Run.

Started running again today, for the 3rd time this year. The last couple of times I got thwarted by a bashed toe and then a yuckky chest. I felt okay while I was doing it, but now I'm coughing up... you don't want to know. I reckon I have a week or so of coughing up this goo and then I'll be clear, and things will get easier. Doing the Breath of Fire excercise to help things along a bit.

I have to keep moving. When I stop moving, I get aches and pains and sundry annoyances: my right side cramps, my lungs fill up with crap. When I stop moving, things break down.

I'm having some trouble placing one of my fics. It's a light fantasy piece about a dad dragon giving a pi-jaw to his dragon son, and I just can't seem to settle it anywhere. I'm only submitting to pro markets at the moment, on principle.

Finished a poem last night; God knows who'll buy it, it's pretty bleak. No new stories tho'. I hate it when I don't finish a story for a couple of days coz I feel like I'm losing momentum, winding down. Falling behind. Rolling back to where I was a couple of years ago, when I was finishing one piece every few months, if that. I must finish something tomorrow. I have to keep on finishing, submitting, revising, rewriting, resubmitting.

I have to keep moving, or things break down.

Gnarrgh.

Bunnies. Fluffy bunnies.

Goddammit--why isn't there a 12-step programme for giving up passive-aggression? Specifically, that form of passive aggression which involves going off into one on your weblog about something someone said on a message board.

Miniature goats. Teeny little miniature goats, the ones that only come up to your knees.

I used to do that all the time, but I've been sober from it for about a year (I think), because I realised just how hurtful (not to mention bloody irritating) it can be.

Tapirs! Yay for tapirs! Exotic wuffles.

But I am sooo tempted to fall off the wagon right now, because an unwitting finger has poinked one of my buttons. And the worst of it is, I genuinely like the person doing the poinking and would bitterly regret tearing hir a new one.

Kittens. Of course.

I don't know why that makes it harder.

Tiny Shetland pony foals with weebly-woobly legs. Ring-tailed lemurs. Pipistrelles. Hedgehogs. Leeetle baby fox-cubs.

God, I'm so fucking petty.

Oi! Spooky perverts!

I've been cracking the keyboard all day, but I seem to have run out of ideas. Zap me, please.

Also: When the current stack of cats-in-a-box collapse their precious little waveforms, could there be just one or two kitties still feet-down instead of feet up? Ta.

No a la guerra

Piled out to the manifestación yesterday with Lurid A. It was pretty big; the Beeb say 200,000 but I'm betting it was more. Great atmosphere, as usual: floats, lavish home-made banners, samba music, kiddies in face-paint. It's really cute to see a whole family marching together, parents, grandparents, kids, all chanting in unison.
My fave costume? The seven-foot tall blue alien with the "PAZ UNIVERSALE" placard.

It was a festive atmosphere, but there was an edge of sorrow there too. Many people had added black ribbons to their anti-war banners; one man carried a placard that simply showed the black memorial ribbon with MADRID written below it and BAGDAD above. There was a great deal of anger, too, much of it directed to the recently-ousted Aznar.

I'm impressed by the peaceful nature of Spanish protests, as well as the high turn-outs. The police prescence was microscopic, not like back home. (Honestly, I've been on marches where the protesters were outnumbered two to one by the old Bill.)

Later we met a couple of friends for a meal in Barceloneta and then walked along the beach. There were a few protesters camped out in sleeping bags and tents, votive candles burning next to a placard remembering the dead of Madrid.

I found the culprit.

It was Wordpad. Eeeeeevil Wordpad.

Amongst other annoying glitches, wordpad is possessed by the Demons of 10ptyness. When you open your file in Wordpad it is automatically downsized from 10 to 12, which you don't notice because you're on the laptop and so inadvertantly piss off good and deserving editors with your teenytiny letters.

I say FIE unto Wordpad. How much FIE? Enough FIE that I have banished it from my toolbar in favour of a freeware wordprocessor called AbiWord. It's as shaky as Heck, tries to load a nonexistant dictionary every time you open a file, and crashes altogether if you try to use the Help... and yet strangely it still sux0rz less than bloody Wordpad. I'm running Star Office over on the big 'puter, of course, but Lurid needs that to shoot Klingons.

Edit: I've just resubmitted the story that got rejected yesterday to a different market. The ed. of the rejecting zine was right: the ending was too weak. I've altered it, and I think the story as a whole works way better now.

Dealing with rejection.

Okay, make that four bits in the post. Just got a rejection from one of the places I sent stuff off to yesterday.

I am sooooo pissed off. Not with the rejection, I mean, that's fair enough. But somewhere along the line, my attachment got reformatted down from 12 to 10 pt. font. 10 pt? What the fuck? I KNOW I formatted that bastard properly! I've been doing this since I was a kid! Double line space, single side, TWELVE POINT COURIER! How could this happen to me? Oh, the shame! The indignity! The helpful little note from the asst. ed. with a link to a writer's help site! AUUUUUUUUUUGHHHH!

How will I ever live this down?

Okay. Calm now.

