Welcome newcomers!
Hello, all time zones!
Hello, all time zones!
Come on in!
Coffee & Tea under the window, platters of treats on every table
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Newspapers are in their regular spot next to the door
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Please recommend (and unrecommend the Cafe/Lounge from yesterday)
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May the 4’s be with you
It’s not so much the newspapers I have to catch up on as it is all the great diaries from yesterday and already today! I know that we got new members. I hope they all drop by the pond today. If you recently signed-on, or if you’ve been a shy frog lurking by the side of the pond, let us know so we can welcome you anew or all over again. We like saying hi.
Must Have Coffee Now.
Have now had coffee. “anew or all over again”? I think that next time I’d better get the coffee first.
<obSimpsons> I found your syntax to be perfectly cromulent!
Proper use of language embiggens us all.
But this sounds like Dubya in a frog suit.
Good Morning. I think I may be the newest kid on the block. Last night when I made my first official post, Cabin Girl suggested I should drop in here and introduce myself.
So, here goes. I’m a full time writer of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and (with a growing regularity) political discourse. Actually, considering the theater of the bizarre that we currently have at the helm of government, those may all be part of the same genre now.
For an example of that latter, you can look at my very first diary at Booman Tribune – here.
For more info on my other writing, click on my name in the sig below to be whisked off to my home page, such as it is.
I’m a lifelong liberal raised in that one time bastion of progressive thinking, Minnesota. Now I live in a small college town in Wisconsin, where my wife teaches University physics and does educational research. I was precinct leader for MoveOn during the last election, and have become a thorn in the local conservative side via a never ending stream of letters to the editor. Somewhere in there I found Kos, which provided a lifeline during the election run up. Since then I’ve branched out to the rest of the political blogosphere. Since I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time lurking here, I decided to take the plunge, sign up, diary, and hit the Froggy Bottom Cafe. So, here I am.
I’m a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy so I’ll definitely be checking out your homepage. The Froggy Bottom Cafe diaries run everyday as a place to build community and take a break from the daily outrage that is caused by Bush and his minions. I’m off to go read your diary, see you around!
Thanks for the welcome, and for checking out my home page. I hope that you find some of my work interesting.
Cheers,
Kelly
I’m a big fantasy and sci-fi fan too, and will also visit your webpage.
Hi, Kelly! It’s great to have you here. You’ll find we have a lot of great writers, some pro’s, and some “just” naturally talented. (I’m a full time writer of mystery and suspense novels and short stories, myself.) I’m looking forward to reading your novel that’s coming out in ’06!
Thanks for the welcome. The thoughtful prose and analysis here is a good part of why I signed up. I’ll look forward to finding out more about your writing as time goes on.
Cheers,
Kelly
I didn’t know that. I’m sussing out from your email, that you are “Nancy Pickard” — is that right? If so, I see you’ve written a bunch of books. Care to make a recommendation? As a possible guide, my favorite mystery writers are Laura Lippman, Sarah Andrews, Nevada Barr, and Denise Mina.
Hi, AndiF. The one you need to get is DEATH OF A BLUE DOT. Just kidding, anybody who’s reading this! Little joke between AndiF, her hubby, and me.
If you can get The Whole Truth, I’d suggest that you start there. It’s out of print, but should be findable. It’s the first one of my most recent series that stars a true crime writer in south Florida. (It was an Edgar award nominee for novel of its year.) My next novel, The Virgin of Small Plains, won’t be out until June ’06. I don’t think you’d like the three I did starring a sleuth named Eugenia Potter–too cozy. But you might like my old Jenny Cain series. There’s also a non-fiction book I co-wrote with a psychologist–The Writer’s Path.
(The reason you didn’t know is that I don’t normally mention it. It would have seemed wierd to me not to say something about it today, though.)
