One of my students told me that she was media fasting over Easter. Cynically, I said to her, “Well, you know, Jesus without his mobile was only half a man.”

Apparently, general idea of media fasting is that there’s an information overload in the everyday life that we live, and we should strip it back for peace of mind. I wouldn’t have thought that not watching DVDs, turning off the net, the TV, and avoiding books and video games was a way to actually find a peace of mind, but that’s me.

For example, if I had begun to media fast over Easter (if, say I was religious and some kind of religious leader said to do it) I would have missed this time line that noted the child molestation scandal in the Catholic Church and the Pope’s reactions to it. Before 2005 it notes that “When the erstwhile Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is selected to be Pope, he has been heading up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that decides whether priests accused of child abuse should be given canonical trials and defrocked” and mere months later “a Texas civil lawsuit accusing Ratzinger of covering up the abuse of three Houston area boys in the mid-1990s is dropped.” In 2007, however, “the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles pays out $660 million to hundreds of plaintiffs accusing up to 126 priests of clergy sex abuse.” It quietens down a bit, and then there’s the report in Ireland in late 2009, followed by February of this year, where “evidence of “systematic” sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Germany begins to emerge. German magazine Der Spiegel reports that “close to 100 priests and members of the laity” are suspected.” It gets better after that, as the Pope’s brother is linked to the scandal, and the Pope himself when he was an Archbishop, who “reportedly approved the transfer of Peter Hullerman, a priest accused of molesting boys, to therapy. After being treated, Hullerman returned to pastoral duties and abused more children. He was finally convicted of sexual abuse in 1986.” Of course, it emerges that Hullerman is still a practising priest (well, n more after the media finds out) and after an apology that convicts no one, the Pope is then linked to another scandal, in which he “is accused of failing to defrock Lawrence Murphy, a priest who allegedly molested as many as 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin during the 1960s and 70s. A canonical trial to dismiss the priest in 1996 was halted after Murphy personally wrote to Ratzinger to protest the trial because he was in poor health and had “already repented.”"

Imagine, if I was media fasting, I wouldn’t have heard any of that.

Happy Easter, people.

I went up to the bank today to cash in a cheque for Black Sheep. It wasn’t a whole lot, and with the American dollar the way it is, I actually ended up losing a couple of dollars once I paid the conversion fee, but that’s how it is some times. To be honest, I was kind of surprised when it showed up last week, but it seems that every six months or so I get a cheque for a hundred odd dollars, and a slip of paper that tells me 90 or so copies have been sold. I wish I knew what I’d done with the previous ones I’d gotten–I could add up the numbers correctly and say how many it had sold. It wouldn’t be a whole lot, but it’s enough, I guess, to find yourself on the German Abitur, which is still, a year later, a kind of strange and bizarre thing.

While I was in the bank cashing in my money, however, the woman serving me told me that I sounded American. “No,” I said, “I’m local.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Been there recently, then?”

“No.”

“Well, you have a very unique way of speaking,” she said, trying to end the conversation quickly. “What is it you do?”

I told her I run my own part time tutoring business, and that I write around the hours I work. I nodded to the cheque she was holding. “It’s big money, as you can see.” She laughed, and I think she thought I was joking, but she had access to my account information, and the jokes stopped soon enough.

Deb Layne (wheatland_press) has announced that Polyphony Seven will be released, around July 1st. Here’s the table of contents, followed by a link for you to purchase, because of course you should.

The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew
by Howard Waldrop

Dr. Black at the Red Demon Temple
by Brendan Connell

The Snow Queen
by Chris Clarke

Strange Mammals
by Jason Erik Lundberg

The Afterlife of Sorrow
by Mikal Trimm

Breaker of Thresholds
by George Zebrowski

The Seven Deadly Motels
by Bruce Holland Rogers

The Monster in the Field
by Steve Rasnic Tem

There is Something So Quiet and Empty
Inside of You that it Must be Precious
by Ben Peek

A Problem in Five Clocks
by Stephen Bush

Bear in Contradictory Landscape
by David J. Schwartz

Automata
by Eric Schaller

The Klepsydra
by Micheala Roessner

Captain Kid
by Kristin Livdahl

Loose Ends
by Jerry Oltion

The Possibility of Love
by Stephanie Campisi

Grief-Stepping to the Widower’s Waltz
by Ken Scholes

A Sip from the Cup of Enlightenment
by Sarah Totton

The Dust and the Red
by Darin C. Bradley

A Joy Forever
by Celia Marsh

The Heart of the Rail
by Mark Teppo

Mirages
by Eric M. Witchey

Avoiding the Cold War
by Josh Rountree

My title is still the longest one!

