Gillian Polack's Blog, page 124

gillpolack @ 2013-02-28T14:36:00

It's funny how many holes one's mind has. Mine has more than most, I suspect. I had a whisper of a story out last year. It was so short that if you breathe then it's over, but it most certainly did appear, albeit only in the context of Conflux and CSFG.

This morning I sacrificed six vials of blood to the Deity of Testing, to see if this pain can be sorted, to find out if the fact that I am middle-aged can be sorted, to see if I'm diabetic (except that was another vial and it was a different shape and did not contain blood) and to work out other things. I don't know what the other things are, for the vast list of hormonal material being tested piqued my amusement. Also my interest. Why was I tested for any of this when perimenopause first manifested, a decade ago?

Since I came back from the testing-place (which is just four doors from my doctor - and by 'four doors' I mean doorways within a building) I have pottered much and frittered away time, for what I'm doing today is tax and I hurt. It's the weather and the PMT and the fact that it's acid-in-the-veins-day (this month I have a 60 hour day, I think) and the sad fact that I have no deadlines to force me to do things. The only one I had today (for my teaching on Saturday) I have met. This means that it's 2.30 pm, and I've only done 3 hours work. But I've done a remarkable job of feeling sorry for myself.

Half the problem is the weather. It's in a constant state of significant change. It will settle later today, or I shall have words with it.

Nothing's actually wrong at my end of things. I just hurt. And obviously, if I can't remember my own publications, I'm not going to drown my sorrows in something workishly interesting. I potter around with my taxes (which will take a long while at this rate), and I restore bits of my place to its pre-fixing-up normalcy, and I prepare a bit of dinner here and a bit there (for I have friends dropping in), and I wash dishes, and I do email or teaching prep (Saturday's is a workshop that has fairly intensive prep for me, so all I've done is the first segment, but that includes the handouts, so I'm 1/3 through) and I do more bits and pieces.

It's not even a wasted day. It just feels like it, for I can't tick things off my list. Maybe it would help if I did a list for March. The only item unfinished on my February list is taxes. This would be why I had planned to spend today breaking the back of them.

Coffee, that is my answer. And a wall-list for March. And just keep on starting and stopping until the first part of the job is done. To music. I shall give myself three hours for these things.

Ditmars, the CSFG, and rain

I was only going to post once today, but several things need to be told.

First, CSFG members (including me) are creating a list of Ditmar-eligible work. We're not pushing people to nominate us in particular (as a group, we're not, each member makes their own decision on this and my decision was to write what you read here), but to read widely and make their own decisions. To make it easier to read our work and make up your own minds, there is a list of CSFG work: http://csfg.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/csfg-members-eligible-works-for-the-ditmar-awards/

I didn't publish any fiction last year! Well, I did, but it was all reprints. I sit back, astonished. And the CSFG list (and the Ditmar wiki) don't contain complete lists of everything I wrote, just the stuff I wouldn't mind people remembering. The piece I care most about is the one on robust criticism, for I still think that we need it and I thought my examples were cute. Although there are a couple of BiblioBuffet essays I rather like, too.

And now for the cool stuff. My students have uber-super-powers. I'd forgotten that homework last week was to write convincing narratives. The success of their narratives was going to be measured by how much it rained (we wanted to drown bushfires). One claimed he failed, because the rain didn't fall exactly on the instructed straight line. Overall, though, we decided that this homework was an immense success. The measure of their success: http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?CAT_ID=683

There is a price for godlike powers, however, and the price was that none of us got a decent night's sleep last night.

gillpolack @ 2013-02-27T08:29:00

I've finally caught up on quite a few of the things that got caught up in other things. I'll have another wave of promises to keep, but they don't start until 1 March. At least, I hope they don't. I have just a little pile of notes to myself, and they're all about today's tasks, but I haven't been through my scary pile of paper yet. Why do I keep a scary pile of paper? I think it might be... no, I don't know why. Anyhow, my tasks for the day are:
1) to check the scary pile of paper
2) to entirely get rid of that small pile of notes
3) to teach
4) to work on much medievalness (I get to learn about glass!)
5)to start my taxes.

Taxes are the most important undone task this week, for I sorely need finances (again). I have some unexpected expenses. Also, I have the world's nicest accountant (we met because our shared interests in history and books) and I don't want to cause her extra work.

I don't know if I'll get a refund this time round, but I really, really hope I do. I'm at a transition stage of my life, and I can't tell myself "Leave this until I have money." Transition stages of life are more expensive than other stages.