I don’t normally eavesdrop (well, OK, yes I do), but I thought I’d follow up on your recommendations to AndiF. So I headed on over to Powell’s. Rave reviews for The Writer’s Path–it’s on order. The Whole Truth was available in Adobe e-book form, so I downloaded it to my Palm.
I hope that sends a couple of royalty bucks your way!
So glad you eavesdropped! Hey, maybe I should have said something sooner. 🙂 Thanks very much and I hope you like ’em. (I’ll go take a look at those reviews for The Writer’s Path.)
Now, that’s a concept I hadn’t considered — I must be too nosey (and you’re obviously way nicer than me*) ’cause I figure everybody’s post is open season.
* not only for the politeness but for going right out and actually spending money.
It’s kind of visualization thing–when I read the Cafe posts I imagine a room (or patio) full of happily conversing people. I fetch myself a Boo-mug full of coffee or tea, then I wander through the room, listening to the various discussions. And occasionally I jump in, although more commonly I listen, smile, and nod. I think of the ratings as the “smile and nod” part.
That made me smile and nod.
Diane, are you here? Have you got an animated emoticon for smiling and nodding?
I wasn’t here exactly then, but I just saw this, looked in my smiley bag and found this one, hope this works…
BTW I just had to close our gib gate and caught one of my typing fingers between the metal.. I shall recover, but right now it hurts like hell.
If you are wondering waht a jib gate is, it is a big gate spelled backwards…
I think of it as being like the coffeehouses (without the heavy layer of smoke from joints, of course and with much better wine than Ripple Pagan Pink) of my misspent youth where there are a bunch of people sitting on cushions on the floor starting up random conversations about whatever interests them at the moment with anyone who happens to be within earshot.
I misspent some time in those coffeehouses too. But what with the heavy layer of joint-smoke and the Ripple Pagan Pink, I often found myself talking to the cushions.
put the blue dot in a mystery — you’re really clever, I know you can work it in somehow.
The library’s got the ‘Whole Truth’ so it’s now on my TBR list. And they’ve got several Jenny Cain.
(You’re right on the cozies, I don’t normally read them. But I don’t like hard-boiled either and legal thrillers are my idea of a sleeping-pill.)
Just checking back in after running off to knock out the opening of the chapter I was supposed to be working on when I wrote my diary this morning. I read some mystery, though not a lot. I’ll make a point of looking for your work on my next bookstore expedition. I try and keep them few and far between, being a written word junkie.
and I hope you find the same joys of fellowship I have found here.
I will make sure to read your diary and check out your webpage.
Again welcome.
Glad you made it to the cafe today, Kelly!
Welcome to the pond!
As a science-fiction writer maybe you can help us with a problem we have:
If it’s true (per quantum mechanics) that the universe splits in two each time a choice is made, how can we all get off of this universe and over to the one where Gore assumed office after the 2000 election?
I’ve tried clicking my heels, but that only takes me to Kansas, LOL!
Funny you should mention that. The novel coming it in 06 started as a short story whose first line was
“Mtp/mweb.DecLocus// GorePres2000. umn. edu~comstockhall301,” I said. It was my current home site on the mweb. “Execute.”
It’s a magic and technology hybrid book with travel between alternate realities and computer code for spells. Back when I wrote that line and it was published in Weird Tales, Clinton was still president and it seemed to me that the logical mainstream of reality was going to involve a Gore presidency. Who knew?
The novel version for reasons of timeliness and ongoing readability is no longer tied quite so close to any one date or event, but man I wish I’d been right. Or, maybe I was right, and our little corner of reality turned into a backwater with the supreme’s selection of W.
If I ever figure out a way to make the magic work in the real world and get us back into the mainstream, I’ll post it here first.
Glad you plunged in 🙂
Thank you all for the many kind words and the very warm welcome. Thanks also for putting my very first shiny new diary on the recommended list. Even after a year over at dKos I don’t feel as at home there as I do here after less than a day. Wow! I just… Wow!
Thanks!
