It was ten years ago today that Lisa and I -- battling sinus infections that we'd contracted the week before -- spoke our vows on the platform of the Bradley Beach train station. We were supposed to get married in a gazebo on the beach, but the torrential rain, being driven sideways by the wind, would have drowned the entire wedding party before we got to the first "I do." So we retreated to the train platform, which offered at least some shelter from the elements, and hurried to finish the ceremony before hypothermia could set in. The applause of the guests as I kissed the bride was drowned out by the arrival of a very loud commuter train.

Luckiest day of my life.

Back in April, megmccarron  posted her idea for fake shopping, which is where you blog about stuff you'd buy if you had "stupid amounts of cash." Since then I've been keeping an eye out while surfing the tubes, and I'm pleased to announce I've found my first fake purchase.

A Japanese company called Tokyoflash makes a line of limited-edition designer wristwatches with unique displays. For example, here's the "Active Reactor":



The time shown is 11:43. How do I know? Simple, just do the math:



By the way, this is one of their easier watches to read. Check out the "JLr7":



Since this is a fake purchase, I will of course be buying all of the available models, along with a nice display case to keep them in. Because I don't actually wear a wristwatch.

Seeing stuff like this reminds me what a cultural debt we all owe to George Lucas, even after the atrocity of the prequels. Via lizhand of theinferior4:

Lisa and I went to see this yesterday. We both really enjoyed it, although owing to her crush on Robert Downey, Jr., I think Lisa enjoyed it a bit more. Robocop is still my favorite film in this particular subgenre, but Iron Man comes in a very close second.

This week's amusing attempt at language control, as reported by the Associated Press:

ATHENS, Greece - A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women.

Three islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.

"Does Ben Stein have a brain parasite?"

Marijuana grow lamps are effective against vampires. This is due not only to the ultraviolet rays, but to the magical way the lamps' wattage increases when they are aimed at the undead.

1. The people who live there are really careless with their cellphones.

2. The airport shuts down for a month in the dead of winter, and alcohol is banned.

3.  The police response to finding the local IT guy's head stuck on a pole is to drive around warning people to "stay in your homes and load your guns," but not explain why.

Lisa and I have been unusually social this past week. Last Saturday night we went over to Leslie Howle's place for a dinner being held in honor of Elizabeth Hand and John Clute, who were in town for the weekend. It was good to finally meet Liz, although an initial fifteen seconds of confusion reminded me of a basic fact of the universe, which is that just because you've seen someone else's author photo doesn't mean they know what you look like. (As John Crowley might say, that's Relativity.)

Sunday was brunch at Eileen Gunn's place, where Ted Chiang and I had an interesting conversation about what sort of TV shows we'd create if they let guys like us create TV shows.

Monday night we caught Liz Hand's reading at Richard Hugo House, and scored a signed copy of Generation Loss.

Finally, last night we went to Ursula Le Guin's reading at the University Book Store.

All of which has been fun, although it looks like there's going to be a price to pay: this morning, we're both showing signs of coming down with colds. Good thing we've got some new books to read.

Leon Wieseltier on Martin Amis's The Second Plane in today's New York Times. If you haven't read a good, caustic, morally indignant book review in a while, this should scratch the itch nicely:

For all of Amis’s testimonies about the transformative impact of Sept. 11 — which “will perhaps never be wholly assimilable,” whatever that means — there is at least one way in which he has been thoroughly untouched by the atrocity: he is still busy with the glamorous pursuit of extraordinary sentences. What has to happen to shake this slavery to style? Amis is the sort of writer who will never say “city” when he can say “conurbation.” In his first article about Sept. 11, written a week after the destruction, he hoped that the American response “should also mirror the original attack in that it should have the capacity to astonish,” as if retaliation were an aesthetic statement. When, in a trivial bit of reportage about Tony Blair, Amis observes that “the crouched policemen, in their Day-Glo yellow strip, buzz past like purposeful hornets,” this is merely good writing; but when he describes the second plane on its way to the south tower as “sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty,” the ingenuity of the image is an interruption of attention, an ostentatious metaphorical digression from the enormity that it is preparing to reveal, an invitation to behold the prose and not the plane.

In Amis’s account, the Islamist terrorists are guilty not only of slaughtering people. They are guilty also of proliferating “clichés” and “inherited and unexamined formulations” — and in this respect they are “like all religions,” which were exposed as “fossilizations of dead prose and dead thought,” were they not, by “one of the greatest novels ever written, ‘Ulysses.’” Why can’t they just read “Ulysses”? When he writes that the fear provoked by Sept. 11 is “as audible as tinnitus,” and that “if you closed your eyes” in a Cobra helicopter over Baghdad “you seemed to hear music, military but atonal, like tinnitus,” it is his writing that is like tinnitus. And what is gained by preferring “horrorism” to “terrorism,” except perhaps a round of applause? Amis’s freshness is flat and neurotic and genuinely tiresome. He writes about politics and history as if Orwell never lived. He is dead to the damage his virtuosity inflicts upon his urgency. Instead, he pulls focus, and pulls, and pulls. His book reminds me of what Heath Ledger is said to have remarked, in disappointment, about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar: “I thought it was for the best acting, not the most acting.”