In other news, the engineer is back from holiday today. This means the block of flats will soon be checked for structural stuff. This is not a bad thing.

Also in other news, the weather here is fine compared with cyclone in WA and roaring winds across Texas, but for myself and weather-sensitive friends, it's not good. Muggy and warm and storms around every corner. I had a bad night, and I have one friend who may well have had worse (for it's her boys who are weather-sensitive, and feel the storms coming). I'm the lucky one, for after teaching is over, I can rearrange all my messages to tomorrow and come home and sleep it off before doing the rest of my day's work. The rather large sleep deficit one gets in weather like this is tolerable when one can sleep it off. Also when the work one faces before one sleeps it off is the best class in the world.

Today I plan to cast words among them like corn. Also, just because I feel like it and it's a fun way to approach story structure, we will write a group beginning and a group and and then each student will write their own middle. We've been getting caught a bit on tale length recently - it's time to re-prove to all of them (not just the incipient novelists) that they can write more than ten lines.

And in more other news...if you hear of someone getting arrested for creating a public disturbance, it was me. I am guilty. I fully intend to walk to the bus stop shortly singing "It's raining, it's pouring" at the top of my voice. This is because it is. I shall not let the fact that I cannot sing deter me.



PS My old computer got in one last whatever. I found two paragraphs mucked up in an article. Also some punctuation which I'd fixed. Anyway, I'm nearly at an end of these things being possible, for much of the work spawned on the old computer is where it needs to be. Only three more pieces have the opportunity to be so very wayward. I'll be very glad when it starts happening that the piece I proofed and checked is the piece that arrives on editors' desks. (And this has been happening a lot more often than I've reported her e- mostly I just frown, fix and move on.)

gillpolack @ 2013-02-26T17:48:00

I've done lots and lots today, but skipped one big block of stuff. I can do that one big block now, or quite late this evening. I suspect quite late this evening, because storms are nigh. Once the weather change finally happens, I shall be less ditsy. I've had one long meeting today and it was a very good long meeting, which left much hope and grand possibility in its wake. In the nearby part of its wake, it also left much commonsense, which I shall proceed to apply to an object that sorely needs it.

What I shall do in the interim is make a start on the big block of work that I meant to do before today went awry (there are not many bushfires left, but those that were there, were in the west and the wind blew from there ) and turn it into several little blocks, containable, controllable and able to be finished.

Other news? There's heaps but, as has often been the case recently, I don't want to talk about it lest I jinx it. None of this news relates to employment, but there were actually new jobs advertised this weekend. Not many, and the one that most fitted my research profile was more senior than I'm likely to get, but if jobs are being advertised again then one day I might be fofered one, which is what I'm after.

gillpolack @ 2013-02-25T15:55:00

I just did my annual check for the Ditmars. I'm suggesting to people left right and centre that they nominate their favourite works and make sure they're seen, but my reading is a bit behind, so my own nominations will be at the last minute. I have read 66 of the novels, and intend to read as many more as I can fit in. Obviously I'm going to go for easily available fiction (I have 3 books waiting for my at the library, for instance) because I have neither time time nor the resources to go a-hunting.

There were so many novels published last year that anyone who reads them all deserves some sort of prize, but if I can read 75 of them, I will be happy. The question is not how quickly I read, but how quickly I can obtain the books.

To keep myself honest (ie to make sure I keep reading) I shall blog the books here. I wont' promise reviews - that will depend on my mood or how much time I have, but I will make a mention of each book I finish as I finish it.

Does anyone in Canberra want to do a round of book-swapping, later in the week?

gillpolack @ 2013-02-25T11:46:00

I'm taking a brief blogging break. In a moment I shall make some celebratory coffee (I typed 'chocolate' so maybe I need to have a small piece of celebratory chocolate as well, later, when I'm hungry) and then get to and do the forms. What I've done this morning (which took a full half hour) was adjust my PhD to meet the requirements of examiners. There were eight genuine typos (how all my proofreaders, my superivsor and I missed them is a mystery), several pieces of missed punctuation (mainly commas before speech), three things that Word put back in the text despite having been told they were wrong, and some views that sentences should end here rather than there, all of which were very sensible. It took me a half hour to do it because I was being very, very careful.

And now it's done.

What happens next (after I fill in my accompanying forms) is that my supervisor gets the whole thing printed and sent for binding and then (in about 2 months) someone sets a date for a formal graduation. In a perfect world, this will happen fast enough so that I'm a Timelord by my birthday, but the reality is that the moment my supervisor checks and approves the changes, I'm 'PhD - pending.'