Well, no, I'm not even a tiny bit calm, I'm still pissed off, but I'm all ranted out for now so I'll just whine about how hard it is to be a writahhhh for a bit.

Except that I can't, coz right now things are coming pretty well. I've been working pretty hard this past week, finished three new stories, and tarted up four old storys that I wrote some years back but never submitted anywhere. I submitted three pieces of short fiction to 3 zines, two pro and one semi-pro, which makes 4 bits in the post if you count my entry for the McSweeny prize. I also have a piece ready to send out to TSR (finally!) which I should do tomorrow. That'll clear the decks, leaving me to finish some more works which I've outlined but haven't filled in yet. Two high fantasy, one sorta Fortean-y thing. They shouldn't really take me longer than a week to finish, barring the tedious proofreading etc.

Realistically I need to keep that kind of pace up every week if I want to get anywhere with this. I want to be selling a piece to a pro market, a market that pays 3 cents a word minimum, every week. That's not so crazy. There are a lot of markets out there nowadays and I am writing faster and better than I ever have in my life.

Rummaging around the wonderful Ralan.com I've turned up some promising pro markets. Check it out.

Edit: Make that five bits in the post. It's all quality stuff too. You can hate me now, that's what I'm here for.

Roll over.

It looks a lot like Aznar and friends played up ETA's involvement for political gain, but then "Aznar is a complete git who'd sell his own granny to keep the PP in power" is hardly news round here.

I think we've all worked out by now that ETA was not soley responsible for last Thursday's atrocity (tho' not for want of trying). Most of the evidence now points to Al Qaeda, with maybe a side order of ETA. TBH, I didn't want to belive it myself, because I know damn well that out head honchos will most likely use this as an excuse to clamp down even more harshly on our civil rights.

But that's not what I want to talk about right now. Right now I have a very special message for the (largely) right-wing pro-war lobby, in respect of their comments on the Spanish election result. Obviously this is a complex issue, one which needs a sensitive and even handed approach, showing due regard to both sides, but then there's this whole part where the r-w, p-w all suck and need to be sworn at a very lot.

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU YOU POINTLESS, POINTLESS, POINTLESS FUCKING BASTARDS! YOU KNOW NOTHING! YOU ARE NOTHING! YOU INSULT THE LIVING AND THE DEAD WITH YOUR WORTHLESS BITCHING! SO YOU DIDN'T GET THE ELECTION RESULT YOU WANTED -- BOO FUCKING HOO! CHOKE ON PROPER DEMOCRACY! HARRRGH!

That doesn't mean you get to attack the people of Spain, you ignorant, souless gits. Oh, I'm so terribly sorry that having FUCKING BOMBS GO OFF IN THEIR CAPITAL made more people turn out to vote than might otherwise have done so. I'm so fucking sorry you saw a guy in a 'Palestine scarf' in one of the photos. Jeeze, that must have been hard on you. I'm so fucking sorry that Spain as a whole decided it was sick of the taste of DUBYA'S RIM, and decided that Hey, maybe we should vote in someone with less of an appetite for bushmeat.

Oh, yeah. The Spanish voted in someone you didn't like, so they must have been "scared." I suppose they were also scared when they took to the streets to tell the terrorists to fuck off. I suppose they were scared when they piled, man and boy, woman and girl, into easily bombable public spaces. I suppose they were scared when they chanted anti-terrorist slogans.

I suppose, right, they were fucking scared when they buried their kids and then stumbled weeping from the graveside to vote in the election. I guess they were scared then, yeah?

God, you unfeeling, spiteful, ignorant, self-satisfied, pompous, narcisstic WANKERS. I hope you never lose anyone to a terroist attack. You lack anything like the emotional maturity to deal with it. These people have more fucking guts in there little fingers that you Tory hack SCUM WILL EVER HAVE in your ENTIRE BODIES.

I love Spain. I really love Catalunya. I'd raise a kid here, and that's saying something.

ps: "Appeasement" is not a magic word. Saying "appeasement" a lot does not make you be suddenly be right.

PPS: Democracy's a bitch when it ain't your democracy, innit?

Bleh.

Had a fit last night. First one for ages, so it came as a bit of a surprize. Hell if I know what brought it on; I was working pretty hard yesterday so maybe it was that.

Bleh.

The PP lost.

Spain's ruling PP has been ousted by the PSOE, the leading left-wing party over here. There was a bit more pot-banging tonight, this time in celebration. People cheered, sang, waved Catalan flags. Something like three-quarters of Spain's population turned out to vote, which rips the piss out of the UK's usual 50-odd percent.

I've just watched footage of a family who'd just buried a son killed in the bombing drag themselves weeping from the funeral to the polling booth, and I think I need to cry now.

This post over at Instapundit has many relevant links.

The vigil

Went to the anti-terrorism demo last night. It was massive; I think extra trains had been laid on but even so the train in was packed solid.

