Warning! Labels!

This afternoon, as I went out to cut up some firewood, I noticed an odd thing.

It wasn’t the fact that in the early 21st century, my family still warms itself around a wood fire. As far as I’m concerned, fire is an integral part of the human heritage. Computers and modems are all very well, but you really know you’re civilized when you can tame your own fire, I say. Now, if only I could chip a proper flint spearhead.

Nor was it the fact that I was personally cutting my own firewood. Being a Housebound Husband, there are limited opportunities to exercise my traditional male machismo. I don't drive a sports car. I don’t bring home a testosterone-enhancing paycheque. I don’t even like watching the Bathurst 1000 on the choob. But I do like to chop my own wood.

Anyway, what I noticed was the printed warning on the side of my $20 Chickenfeed axe. Wear Protective Goggles, it declared. And fair enough, I thought. It’s no fun getting woodchips in the eyes.

But then, as I was pulling the corroded elastic over my head, I thought: why am I obeying a stupid Chinese-made axe handle? Think about it. That warning doesn’t say "wear protective goggles to keep chips out of your eyes when chopping.” It just says “wear protective goggles." It’s like George Bush: either you’re with us or against us! Wear protective goggles or else! That’s what it really means. It’s not really a friendly warning at all. It’s an insidious attempt to take control of your life!

There’s a lot of this stuff around the place lately. My wine bottles try to tell me to Enjoy Wine In Moderation. Where the hell is this Moderation place anyhow? Why should the wine there be better than the wine here? Can I get frequent-flyer miles for my trip to Moderation City? If Pain Persists, See Your Doctor. Not Meant As A Life Saving Device. Use Only Under Adult Supervision. It never stops!

If there’s one thing that still raises the primitive beast in the heart of a modern man, it’s getting ordered around by a bunch of consumer goods. Bad enough that doctors and psychologists and feminists have all come up with reasons why men shouldn’t do fun stuff any more — now we’re expected to obey our groceries?

I don’t think so. I mean — I REALLY don’t think so. In fact, I say that it’s time we men got tough with uppity household accessories. Concentrate that oven cleaner and inhale like Bill Clinton at a Free Marijuana rally. Use superglue to stick your eyelids to your forehead while you drive heavy machinery under the influence of antihistamines. Don’t just use the hair dryer in the shower: move the whole bloody laundry suite in there while you microwave the cat! Rise up, my brothers! You have nothing to lose but your no-claim bonus. We’re repressed enough already. Let’s throw off the tyranny of inanimate objects and live as free men once more!

While you’re doing that, I’m just going to duck down to the doctors’ surgery to see about getting this chunk of ironbark out of my eyeball.

Technical Question

Is there a way to designate individual posts in this system as private, or friends-only, or suchlike? All I can find is the option which over-rides the whole structure, and makes each and every post either equally accessible, or equally inaccessible.

Change of Pace

Trying out the vid capacities of this blogger thing. If this works, you'll see a wee clip composed of shots of me and the kids. And you'll hear one of the worst versions of the classic Irish jig "Out On The Ocean" that you're ever likely to suffer with.

But it's particularly cool, because I wrangled into being, and with much cunning. Elder Son plays cello -- badly -- in that audio. But he's only been at it about three weeks, so it's forgiveable. And the fiddle that sounds melodic would be Natalie, but the wee scratchy fiddle noises are the Mau-Mau and her little pink violin, sawing faithfully away. The burbly-sounding instrument is a Low Whistle, courtesy of yours truly.

Thing is that Natalie is desperate to play music with her kids. And the music she loves is Irish, mostly. So today, I got tired of the constant depressing phone calls and the gloom and bullshit, and I took Elder Son aside and pointed out that he could easily manage to saw away on the G-note string on his cello in a simple rhythm to underpin the jig. And the only changes he needed to make? A couple first-position E notes on the D-string, and a couple open-string D.

So, there we were. And Natalie was so damned happy she charged off to get a little recorder. And really, for a group with a 3-year old on the fiddle and an 8-year-old with three weeks experience on cello playing an accompaniment designed by a whistle player... it could be worse.

That's what I figure, anyhow.

Because Everybody Else On The TOC Is Doing It...

Those of you not familiar with New Ceres -- it's a shared-world setting for writers who want to explore a 28th century planet that's collectively decided to live under 18th century technology and morals.