Medical update - totally ignorable

My medical news today is that I've lost 3 kg since I saw the doctor. I've also lost an inch around the waist.

I didn't start a diet, in the end - I thought I should begin any food restrictions after the antispasmodics had taken effect. So none of this is from changes in food habits over the grand time of 2 days. All of this is due to my PMT symptoms being lessened through medication. And yet the medication for those PMT symptoms was almost an afterthought, when I pushed for something to at least control the spasming and reduce the pain.

I still have extraordinarily tense muscles, so I suspect that more of the weight I so mysteriously gained might be due to being premenopausal and in a smokezone. It didn't hurt to walk until I was exposed to the smoke, in Melbourne - that's when everything escalated. Now I'm back to my first day in Melbourne. Still not good, but not pushed beyond the tolerable.

I'll get my blood tests on Monday, take myself back to the doctor the week after, and we'll see what she says. It shouldn't be the same thing as she said last time, though, for I have lost 3 kg in 48 hours. The only thing I've done differently is spend a lot more time asleep (due to the pain being so much less evil.) And it's slowly hurting less to walk.

Life is improving.

The Story of Purim, Recited Precisely and Accurately. Now with Footnotes, Songs, and Much Mirth.

A very long time ago there lived a rich and powerful king (1). His name was Ahashverosh, but no-one could pronounce it. Even his friends found it difficult to say. They called him Harry. All his servants called him the PM - standing for Persian Monarch. He ruled over 127 provinces.

Harry lived in Shushan and mostly ignored the provinces, except when he wanted something from them (2). Mostly it was taxes. Occasionally he collected a concubine or two, but generally he preferred good solid gold. He taxed everything from resources to higher education, although during election time he claimed it was someone else doing the taxing (3).

The reason he ignored the provinces was because he was too busy spending the taxes on feasts. Tea-breaks just weren't good enough for someone in his line of work, he decided. It was a hard job, ruling. The PM got rid of the tea-ladies and brought in banquet-management. His imperial servants organised the feasts, or delegated them to someone else to organise, who brought in contractors to do the job. Harry never remembered to invite them. They weren't too happy about this, but there wasn't much they could do except grumble, pay more taxes or give the job to someone even further down the hierarchy the next time. They couldn't even vote for the Opposition, since there wasn't one. Eventually a lowly branch of servants called D.o.P.E. came to exist, standing for Department of Private Entertainment (4).

Harry mostly wasn't worried that he didn't pay for the feasts himself, or even organise them. After all, he was king and he had dreadful insomnia. He also poisoned lots of enemies. A small banquet here and another there were but tiny reward for the dreadful impositions of duty.

Archaeologists were never invited to the feasts either. They weren't worried by this (5). For one thing, they were too poor to pay taxes. For another, they had a dreadful habit of waiting till any big event had been over for a thousand years or so and then digging it all up again (6). Whenever Harry threw a feast, the archaeologists threw a sort of pre-university academic gathering, where they would get drunk and tell everyone else exactly how they would go about the excavation for this particular dig the moment funding was found.

They were always writing letters to American universities asking for sponsorship and proposing conference papers. Each of these letters was carefully written on clay tablets and passed from hand to hand until it was so smudged with corrections that they had to start all over again. Sometimes someone got sick of this and they tried sending a tablet after only five or so drafts. There was never any answer anyway. Ancient Persian archaeologists thought too much about the big picture and forgot local chronology. Local sailors had no idea where America was, or even where it would be. When no-one answered their letters the scholars became huffy and pretended they didn't really need the funding anyway and the conferences were poor excuses for true Old World academic meetings.

One day Harry decided to throw a drunken orgy along with one of his banquets. He carefully staged it just like a real media event. The archaeologists used this as an excuse for yet another boring academic gathering. They were discussing the possibility of resequencing recent events to see if they made more sense. Someone suggested replacing Ahashverosh's ancestors with Arthur and Woden to improve his lineage, but that had been done three times already and it never worked. The servants (other than the DoPEs) had a stop-work meeting to discuss conditions and ended up giving each other seminars on how to organise demonstrations (7).

This feast was to be Harry's best yet: it made the third page of the pre-Murdoch press. It even beat the coverage of Abbott's bathing suit (8).

Vashti, Harry's queen, also gave a feast. It was much more sedate. Pottery was used so the archaeologists dismissed the midden-heap as boring. Ancient Persian archaeologists preferred crumpled gold to shards of pottery: no-one has ever been able to work out why.