The Placa Catalunya was seething. I don't know how many people turned out to show their grief, their solidarity, their defiance, but there must have been tens, maybe hundreds of thousands. Mostly they were ordinary people, the kind of people who wouldn't normally demonstrate: there were far more salon perms than bleached dreds, more short-back-and-sides than pink fauxhawks. People painted their faces with peace signs, slogans, and loops to represent the little twist of black ribbon that has come to symbolise mourning here. That same image was repeated everywhere: real ribbons and painted; printed and photocopied, stuck on walls, windows, doors, coats, and bags.

Home-made banners were brandished above the heads of the crowd. Some of the slogans seemed inspired by the rumours of Islamic terrorism, attacking Bush, Blair and Aznar for provoking the bombings. Mostly though, it was peace that people were thinking of. PAU! PAZ! Terrorism No! ETA NO! said the signs; We won't forget you, Madrid. No more bombs. No more deaths. They flung their white-painted hands* in the air, or clutched votive candles that cast flickering shadows on painted faces.

There was some chanting: "ETA no! ETA no!" and "Hijo de puta!" (son of a whore). Mostly, though, people were subdued, talking quietly amongst themselves or calling to friends in the crowd. There was sorrow in the air, and anger, and fear, but also a kind of grave joy in their unity. Here in Barcelona and all across Spain, millions of people are turning out to say the same thing: We don't want your bombs. What we want is peace.




*"Manos blancos, " a symbol of peace and defiance against ETA and the name of a Spanish peace organisation.

Just got back from a small demo in the main plaça of the campus. No chanting, no banners, no hubbub, just a show of solidarity. Sort of brings home to you how useless you are in the face of something like this. Me, I can't even give blood.

Going into town for the big demo at 7:30 tonight. See if there's any volunteer-type stuff that an ex-cleaning lady with bad Spanish could do. I wish Madrid weren't so far away.

"In one hospital, a doctor answered the mobile phone of a critically injured woman to find it was the patient's cousin, desperately trying to trace her."

God, imagine it; trying to reach a loved one after a calamity like that, and hearing a stranger's voice on the other end of the phone... Or worse, getting no answer.

There's an anti-terrorism demo tomorrow night. I'm going. Fucking futile, of course; the people who plant the bombs don't give a shit what anyone thinks. But sometimes you just need to be around other people who feel the same way, you need to get together just to say This is wrong.

Tonight the balconies of my neighbourhood have erupted into a fury of protest: pots and pans are being banged together, airhorns are blasting, people are shouting, screaming, whooping, whistling, stamping, banging on doors and windows. They are angry and they need to be heard, even if it's only by one another.

"When Eta attacks, the Basque heart breaks into a thousand pieces."

ETA massacre in Madrid

Christ. When I went out this morning the death toll was around 60, 70; now it's up to 180+ and just keeps rising.

I can't fucking belive it. All those people. They hadn't done anything, nothing; just a bunch of ordinary people. All they wanted to do was get to work. People here are talking about it in the streets, on the train, in the bar, in this cybercafe. Impromptu banners and ribbons hang from the balconies: PAU, says a hand-lettered sign in one window: the Catalan word for peace. ETA NO, says another. Everyone's stunned.

Well done ETA, you gutless, mindless, worthless pack of scumfucks.

Madrid blasts: Who is to blame?

Who are Eta?

Free money.

Right. Now, when I entered the contest I promised myself that I wouldn't think about the contest at all until they announce the winner. But in my current state of penuriousness, I can't help it. Which is bad. I keep thinking about all the things I could do with that dough, and if (well, when, really) I don't win, I'm going to feel even more gutted about not being able to do those things than I did before I even knew there was a contest.

So here it is, once and never again, just to get it out of my system: the big fat list of Things I Could Do With That Money

Sign up for a TEFL course.
Get my Reiki 2 attunement.
Get on an advanced Spanish course.
Get some new clothes. Shiny shiny black clothes mmMMMmmm shiny.
Buy sword lessons. Big sword. Big pointy sword.
Go and see my folks.
Toys for Lurid.
Books on how to write more betterer.

Dearly beloved Spooky Perverts: Please fix it for me to win this contest, or if not this ontest, some other contest with a big wodge of prize money. Please help me to sort out my grubby little life. Thankyou.

In other news...

I sold another story. w00t! It's only ten bucks but what the hey. It's for this nifty fantasy & spec. fic. webzine and it'll be out at the end of March. That poem I sold will probably be in the same ish. Wow.

Suicide Note Generator

Dear Ungrateful World;


Although everyone on Earth has failed to give me even half the accolades and adulation that should go with me, Mordant Carnival, being the 3rd coming of christ, I will still fulfill my destiny. For you insolent pukes, I will shed my blood to once again open the gates of heaven.

Start erecting statues, singing songs, scoring touchdowns and doing other shit for my glory, because you fuckers owe me big,



Jesus Christ III
a.k.a. Mordant Carnival


P.S. Tell everyone I'm not psychotic.

Lies, damn lies, and GM spin

Champion article by George Monbiot, detailing exactly how the "GM will solve world hunger!" line is bullshit. I mean, we already knew that, but it's nice to see it all written down properly.