I am writing this from my old notebook, because my desktop video card appears to have died. It has wonderful blue screens, red dots, green dots, and removing drivers and so forth seem not to solve this. Even safe mode appears not to be safe.

Wonderful.

At the moment, I’m currently describing life by how this keyboard works: sometimes the L sticks.

This morning, my mother came over. One of the first things she asked me if I had watched the Michael Jackson funeral.

I didn’t, but she did. Apparently his coffin was golden.

Anyone else fancy a refresher course on the kind of man Michael Jackson really was? Good. Let’s go back a few years….

“The accuser, now 15, remarked that ‘Sometimes Michael would also give wine’ to the New Jersey siblings … which Jackson called ‘Jesus Juice’.” As a novelist you know a linguistic bullseye when you see it and “Jesus Juice” is just too good. It is exactly what a quasi-religious paedophile would call wine he has transferred to a Coke can and is trying to get a child to drink. When I heard that detail during the trial it literally stopped me in my tracks.

Jordy Chandler, Jackson’s first accuser, gave detectives a detailed description of Jackson’s genital area, including distinctive “splotches” on his buttocks and one on his penis. The boy’s information was so accurate he was able to locate where the splotch moved to when Jackson’s penis became erect and the fact that he was circumcised. Jackson was brought in and his genitals duly photographed. Soon after this shoot (surely one of the stranger photo sessions endured by the singer) was matched up to Chandler’s description, Jackson suddenly agreed to settle Chandler’s civil claim out of court for somewhere north of $20m (£12.2m).

At this juncture, some details recounted in the affidavit of Gavin Arvizo, Jackson’s second accuser, are also worth remembering: “Jackson told him [Arvizo] that boys have to masturbate or they go crazy, and related a story about a boy who had sex with a dog. Jackson, he said, then told him he wanted to show him how to masturbate.”

…

Let us picture what was, by all accounts – that of the staff, of the parents and siblings of various young accusers – this grown man’s idea of a good time. We descend into the chilled, darkened bowels of Neverland, passing the Mickey Mouse posters, the discreet alarm systems (rigged to give advance warning of anyone approaching his chambers), we punch in the keypad security code required for access to the inner sanctum and we find the King of Pop: he lies on an enormous bed, numbed by opiates, smudged with wine or bourbon (”Jim Bean” one of the boys called it, a malapropism that might be charming in other circumstances) and surrounded by half-naked pre-pubescent boys.

A laptop is showing pornography, opened bottles of Pinot Noir and SKYY vodka are strewn around. Jackson is watching Disney’s Fantasia over and over again, drifting off up to the ceiling as a wave of the Dilaudid or Demerol hits him. He cuddles the nearest boy. His newest, most special friend. The medical bag in the corner glistens darkly, filled with brown tubs of prescription candy and pre-loaded hypodermics. Man, sweet dreams for the King of Pop.

That’s John Niven, giving Jackson a send off.

Link.

You know, it disturbs me that I’m making a second Michael Jackson post, but check out this:

It comes from a link to a story about Jackson’s ghost strolling round his house, which is an obvious waste of brain space. But what’s truly disturbing is the number of locks on his bedroom door, which is what they’re looking at the moment before the ghost appears.
Now, I ask you, why would someone need that many locks on their bedroom door?

The children, I tell you, think of the children.

Today’s compliment comes from Rjurik Davidson:

I suspect here we get an interesting example of a divide that runs right through the SF world: the differing aesthetics of readers who like traditional genre elements (plot, pace, sense of wonder) and those who are literary, concerned with deep character, theme, mood, language. Dave falls on the former side of the divide. And it seems to me that writing literary SF is probably not a great career move. It’s a form of marginalising yourself doubly. First, you marginalise yourself from the literary mainstream which often sneers as science fiction, then you marginalise yourself from the bulk of SF genre readers who are often attracted to its pulpish elements. You end up with a very small readership indeed, unless like Ballard, Le Guin and others, you can reconnect with the literary mainstream. Or if you’re really smart, you write science fiction which is able to hide the fact that it is science fiction (here I’m thinking of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or Margaret Atwood’s work). Otherwise you are likely to end up like Thomas M. Disch - a great and ignored writer.

It seems to me that there are a number of writers I know who run this risk: in terms of Australians, someone like Ben Peek (who has written for Overland), might be sitting in this space. Peek’s Twenty Six Lies One Truth is a smart novella which owes much to experimental or ‘postmodern’ fiction, and yet I suspect its main readership came from the SF community, the place where Peek made his name.

Sometimes, it strikes me as strange the things people say about me. I’ve been a jealous bastard, I’ve been the next best thing, I’ve been a has been, and now I could possibly be great and ignored, though only time will prove, I suppose.

At any rate, it’s still a nice compliment, and Davidson’s comment that there is a divide in the speculative fiction scene is true, though I hardly think that it is a new one. In fact, I would go as far as to say the divide exists in fiction, no matter the genre, since there has always been the people who value plot, pacing, and suspension of disbelief over everything else. The number of people who read Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and told me it was poorly written but an engrossing plot, for example, would be a key indication that this audience exists. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t have a book that does both–but everyone likes a good divide, and me, I look forward to the day when all those people who want a cracking plot and taken to the wall and executed.

Viva la revolution, as they say.

I made a twitter account. Strangely, my name was taken, and so I called it nosubstance.

I don’t know what to do with it yet. I added a bunch of people and a lot of it is a wall of text, so I figure I’ll have to cut that back, and then I’ll figure out what use it has

From Deb Layne (wheatland_press)

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