The king got pretty drunk at this feast. He'd killed all his enemies so there was no poison floating around. This meant he could drink lots of wine. Ancient Persian wine was pretty potent. After two glasses he sung a little song he made up for himself. He flattered himself it had a nice little melody, might have won a Grammy if someone had remembered to invent them. This song has fortunately lost itself in the mists of time, possibly due to its strong sense of embarrassment at having ever been sung at all. The king has recently however been brought back to life and is currently a contestant on American Idol. He’s the first confirmed re-animated corpse to reach the top twenty.

After everyone had applauded him (back in the days when he was alive) and he'd had a few more goblets of strong liquor and he'd been encouraged to sing his shy, lilting melody a few more times, he was very drunk indeed. He looked for his queen and couldn't find her. He looked under his throne, which was a stupid thing to do since it was solid. He looked everywhere. He even asked a DoPE if he had seen her. Finally he thought she must have gone to sleep after her own banquet. He had forgotten she had a banquet. He wondered who she had invited. He decided to ask her. He sent the chief eunuch to wake her up. After he found out her guest list, he thought, he could get all the gentlemen of his court to tell him how lovely she was and how good he was at choosing a bride.

His eunuch took about three hours to find the Queen. When he eventually crawled back into the King's presence, his face was miserable. He grovelled just as hard as he could (9). With his head so far into the floor his voice couldn't be heard, he excused himself as the bringer of bad tidings. The king made him grovel in apology for mumbling. Then he got him to tell the message all over again. The eunuch was terrified and purple splotches began to cover his face. Harry was fascinated by this phenomenon. It didn't help him find the Queen, though. "She refused to come," muttered the eunuch, and grovelled himself out of sight before the king could come to his senses and have him killed.

The next day Vashti did come. She walked up the 953 purple and red plush steps to the gracious throne and had a private interview with the King. The King was livid. Vashti walked gracefully back down those 953 steps, a slight smile on her face.

Harry sent out decrees to all parts of his kingdom in all the languages of his realms. They stressed the need for wifely obedience. More than one hundred and seventy-five clay tablets were used for the various drafts. It went up and down the Persian hierarchy no fewer than thirty-one times in its search for perfect wording.

Wherever the decrees were understood, an awful lot of wives walked down the steps of the house with slight smiles on their faces. Fortunately, the wording of the decree was obscure, obtuse and largely incomprehensible. Nineteenth century historians were very angry when they discovered this. The Persian Empire would have fallen at least 200 years earlier, Toynbee calculated, if there had been a complete breakdown of all marriages at the time.

The king was pretty pleased with himself after this, and he threw a party. The archaeologists waited anxiously in the rubbish dump, ready to examine the tailings. The tailings never arrived.

What had happened was the king had looked around for Vashti and found she wasn't there. The PM, being a King and no ordinary mortal, got sick of his 861 concubines fairly quickly. Then it dawned on him, he needed a replacement. He set up a Royal Commission to investigate the matter. The Royal Commission acted with extraordinary speed for a Royal Commission due to the king's temper.

They were too slow.

After their untimely demise, the PM was forced to try other measures. He got in touch with his Chief of Protocol, who referred him to the Military Chief of Staff, who referred him to the Taxation Branch. The Taxation Branch could not be found. So the PM asked his personal valet, who referred him to the advertising manager who decided to set up a complete list of all applicants, and then to hold a beauty parade. The PM was to choose his own bride.

The plan was modest. To gather together the largest array of beautiful virgins ever seen, and to sell the leftovers as slaves. The list was entitled Virgins and Maidens of Persian Satrapies, or VAMPS. The advertising manager sent for his favourite consultants, whose normal work was in the Ancient Persian equivalent of King's Cross. The list of VAMPS was considerably shorter by the time the King discovered that they couldn't be trusted. So the eunuch found a florid young man who had migrated to Persia from the ancient equivalent of California. He had degrees in pre-Keynesian macro-economics, technology transfer and advanced sandwich making. He was massively enthusiastic about wife-hunting and set up a huge media-campaign. It worked so well, this campaign, that, over two thousand years later, the Australian Greens used carrier pigeons, runners, and clay tablets for their election campaign. After all, they were environmentally sound. Unfortunately carrier pigeons were nearly extinct by then, and the climate wasn't suitable for clay tablets. The campaign worked anyway. Back in Ancient Persia, the consultant managed to amass a vast number of Ancient Persian virgins for the king to consider.

