You may recognize the title– if not, treat yourself to a viewing of Madagascar 3, which might be the best comedy of its decade.
What really prompts the film today is some encouraging news that’s hardly appeared in major outlets. There is, it seems, a push to get some publicly-accessible car chargers set up across Canada. Some argue that electric cars just shove the emissions elsewhere, but that “elsewhere” is almost always more efficient than a car engine.
And speaking of inefficient car engines…
I will admit a vague interest in being taken for a lap in that brute… but not enough to overcome a terror of being thrown out, caught in a roll-over, or Isadora Duncan-ed into the grave.
I got essentially zero writing done over the vacation, about which I am not very pleased, but the failure was the payment for actually getting something done about the state of the house.
Also, there was this distraction: a couch we bought in 2012 (mentioned in passing here), intended to be more or less disposable in the face of the now-passed incontinent cat Cleo and the ever-expanding menace to durable goods which is my son, collapsed somewhat. It was a cheap item… as couches go… so its failure has always been anticipated. However, it brought with it the unwelcome expense of replacement. We spent someone more on the new one, since the current bunch of cats seem to have a better sense of what litter boxes are for and sonny doesn’t randomly up-end containers of staining foods so much these days.
I can’t say any more than this, although I am fairly bursting with it: I’ve had acceptances of two stories, and two more have been declared short-listed by the publications I sent them to. I will, obviously, be shouting about venues when I’m able (although the latter two may not resolve themselves for a few months, yet, and based on the production history of another anthology I’d love to point the world to, a similar delay may affect the others).
†The pen in the rotation was the Pelikan P1, but someone was very distracted by having to leave early to take the van in for some repairs (cheaper than promised, hoorah) so the on-deck Pen of Fiction gets to have a round of general duties for a day.
It’s an audio presentation today, and in part I want to offer you entertainment (since I generate little of my own here of late), but I also want to signal boost a worthy enterprise:
This mellifluous person with an excellent taste in literature has been told by YouTube that they’ve never going to monetize his stuff. I hope that you’re as taken with his presentation as I am, because I’m hoping to get people to make YouTube feel foolish by clicking on many of his videos, and even more importantly, I’m hoping to make him feel funded by getting people to click on his Patreon page.
That’s not much for the week, especially considering I imported some work from Sunday into this week’s total. So, what’s up?
Gall stones!
Not my own, for which I am grateful, but my wife. I’m hoping this is a purely matrilineal thing (her mother and sister have had similar problems) and that our son remains untouched by it, because she was not having fun when I came home from work on Monday. So little, in fact, that Tuesday morning saw me installing her at the ER, and I was 100% of the household childcare staff for Tuesday and Wednesday. She’s home now, having been shaken free of the blockage of the moment by the modern miracle of ultrasonics, although we’re told the offending organ will have to be removed… probably in the next couple of weeks.
Anyway, without preparation (and the whole time was very much a lack of information exercise; the ER is a bit of a black box) I was unable to get any writing done. Thus, little accomplished. The draft is complete, which is good, since the anthology I aim to submit it to closes in July… unless they fill all their slots before then.
As a data point to my American readers, let me tell you what this week’s entertainment costs were. The entertainment consisted of:
Admission to the ER;
36 hours of IV fluids, because surgery might have happened at any time;
as much morphine as someone without previous tolerance to stand (apparently gall stones really hurt);
ultrasound imagining to get a firm idea of what the problem really was;
the ultrasonic treatment;
three consultations with doctors;
loads of interactions with nurses;
the use of hospital linens.
The total cost of this was One Canadian Dollar, paid to park in the lot not devoted to ER patients when I was picking her up. I could, conceivably, not have paid that, but I didn’t want to plug up a parking space close to the door which someone with a box full of severed fingers might need. I’m considerate that way. You might also say “Oh, but you pay so much tax there,” to which I reply– I got a refund on my income tax because our household doesn’t bring in a lot. And were we entirely without income and thus paying no tax, we’d still have got that very same level of treatment. I’d just have trouble coming up with the dollar. This is why the resistance of the US to socialized medicine is such a point of amazement to so many outside that country.
A bit of good news came to me on Monday (which was, alas, otherwise a little too true to the its stereotype); “The Glamour of Battle” is being held for final editorial consideration after passing three rounds of reading. This is not acceptance, and acceptance may not come, but it’s still encouraging.
Actually, I also got a very pleasant item of feedback from someone who had read another story, sent for a competition some time ago, and thought that they should send along a few under-the-counter words of encouragement. Very kind, entirely unlooked for, and deeply appreciated. I may persist in this writing nonsense if treated thus.
I completely fumbled last weekend’s potential for writing, and thus did not manage the Monday deadline for “Curse of the Dragon.” Not a big deal; it won’t go moldy waiting for the next submission window, and I’ll be able to give it the proper post-completion examinations it wouldn’t have gotten had I pushed it through.
This is not quite as silver-lining flavoured as the news of how intact Notre Dame has remained, but it affects me more directly.