Kelly
Welcome, Kelly. I see you selected your lili pad and came on over here for a little ribbiting. So good to see ya this morning.
I just know that you will add to our diversity. Please just do what comes naturally…….:o)
Hugs and have a great day with us and far from anythings else, please share with us your writting skills….
hope everyone has a great day, and if you don’t, quityurbitch’n, and smile ; ) LOL
I’ll have a coffee/Bailey’s…that’ll put a smile on my face….later tater’s
peace
Mornin’! Just popping in while I avoid finishing my premature ejaculation paper…which has provided me with an endless supply of useless trivia…
Do tell!
On the contrary, I’d argue it’s already TMI!
Come on now, I know EVERYONE here is just dying to hear what the median IELT is, and how it’s measured in clinical studies!
Ribbit.
After all the angst of the last couple of days, it’s so nice to see the FBC. I need to de-stress from all the horror in the world, so I’m going to un-blog for a bit.
Not GBCW, but a bientot BMT.
I know what you mean. I de-blogged a bit this week, myself. I was tired of feeling angry. Had to go find the peaceful center again before I could walk back into the pissed-off world. As Cali Scribe’s sig line says, we have to be the change we want to see in the world. I take that very seriously. And lightly.
I’ll be looking for you when you’re ready to go again.
(bunny day) (bonne idee) (good idea).
Uwind, destress, heal, and hop on back when you’re ready.
Farewell, for now, O Muse. Please don’t stay away for too long; I’d hate to think we’ve lost our memory.
Feeling really good so far this morning — in fact I feel a song coming on…
I used to live in new york city
Every thing there was dark and dirty
Outside my window was a steeple
With a clock that always said 12:30
Young girls are coming to the canyon
And in the morning I can see them walking
I can no longer keep my blinds drawn
And I can’t keep myself from talking.
At first so strange to feel so friendly
To say good morning and really mean it
To feel these changes happening in me
But not to notice till I feel it.
Young girls are coming to the canyon
And in the morning I can see them walking
I can no longer keep my blinds drawn
And I can’t keep myself from talking.
Cloudy waters cast no reflection
Images of beauty lie there stagnant
Vibrations bounce in no direction
And lie there shattered into fragments.
Young girls are coming to the canyon
And in the morning I can see them walking
I can no longer keep my blinds drawn
And I can’t keep myself from talking.
(That’s by The Mamas & the Papas, BTW…)
Actually out of bed and have the bed made this morning! The spouse is over exercising — thinking of treating him to a good breakfast, then we can get to work around here.
Hope everyone has a great day…I’m feeliing a little more positive today. Yeah, the world still sucks…but it’s the only one I’ve got, so I’d better learn to deal with it…
Yeah, the world still sucks…but it’s the only one I’ve got, so I’d better learn to deal with it…
Actually, I’ve put Kelly, our latest BMT resident, to work on this very problem (see my comment above) so maybe this will only be a temporary problem (one can hope!).
Good Morning to all! I’m hung over from my 12 banana daquiris at yesterday’s FBC, but I’ll get over it. A little hair o’ the dog that bit me, perhaps?
Umm, more booze.
Mornin, evening!
Hi Kansas how you doing today and Cali, Brother, Boran, Ipig, Cabin, and anyone else I forgot.
Today holds the promise, let it come true.
Do we have waitresses yet at the cafe, if so I would like cream of wheat, toast and milk. Please serve that on a tray, with a rose and the paper…so I can eat in bed. LOL
Everyone, have a really great day.
We had a minor household incident and weren’t in position to watch last night’s installment of “Evolution, Shmevolution.” And they had Lewis Black.
OK, nobody say anything about it, and we’ll try to look up the morning rerun time for Puget Sound.
Louis Black was good, off course, but you didn’t miss much with the Ed Helms section. It was on how Hooters evolved by having big-breasted waitresses.
