Mario Milosevic » cool stuff

Suicide Note

mm — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:45:23 +0000

The amazing Michael Swanwick, who I have mentioned here before, has seen fit to post one of my poems on his blog Poem du jour. I’m not telling you this only to brag on myself. The blog is a collection of interesting poems with comments by Michael, originally intended for his son Sean and some of his friends. I’ve had a good time reading through it and thought you might as well.

qarrtsiluni Just Posted My Latest Story

mm — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:48:34 +0000

It’s called “Red Shift” and you can find it here, along with an MP3 of me reading it. While you’re there, take a look at the rest of the issue and the rest of the site. A lot of good and interesting material by a wide range of writers and visual artists.

Kim's Redesigned Site

mm — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:11:19 +0000

Kim‘s done a complete overhaul of her website. Surf on over and look around. She’s put up a biography (with pics), and all kinds of juicy tidbits about her various books, including Ruby’s Imagine, which is coming out in a few months. She’s also got some big name writers (like Alice Hoffman and Jane Yolen) on board for the opening week celebration. Plus, if you leave a comment, you’ll be in the running for a free book. So what the heck are you waiting for? Go, go.

Spring Cleaning

mm — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:14:00 +0000

I’ve got a bunch of science fiction digest magazines I don’t want anymore. They have been in boxes for seven years and I have not once felt the urge to open any of those boxes, which reminds me of that rule for getting rid of stuff: If you haven’t used something in two years, you probably don’t need it. Or something like that. I’m not exactly quoting directly, but you get the idea. Anyway. There are about 850 of these things. I’ve got issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction going all they way back to the early 50s, I’ve got Asimov’s from 1982 to 1998 and a smattering of some Analogs and Amazings from the late 80s and early 90s. None of these are complete runs, but I do have many complete years for F&SF and Asimov’s.

What to do with these? Well, it would be nice to sell them. Are you interested? I’ll entertain offers. Know anyone else who might be? A collector? A kid besotted by all things science fictional? Pass the word on. I know if I got a big box of these things when I was about twelve or thirteen years old I would have been on cloud nine for months. Years.

Let me know in the comments. I can also provide a list of specific issues for anyone interested.

The Devil's Dictionary

mm — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:03:00 +0000

I was a library nut when I was a kid. I’d go at least once a week, sometimes more, and check out the maximum number of books they allowed. (I’m still the same way, but that’s a story for another post.) I thought there was nothing better in the world than the public library. I loved spending time in it and I loved just knowing it existed.

It took me a while to accumulate enough capital to actually buy a book of my own, rather than borrow it from the library. One of the first ones I purchased was a Dover edition of a book I first encountered on the library shelves and decided I had to have for my own: The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. The book is a collection of satirical, witty, sardonic, and just plain funny definitions of everything from Abasement to Zoology.

Who knows what drew an eleven year old to such a dismal view of the world? Could I have been as pessimistic about life as this book? Probably not. It hardly seems possible, given my more or less charmed middle class upbringing. Nevertheless, I do remember enjoying the definitions. I still own the book and still dip into it occasionally. Bierce had the sharpest wit of anyone I’ve ever encountered, in print or in real life. Also the most unrelentingly cynical grasp of human nature. His ability to find the negative in everything still warrants my admiration. Just try these definitions on for size:

EGOIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.

RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

My copy of Bierce’s singular lexicon has a $1.25 cover price, which gives you some idea of just how long I’ve had it.

What book do you still have from when you were a pre-teen?

Names

mm — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:04:00 +0000

Driving north on the I-5 yesterday, we passed a truck hauling a boat. The boat’s name, displayed prominently on the stern, was Current Toy, which is a marvelous name for a boat. Seeing it made me think about names in general. I’m one of those guys who has trouble with names. People I’ve seen in town for years, and know as casual acquaintances, I have trouble with their names. Heck, people I’ve worked with for years I sometimes fuzz out on their names. It can be embarrassing. And books, well, forget it. I barely manage to keep track of character names during the course of reading a novel. No way I can recall them after I’ve finished the book. This is even true of books I’ve written.

My good friend Nenad Dragicevic is a sly inventor of names. His sequence of bestiary posts from my old CR blog displays his inventiveness to good effect. Readers of that old blog may recall some of my own strange names: Dandelion Streetscape, Rainmaker Thirdgear, Coldkey Pianobones, Bitpart Stripmine, Corkscrew Speakeasy, and so on. I liked making them up, and they helped me kick start my imagination for some of my more bizarre scenarios.

