739 words on "The Unicorn Evils" this morning, which seems to be all I have in my head right now. So here I am, drinking tea and staring aimlessly, and contemplating whether I should do some of this Other Work that's staring at me from my to-do pile, or try taking a nap instead.

The work wouldn't take too long if I did it, but right now it all seems incredibly onerous, and I am incredibly tired.

Right, more staring aimlessly, then.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/bit-sad-but-it-ends-with-toast.html

• 14:04 www.sbs.com.au/films/article/single/9967/Dawn-of-the-dread Nice article on the history of Zombies. #

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/11/29/12579.html

Apparently when you buy a house, all sorts of groups decide that you must have money that you want to give them. My junk mail levels have exploded in the past couple months.

A lot of it is catalogs from companies I've never heard of, home furnishings and the like. A fair bit of it is realtors—what part of "just bought a house" do they not understand? But quite a lot of it is from nonprofits that want me to donate money.

My donation list is full up, so I'm going to turn them all down. But I wanted to call out one organization in particular for making me not want to donate to them:

The Sierra Club sent me a big envelope stuffed with paper.

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/11/29/12577.html

I'm reading William Tenn's 1958 story "Eastward Ho!" (as reprinted in the 60th-anniversary volume The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction). It takes place in a post-Collapse future in which American Indians (who are redeveloping science and technology) control most of the former US. I was rolling my eyes a bit at some Indian stereotypes transplanted into the future (though I figured, hey, 1958, I can cut the story some slack), but then I got to this bit:

Makes Much Radiation [the chief's son] shifted his shoulders back and forth and flexed his arm muscles. "All this talk," he growled. "Paleface talk. Makes me tired."

[....]

One of the other, older warriors near the chief spoke up. "In the old days, in the days of the heroes, a boy of Makes Much Radiation's age would not dare raise his voice in council before his father. Certainly not to say the things he just has. I cite as reference, for those interested, Robert Lowie's definitive volume, The Crow Indians, and Lesser's fine piece of anthropological insight, Three Types of Siouan Kinship. Now, whereas we have not yet been able to reconstruct a Siouan kinship pattern on the classic model described by Lesser, we have developed a working arrangement that—"

"The trouble with you, Bright Book Jacket," the warrior on his left broke in, "is that you're too much of a classicist."

And the scene goes on from there. A delightful moment, and it took me completely by surprise; I laughed a lot.

Sadly, the rest of the story isn't as much fun—the plot is okay (but it's not really a plot story), but I don't like its handling of gender, and a lot of the story's undermining of stereotypes of Indians consists of just applying them to white people; that kind of reversal approach always strikes me as a little simplistic. Still, the political stuff is not bad for 1958.

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/11/29/12578.html

David Hartwell points out that it's easy for Year's Best editors to miss new stories (non-reprints) that appear in single-author collections.

So if you were the author of a science fiction, fantasy, or horror short-story collection that came out in 2009, and your collection contained one or more previously unpublished stories, it might be worthwhile to make sure that various Year's Best editors know about those new stories.

Some of the YBs for work published in 2009 are closed by now, but a couple of them are not quite final. See my Year's Bests info site for details (though there are a couple I'm not yet certain about).

4019 words on "The Unicorn Evils" today, in a steady seven hours of work interrupted only by snacking and sending the dog outside.

Man, why can't the novel put out like this?

But now TBRE has come home and made me a hot cocoa which I suspect is spiked with something, and I'm going to call it a night and go read a book or something.

Mean things: flashbacks, still more jurisdictional disputes, political meddling
Reason for stopping: end of scene and end of rope

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/11/29/12574.html

Here's what I've been watching:

• Watched the first two episodes of Glee 'cause everyone's talking about it; interesting and often fun so far, but not sure how long I'll keep watching.
• Watched the pilot of White Collar on Hulu (yikes! They only post the five latest episodes, so the pilot is now gone! Very sad! But it's being rebroadcast this Thursday, so if you missed it, keep an eye out, or buy it from the iTunes Store), and totally loved it—funny, smart, charming; hot male lead; even kind of romantic. I laughed out loud four times in the first twelve minutes—three times at funny bits, once when I saw where the series was headed. It's not quite perfect—I'd like the women to be in less support-oriented roles, and it perhaps overexplains some things. Still, has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, I wasn't at all impressed with episode 2. But will keep watching, on the strength of that pilot.
• Watched the first three hours of the six-hour Prisoner remake/reboot with Kam. They're doing some interesting things, but we're not enjoying it much, and it fails to do a lot of the good things that the original did. (Though it's been 20 years since I've seen the original, so it may be better in my memory than it really was.) We'll watch the rest, but with low expectations.
• Watched the first episode of True Blood with Twig. Intriguing. Would like to see at least a couple more episodes.
• In the past couple weeks, watched Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Monsters vs Aliens. Both interesting, both worth watching, neither brilliant.
• This week, watched BSG: The Plan and Elektra with Kam. Neither, sadly, was all that great, though both had their moments. (And Elektra was better than either of us had expected, though that's not saying much.)
• Watched The Guru with Twig; fun Bollywood/American romantic comedy, though one bit of protagonist bad behavior made me cringe a little. (Not to be confused with The Love Guru, a very different movie.)

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/11/29/12573.html

I last posted a life update a week and a half ago. Since then:

2050 words on "The Unicorn Evils" tonight.

Mean things include jurisdictional disputes and mass murder.

Sleep now.