. More later.

Well, you know I now have a whole raft of drunk-people-on-Metro-North stories. Here’s another. As I was riding home late at night recently, there was a drunk high school girl wailing hysterically. Her friends were trying in vain to console her. Nearby was a different crowd of high school seniors and college freshman, all guys, almost certainly lacrosse players. (I played lacrosse in high school and I know the type.) They were also drunk, and laughing uproariously at this girl’s misery. The girl’s friends tried various tacts to get them to shut up, ranging from reasoned (“Come on, guys. She’s had a hard night. Take it easy on her.”) to superior (“You guys are being so immature.”) to confrontational (“Shut the fuck up or you’re going to get smacked by a girl!”). Regardless of what they said, the guys just laughed louder, mimicked them, or dared them to go ahead and start swinging. Finally, the train stopped and the girls got up to leave. As the girls dragged their drunk friend off the train, they had to hold her back from lunging at the guys. The wailing girl shrieked at the guys and tried to claw at them and pounded the glass as she was led away. Of course this just made them laugh even louder.

As I watched these guys laugh, I thought very clearly, These guys are not human in the same way that I’m human. Since earliest childhood, I’ve never been able to understand why people derive pleasure and entertainment from making other people miserable. That instinct just isn’t in me. The sad thing is, they seem to be the normal ones. I was talking recently with someone about why I had included R.A. Salvatore’s Homeland on my list of favorite books. Since it’s a Dungeons & Dragons media tie-in novel, it’s automatically suspect among literary sf snobs. My answer is that when I read it as a teenager it perfectly captured my feelings. The book is about the drow, evil elves who live in cities underground and are totally amoral. The protagonist, Drizzt, is an aberration — a drow who actually has a conscience. For this he suffers, and will never fit in with his people, and eventually leaves them. That’s basically how I’ve felt for most of my life.

Last night I stopped by the Rite Aid in Grand Central to buy some pens. While I was standing at the counter, a crazy person started haranguing the checkers. He was under the impression that someone had told him there was a public restroom in Rite Aid, and he refused to believe that there wasn’t. I made a hasty departure, but, as crazy people seem wont to do, he started following me, trying to strike up a conversation. I kept reversing directions but he stayed on my tail, mumbling stuff like, “This is an outrage! Where are the public facilities! I’m calling the mayor! Maybe I’ll piss in this garbage can, that seems to be the best place!” He kept looking to me for confirmation, as if I was supposed to say, “Sir, I heartily concur. The appalling dearth of public facilities leaves a concerned citizen no recourse but to empty one’s bowel into a trash receptacle.” If he hadn’t been acting so obviously crazy, I would have been glad to point out where the restrooms in Grand Central are (not far from Rite Aid). Anyway, I finally shook him.

I have this problem. I get asked for directions. A lot. I get asked for directions more than anyone I’ve ever met. About once per fifteen blocks, on average. I guess my urban casual dress makes me look like someone who knows where he’s going, and my amiable demeanor makes me look helpful and non-threatening. My ability to get asked for directions is matched only by my total inability to remember street names, which way is north, or where I am. My usual response when someone asks me for directions is to look around and wonder aloud, “Um, I don’t know, what street are we on?” which hardly inspires confidence. Even after consulting a map (which I carry around for exactly this purpose), I’m more likely than not to send people off in the wrong direction.

Take last night. An older couple, probably from abroad, stopped me at the corner of 1st and Bowery to ask me where Eldrige is. Of course I had no idea, so I consulted my map, and told them to head a few blocks west. I walked down to Houston and turned west myself, and passed Eldrige, at which point I realized that it starts below Houston and therefore they wouldn’t find it if they headed west along 1st street like I’d told them. I felt really bad, but I actually managed to find them again and give them correct directions. It’s nice to be so helpful.

