Things That Are Ridiculous

1. George W. Bush. Occasionally, as this man worms his way out of office, I have irrational flashes of nostalgia for his slapstick leadership. Like, during the press conference this morning, when he made that little joke about the press "misunderestimating" him. Then I remember that he is not the governor on Benson or the mayor on Spin City, and everything that he has managed to fuck up, and I am angry again.

2. Save the Sea Kittens. I swear PETA was relevant once; or did I imagine that?

3. The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror is no more. Seriously, this was the anthology that made me want to write short fiction, and introduced me to a zillion writers. One of my career goals was to get a story into one of those volumes. I can't believe it's going away. (At least Ellen has a deal with Nightshade to do a couple of horror Year's Bests.)

2009 Reading #4

1. Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy
2. The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
3. From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes.

4. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes only had the stories published in The Strand, which left these two out. Holmes stories are mostly interesting, I find, for the characters; the mysteries are rarely that absorbing, it's how Holmes and Watson interact with them, and the people involved, that keeps me reading. So I appreciate reading about how Holmes and Watson met, and the first explicit mention of Holmes' drug habit, but I could do without the long exposition on the Mormons that takes up a third of A Study in Scarlet. But I can't pretend I'm not a completist, and I'll be seeking out the rest of the Holmes stories before long.