Hear ye Reading list and beyond!

Does anyone know of any contemporary British (preferably Scottish/north England) based science fiction writers with a reputation for public speaking and other noteworthy causes? The Manchester Oxfam co op is organising a sci-fi/comics event for the first two weeks of July and we need speakers to speak/sign books. We're also planning on holding several book/comic/graphic novel stalls so if anyone has anything they're willing to part with/need to clear out, please consider donating them to the event.

If you know of anyone/anything or have other good ideas/ would like to get involved somehow (including making a donation), feel free to send me a message or email me at FINOkoye@gmail.com.

Spread the word!

http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?p=1808

I hope to squeeze in some quick blogging about EDCC before the Phonogram Party tonight, or at least link to a load of the reviews of SWORD 5 and THE MYSTIC HANDS OF DOCTOR STRANGE. But it’s tight today, and it’s probably unlikely.

In which case, here’s the preview for Thor 608, out next week wherein Tyr suffers the slings and arrows of Dramatic Irony and Volstagg’s Very Bad Week continues apace.

http://darkgate.net/comic/#peanuts

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wondermark/~3/S8IskmmsrA4/

http://wondermark.com/?p=5256

http://xkcd.com/716/

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=540

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http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?p=1807

Sorry!

http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?p=1806

I’ll write more about ECCC soon, but until then, this.

• Discovering SpatioTemporal Mobility Profiles of Cellphone Users
  In brief: the geographic long tail. 15% of most peoples time is spent in places that they are in less than 1% of their time. People sometimes ask me why I want to start logging my GPS data, even if only privately – it's for this sort of stuff – to work out whether or not I can better optimise my personal possibility jelly. (And if I lost you there, then I suggest you google the term.) I'd like to better track what I'm doing with this 15%, and see if I can't grab some hours back.
  (tags: location phone)

http://www.asofterworld.com

The Beresford Building on Sauchiehall St. It was opened as a hotel in 1938, in the 60s became student housing and is now apartments. This is one of those on-the-way-to-the-camera-shop sort of shots, which worked better than it has any right to, especially because I was without a light meter all day!

http://darkgate.net/comic/#peanuts

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wondermark/~3/rMwDZ78hqsQ/

http://wondermark.com/?p=5246

Modeling a lovely Survival Kit bag! Photo by Carly Monardo.

Thank you to everyone who came out to the Emerald City con in Seattle! We had fun at the TopatoCo Castle and especially at the TMH Live pre-party. I’m very much looking forward to sharing the video of the event with you, as soon as it’s ready!

I also wanted to give a special thank-you to Shari for this wonderful sketch:

You may remember Shari’s spirited prequel to this comic. These are the sorts of things that arise when I livestream the comic-makin’ process! We get to chatting while I’m putting the comics together, and every little piece that goes into the work gets an elaborate backstory. Shari’s piece made me wonder just how Strivey got himself into that pickle in the first place…

It was an ordinary day for Strivey. He’d heard there might be some lettuce underneath the back porch of the big blue house, so he took a wide, ambling stroll around the side of the building, finding sure footing in the grass as the sun paced him. He liked to time his walks with the sun this way, keeping steadily in that pleasing light, and he fancied himself an escort for that old yellow friend, showing him the way across the old footbridge over the course of an afternoon, or around a large tree, or behind a big blue house.

But today, as they walked slowly and carefully together, the sun managed to tangle itself behind a stand of scraggly branches, and no amount of Strivey’s coaxing could urge it back out. It happened this way often, to Strivey’s chagrin and despite all his urging, and usually it took all night for the big lunkhead to free himself and meet Strivey sheepishly back in the morning. Strivey would shake his small, wrinkled head, and the sun would start to shine brighter and brighter as if saying “I know, I know,” and then they would go on a long walk again.

Today was no different. So by the time Strivey reached the deck behind the big blue house, it was dim; and even though the dimness of evening is never the best time to look for lettuce that might be hiding, he’d come this far, and he was hungry. He peered about in the deck’s corners and crevices, and when nothing was evident beneath the deck he managed to make his way on top of it, and then from there into the house itself, and from there down a long hallway and into a room which was emitting a bright glow as if the sun had beat him there. “That crafty devil managed to sneak in ahead of me,” thought Strivey, as he nosed his way through the doorway.

