The Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop at UC San Diego is now taking applications until March 1, 2009. The application form etc. is available here:

http://clarion.ucsd.edu/apply.html

This year's instructors are Holly Black, Larissa Lai, Robert Crais, Kim Stanley Robinson, Elizabeth Hand, and Paul Park.

I graduated from the '95 class when it was still held at Michigan State, and I learned a tremendous amount about writing and publishing in my 6 weeks there, and a met a bunch of really interesting, vibrant people. It was a heck of a lot better than any other six weeks I had in graduate school. And as much as I hate that the workshop left the Midwest, I must admit that trading raccoons and mosquitoes for the beach is probably a fair trade ;-)

Anyhow, if you're in a place in your life where you can take off for six weeks and go to California, and if you have tuition money (although they do give out a lot of scholarships), and if you'd like to become a professional science fiction or fantasy writer, Clarion's a good way to go.

My keyboard is being shitty. I got an air conditioner installed today, and even though they covered it up with a sheet my keyboard is having extreme issues obeying me. The sheet kept my screen in its healthy black condition, but my desk somehow got covered with brick dust and the like. And everything got moved around. They didn't seem to understand that touching anything on my desk without permission is an offense punishable by death.

But on to other stuff! Being bored I watched the news at five thirty and again at six. The many sports currently in play made the sport section very exciting, but the rest of it was rather dull. A couple of bikies arrested for either drug possession or something to do with money, depending on the channel. Hoons arrested for hoon-ish driving. People in the Middle East killing other people in the Middle East. All not very interesting, because it's mostly the same as the last time I watched the news. Which was probably a good five weeks ago.

And then. I learned of a death of a soldier in Afghanistan. The eighth Aussie soldier to die there, name of Private Gregory Sher. All very tragic, and I mean that, I don't mean to be disrespectful towards him or his family. But it amused me when the reporter relaying the story to the Australian news-at-five-thirty-watchers that this "growing death toll" was "awful". I'm not disputing the use of awful, just the "growing". What do you want it to do? Shrink? Dead people don't un-die. They're soldiers. Of course there's a chance they're going to die. And eight dead! That number is huge, don't you think? I don't agree with war, and I don't agree with killing people, but eight dead is actually pretty darn good, compared to a dozen dead, or three dozen, or one hundred.

Also, I was amused by reporters attitudes towards other things, such as warfare in the Gaza strip. Yes, report it, but don't act as though this is the worst thing since the Holocaust, and it's new and shocking and never been done before. I then compared their attitude about that to the general idea that cloaked a story about a women who set fire to her husband's penis. They acted as though that happened every day! As though every women who ever suspected her husband of cheating was expected, even allowed to set her husband's penis.

That was how the general idea about the fire-penis thing appeared to me, at least. I most definitly would not set fire to my husband's penis should he cheat on me.

Despite all that I seem to have become a little bit of a news junkie. To entertain you, read this. Ciao.

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Today I woke up on the couch with a lot of meat in my pants. The troubling thing about this, other than the obvious natural discomfort of having meat literally shoved down your pants, was that I did not know or remember how the meat came to be where it was (in my pants). Then I remember that due to recent shakiness and tremors I have been writing down (using a hand suffering from shakiness mind you) what I was doing before I forget what I was doing so I know what I was doing after I have already done it. That way there can be a better job of explaining done if what I have done is in any way reprehensible.

Now with the use of paragraph tags I will begin a second paragraph which will be about remembering what I have done that may have been in some way reprehensible. I apparently, and that should be in quotes, went to the supermarket and apparently was ripping open cellophane wrapped meat and shoving the bare and unencumbered by styrofoam plate underneath the meat meat into my pants. And this was not discovered by any employees working in the supermarket possibly due to fear of a black planet and other goings on in our nation's capital.

The meat stayed where it was unencumbered and in my pants for a long period of time in which the meat began to turn bad especially due to things of a scrotal contact nature. While I cannot explain how or why I did this reprehensible act I do have notes written down about it. These notes don't make a great deal of sense to me or any other sensible man but I wish to make a public apology to the parties injured or hurt by my actions and their families here on this website which is read by everybody.