They've got one for rottweiler lovers too.

Covers, a blog devoted to discussion of book cover design, has a couple of recent posts about Bad Monkeys and Set This House in Order. They also give a thumbs-up to Hamburg artist Britta Kussin's custom Matt Ruff covers.

While you're checking out their site, make sure you don't miss this feature on designer bookshelves and this feature on still more designer bookshelves.

The folks at Richard Hugo House have invited me to participate in this year's Hugo House Literary Series. It's a two-part deal: on the evening of Friday, October 24th I'll be reading from a new work, and then on the morning of Saturday the 25th I'll be leading a panel discussion, both somehow involving the Series' theme, "Road Trip." Since I never learned to drive, I suspect I'll be making a lot of stuff up, but that's OK, I'm pretty good at that.

Via 'Aqoul and the BBC News. In an audiotaped interview posted to the web, Al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri insists that Al Qaeda really did carry out the 9/11 attacks. Claims that Israel was responsible are, it seems, all part of a Shi'ite disinformation campaign:

Zawahiri said the rumour had begun on the Hezbollah television station, Al-Manar.

"The purpose of this lie is clear - [to suggest] that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no-one else did in history," he said.

"Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it."

Snow and lightning at the same time. It's kinda cool, but I'm not sure the clematis is going to like it.

Via Cheryl Morgan: This year's James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner is Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army, published in the U.S. under the title Daughters of the North.

A full list of 2007 Tiptree honorees is here, and Tiptree Award juror Gwenda Bond has more to say here. Congrats to Kelley Eskridge for making the short list (for "Dangerous Space").

Turns out this nesting in vents thing is a common problem. My favorite of the proposed solutions comes from Calvin W. Schwabe:

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STARLINGS IN CRUST (Etourneaux en croûte à l’ardennaise) / FRANCE

Remove the backbones from some prepared starlings. Rub them with a mixture of salt, white pepper, and mixed spices. Stuff with a bread stuffing containing the birds' livers, some mashed juniper berries, and, if available, some liver pâté and truffles. Wrap each bird in a piece of pig's omentum. Pack tightly in a shallow baking dish on a bed of the backbones, chopped onions, and chopped carrots, all browned in butter. Paint the birds with a lot of melted butter and braise in a hot oven for about 10 minutes. Unwrap the birds and place them in a large bread croustade that has been buttered, "melba-ed" in the oven, and sealed with a paste made by blending in an electric blender some fried chicken livers, mushrooms, and egg yolks. Bake in a moderate oven for a few minutes and at the last minute pour in a sauce made by reducing a cup of sherry added to the braising pan, straining, and adding a cup of demiglace or other rich brown sauce. Garnish with some pieces of truffles lightly sauteed in butter.

STARLING STEW WITH OLIVES (Karatavuk yahnisi) / TURKEY

Fry some chopped turnips and carrots. Add a little stock and a glass of red wine. Place some starlings or other small birds in the pan. Add a thin purée of boiled potatoes mashed with beaten egg, dry mustard, and some stock and a little beer. Cover with stock and cook for about 30 minutes, adding some ripe olives near the end.

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...in the end, though, we decided to just ask the landlord to nail some wire mesh over the vent opening. Maybe next time.

Part of settling into a new house is learning its little quirks. This weekend, we discovered a new one: the flap that covers the external vent for the oven exhaust fan does not close completely when the fan shuts off. The local starlings have noticed this and decided to build a nest in the exhaust pipe. Given birds' sensitivity to Teflon fumes, this is not a good long-term survival strategy, but you try telling them that.

An artist named Britta Kussin who attended one of my appearances in Germany last February gave me a gift, a set of custom covers for my first three novels. When I saw how cool they were, I asked if she'd send me scans that I could post on the blog.

Here they are:







I really like this style, and of course there's something neat about seeing (almost) all of your books illustrated by the same hand.

Via Andrew Sullivan: Using Science, it's possible to create artificial diamonds from carbon. And we humans are, as you know, carbon-based life forms. Now a company called LifeGem is offering custom jewelry made from the cremated remains of your One True Love, or any other dead person you want a wearable trophy of. (They also have an option where they extract the carbon from locks of hair, so the person doesn't even have to be dead...just desirable.)

IMHO this is not as cool as the pet mummification service, but it's close.