My interest in Cory Doctorow and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has very little to do with his writing ability.

Which is not to say he’s a bad writer. Very few authors can pen the words “I pinged her Whuffie” and still maintain any semblence of suspension of disbelief. In fact, most authors would create something like the Bitchun society, in which humanity has abolished scarcity and mortality and whose economy is based purely on repuation, and stop there. Doctorow uses that as a launching point for all kinds of additional weirdness involving feuding clans of Disneyland castmembers. And yet, he manages to give it unexpected emotional resonance by the end.

But I came to Doctorow through his ideas on copyright and distribution rather than his talent. He’s a major supporter of Creative Commons, and he publishes all of his work for free online. The idea of giving away your work is abhorrent to most authors, but Doctorow argues that it feeds sales of the dead-tree versions – people read his work for free, enjoy it, and decide they want a copy for their bookshelves. Or, as in my case, they don’t enjoy reading entire novels in an online format and buy the book anyway.

It seems to work for him – Down and Out, his debut novel, sold much better than expected for a first-time novelist, especially considering it comes in at a brief 50,000 words.

All of this is what led me to create this site and put my work out for free in the first place. I don’t have a major publisher for my work like Doctorow does, so it won’t make me any richer. But like a garage band just starting out, playing free gigs might at least get people to pay attention.

…but the Cardinals are 14-5 and own the best record in the major leagues. It’s still early yet, but it’s nice to know they haven’t lost a step from last year, regardless of their poor showing in the Series.

The gorram Serenity trailer is out. From what I understand, it’s attached to every showing of Hitchhiker’s this weekend. Now watch this harmonic convergence put Mike into a state of blissful Nerdvana.

Ommm…

(btw, the trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest anime import, Howl’s Moving Castle, is also out. Disney’s giving it a June release.)

I’ve been too busy to blog this week, as I try to get used to a day job once again and settle into a useful routine. I’ve had a busy social calendar, too. And for once, I’m not being sarcastic when I say that.

Take Thursday, for example. My new workplace took the late afternoon off to celebrate a co-worker’s birthday at a nearby bar & grill. The company bought me two jack & cokes. Then I cut out early to attend a Seattle Writer’s Meetup at another bar, where I drank even more with local amateur writers. (Since Meetup.com is about to start charging for its service, we’ve moved to a brand new Yahoo group.)

So, yes. I went barhopping from party to party on a Thursday night. Mine is a difficult life.

Did I mention I went to karaoke with a couple of friends last night? And that I would’ve gone to see The Donnas at El Corazon tonight if they hadn’t sold out?

Seattle: it doesn’t suck.

Via BoingBoing:

German singer Max Raabe’s covers “Oops, I Did It Again” and “We Will Rock You” in the style of a 1920s crooner, with full orchestral accompaniment. Deeply amusing.

Download the MP3s while they’re still available. Raabe’s site also contains some low-quality clips of his other creations.

I just accepted a Web Developer position at Bel-Red, a small, nine-person web consulting firm in the Eastlake section of Seattle. I’m making about 4/5 what I was in Tucson, but there’s a salary review after 60 days. And I’ll be working a 36-hour week, meaning I can take every other Friday off if I so desire.

I think I nailed the job on my answer to a very standard interview question.

INTERVIEWER: In your own words, why should we hire you?
ME: I’m relatively likeable, I know my stuff, and I’m not expensive.
INTERVIEWER: [pause] That’s a much better answer than the last guy gave us.

I know I said I wouldn’t take another office job right away. I have mixed feelings about this. Especially since I saved up enough money specifically so I didn’t have to take the first thing to come along… and here I am taking the first thing to come along.

But in the Bush economy, the pickings are slim, especially for an ASP programmer without ASP.NET experience in a competitive tech job market. (For non-techies: ASP = old and busted, ASP.NET = new hotness.) Better to pounce on this and expand my resume into JSP and PHP.

Plus, I haven’t written a damn thing on my novel since I moved. (Since Christmas, in fact.) I’ve written 1700 words on a new short story, 900 of those in the last three days, and I can’t seem to plant butt in front of laptop until early evening anyway. Might as well get paid for not writing.

This relates directly to a post I’m about to write.

I was just reading No Plot? No Problem! by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty and came across this passage under his “writing lessons I have learned” section. Pretty well describes my last four weeks or so, substituting “blog surfing” for the bits about the Habitrail.
Read the rest of this entry »

Rasputina will play at Neuomos in downtown Seattle on Monday, May 9. Must remember to get advance tickets…

Mike Doughty plays the same venue on May 17, but… EDIT: Never mind, I might be able to catch this show after all.

Despite my love of Douglas Adams, I avoided his posthumously-published The Salmon of Doubt because it’s just a collection of older and unfinished works compiled from the contents of his hard drive. I know if you went through the old documents on my hard drive, most of it is unpublished for good reason. Besides, the whole idea seemed a bit morbid. But I found a cheap copy at Powell’s in Portland last month and decided to give it a shot.

My fears were only partially founded. Adams going on and on about his Macintoshes is a bit dull, but some of his other non-fiction is engrossing… and unavailable anywhere else. His thoughts on atheism and evolution were especially thought-provoking, including a memorable analogy involving a puddle of water that believed the hole it inhabited was designed for it. That essay finally convinced me to order Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker; it should arrive in a few days.

The Salmon of Doubt itself, the unfinished Dirk Gently novel compiled from various drafts by the editor, is better and funnier than I remember the Gently novels ever being. I originally read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul in high school and mostly recall feeling disappointed that they weren’t Hitchhiker’s books. I may have to re-visit them now, years later, and see if they speak to me.

The last couple of chapters suddenly switch to first-person narrative, and I wonder if that was purposely experimental or a byproduct of the Frankenstein-style assembly of various drafts. None of the plot questions raised in the novel are answered, of course. Sadly, they never will be. (And imagine the enormous pressure on anyone who volunteers to try…)

From the indispensible James Wolcott:

This morning on Air America, Jerry Springer ran the tape of Rush Limbaugh’s bizarre outburst against Al Gore’s upcoming cable news venture for “yoof” (as they say in British papers), mocking its mission to represent the viewpoints of young people by claiming that the only thing kids cared about today was blowjobs, which were rampant in the nation’s high schools today thanks to Al’s good friend Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Maybe it should be called “The BJ Network,” Rush railed, since blowjobs were now the only thing occupying the empty minds of MTV audiences–all those teenage Monicas out there hooking up with teenage Bubbas.

Limbaugh seemed to be implying at the top of his voice that blowjobs are an integral part of the liberal agenda, an argument which he may want to rethink. The popularity of blowjobs is difficult to metric but undeniable; they cause little harm and zero unwanted pregnancies. If the plentitude of blowjobs is part of the Clinton legacy, millions owe the former president a debt of gratitude and an annual pilgrimage to the Clinton Memorial Library in Arkansas.

There’s more, and it’s all this hilarious… and sadly accurate, too.