On my way back from Derek’s show, which was awesome by the way, a girl from Japan asked me if we were on 1st Avenue. I contemplated this thorny problem for a minute or so, but she and her friends figured it out before I did, so I went on my way. As I approached Grand Central, lost in thought, I suddenly realized that my way was being blocked by a stunningly attractive and fairly intoxicated young woman who smiled and tossed her hair and swayed seductively about an inch from my nose and asked in a flirty way, “Hi. We’re looking for a fun bar to go to around here.” An equally attractive friend of hers stood nearby. I’m sure there’s some parallel universe in which I’m the sort of guy who said, “Sure. There’s this great place just around the corner. The bartender Eddie is a friend of mine. Come on, I’ll introduce you.” But, being me, I just said, “Um…” and spent about a minute trying to remember what street I was on. The young woman added, “Preferably on this street, because we’ve already walked like 15 blocks.” (Obviously tourists. 15 blocks? I mean come on, I had just walked 50 blocks, and I don’t even consider that far.) I determined that I was on Park Avenue at about 39th street, and realized with mounting panic that I didn’t know any bars, fun or otherwise, anywhere near there, and couldn’t even fake it. I said helplessly, “Um, I don’t know fun bars around here, sorry.” Perplexed, she said, “Well, that doesn’t sound very promising.” I said, “Good luck,” and beat a hasty retreat, so that I could go wallow in my own lameness, and wonder why I never get stopped by attractive young women who ask, “Hi. Can you give us a hand? My friend and I were just trying to figure out what some of the major literary influences in Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber are.” And of course, a few blocks later I remember that I’m carrying my Time Out Nightlife guide, which lists every bar and club in Manhattan. Duh.

My friend Derek will be performing tonight at 8:30 p.m. at Pianos, 158 Ludlow, at Stanton, lower east side, Manhattan (http://pianosnyc.com). I’ll probably be going. If anyone wants to come, or meet up before or after, email me.

Here are some photos from the last KGB. I’m sort of in the background in two of the photos. In one my eyes are closed and in the other I appear to be a pupil-less pod person (which I’m not). Aside from that, they’re pretty good pictures.

Holy frack! I just watched the Battlestar Galactica Season Two mid-season cliffhanger. And I thought the show was dark and suspenseful before. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. Oh man. Can’t wait for Season 2.5.

Update: Entry edited to conform to esoteric SCI-FI Channel numerical practices.

Congregated with other Kirtleys in Connecticut for the holidays yesterday. They had Dance Dance Revolution Extreme Remix 3 set up, and I was instantly addicted, as it combines two of my favorite activities — video games and really, really bad dancing. I know DDR has been around for a long time, and I’d sort of heard of it, but I’d never really seen it or played it until yesterday, as I mostly swore off videogames a few years back in the name of ever actually accomplishing something. Anyway, I grooved for about five straight hours to songs like “Come With Me” and “Imperfection.”
This morning my leg muscles were so sore I could barely walk up stairs, but I couldn’t stop playing until sharp pains in my shins finally drove me off the dance floor (well, pad). Actually, Public Service Announcement: Eating several pounds of shrimp and then playing five straight hours of Dance Dance Revolution is not the best preparation for Christmas dinner.

Made it into Manhattan last night for KGB. I wasn’t sure exactly how bad things would be in the city with the transit strike in effect. It wasn’t exactly the pandemonium that some had feared, but it was an awful mess. I usually take the 6 train down to Astor Place, but with the subways out of commission I simply walked. It was cold, but not freezing, and the sidewalks were clogged, but not as badly as the streets. The creepiest thing was seeing lots of gridlocked ambulances with their sirens wailing. At one intersection, an elderly couple were screaming at eastbound cars to turn uptown instead and clear the street so that an ambulance could get past. Not surprisingly, KGB was pretty sparsely attended, but I was glad to see everyone who managed to make it out, including my amazingly wonderful friend Andrea, who gave me seasons one and two of Battlestar Galactica for my birthday. On the walk back to Grand Central, I passed a double column of uniformed cops carrying bags with batons. There must’ve been 100 or more. It was like a parade. I wonder where they were headed. (Union rally?)

Well, I’m back in New York now. Been pretty busy.

Let’s see, I flew out of LAX on the 10th. As I was making my way toward the metal detectors and X-ray machines, the hallway divided in a somewhat confusing fashion. As the crowd kept going straight, the young woman in front of me turned and asked, “Were we supposed to go that way?” I laughed and said, “I was just following you.” It turned out we were on the same flight to Chicago, so we hung out by the gate and chatted. After deplaning, we met up again and grabbed some food. My flight was delayed and delayed, so we hung out talking for hours and learned significant chunks of each other’s life stories, which made the time pass much more pleasantly. She was on her way home to upstate New York after having spent a semester abroad in Australia, and, amusingly, she had the same name as a bestselling fantasy author. (No, not “Lois McMaster Bujold.”)

