“The Sugarplum Favor” — a Christmas story by Tad Williams
I hope you are enjoying the holiday, Festivus, Winterval, or whatever you consider this period of time. I am spending it mostly unplugged, an important thing I do not do often enough, but I had to plug back in to share this with you. I have been an avid fan of Tad Williams since discovering his Otherland saga, a science-fiction series I regularly recommend while never being able to adequately describe it. So when Deborah Beale, Tad’s co-conspirator and wife, tweeted about a new short story of his available for bloggers to post, I was absolutely thrilled to volunteer. And through the magic of the Internet, here it is. Tad Williams’ new short story collection, A Stark And Wormy Knight, is available now, worldwide, as an ebook, $4.99 (or equivalent) for...
Read MoreDon’t stop believin’, a lip dub for FunkyPlaid.
After 299 emails, 5.09 GB of movies, weeks of very little sleep, and so much iMovie-bashing, I present my birthday gift for FunkyPlaid, a lip dub of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Thanks so much to everyone who participated, who lent moral support, who tolerated my dithering over the choice of song, and especially to the Gamescape crew who stealthily set everything up to show him the video at the store tonight. (He was floored.) I regret not being able to include more of everyone. There was just too much rock for one video.
Read MoreIt’s My Phone
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Hawk and I went to Anchor & Hope for dinner. It was a wonderful evening: we crossed off #48 on 7×7′s 2010 Big Eat SF list, plus I told a story that made Hawk laugh. He mentioned that I might want to lead with the story next time. So here I am, not leading with the story. After work and before I was due at Anchor & Hope, I headed to Westfield because, despite it being a large collection of stores I avoid, it has one thing I love: Maido, a lovely stationery shop filled with fountain pens and notebooks and tiny stickers shaped like frogs and kittens and wheelbarrows and what appear to be smiley-faced boogers. I kicked around Maido for a while, checking out the happy booger stickers, and then did something I rarely...
Read MoreThe City of Stolen Time
If you don’t live in San Francisco or care about city infrastructure, skip this post. I am compelled by my own impotent rage to document the abject absurdity of commuting in this city. This is anecdotal and subjective in nature; for statistics, please see Joe Eskenazi and Greg Dewar’s excellent SF Weekly article, “The Muni Death Spiral”. Today the N-Judah train I was riding during rush hour stopped at Church and Duboce due to “train control problems”. (For those of you who do not commute in San Francisco, that stop is the last above-ground stop for the N, meaning that all the commuters trying to get downtown and to the Caltrain station are out of luck.) Above-ground, all the F-Market trains and shuttle buses were packed. I did...
Read Morea letter to the reason
On his birthday, I wax poetic on what FunkyPlaid has come to mean to me.
Read Morerefrigerator
The dead woman’s refrigerator is in the space between our buildings. I call her the dead woman although I admit I am guessing. A few weeks ago, a couple I did not recognize stopped while opening the door to her flat and asked me if I knew her. I didn’t, so I said no, and then immediately wondered if I should have said yes: what does “knew her” mean? I knew her to pass her in the hall and say hello, offer a brief word about the weather, and pet her dog, Kelly. I once helped her call Kelly out of the backyard bushes, minutes and minutes I called the name of a dog of a woman whose name I do not know and now she might be dead. I first noticed the refrigerator after a Saturday morning of thuds and whacks and grunts coming from her flat. ...
Read Moresquidring
Stedateuthis scintilla is a squid ring designed and created by Mike Jeung. It is one of my most prized possessions.
Read Morei could never write enough
What seemed like a lifetime ago, I met someone named Kelley. Actually, that wasn’t her name, but I kept calling her that so she answered to it after a while. While we were both teens, we went to summer camp together. Kelley was hilarious, took risks, breathed life at double-speed. I was in awe of her. I was thrilled when she enrolled at Edinboro. I was sure everything was going to be just like it was in summer camp. Hell, we were even staying in the dorms together again. What could be better? Yet things had changed, as they always do, and Kelley and I were no longer as close. We had differing interests and friends, and trying to keep our friendship going proved as pointless as taping together torn Kleenex. I barely knew Kelley’s roommate. She...
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