To cope with the sudden onslaught of data, the archaeologists set up a research group to keep American academics informed of the King's affairs. This was known as TIMEWARP, or Transatlantic Information on the Monarchical Eastern Women's Affairs Research Program. The Americans took 2,500 years to find out about it.

The shyest and most demure girl in Shushan at this time was the niece of a man called Mordechai, who was Minister for Security (or Persio (11), as it was known). Mordechai had taken care of his timid relative since the death of her parents, many years before. Now that she was adult, he had great plans for her. Hollywood! The other choice was The Guild. Either way, lasting fame and glory, and her virtuous modesty untouched. His first worry had been her taste in clothes. If only she could be persuaded to wear a little less basic black. Let her eyes show, or something. Hard to have a career, even on The Guild, if no-one could see you. All these fond dreams were rudely shattered when Esther became a VAMP.

Hege rather liked Esther. He didn't know she was related to Mordechai. Mordechai couldn't tell him of the link, or stop Esther from being rounded up with the other virgins, because he had a dreadful sore throat. It was thought that his Secretary had put something in his mid-morning cup of wine. As everyone knows, all Ancient Persians sang at every opportunity. What not many people are aware of is that Mordechai sang rather like a dying chain-saw, and that was on a good day. So the hero of this tale was sulking in his office when Esther was taken to the palace. He couldn't sing, so he was teaching himself how to mutter. A useful and pleasant past-time.

Esther had weeks of being bathed in myrrh and other exotic scents to ponder upon the advice Hege kept on giving her. Hege's most useful piece of advice to Esther was simple: to have a bath before the presentation. That way the king might stop and speak with her. It was traditional that the king walked down the line of beauties as quickly as possible, you see, just to get away from the smell.

On the day of the parade, Esther adorned herself simply, as befits a young maid. When the king stopped in front of her as Hege had predicted, demure little Esther shyly raised her long lashed eyes, and sang her tiny song straight from her heart.
(Tune: "Big Spender")
The minute you walked in the joint
I could see you were a man of distinction
A Real True Royal,
Good-looking, half-divine.
Wouldn't you like to know what's going on in my mind?
Now let me get right to the point,
I don't dress like this for every king I see.
Hey big kingy!
Give a little crown to me.

Harry was enchanted.

Factionalism was particularly rife in the Persian government. Hege was Centre-Left, and very powerful. Mordechai's power was mostly personal. This was a shame, because very few people really got on with him. Though he had an older brother with a great deal of charm, and a young sister who was as sweet as they came, he couldn't sing, and, when they'd taken care of that, the man insisted on muttering. But he was clever, and had managed to find out about a plot against the PM's life. Mordechai and his intrepid band of Persio men foiled this plot, without much fuss or bother (as one does). The matter was written up in a Departmental Minute and it was sent to the King. It unfortunately went to the Taxation Department instead, and was filed under Shushan region 15, section 9501, subsection 33.56392 by mistake. Life went on as usual.
Haman, who was of the extreme right, found great favour with Harry at this time. He was a notable person in many ways. Even before he entered the Megillat Esther, he was responsible for a variety of noxious conditions. They included ads on cable TV, indigestion, frakking, Twitter, and tourists who persist in telling you how to find your way home. He also invented iOUphones, Judge Judy and Mitt Romney.

He was promoted to chief minister. He used his newfound power constructively. First he ground people's faces into the dust. Then he laughed at them for having dusty faces. Also, he offered people flat rate taxes. When they enthusiastically agreed to it, he raised all taxes to 99% of income.

He liked giving banquets in honour of himself. Only the archaeologists and the DoPEs were pleased. He made everyone bow to him, but Mordechai wouldn't. Mordechai muttered to himself and claimed that his sore throat and a stiff neck had given him a very rigid spinal column.
Haman didn't do things by half. When he planned his revenge on Mordechai for his disrespect, he didn't just plan to unstiffen his neck (12). First, Mordechai's mother would die, Haman decided. Then his brother was added to the list. He tried to poison them with a cunningly ethnic food fair.

When this didn't work, his ambitions grew. He added Mordechai's sisters and his cousins and his aunts and even his mother-in-law to the list for slaughter. Then he went around trying to find a tune for the words, "If sometime it must happen that a victim must be found; I've got a little list, I've got a little list, of Mordechai's relations who should all be underground. They never will be missed, no never will be missed..."