Then my cousin Brian and his fiancee Kelly visited for a few days. We went to the Katonah Museum of Art, which had an amazing exhibit called Over + Over: Passion for Process, consisting of art executed with an almost obsessive-compulsive level of detail or repetition, such as using a scalpel to cut away every part of a map of Austria while leaving all of the hundreds of roads intact. The KMoA is pretty small and out-of-the-way, and when we showed up the docent seemed shocked and ecstatic to have five people on a tour. We also went and saw a special screening of Brokeback Mountain that included a Q&A with the director, Ang Lee. The movie was outstanding. Ang Lee got a long standing ovation when he walked out on stage. His comments were inspiring, and also fascinating, particularly his discussion of portraying the strongly verbal culture of Sense & Sensibility versus the largely non-verbal culture of Brokeback Mountain. The audience included many members of the LGBT community, including the president of the Gay Rodeo Cowboys Association, and they expressed heartfelt gratitude that the film told their story with honesty and respect.

Then this weekend I went to a couple lunches and parties in Mahattan, and said hi to some of my NY friends, which was fun. It’s good seeing everyone again.

My science fiction story “Veil of Ignorance” just went up for sale on Fictionwise.com. This is my best story, according to the Slush God.

I’m quite proud of “Veil of Ignorance.” It employs a shifting first person viewpoint somewhat similar to the one used by Alfred Bester in “Fondly Fahrenheit.” This was an absolute bear to make work. In the three years since I wrote the first draft, I’ve reworked the story countless times to make the point of view trick more clear and consistent. This Fictionwise version includes a few polishes that didn’t appear in the version published in the All the Rage This Year anthology. Basically, going over the story again, I caught a few very, very subtle inconsistencies in the pov: 1) it’s established that the characters know what each other are thinking, but in one or two places they appear not to, and 2) in one spot the viewpoint switches to Dillon, but then a few lines later Dillon is referred to in the third person. Both fixed now.

Well, things are pretty much wrapped up around here. Classes are done, assignments are handed in, local friends have been dined, other friends have been driven to the airport, travel arrangements have been made. One Literary Society meeting, one MPW Reading Series, and I’m outta here.

I finally tested out my pepper spray. I really should have done this earlier, I guess, but I didn’t for two reasons. 1) It’s hard to find a good place to test it. The vendor said I’d get in trouble if I shot it off on campus, but obviously I didn’t want to let loose with it in my apartment, and outside my apartment is a very busy neighborhood, and I feel self-conscious, like, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just testing out my pepper spray on your property here.” The other reason, 2), is that everyone I’ve talked to who actually shot it has managed to accidentally debilitate themselves or a close friend for a period of hours ranging from 4 to 24, and I’ve been too busy for that. But now that everything’s wrapped up and I had nothing really to do for a day or so, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to accidentally injure myself with pepper spray.

I went to an undisclosed location and shot it. At first I thought it was broken, but it turns out you just have to press the button down really, really hard. That’s a good detail to work out in a non-life-threatening context. Anyway, I pressed the button and a spurt of translucent brownish liquid that looked strikingly like salad dressing shot about three feet. As the spray quickly lost forward momentum, a lot of it trickled onto my fingers. I examined my fingers. They were stained orange, but I didn’t really feel or smell anything, except maybe a vague stench of rancid salsa. At first I was like, “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Who is this going to scare off?” I had always imagined that firing pepper spray would be like shooting someone with a really, really powerful can of Raid, not like squirting them with salad dressing. Then my fingers started to burn. Not bad enough that I couldn’t ignore it, but enough to make me think I should wash them off real soon, which I did, thoroughly, with soap and water, but they kept burning. It was never any worse than a mild sunburn, but it didn’t go away. After a while I got distracted and forgot about it, but when I got ready for bed eight hours later I noticed that my fingers were still burning, and I had trouble getting to sleep. And that was just a little bit that I washed off immediately. I really wouldn’t want to know what it feels like to get the whole thing in your face, let alone your eyes. I apologized to the pepper spray for doubting its puissance.

In case anyone was wondering, I’ll be going home to New York for the holidays. I’ll be there Dec 10 – Jan 7.

Eugen M. Bacon, a writer living in Australia, has posted extremely positive Fictionwise recommendations for some of my stories.

One of the frat houses on my street has a teddy bear wearing a UCLA T-shirt hanging by a noose from the balcony. I guess the USC vs. UCLA football game must be this weekend.