The sun was smaller in person, a tiny glass figure shouting fiercely at a woman’s leering face. Immediately Strivey knew something was wrong — for his friend’s light, though bright, was not warm, having been trapped within this bulb of glass like a genie captured in a bottle, and the woman was the trapper.

Strivey tried to turn back and flee, but he was, after all, a tortoise, and a sprint back toward the hall took him about twenty minutes.

Next up: Comicpalooza in Houston, TX, March 26-28!

http://www.thepostgameshow.com/?p=928

This year’s American Idol is finally down to a manageable number, which means I can finally tolerate blogging about it. Up until now, there has been too much filler on stage. Too many packing peanuts, no personalities. And because the votes are spread so thin, anyone could go home any week - as proved last week when smoky-voiced witch woman Lilly Scott was prematurely sent home - so it’s barely worth forming an opinion about these people.

Of course, I did have opinions. Of the top 24, I was sorry to see Latino mole man Joe Munoz and wannabe rubber Jagger doll Tyler Grady kicked out so quickly - they weren’t going to win, but Munoz was better than most of the boys and Grady was more interesting. Asian crooner John Park showed great potential in auditions, but was a sucking vacuum on stage. Haeley Vaughn had a lot of charm, and Michelle Delamor had talent, but they were also both ethnic, and that never helps. By my count, ten of the top 24 were ‘contestants of colour’, and seven of those went home in the first three weeks. It’s always easy to get the minorities out when they haven’t had a chance to become people yet.

Now that we’re down to 12, I’m bothering to care a little more. So here are my thoughts, in order from least to most favourite.

12. Katie Stevens, aka Rinkydink Girlchild
You can see in her face that Katie doesn’t know what she’s still doing on the show. She’s a weak runt kitten that should have died weeks ago. Her version of Wild Horses was like watching a goldfish with a gun floundering on a pavement. I’m struggling to remember why I had nice things to say about her at the audition stage.

11. Tim Urban, aka Crap Efron
I find the continued presence of Tim Urban on this show kind of hilarious. He was brought in to the top 24 as a replacement at the last minute and he should have gone straight back home again, but week after week his dimpled smile, his dewy eyes and that ridiculous mound of hair have kept him in. The shirtless photos of him on the internet can’t have hurt. So long as he keeps wearing really tight sweaters, he has a chance to stay in. But his voice is shaky and soulless, and as a performer he’s so wet and floppy that I assume he must also be lemon-scented and Swiffer branded. But I’ll give him this; he’s good-humoured about the mistake his life has become.

10. Aaron Kelly, aka Rinkydink Boychild
Completing the troika of contestants who have no idea what they’re doing on this show. He looks like a young Ed Norton squeezed through a toothpaste tube. He may actually be Ed Norton, smuggled onto the show to prep for a role. He can’t be here based on talent.

9. Lee DeWyse, aka Canless Meat in a Can
So uninteresting. Solid, but so dull. He simply never gets started. When Simon trots out his ‘you sound like a pub singer’ line, Lee DeWyse is the Platonic ideal of that concept. I suspect that Lee is a Chicago attempt at a Frankenstein’s monster, moulded together from breeze blocks, toilet roll tubes and a thick paste of corn grits. Corn grits without the butter.

8. Andrew Garcia, aka Guy Who Did That One Good Song That One Time
Remember that one time he did Paula Abdul’s Straight Up as a ballad? Remember how good that was? You’d better, because Andrew Garcia has been coasting on that performance ever since. He tried to recapture the magic with a reinvented Genie In A Bottle, but it didn’t work, and this week’s Gimme Shelter was unforgivably boring. It becomes increasingly clear every week that Andrew Garcia had one good trick in his repertoire, and now he’s all used up. But it was a good trick.