One evening a few years ago I suddenly got this urge to make up a bunch of them. I spent two or three hours just writing down juxtapositions of everday things that might become names. I raided that list for many of my CR posts. Here’s most of the ones I didn’t use.

moviestar
brokenglass
bifocal
kickstand
doorknob
thebigone
phosphene
picnicants
lawnmower
laserprinter
farmland
phonecall
crackedelbow
magicmarker
waspnest
cheekbone
pipestem
birdfeeder
upperhand
slipcase
lossleader
redlight
doubleslit
dirtroad
blackhills
wirehanger
floodlight
hideaway
jailcell
friedegg
splitend
mailbox
bluestate
rockbottom
rockingchair
skidcontrol
broomhandle
diningcar
lampost
snowflake
rooftile
middenpile
devilnose
packedhouse
seatbelt
eardrum
trafficjam
flattire
crossbreed
widowmaker
backpack
beanbag
chainlock
pushbroom
flipflap
handlebar
chairleg
forktongue
checkerboard
cuphandle
frontallobe
frayededge
cheesecloth
curlingiron
musketcharge
exactchange
passinglane
smalltown
towtruck
shoulderblade
tissuepaper
speedzone
heartbreak
clothesline
afterlife
fallback
springahead
mercywood
bellringer
pottingsoil
sheetrock
guardduty
filmvault
smokestack
punchdrunk
afterimage
moustrap
elementaryparticle
mutebutton
thoughtballoon
cheesegrater
lobstertail
fireplace
trainingwheels
cornfield
neonsign
curtainrod
trapdoor
dustjacket
wateringcan
sneakerwave
feedback
afterimage
highbeam
dealbreaker
leadpencil
nametag
middleman
yesman
gemstone
meltingpot
gradschool
logcabin
bluebook
carpool
roadkill
greasyspoon
overeasy

If you want to make up your own weird CR name, it’s real easy. Just take two items from the list and put them together. Thus: Bluestate Diningcar would be a great name for a traveling sales person. Or Chainlock Forktongue could be the name of an introverted doctor. Yes, this is the way I sometimes amuse myself, and I make no excuses for it.

My Tiny Life List

mm — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:01:00 +0000

Though I like observing and looking for birds, I don’t have an extensive life list, and I haven’t even written mine down as serious bird watchers do. My all time favorite bird to watch is the sanderling, a shore bird often seen in flocks on the Oregon coast and other beaches. Sanderlings move rapidly along the surf like wind up toys. They are so charming I could watch them for hours. This youtube video gives an idea of their locomotion, but seeing a flock of them moving rapidly on the sand is a unique experience and always worth a trip to the coast.

E. J. Peiker has a good page of close up photos of sanderlings. He is an amazing nature photographer with, obviously, an extensive life list of birds. He’s put up many hundreds of his photos on his website and indexed them according to type of bird. It’s well worth browsing through his pictures. Some of the photos are so life like I almost feel justified in adding them to my life list. Not that I would. I’m just saying.

The Unrepentent Joy of Sisyphusian Struggle

mm — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:03:00 +0000

If you haven’t seen “Shelf Life” by Adrian Tomine, the hilarious cover of the current New Yorker, it’s worth seeking out. There’s a teeny tiny version of it on this page and a bigger version on the artist’s website here (currently the 4th box in the top row). It depicts the book publishing process in nine wordless panels. 1. Author writes book. 2. Agent presents book (and author) to publisher. 3. Publisher loves book. 4. Publisher prints book. 5. Book arrives in bookstores. 6. Reader enjoys book. 7. Reader discards book. 8. Homeless person finds discarded book. 9. Homeless person and friend warm themselves on a cold evening by burning discarded book in a barrel.

You’ll notice that by the 9th panel the book is serving a very useful physical function, which is something we can all aspire to.

I bring up this mini tragicomedy of authorial effort because I have just completed my rewrite of Art Saves Lives and have sent it off to my agent, which means I am in that anticipatory twilight zone, floating around in the featureless whiteness somewhere between panels 1 and 2, hoping against hope that someday someone will warm themselves by my words. That is, I hope to get the gears rolling so I can make it to panel 9.

Not that I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs while I wait. I have jumped into the rewrite of the next book, The Last Giant, with wild abandon.

Really now, what’s not to like about the writing life?

Free Book

mm — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:29:00 +0000

This article by Douglas Goetsch in The American Scholar from last year is a marvelous piece about a group of high school kids who learned how to write poetry then set up a stand where they wrote poems on demand and on the spot for anyone who asked. It’s about the most inspiring thing I’ve read in ages. It made me think that maybe we should all be giving away at least some of our words in one form or other.

So, in the general spirit of giving, I’m offering a copy of my novel Terrastina and Mazolli to one lucky reader of this blog. Just add your name to the comments on this post by midnight Sunday, 17 February 2008. I’ll put all the names in a hat, pull one out at random, and send that person a signed copy of my book.

I Used to Believe

mm — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:55:00 +0000

When I was very young I thought the phone company could tell when you had too much going on in your house to answer the phone. That’s when they sent a busy signal to whoever was trying to call you. I also believed that clouds came from the smokestacks at the smelter near the Northern Ontario mining town where I grew up. I saw them pushing out great billows of white every day. They were clouds; it was so obvious. Another childhood belief was that curse words were a private language that only kids knew. I had heard all the swear words in existence by the time I was seven just by paying attention in the school yard at recess. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that adults knew all of our words and even used them in conversation!

I’m sure you have childhood beliefs similar to these. I used to Believe is an entertaining site in which readers post their own strange and charming beliefs. I visit it periodically just for the smile it invariably gives me.