Last night I was walking near my apartment after dark with my friend Erica when we spotted a guy headed toward us. Erica whispered, “That guy looks sketchy. Should we turn around?” The guy was close enough and walking fast enough that the only way we could really avoid him would be to turn and sprint in the opposite direction. That seemed a bit drastic to me, and besides, the guy seemed focused on a cell phone conversation. I shrugged and said, “I’ve got my pepper spray.” As we neared, the guy reached his free hand inside his jacket flap and held it there, pretty clearly suggesting that he had a gun. I was sure we were about to get mugged, but the guy passed us without incident. Still not sure what was going on there. Maybe he was just fucking with us. Or maybe he suspected we were going to jump him. I guess that’s a reasonable concern if you see two people spot you, stop to confer, then keep walking toward you.

Tonight I went to a free advance screening of Grandma’s Boy, a decidely sub-average comedy in the vein of The Waterboy or Mr. Deeds. It had a strikingly unpolished, straight-to-video feel, full of awkward silences, bad comic timing, and set-ups that didn’t pay off, but it did have a fair number of funny moments as well. Its portrayal of the video game industry was, sadly, fairly accurate.

Last night I went to a poetry reading event organized by fellow MPWer Lisa. I had spent Thanksgiving visiting relatives in Modesto, so making it to this event in time involved driving 8 hours and skipping 2 meals. I was envisioning about eight attendees crammed into a smoky basement (the invitations had talked about the importance of RSVPing due to “venue constrictions”), and I wanted to be there to show my support and fill out the audience. It turns out I needn’t have worried. The crowd was more like eighty than eight, and the place was the size of a cathedral. It was actually one of the most surreal venues I’ve ever seen. After much to-ing and fro-ing I finally located the address, but was sure I must have the wrong place. It was in the middle of nowhere up on North Broadway, and the modest frontage was dark, nondescript, and covered with swirls of grafitti. But stepping inside was like entering another world. I swear it was bigger inside than out, and contained a cavernous auditorium, a sprawling kitchen/lounge/art gallery, and an open-air courtyard with a wood-burning stove. There’s a picture here, but it doesn’t really capture the magical otherworldliness of first stepping inside. The crowd was very trendy and very L.A. (Leopard-fur coats and, as one of my friends put it, “a whole lotta F.M.B.’s.” (“F***-Me” Boots.) I was reminded strongly of the scene in The Player when Tim Robbins takes his lover to a surreal spa somewhere outside Hollywood. “Do places like this really exist?” she asks, and he replies, “Only in the movies.” After starving all day, I gorged on free wine, cheese, and crackers. The poetry was fantastic, and I ran into a surprising number of people I knew. All around a great evening.

Went to see a free advance screening of the new movie Just Friends. It was much funnier than I was expecting. When the hockey kid said, “I dub you sir suckster” (or whatever it was) I almost fell out of my seat I was laughing so hard. I even kind of liked the soundtrack, including “Eyes” by Rogue Wave.

Yesterday I drove down to Huntington Beach to see George R. R. Martin at Barnes & Noble. There was a massive crowd there. (They said 260 people had bought books to be signed, and there were probably a lot more people — including me — who were just there to hear him speak.) GRRM was great, as always. He related hilarious anecdotes from earlier in his career (when not quite so many people showed up to see him), such as the time he gave a reading in a coffee shop and the only people in the audience moved out to the patio after he was introduced. There was also the time he had to sit and watch as hundreds of people streamed past him in order to have their Clifford the Big Red Dog books get stamped by a junior store employee in a dog costume. Fortunately, things have changed. He said he’d just gotten word that A Feast for Crows will be debuting at #1 on the NY Times bestseller list, a first for him. That got a big round of applause. He joked that taking five years to write AFFC was all part of his brilliant strategy to build up the series’s popularity so that AFFC would sell better.

I had managed to get a pretty good spot right behind him, so I decided to hang out there during the signing and take note of what sorts of things people said to him and how he handled them. One couple described how they’d saved AFFC to read on their honeymoon. One guy came up and was like, “I just wanted to say that you’ve been my favorite author for 30 years now. Ever since I read ‘A Song for Lya’ in Analog magazine.” They chatted a bit as GRRM signed all the guy’s books, and as the guy gathered up his pile, he said, “I hope you keep writing for another 30 years,” and GRRM joked, “It may take me another 30 years to finish this series.” One guy said something to GRRM about the “Brothers,” by which I figured he must mean the Brotherhood Without Banners, the GRRM fan club. I’ve met some of the BwBers at conventions, and had figured some members would probably show up to this event, but I hadn’t been organized enough beforehand to find out for sure. I wandered over to where the guy was hanging out with a large group of people and introduced myself. They were indeed the local BwBers, and they invited me to join them for dinner. One woman very nicely offered me a ride.