Haman looked at this list for a couple of days and decided it was very unsatisfying. Mordechai was Jewish, so Haman decided to kill all Jews. It was much easier to include everyone than to risk offending someone by leaving them off. He invented a couple of useful acronyms to cope with the problem. Both of them later became very popular. The first acronym was YIDs, standing for Yucky and Irreverent Dissidents, and the other was SDI, or Sudden Death Initiative. This latter was Haman's name for his special technique of ridding the world of his enemies. It went at the top of every list he made. It used the latest technology - the drawing of lots and the sending of fast couriers - enabling him to co-ordinate his effort in a way previously unheard of. Because the couriers reached every corner of the immense Persian realm, it was also called Far Wars (14).

His advisors wrote SDI on their lists, as Haman told them to, but in their minds it stood for Some Damn Idiocy. They grumbled to themselves that there was no-one to fight against any more, and envisaged thousands of shiny pebbles in space raining down on anyone who dared to claim that there was no-one to fight. At the bottom of every list Haman wrote in the biggest, boldest letters he could get his scribe to muster up, "NB gallows for Mordechai to be particularly high." Then he went to bed, perfectly happy.

Next day he cast lots, or Purim, and settled on the 13th of Adar as a suitable day. He told Ahashverosh that all the Jews were breaking the laws and ought to be punished. It was necessary, Haman claimed, to make sure the bringer of justice was a disinterested and upright man, such as himself, for example. The King, deceived, handed over Haman his ring, which meant Haman could do what he liked in the matter.

On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, ran the decrees, all Jews in the realm were to be killed and their possessions were to be given to Haman. It was a very tidy, simple little decree.

The scribe who worked on it was a Persio agent. Mordechai was not very happy to get the news. He suggested that it would be a good idea for the Jews to stage a protest. The Society Contrary to the Abolition of Residents of Eastern Demesnes, or SCARED (15), had a meeting to discuss the matter. They contemplated a stop-work, a strike, a street-march, and a sit in, but eventually settled for sackcloth and ashes and wandering through the streets of Shushan, groaning loudly.
Esther was very embarrassed to hear that her uncle was roaming the streets, looking like a fool. It was bad enough that he was a Public Servant, but to wear such stupid clothes! She sent him linen and silk and cloth of gold. He sent back a message saying he'd rather die than wear such things. It took Esther a while to penetrate this deep and meaningful statement. In fact, it took a leak from Tax, which asked if she wanted any of the loot.

Esther was tempted by the gold, of course, but nobly put her life above such wordly considerations. Esther looked her very best: modest, timid and demure. Harry was so impressed that he granted her a favour. Vashti hadn't even been able to get him to pay the food bills. Esther knew the PM very well. So did the archaeologists. They held their collective breaths. All their hopes were realised - Esther invited the King and Haman to a banquet.

Banquets don't just happen overnight, even when you are the Queen of Persia and have a whole army of DoPEs to do the work for you. The weather was hot and sticky. Summer seemed to go on forever(16). The king's insomnia was getting worse and worse. He began to get bad headaches from all the filing he had to do. He'd have to invent a new government department to cope with it all, he thought. In the meantime, he spent long, sleepless nights dreaming of filing cabinets. Finally, at three o'clock in the morning, he sent for someone to read to him. Harry was torn between having something read to him that was interesting, or something that was so boring that it would put him to sleep. He compromised. One of his secretaries started reading him the tax returns for Shushan region 15, section 9501, subsection 33.56392.

It wasn't what he thought it would be. When he found out that no-one had bothered to reward Mordechai for saving his life, he waxed exceeding wrath. In fact, he called Haman out of bed. Haman was puzzled, but hopeful.

The PM led into his subject indirectly. The filing cabinets walking beside his bed when he had dozed off three nights before, had inspired him. He commanded Haman to spend 50,000 shekels of the enormous bribe which had got him the use of the signet ring, to set up a bureau to take care of the filing. He called it the Cabinet Office. Then he tackled the more important issue.
"What would you give someone deserving of the highest honour, if you were the King of Persia?" Harry asked. This looked promising. Haman listened for the sounds of the gallows-builders doing overtime and rubbed his hands with glee. He listed everything he could think of (17), but the centrepiece of the honour was to have "this worthy individual" astride the king's mount, adorned with cloth of gold, and wearing a crown.