Jon did a panel discussion with a biologist, an intelligent design person, and a kind of new-agey person. He asked the ID guy if the design was so intelligent, how come his most delicate parts were in a sack out in the open. 🙂 It was sort of funnt, but too short to allow much interaction between the panelist or development of a discussion.
Mrs. Gooserock is working with me in the shop today so we timed some “clean shop” work for the 10AM rerun.
The Hooters bit would have connected with teen-aged/mentality males. Say what you will, that’s a demographic we need to be skeptical of the other side going into the future.
The panel was great as far as it went. Turns to the I.D. guy after the spiritualist (?) spoke: “Why shouldn’t we teach this in school?” I was sort of hoping they’d repeat her opening statement as the moment of zen.
I liked the teaser for tonight: Christians are moving to a place where nothing is evolving.
It’s kind of a shame that very soon I will no longer live in a state with its very own time zone (Indiana-East). OTOH, I am looking forward to never having to explain again that (most of) Indiana is on EST while the other guys are on EDT.
On a totally different subject, here’s a picture of a snow squall at the Grand Canyon that fits my current mood.
Just finished a great book about kamikaze pilots-sorry I don’t remember the exact title but the author’s name is Shetfall. His descriptions of how a government could talk a large portion of the population into thinking it was OK to have young men hurl themselves into enemy ships in flimsy airplanes or torpedo subs was WAY too familiar, really raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Now am reading Commonsense Rebellion by Bruce Levine and am really feeling energized by it.
S’posed to be working so will duck back out-hope the boss didn’t see me sneak in here…
A few stanzas from Billy Collins poem “Marginalia” to amuse you. . .
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive–
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!”
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who write “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
(. . .)
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
hands cupped around their mouths.
“Absolutely,” the shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have ever managed to graduate from college
without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
etc. (From “Sailing Alone Around the Room.”)
The best argument I’ve read against marking in books. Bloody heathens, sullying the text with their inane or irrelevant scribbles. Unrestrained highlighters will occupy the same circle of Hell in my cosmology.
Preach it, Brother!!
Not all marginalialists are created equal. Here’s another stanza:
. . you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.
I have a friend who wrote a mystery novel inspired by a comment she read in the margins of a library book. Some anonymous woman had written a plea for help from domestic violence. As you can imagine, my friend felt haunted by that.
That’s stunning. I can imagine that could make a gripping story, and I’d be haunted too. I wonder whatever became of the woman who wrote the margin-note.
Tho there is precedent for marginalia to take on importance of their own, e.g. Irnerius and other “Glossators” whose notes and “glosses” on the Justinian Codex were as important to early legal curricula as the Codex itself. But alas, I lapse pedantic again….
Oooo, we just love it when you talk pendantic!
Well, y’know, the little dust-up yesterday got me thinking about the relations between Greek city-states during the Classic period, particularly between cities and their colonies. Was even going to diary it, but then I pulled Thucydides off the shelf, and then I recalled a comment on MLW earlier in the week about the Melian Dialogue, and well, it all went downhill from there and I woke up this morning with the cover of the Loeb edition of Lysistrata imprinted on my face. Suffice to say y’all were spared a major exercise in pedantry by yours truly.
My thinker-thing hurts just from reading that…
My other thing hurts from thinking about how they measure the things you’re writing about in that paper….
The partner holds a stopwatch and times the event from insertion to (male) completion…
Well geez, that adds another dimension to “performance anxiety.”
Did I mention that they pay each couple $400 for their efforts?
Now that’s pedantic.
This on the other hand, is just silly.
How’s that for some subtle diary whoring…
Call me a Medievalist, but I do it whenever I’m reading essays. Something about finding out what I think by writing it down, I guess.
One of the best books to execute marginalia in is Douglas Hofstadter’s
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
That’s because there are hidden games in the text that make the otherwise rather scholarly book an interactive egg hunt kind of read.
