Friday, January 14, 2005

SUN, WATER, SCREAMING, AND TUNNELS OF DARKNESS

Went to Adventure World with the kids yesterday. It's been about 8 years since I've been, and there have been a few changes: more rides, everything about twice as expensive, and weirdly enough, the rides I used to love seem slower. I would understand that if I'd been a kid the last time I went, but I was in my mid-twenties...

Anyway, much fun was had by all, and my personal highlight was giving in to Aiden after 4 solid hours asking and going on the 'Tunnel of Terror' with him: a water tube with the lights out so the interior is pitch-black, that goes near-vertical for most of the way, with twists, and then dumps your two-person tube into the water with about that much warning.

I laughed my ass off, in between threatening to kill him.

It was a hoot, albeit a hideously expensive one (The better part of $150 just to get in), made all the better by the fact the kids thought they were going to their Uncle & Auntie's place, and then when it became obvious we were going in the opposite direction, a chick-flick screening at the nearby Uni.

The one thing better than doing cool stuff with the kids is surprising them with it :)

ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN

Connor rolled over for the first time yesterday. You'd think he cured cancer by the way his ridiculously over-proud parents behaved. Of course, blogging it is in no way over-proud at all :)

JAPANESE NAME GENERATOR

My Japanese name is 原 Hara (wilderness) 駿 Shun (fast person).

Cooooollllll.....


Take your real Japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.



I WANT TO KILL NICKELODEON

Took the kids to see The Spongebob Squarepants Movie today. Now, the boys and I are big Spongebob fans. It's silly, it's funny, it's weird. You know, like us :)

But the movie was awful. Pained, padded, and slow. There might have been enough plot to fill a normal episode, and the lame-ass songs they crammed into the rest of the film with were simply awful. Not even a kack-funny cameo from David Hasselhoff (I should perhaps point this out for those old enough to remember the Hass: deliberately funny) can save it, although you'll never look at the Hass's pecs the same way again...

Even three year old Erin, who insists on absolute quiet so she can watch 'Spongepants' was bored and restless by the end.

Avoid.

COOL E-BAY STUFF

As if the Cyberman fridge magnet and the Madman magnet set weren't cool enough, this morning I bought myself a Hong Kong Phooey beach towel.

He's got style, a groovy smile, a bod that just won't stooooopppppp......

GENIUS

We've watched 3 of the movies in the Myazaki collection so far: Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, and Grave of The Fireflies. My God, the man is incredible. Such range, such fierce imagination, such an intellect, such humanity. Having already seen Spirited Away and My Neighbour Toturo, I find myself utterly enthralled by the man's work. I'm hooked. I'm a fan. I have to have more.

Thankfully the kids and Lyn feel the same way. This is one thing I will be eternally grateful to the boys for: after watching some of the most awful movies I'd ever seen at an anime festival 10 or so years ago, I swore I would never watch the stuff again. And then I met a woman with two manga-mad boys, and have watched some of the most wonderful stuff I've ever seen since. Jin-Roh, Vampire Hunter D, Cowboy Beebop... and still 8 more Myazaki movies to watch...

So thank you, Aiden and Blake. You've enriched my imagination in many ways, but this is one we get to share whenever you want.

RICH HORTON GETS IN TOUCH WITH HIS INNER SWEETY

From Rich Horton's review of Aurealis 33/34/35, which you can find here

The best ofthe novelettes was Lee Battersby's "Father Muerte and the Rain",definitely one of the "striking" pieces. Father Muerte seems to be the dominant personality in a curious isolated touristy sort of town, where strange things happen and some people live for a long time. One day there is a rain of insubstantial coelacanths -- insubstantial to most people, but not to Father Muerte, nor, significantly, to an elderly man who has just arrived.

Wheeeee! January 2005: Lee Loves Being a Writer Month!

GOOD ASIM NEWS

The ever-fabulous Tansy Rayner Roberts, who had the good taste to buy Murderworld for issue 23 of ASIM, emailed me this morning to say she'd been gazumped by another editor and the story will be appearing in an earlier issue. No mention of which issue, but I'll tell you as soon as I know. I do have another story I was planning to send to ASIM this week, which I've offered to her. Fingers crossed: it'd be nice to sell 2 stories to the same editor, non? :)

WORDS WORDS WORDS

A very interrupted writing day today, with visits from friends (Hi Anna!), rambunctious and rampaging kids, dinner to cook, cleaning to perform, fighting kids, punishing fighting kids, business emails to answer, and on and on and keep taking the pills, Battersby...

Consequently, ended up working on a bunch of things. managed to get just over 1000 words done (had to make up for doing nothing yesterday. Ah sue me: I was going down waterslides), as well as line-editing Blake The God ready for sending out.

Tomorrow, Luscious is heading out to her best friends' place and taking the kids for an afternoon of beachy goodness, leaving me behind to do writer-guy stuff and write our wedding invitations. With any luck I'll crank out some real numbers, get some stuff into envelopes, and who knows, maybe even line-edit a story or two for the collection, which at the moment is going under the name Lethologica. Gonna have to face that pile sooner or later...

Words For The Day: 1245
Words on Nouvelle Hollande: 610
Words on The Squire: 127
Words on Muerte & The Joy of Warfare: 508
Year Total: 9626

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