Haman was not at all pleased to find himself, the next day, leading the King's horse. On it was Mordechai. On Mordechai's head was the king's own crown. To add insult to injury, Mordechai muttered the whole time and Haman had to pretend he was listening. The only good thing in Haman's whole day was the sight of the gallows, reaching higher and higher. He consoled himself with the thought of a private banquet with their Majesties, that evening.

The banquet wasn't really worthy of the name. It had only forty courses, and so few guests that Haman was able to monopolise the conversation. However, even the garbage bags were made of cloth of gold. The archaeologist wept tears of joy. Haman, while he was chatting away, managed to put a couple in his pocket to spend later.

Esther was in despair as the evening progressed. She had planned to reveal Haman's plot and the threat to her own life, and to allow the PM to see the villain's guilt written all over his face. If only that villain would stop talking long enough to let her get a word in edgewise! She sat back and listened to Haman talking for another hour or two or three.

Then the Queen whispered quietly to the King that she was doomed.

Harry's face paled and he demanded an explanation. Esther told the King that she was Jewish, and that the crimes Haman had accused her people of were pure fabrication. She petitioned her husband for her very life.

Harry was bewildered. He went into the garden to think. What to do? His chief advisor, a murderer? While he was thinking, he sang an ancient song to himself, a song of puzzlement and betrayal, a song so old that not even the people of that time knew from whence the tune had come.
Alas Haman you do me wrong
To treat me thus discourteously
For I have honoured you so long
Delighting in your company

Haman was all my sooth
Haman source of wisdom clear
Haman, you played me false
When you tried to kill my Esther dear

While the PM was in the moonlit garden, Haman had tried to get out of his dilemma. He had seen his life was threatened, and had come close to where the Queen was sitting, meaning to throw himself upon her mercy.

The King re-entered and didn't realise that it was upon her mercy that Haman was advancing to throw himself. He vaguely remembered seeing a nice new gallows, fifty cubits high, in the very best part of town. Haman was sent to these gallows at once. He said nothing, for he was gagged until he was out of the King's presence.

It was Purim. Haman died bitter, but, being Ancient Persian, he couldn't resist writing his own funeral dirge. Very original, he thought, as he waited for the hangman.
I was a crooked man
I walked a crooked mile
I made some crooked sixpence
Into a crooked pile
And with my crooked dough
I led my crooked life
Which now must finish
Due to Kingy's crooked wife.


(1) Not of the family Baratheon. This is a shame, for he would entirely have enjoyed Sean Bean as an offsider. Mind you, if he had Sean Bean as an offsider, this story would never have happened, for Haman couldn’t have the King’s ring if Mr Bean held it. And now I’ve jumped ahead in the story. Also, if this narrative were really Game of Thrones, I would have to give you a description of stunning armour and spectacular sable in the next sentence. And I refuse to.
(2) I need advice. I don’t think this bit fits Westeros at all, but does it fit Hollywood?
(3) Elections are themselves taxing. May I suggest Harry as a candidate for the forthcoming papal elections and for Australian Prime Minister? The two have never been held by the same person, which is an entire shame.
(4) I once worked on licit opiates in a federal government department called DoPIE. Alas, this was far more respectable than it sounds.
(5) What archaeologists ought to be worried about is me and my short stories. Or one short story. I made a Richard III joke in it, by mistake. The mistake was that it didn’t mention the word ‘carpark.’ As bad jokes go, it was woeful. And this footnote is the third in a row that doesn’t mention Game of Thrones. I shall make amends.
(6) Once one of them wrote a fictionalised version of events. George RR Martin found a translation of it and was inspired to invent the Dothraki. This must be a true fact, for it is stated clearly in a footnote. Everyone knows that neither footnotes nor historians lie.
(7) Their very successful technique is currently being used at one of my old universities. Or is that at two of my old universities? Good things have their own momentum.
(8) It didn’t beat the weather report, which announced “Winter is Coming” because the temperature dropped to an icy 30 degrees Celsius.
(9) I’m torn between a Game of Thrones reference here (for there is an obvious one) or a British Government one (for there is an even more obvious one). I shall let you add the reference yourself and am leaving sufficient space:


(10) Of course, everyone claimed (as the good folks in Martin’s world did) that they were not slaves. I’ve always thought that if human rights were so hard to achieve for free people in Ancient Persia (this story acts as witness to that) how very tough it must have been for the enslaved. And that’s the subtext of Purim – human rights are essential, but we don’t have to address them in a serious manner. This note is for those of you who wonder what this festival is actually about, besides drinking.
(11) Because the CIA and MI666 are not nearly as funny. Also, if I’m being rude to everyone else, I need to be rude to Australians, in the interest of equity.
(12) The sound effects here ought to be an evil laugh, but all that Haman could manage was a rather woeful cackle, so all evil laughs have been edited out.
(13) This footnote doesn’t exist, just as the thirteenth floor doesn’t exist in some hotels.
(14) At this point I am in an urgent state of NMDA (Needing More Damn Acronyms) – all submissions will be thoughtfully considered. Any that make me laugh aloud will be included in next year’s version.
(15) OK, now I really am out of acronyms. My life is officially an acronym-free wasteland. There's a lost TS Eliot poem about this, actually.
(16) All events in the Jewish year are measured according to the southern seasons. Christianity measures events using the northern seasons. This is the equivalent of Spain and Portugal dividing the world ie no-one pays attention to it except certain individuals who use it for mind games and certain scholars who analyse it in depth. I am of course in the latter group, for I never play mind games (and footnotes cannot lie).
(17) He at no stage thought about sitting on an Iron Throne. Haman was mostly not stupid. He just had the occasional blind spot. His greed and bigotry were flaws independent of these blind spots.

Purim is coming much faster than Winter

I have a question. The first part of it is simple: does anyone want me to post my version of the Purim story again?

If the answer to the first part of the question is 'yes' - do you want me to add more bad jokes to it this year? I was thinking that, in fairness, since I put hobbits in my Chanukah tale, I might put Game of Thrones references in the Esther story. Queens sulking and kings being stupid and villains conniving ...it's obviously all the same story.

Let me know soon, for Purim starts tonight and is not, thankfully, an 8 days festival (compulsory drunkenness for eight days is a thought, however).

For Canberra friends and friends visiting Canberra, drop in tomorrow night, for there will be a very small gathering and much food and foul liquor. Also some nice (ie not home made by me) liquor. Also much tea and coffee.

PS LJ is a big odd today. I'm a bit odd today, also, so at least we're in harmony.

gillpolack @ 2013-02-23T10:16:00

I have slept and slept and slept and slept. Turns out this is what happens when the pain goes from screaming-size to "ouch, that hurts." I keep discovering how much pain I was in and being astonished. For instance, I have pain circles under my eyes still and my muscles are still stiff enough so that I can't turn my head. Whenever I lie down, I can feel the hurt that belongs with this. I think "I need to take pain killers." But I"m too tired and besides, it's not so acute I can't lie down anymore, so instead, I sleep.

I didn't realise I had reached a level of pain that meant I was actually obliterating the pain. I also didn't realise that I had learned how to tolerate quite bad pain all the rest of the time, simply because those three days a month were impossible. All I knew was that I was grumpy and couldn't see straight and couldn't think straight.

If I hadn't been driven out of my place by the chemical sensitivities, I possibly would not have been to the doctor yet. I knew I had to go, but doing anything that took me away from my desk was tough. It's still tough, which means I'm not where I need to be yet. But I will be. On Monday I will get the bloodwork done, for instance.

The amusing side of this is my astonishment. I came online just now and thought "I guess that's why I've been a bit less productive than I want to be."

Speaking of productivity, the details have been released of the volume that contains my Lanagan essay: http://salempress.com/Store/samples/critical_insights/speculative_fiction.htm

This is one of the things that's been bubbling away for months. Soon I hope to have news of the others. And now that the pain's subsiding, I can maybe make more progress on my writers and their history book. More and more I see a need for that book to be out there. The lack of progress at my end, though, means that I haven't sent off the proposal I meant to, three weeks ago. I've put in more work on it, but shaping the work into two sample chapters required a brain that was just that much clearer. So it has progressed, but not enough and not in quite the right direction.

It's an interesting balancing act, this book. I want writers to be able to use it, but I also want to use all the wonderful ground-breaking stuff I've been researching and to situate fictional historical writing in contexts that are not normally considered.

I nearly dumped my research and wrote it as a manual, which would be much easier, but which would leave the field without the stuff I feel is missing from it. By doing my balancing act I get to talk about historiography and historical method and to talk about writing techniques and the needs of readers and about the cultural contexts of genre. So many writers take their history seriously and yet are sent to high school level background texts for theory. And so much of the understanding of the relationship between history and fiction rests on how writers go about their job. The needs are meshed. It's quite tough to write because meshed needs don't always mean meshed approaches, but it's going to be a useful book, I think.

I need to get past this pain, do all the essentials for the weekend, maybe watch more Fringe, and then get to work on those two draft chapters.