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quasigrecian thoughts
Jun. 13th, 2013 10:23 pm1. For our anniversary dinner out last evening, I craved Mexican and B. is always willing, so we tried a newish restaurant a couple miles away. Service started out rather glacial - you shouldn't be able to eat the entire basket of chips before the server comes back to ask if you want something to drink, for ghu's sake - but it got better, and by the time our food came my very large water tumbler was being refilled every time I emptied it. (I drink a lot of water, a challenge at many restaurants.) B. had enchiladas suiza, which were very good, and flan for dessert, which she loved; and I had enchiladas mole, with a strange and bitter sauce, but one I could get used to.
2. My third try at buying her Nook books at Barnes & Noble was the least, if not totally un-, traumatic experience yet. I kept repeating that the chain ought to train its employees in the fine art of how to purchase e-books as a gift for somebody else's account, because the last thing B&N needs right now is to alienate its customers. (And the books? 3 new fantasy novels by 3 authors, all women, whom I know she likes.)
3. Our city wants to build a new branch library at the end of town farthest from any library service, ours or that of any neighboring towns. Which only seems fair to me, even though I live at the other end of town. In the meantime, I see that they've installed down there a new thing in these immediate parts, a book vending machine. I've actually seen one of these before elsewhere; the Peninsula Library system has one at the Millbrae BART station for the convenience of commuters. Selection is limited, though not as limited as you might think (one of the books they had when I inspected it was Tony Blair's memoirs, which will last you even through a halt on the Transbay tube), but it's a clever idea.
4. There's something that bothers me about the SFWA kerfluffle above and beyond the question of whether it was really appropriate for their Bulletin to publish in 2013 a rambling dialogue article by two male veterans of the sexist era reminiscing about early "lady editors" and how enticing their bodies were, rather than focusing on how good their work was, and then another one in which the gentlemen vigorously dig their pit deeper. (Hint: No.) (Here's Jim Hines' link list if you really must know what this is about, but trust me: if you don't already, you don't need to now.) And it's something that's been bothering me ever since I tackled an unreadably-large wad of Resnick & Malzberg's earlier barfly-like conversations on How Things Are in SF Publishing, Once Now and Forevermore (And I Know, Because I've Been Publishing Since 1967) that was nominated in book form for a Related Book Hugo a couple years ago.
But it took Cheryl Morgan to verbalize it today. "SFWA has to be a professional organization. It can't be that if its newsletter gives a platform for two people to do a bad impression of Statler and Waldorf." Yes - that metaphor of ceaseless chattering antiquated crabbiness is it exactly, and it subsumes all the other questions at hand.
2. My third try at buying her Nook books at Barnes & Noble was the least, if not totally un-, traumatic experience yet. I kept repeating that the chain ought to train its employees in the fine art of how to purchase e-books as a gift for somebody else's account, because the last thing B&N needs right now is to alienate its customers. (And the books? 3 new fantasy novels by 3 authors, all women, whom I know she likes.)
3. Our city wants to build a new branch library at the end of town farthest from any library service, ours or that of any neighboring towns. Which only seems fair to me, even though I live at the other end of town. In the meantime, I see that they've installed down there a new thing in these immediate parts, a book vending machine. I've actually seen one of these before elsewhere; the Peninsula Library system has one at the Millbrae BART station for the convenience of commuters. Selection is limited, though not as limited as you might think (one of the books they had when I inspected it was Tony Blair's memoirs, which will last you even through a halt on the Transbay tube), but it's a clever idea.
4. There's something that bothers me about the SFWA kerfluffle above and beyond the question of whether it was really appropriate for their Bulletin to publish in 2013 a rambling dialogue article by two male veterans of the sexist era reminiscing about early "lady editors" and how enticing their bodies were, rather than focusing on how good their work was, and then another one in which the gentlemen vigorously dig their pit deeper. (Hint: No.) (Here's Jim Hines' link list if you really must know what this is about, but trust me: if you don't already, you don't need to now.) And it's something that's been bothering me ever since I tackled an unreadably-large wad of Resnick & Malzberg's earlier barfly-like conversations on How Things Are in SF Publishing, Once Now and Forevermore (And I Know, Because I've Been Publishing Since 1967) that was nominated in book form for a Related Book Hugo a couple years ago.
But it took Cheryl Morgan to verbalize it today. "SFWA has to be a professional organization. It can't be that if its newsletter gives a platform for two people to do a bad impression of Statler and Waldorf." Yes - that metaphor of ceaseless chattering antiquated crabbiness is it exactly, and it subsumes all the other questions at hand.