Link.

Reposted around a lot, I’m sure, but this is a really freaky image. It looks like worms beneath human skin, but it’s actually Spring on Mars.

Spring has sprung on Mars, bringing with it the disappearance of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) that covers the north polar sand dunes. In spring, the sublimation of the ice (going directly from ice to gas) causes a host of uniquely Martian phenomena.

In this image streaks of dark basaltic sand have been carried from below the ice layer to form fan-shaped deposits on top of the seasonal ice. The similarity in the directions of the fans suggests that they formed at the same time, when the wind direction and speed was the same. They often form along the boundary between the dune and the surface below.

Link.

If I still had a comic, I would do an entire month on why you shouldn’t let visitors buy toilet paper for your place.

I expect anarchy in America, any day now.

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to pass a landmark healthcare reform bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

The bill was passed by 219 votes to 212, with no Republican backing, after hours of fierce argument and debate.

It extends coverage to 32 million more Americans, and marks the biggest change to the US healthcare system in decades.

“We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things,” Mr Obama said in remarks after the vote.

“This legislation will not fix everything that ails our healthcare system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction,” he said.

Mr Obama is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly.

Link.

Its been a while since A Softer World made me laugh.

Link.

A couple of hours ago, I flipped on the TV to chill for a moment, and found some kids program discussing being a writer.

Apparently Kim Wilkins had appeared and told the not so young looking teenager that he had real talent, and he was no considering becoming a writer, much to his father’s concern. His father, it seems, told him that he needed to have a career, to support his ‘career’ as a writer. I waited for his father to say, “I know you won’t really like your money making career, at least, not as much as your writing one. Truth is, you’ll probably do it in a less that spectacular fashion as you day dream and try to work out sentences and plots and themes. But it’s still important for you to have this career. Everyone should do things they don’t particularly like to get by. Especially artists.”

But that conversation never seemed to appear.

I have been listening to Silver Mt Zion’s new album, Kollaps Tradixionales, from which the above track is taken. I’m a big fan of the band and I quite like the album, but I hope they didn’t pay anyone to make this video clip, I have to say. Still, cool album–try not to let this turn you off it.

Still, there’s a happy baby in it, and that ought to count for something.

In 2002, the Polyphony anthology series debuted. Conceived as a short fiction venue for stories that would skate gracefully across the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, and literary fiction, it was quickly recognized as the standard bearer for cross genre work. Since then, the series’ six volumes have become a vital, unique collection of voices in literature of the fantastic.

Polyphony has been twice nominated for a World Fantasy Award and the stories therein have been featured in several “Year’s Best” anthologies, along with garnering accolades from several award judges and committees. Polyphony authors range from multiple-award-winning seasoned writers to the previously unpublished. The series is truly a melodic interweaving of many voices: old and new, speculative and literary, heralded and unknown. Polyphony has not merely crossed literary boundaries, it has reformed and redefined them.

The harsh economic climate threatens to kill this vital series. Wheatland Press is asking for your help.

The authors have graciously made concessions to make Polyphony 7 a reality. They’ve agreed to a reduced pay rate to see the volume published. Now we need readers.

In order to publish Polyphony 7, Wheatland Press must receive 225 paid pre-orders via the website by March 15, 2010. If the pre-order quantities cannot be met, Polyphony will cease publication. It’s that simple. The preorder link is here: http://www.wheatlandpress.com/polyphony/v7.html

If the preorder number is met, then Polyphony 7 will be published on or about July 1, 2010.*

We have heard from many in the SF/F literary community that Polyphony is a vital part of landscape. We agree, but we cannot continue without your support. We hope that you will support our fine authors and their art by becoming part of the Polyphony community and pre-ordering a copy of Polyphony 7.

The podcast of my reading of ‘Under the Red Sun’ is now live at Terra Incognita SF.

It’s a sizeable story, and though I haven’t listened to the end product–like most people I have no particular desire to hear myself–I figure it’s about forty minutes or so in length. So check it out, and check out the rest of the site.