Things You Missed + Derby + "Bring It On" Week + Questions + Asterisks

[snurri]

Yesterday, while you were all at your wild, all-day George Washington parties and I was at work (NOT THAT I AM A RESENTFUL PERSON*), I posted about blogs that cover future urban concepts, one of my personal manias. I also posted the shiny trailer and banner for the upcoming Paper Cities antho, which Jeff VanderMeer (among others) has said very nice things about. (Scroll all the way down for the review.)

The Minnesota Roller Girls are at Roy Wilkins this Sunday. Locals: anybody going? Anybody want to? My planned companion has flaked on me discovered a scheduling conflict. I am in the mood to watch tattooed girls in fishnets shove each other around.** I'll go alone if I have to, but it won't be pretty. (Well, I won't be pretty. But then I rarely am.)

Things that are awesome: Chris Sims kicks off his "Bring It On" week with the 30-second recap. If you have not seen "Bring It On," you might be under the impression that a movie about cheerleaders cannot be awesome. You are sadly mistaken. Of course, Sims does his best to amp up the awesome with his stick-figures*** and Shakespearean dialog.

Finally, it has come to my attention that I am a cipher wrapped in an enigma, smothered with secret sauce. No, I am not Jimmy James. But being as this is a personal blog where I tend to skirt around the personal, when I actually do talk about something that's very personal--like, say, my recent tirades about Valentine's Day--apparently people aren't quite sure what to make of it. So, inspired in part by mrissa, I'm opening the floor. Ask me anything. Yes, anything.**** I will make an effort to be forthcoming, even if it's personal. If, on the other hand, you'd rather just trade smartass quips, I can do that too. It's kind of where I live.

* This is a lie.
** I am almost always in the mood for this.
*** Stick figures + Spirit fingers = Fail
**** Except THAT.

Comments

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Where does your interest in Kenya and elephants come from?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Hard to say, exactly. I can trace my current mania to the Nebula Awards weekend 2005, where there was a weird synchronicity of elephants popping up: elephants on an episode of Crocodile Hunter that happened to be on the TV while I was getting ready to head downtown to the hotel, elephant keychains that Mary Anne Mohanraj gave out at a dinner party at her place that night (she had just come back from a trip to Sri Lanka; I think there were elephants on some of the plates as well), and the statue of Ganesh at the Art Institute that I'd visited earlier in the week. For some reason this all seemed significant at the time, and I decided I wanted to write something about elephants. I suspect that this is an awakened mania from my youth. Anyway, I immediately began researching elephants: I read about half a dozen books in quick succession, enough to convince me that the initial idea I'd had for the elephant story wasn't going to work. I also subscribed to some elephant news alerts. Most of the elephant research that I was reading had happened in Kenya (Amboseli, specifically), and there was a lot of news coming out of Kenya about relocating elephants, the change in status of Amboseli itself, etc. Pretty quickly the point was driven home to me that the problems of elephants, as they relate to humans, are both political and economic; too, the arrogance of casual environmentalists (like I was at first) routinely puts the survival of endangered animals above the interests of the people who have them living in their backyards. So the two became more and more connected in my mind, and I don't think I can separate them now. I still have plans to write my elephant novel, but it'll be different from what I envisioned at first, and I want to visit Kenya before I write it.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Very cool.

I can remember visiting a farm on the slopes on Kilimanjaro, and surveying the damage that elephants had done to the fields. The family were subsistence farmers. The damage the elephants had done could mean starvation for them. We were often told by Kenyans that elephants are no longer endangered, thanks to the ban on ivory. In fact, many argued that elephant populations were too large. I certainly had mixed feelings after seeing those trampled fields.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing that gives me pause. They're kind of like giant rabbits, or something. Giant, empathic, really smart rabbits, but still pests, at least from the perspective of those farmers.

[ted chiang (from livejournal.com)]

Only since 2005? What year was that Wiscon when you were telling me about that elephant that had been lynched?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Must have been 2006?