I like shared-world settings, especially as a writer. I find that the restrictions provoke all kinds of ideas. Those of you who read Angel Rising will know that I've had tremendous fun with the setting, and with the character I dreamed up for it -- George Gordon, "Proctor-General" to New Ceres.

Angel Rising marked the official end of Gordon's career as a proctor. The first story I wrote about him -- Waiting For The Dawn -- was set around the middle of his career. So, naturally, the story that appears here is the story in which he first gets the job, and it explains a bit more about him, and about why he took on such a peculiar job in the first place.

The list of writers on the TOC is pretty hot, and I'm chuffed to be there too. You may recognise a few writers from my Canterbury 2100 anthology here, as well. Gotta say, it feels a lot better sharing a TOC with them than it did constructing the TOC around them! Anybody interested in a bit of Australian short-story SF, you could do worse than this.

Table Of Contents:

Debutante — Dirk Flinthart
The Widow’s Seven Candles — Thoraiya Dyer
Code Duello — J C Hay
Murder in Laochan — Aliette de Bodard
Tontine Mary — Kaaron Warren
Fair Trade — Stephen Dedman
A Troublesome Day for Jacky Midnight — Matthew Farrer
Prosperine When It Sizzles — Tansy Rayner Roberts
Candle to the Devil — Sue Isle
Blessed Are the Dead That the Rain Falls Upon — Martin Livings
The Sharp Shooter — Sylvia Kelso
Smuggler’s Moon — Lee Battersby
The Piece of Ice in Miss Windermere’s Heart — Angela Slatter

New Ceres Nights is now available for presale. http://twelfthplanetpress.wordpress.com/shop/

Return To New Ceres

Anybody who got a kick out of Angel Rising will be pleased to hear that my far-future swashbuckling cynic and Byron impersonator-hero George Gordon will be returning in a short story in the upcoming New Ceres Nights anthology from Twelfth Planet Press. Better still, not only does he appear in my own contribution 'Debutante', but he gets at least a walk-on speaking role in The Piece of Ice in Miss Windermere's Heart, by the redoubtable Angela Slatter.

Actually, the roll call of writers who made the cut for this one includes a list of many of my favourite of the current crop of Aussie SF folk, and I'm really looking forward to reading the thing. New Ceres is a fun setting to work with. I had a ball with Angel Rising -- the story took off on its own, leaving me to chase the details. I didn't actually expect the revelation at the ending at all, right up until it occurred to me. So to speak.

Anyway, Debutante is the story of how George Gordon got the job of Proctor-In-Chief to New Ceres. Writing it made me feel quite good, because it sort of completed the arc of character for the guy. Of course, being me it was all out of order.

The first George Gordon story I wrote was She Walks In Beauty, for New Ceres Online (I think it's still available as a PDF, by the way.) At that point, Gordon has already been doing the job for a very long time, and has really begun to lose his way, but he doesn't see any real alternatives for himself. Then I did Angel Rising, in which an artificial intelligence of sorts shows Gordon how to recover his own sense of humanity, and marks the end of his official tenure as Proctor-In-Chief. So naturally, the third story had to be the beginning, right?

Yeah, okay. I like doing things the hard way.

What Forking Crisis?

cri-sis, n.; pl. cri-ses, [L. crisis; Gr krisis, a separating, decision, from krinein, to decide, separate.]
1. a serious or decisive state of things, or the turning point when an affair must soon terminate or suffer a material change; a decisive or crucial time, stage, or event.
This hour's the very of your fate.
--Dryden
2. in medicine, the turning point in the course of a disease, which indicates recovery or death.

______________________________________________

My point being, of course, that if there was a fucking crisis in the financial sector, it is either long over, or it has become something other than a crisis, no? Because a crisis is a crucial moment, the make-or-break, the act-now-or-die part of the plot.

And how far are we into this one? What is it now? Five months? Six? "Blah blah blah crisis in the financial sector," say the government-appointed talking heads around the world.

"Blah blah blah bailout to weather the credit crisis," shout the banking johnnies.

Folks, if it actually had been a crisis, it would already be over. That's the nature of a crisis. Something that lasts five or six months and only shows signs of getting worse isn't a crisis. It's a situation that calls for an entirely different word.