We were supposed to leave B&N, turn right, drive a few miles, and look for a Blockbuster on the right. The restaurant would be behind it. We drove down the strip without seeing a Blockbuster and got out into the darkened residential streets. We figured we must have missed it and turned around. We drove all the way back to B&N without seeing it. We decided maybe the directions had been confused and that we were supposed to turn left out of B&N. We tried that, but still saw no Blockbuster. I tried asking for directions at a few gas stations and liquor stores, but couldn’t find anyone who spoke English, let alone knew where Blockbuster was. Finally we found a pay phone, called information, and got an address for Blockbuster. It was back the other way, of course. We headed back, trying to read the numbered streetsigns, which was somewhat difficult in the pitch black darkness. As were doing this, going maybe 40 mph, a small woman wearing all black tried to cross right in front of our car (and not at an intersection). The driver slammed on the brakes and the car skidded twenty feet, tires screeching. I was sure the pedestrian would be killed, but somehow she managed to kind of leap out of the way at the last minute, missing the hood by less than a foot.

Adrenaline pumping, we finally located the address, and discovered the dark, abandoned husk of what had apparently once been a Blockbuster, though all the big glowing letters had been torn off. So we did finally locate the restaurant. We heard that even the guy who’d picked the restaurant had driven past it once. Anyway, after that everything was fine and dinner was a lot fun.

Last night I went to see a lecture by one of the Enron whistle-blower women, but, very confusingly, ended up at a debate on global warming instead. (Turns out the Enron whistle-blower woman is on Thursday, not Tuesday.) The two speakers both had impressive academic credentials (phDs in physics from, respectively, Stanford and Columbia), and so I was wondering how they managed to dig up an actual scientist who was going to deny global warming. It turns out they hadn’t. Both speakers heaped derision on anyone who denied global warming. It was one of those weird “debates” where the speakers agree with everything the other says. While this lack of red meat makes for a less-than-compelling debate, I guess it is representative of the “debate” among scientists about global warming.

The auditorium was packed, but only because all first year English composition students were required to attend, despite the fact that the topic has no apparent connection to English composition. When I was an undergrad, my school used similar nefarious tactics (in the guise of the “wellness” credit) to compel attendance for guest speakers. I think this a bad idea, but whatever, nobody asked me. What you end up with is an unruly mob of students who take out their displeasure on the guests by ostentatiously ignoring them — students shift in their seats, do reading for class, write papers, or carry on loud running conversations with their neighbors. It’s actually even worse nowadays, since everyone has lightweight wireless laptops. I was sitting in the back, and so looked out over a sea of glowing monitors. Everyone whose screen I could see was browsing Facebook, using Instant Messenger, or playing computer solitaire. Sometimes you could barely hear the speakers over the clatter of keyboards.

A few weeks ago I signed up for a free “Narnia screening” at USC. I took this to mean I’d be watching the actual film, but then a few days ago I read the fine print and realized that they were just showing a 10 minute trailer, as well as some featurettes, all of which can be seen here. The trailer they showed was longer than the one available online, being the special “college only” version, but it’s mostly the same footage (and, annoyingly, it had the word “college” printed in white block text in the lower left-hand corner throughout). There was a surprisingly large turnout. Actually, it’s not so surprising considering that 80% of the crowd seemed to think they were there to watch the actual movie.

The organizers raffled off free shirts, wool caps, and — tauntingly — tickets to the actual advance screening. Some people were chosen randomly and some won by answering trivia questions. I was sure I’d be a strong competitor in the trivia contest, having recently read a biography of Lewis and a book about the Inklings, and imagining that they’d ask softball questions like, “What’s the lion’s name?” But the first question: “Who illustrated the original The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?” As you can imagine, dead silence greeted that one. Next was, “Name all the books in the Narnia series.” One guy very impressively rattled them off. If you’d given me a full minute, I could probably have come up with all the others, but I never would have remembered The Silver Chair. Then we had, “In what city was C.S. Lewis born?” More silence. I didn’t win anything, but I did manage to score one of the wool knit caps that they were just handing out to people who asked afterward. It’s actually pretty cool — it’s black with a red lion rampant on the front and on the back it says, “Aslan is on the move.”