7. Casey James, aka The Shirtless Streak
Casey James is proof that you can have a weak audition and go on to be a contender, which shows how unreliable the audition process is. This blond ratty white Jesus lookalike only got through because he took his shirt off and everyone but Simon thought he was a good sport. Never mind that he has a body like a gnawed corn cob! Since the auditions, he has improved a great deal, though he’s sliding  a little lazily into an easy country groove.

6. Paige Miles, aka Miss Teeth
Paige can really go either way. She has a lot of personality, but her version of Smile last week was shaky and badly arranged; her Honky Tonk Woman was much better, but may be as big as she can go. Even so, I like her a lot in principle. She’s sweet and cheerful, and with her big eyes and round face she looks like a Sanrio character. But she should never again wear a shorted safari suit. No-one should.

5. Didi Benami, aka Jo-Beth Sweetums McGee
Didi is the girl-next-door type, but let’s not hate her for that. I think she has potential. She tries too hard to force that 60s girl singer sound that’s so in fashion at the moment, but I suspect that country is more her thingdawg. (Thingdawg is Randy-ese for ‘forté‘.) If she stops pushing the vocals and tries to sing to her strengths, she could be very good.

4. Lacey Brown, aka Baby Cougar
What I like most about Lacey Brown is that she looks like the young white trash waitress in a roadside biker bar, all leather skirts and meth breath and a baseball bat always just in reach. But she sings with this lovely sweetness that’s just on the right side of cloying babydoll cute. There may be a rocker beneath the surface, but I think her distinctive look is a suit of armour and there’s a terrible lack of confidence under the surface.

3. Mike Lynche, aka Big Mike Lynche
Mike is the only guy singer that I actually like thus far, in spite of his abandoning his wife while she was giving birth so he could be on this show. Last week he sang Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work as a tribute to his wife. It was an extraordinary choice, but he made it through the falsetto parts and the parts where there’s not really much melody to grab hold of and acquitted himself brilliantly. This week he sang Miss You, which isn’t much of a song, but still out-sang most of the competition with his gospel riffs. Hopefully he’ll stick around, but that’s a lot to ask for a black dude on this show. He should stop trying to dance, though.

2. Crystal Bowersox, real name Mary Jones, probably
Simon was criticised for comparing Bowersox to a busker, but she is a busker. I mean, both in an actual sense - she is a busker - and in an abstract philosophical sense - she is the embodiment of buskiness. She is the busker queen. Crystal Bowersox has never seen American Idol, and it’s clear that she’s baffled by the whole process, from the tortured group performances to the offensively awful Ford ads. She’s what happens when a musician accidentally walks onto the show. Crystal’s stripped-down, Americana numbers are dependably great, and in all likelihood this year’s show is hers to lose. But she’s not my favourite this week.

1. Siobhan Magnus, aka Solid Gold Crazy
Siobhan is my favourite. I love Siobhan. She is a kook. I think Siobhan is a tiny mouse in a Billie Piper suit, trying to operate the controls that will allow her to pass for a real girl, but the controls are all slightly too far away from each other, so she can’t quite make it look smooth and convincing. There is something detached, peculiar, and massively over-medicated about her. In fact, she brings back the madness we lost when Paula left the room. I thought her House of the Rising Sun (which she sang as a boy) was an Adam Lambert moment, but this week’s operatically gothic Paint It Black blew that out of the water. When she sings, that little mouse has complete mastery of the controls. Delectably daffy.

If you don’t know who got sent home this week, look away now. But before I get to that, a few comments on the judges, who broke new ground this week. First, Kara said something that wasn’t wrong (that Mick Jagger put passion in his songs- it wasn’t original either, but it wasn’t wrong). Simon contradicted her anyway, but it’s a reflex, he can’t be blamed for that. And second, one of the judges made a gay joke that wasn’t homophobic. Admittedly, it was Ellen, but I’ll take what I can get. Unchanged since last year; Ryan Seacrest is still a twat.

This week’s loser was my fourth favourite, Lacey Brown. We will never know if she could have come out of her leopard print shell and rocked the hizzouse.

Whether you agree or disagree with my rundown, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the top 12. Do you love Tim Urban’s dimples? Do you hate Crystal Bowersox and her ‘credibility’, whatever the hell that is? Let me know.

http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=324