Writing in the margins can increase one’s pleasure in a read — but the text has to be robust enough to provoke thought.
Otherwise, marginalia is merely the other oleo for the white spaces.
I wonder (she wrote in the white space)if blog comments are a kind of modern marginalia. Some of them anyway. Like this one?
But what I really want is the ability to draw on comments — I want to make arrows pointing to things and circles around words and sometimes big, red X’s.
Yes! I love that idea. And be able to circle something and draw a line out to the margin and write, “Proof?” That’s what I have long wanted to do with TIME magazine articles. I want to litter their margins with: “Says Who?”
That’s what I have long wanted to do with TIME magazine articles. I want to litter their margins with: “Says Who?”
The answer is to that question always is — the ghost of Clare Booth Luce.
An interactive written response to what you’re reading. Don’t you find that when responding to a thoughtful diary the act of typing out — and going back and editing — a comment is precisely executing “marginalia”?
I thought that was what Marge called her genetalia…. 🙂
“I can’t believe it’s not butter!”
This will get either your or your pootie wondering “WTF??” Litterbox Heavy Metal Video
For some, commuting can be a real bitch! 🙂
Lol! It’s esp. funny to me when viewed with your sig line and considering that one of my cats gives me love bites. They’re very gentle, though I’m careful never to try to pull away from his teeth. Shredding is bad. Now, seeing that photo I may have to rethink his passion. 🙂
Psst SallyCat, yes Kitty drank out of EACH container this morning, too. 🙂
Got some Big Cats in my neighborhood…local animal folks had to shoo one of these bad-boys out of the “very-nearby” just a day or two ago…
Had one dining on a raccoon in my side yard last year…didn’t bother w/ animal control as it was quite late, and he was gone in the morning.
And, since I’m on the subject of “cats”, check this video out:
Herding Cats
Enjoy
Peace
Dada, we have moutain lions here as well. Reason Kitty is an indoor pootie. We’ve had several sighting here. One walked right between my house and the neighbors house in the early morning hours. You can see each damn muscle in their body.
Lately, there’s been more and mores sightings, several at the school’s playground at dusk.
What a beautiful picture! The big cats are so elegant!
—Big cat story…sad for all
My brother-in-law had a close encounter in Eastern Utah with one of those…bad winter and the cat was hungry. The family dog died, brother-in-law had 30 stitches in his back…the cat was shot by my brother-in-law trying to stop the attack on him.
There are lots of issues – and my outdoors type brother in law says it is forest service / fish & game management responsible for animals not having enough food. Another rant another day….
I give them LOTS of space…like from inside.
Wow. For the very first time since I came to the Trib I can’t keep up with the diaries. I gave up trying to keep up with the front page a few weeks ago, but now there’s so much great stuff coming at us from every direction! What a delightful problem. We should still be okay–don’t you think?– as long as we manage to remember Boo’s Only Rule.
I just had a Revelation of my own: it’s the end of the world as we know it.
Growth will always defeat stagnation
Depth coincides with width
and I can still smile at the end of the day.
[/blathering]
Your blather beats most people’s “profundity” any day!
But do you really think it’s the end of the BooTrib world as we’ve known it? Yeah, I suspect you’re right. We may be making an exponential leap.
Not an end, but definitely an ongoing evolution. Take a look at the monthly site hits. You can see the spike in June when pie splattered all over the internets, that growth was out of our hands. Now look at September, we’re already hitting the same numbers as all of June, July and August; even though its barely midway through the month. That is because the site is attracting new visitors on its own merits–great writing, great people, etc. Crooks and Liars, Raw Story, and Salon’s Daou Report have been linking regularly to the frontpage–kudos to Susan and Boo for fostering a blog-relationship with them.
As you can see, we are hardly becoming “marginalized”.
http://www.filmstripinternational.com/index.php?asshole
Worth the wait.
I wish this could be shown tonight instead of his asshole speech.