I'd suggest disaster. Fuckup. Clusterfuck. Snafu. Fubar. Cat Ass Trophy. I'd offer kitty-catty-clysm, or collapse, or decline-and-fall. There are plenty of options. If you want to limit it to the purely economic - which I believe would be terribly optimistic of you, given the worldwide problems with climate, energy supplies, food supplies, water supplies, overpopulation, deforestation, ocean acidification, desertification and mass extinction, all of which are tied into and relevant to this so-called fucking 'financial crisis' in one sense or another, you could even use the word 'depression'.

But crisis... that just sounds so much better, doesn't it? Because a crisis is something which arises and is overcome by proper action. It is a turning point in the plot, the break-point of the fever.

Crisis: so much easier to fit into a thirty-second sound bite than the Slow And Laboured End Of The Cockeyed System We Have Been Calling 'Civilisation'.

Snap. Crackle. Fuck!

I think I've broken the smallest toe on my left foot. I don't really want to look at it too closely this morning to be sure, but the fact that it's painful as hell, swollen, immobile and throbbing suggests to me I may indeed have done myself a mischief there.

It's all the fault of the unspeakably large huntsman spider lurking behind the hall cupboard at the bottom of the stairs. I was walking away from the front door last night, about ten or so, when I saw movement from the corner of my right eye. Hairy, multilegged movement.

As one does, I adjusted my path to the left, swinging my left foot out and forward to both make some distance between me and the Chthulhian horror, and set my balance for a quick pivot step so I could get the hairy horror full in my sights. Unfortunately, I did this while keeping my eyes on the vile, eldritch thing, and in so doing I rammed my little toe into the wooden edge of the stair, where it meets the floor.

There was an ugly little cracking noise. And a white star of pain. That lasted.

By the time my brain had cleared the overload, the colossal spider had retreated entirely behind the cupboard where it lurked, tittering sadistically. Hideously Hirsute Horror from Hell: 1. Flinthart: 0.

We've finished the swimming lessons, thank fuck. Yesterday, grimly determined that the Mau-Mau would float on her back, I spent fifteen full minutes cradling her and swishing her through the water while singing the long selection of bloodthirsty Irish melodies I always used to send her to sleep as a baby. Sure, the other parents stared at me a lot... but after a full fifteen minutes (Shule Aroon, Skye Boat, Hills of Connemara, Follow Me Up To Carlow, Molly Malone, Whiskey In The Jar) she finally relaxed to the point where the palm of my hand under her head was sufficient.

She wasn't happy about it. But she was relaxed, and she floated. Good enough for me.

Today Natalie is taking the kids into Launceston for the afternoon. She's returning one medical student -- bye, Kerri! -- to the airport at 3.30, and picking up the next one -- hello, Katie! -- at 5.30, so the kids will get a feed at Morty's Food Court and I won't have to pay attention to dinner tonight.

That's good, because tomorrow Natalie catches a flight out at about ten in the morning. She'll be gone for a week, playing fiddle at the Celtic Summer School in Victoria - hot, dry, and horrid, but she does love her fiddle, and there are no kids under her feet for that time. I, on the other hand, shall be playing sole parent for a week. Lucky me.

The strawberries are winding down, though I can see the second wave will be coming soon. The loganberries are now in full blast - I can't pick them fast enough! - and the raspberries have just about peaked. Some of the local blueberry farms have opened their gates, but my bushes haven't ripened yet, here on our mountainside. I've picked all but one of the lettuces. Must put in some more very soon. In the meantime, the tomatoes have flowered. I expect big, ripe tomatoes in a few weeks, if I can keep the goddam locusts at bay.

In other news: I've taken up doing reviews of print material for the Cool Shite lads. Their site gets ungodly traffic, but hitherto they've specialized in video and gaming material. Still, their major interest is speculative stuff: SF, Horror, Fantasy... so it seems to me that reviewing the printed stuff that gives rise to the movies and games isn't a bad idea. And if it means that publishers send me books to review, that's all good. I like that plan.

Meanwhile, I'm at work on a couple short stories and a manuscript for (yes, okay!) a Red Priest novel, so here we are: week two of the new year, and I'm already full-on, flat-out.

Oh well. Rest is for the weak.

Now, if you'll excuse me... I just glanced out the window and realized that the dog is atop the picnic table with the two smaller kids. They have a big box of sidewalk chalks, and they're colouring the dog a fine range of pastel shades. That would be fine, except he's jumping and wrestling and snapping, and if he knocks the Mau-Mau off the tabletop, she'll doubtless come down headfirst onto the edge of the paving-stone patio, and I'll never hear the end of it.