Mari Ness's Blog, page 13

Mary Stewart, 1916-2014

Romance/suspense fantasy author Mary Stewart died at the age of 97 this week.

My favorite book of hers was Touch Not the Cat: mystery, Gothic, telepathy, archaeology, identical twins - it kinda has everything. It was enough to get me to rush through the rest of her Gothic/suspense novels, of which the best is arguably Nine Coaches Waiting, although I also have a soft spot for The Moon-Spinners.

But her most influential book on me was unquestionably The Wicked Day, her retelling of the Arthurian legend from Mordred's point of view, which I picked up back in high school and was transformational. To be honest, I haven't read it for years, and it probably doesn't live up to my memories - let's go with it certainly doesn't live up to my memories - but it was the first book that got me to think about the villain's point of view, and to think about how history and stories are determined as much by viewpoint as by anything. And that, in turn, led me to relook and reconsider many of the characters from myth and fairy tale, something I continue to do today.

RIP.

Coffin

Sometimes, when I start to write a story, I know exactly where it's going.

And sometimes the story does not go at all where I thought it was going. I knew vaguely that I was writing about a coffin - even the coffin, but this story took an unexpected turn into the present day with the phrase "satellite photos" and then just kept changing from there, and by the end it had nothing to do with what I was originally thinking (a caper story) and everything to do with other things.

Enjoy!

The Silver Comb/Water Babies

The latest issue of Mythic Delirium is up, featuring poems by Jane Yolen, Cedar Sanderson, and me. Enjoy!

Also out: the latest Tor.com post, on The Water-Babies. I can't exactly recommend the book for enjoyable reading, but it does provide some interesting commentary on the Victorians.

Hugo Awards follow up, also, Windows 8.1 sucks hugely

Brandon Sanderson has a post up about the Hugo Awards as a whole and the Wheel of Time nomination in particular.

In the spirit of his final paragraph, allow me to say that right now, the major reason I am unable to read all the works in the novelette and novella category has nothing to do with the nominated authors, their politics, their ability to write Latin, or the stories themselves, and EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT WINDOWS 8.1 SUCKS. MIGHTILY SUCKS.

Specifically, it does not like Adobe Digital Editions, a program I have used for YEARS to organize, open and read epubs and pdfs. Windows 8.1 allows the program to open, kinda, but then has FEELINGS about whether or not you can actually read the file. Microsoft will helpfully point out the other reading apps available, but a: most of my ebooks are NOT from Amazon/Kindle, Barnes and Noble/Nook, or Kobo Books, so shut up Microsoft; b: the Kindle app on Windows 8.1 didn't open up the epub file either (however otherwise it is a very nice app and does not crash my system, so kudos Amazon); and c: I don't want to have to jump through a lot of different and competing reader apps just to open up a 36 page book.

As it turns out, if you restart the computer several times Windows 8.1 will grudgingly admit that just maybe Adobe Digital Editions has a right to exist and be used, and hopefully - hopefully - I will manage to get the rest of my books to open up in it. (That particular epub was DRM free.) HOWEVER.

This is only the start of many issues that I have with Windows 8.1. Auugh. I will adjust, I know, and at least this time Windows hasn't added that terrifying paperclip thing, but seriously, Microsoft, can you try checking with users to find out what they actually want and need before launching Windows 9.0? Thanks muchly.

Hugo Awards

So if you missed it, the Hugo Award nominations were announced over the weekend. You can find the list here:

http://www.loncon3.org/2014hugos.php



It's generating, as might be expected given what popped up in three and arguably five of the categories, quite a bit of comment. So I figured I'd jump in with a few comments of my own as well.

Full disclosure: quite a few of the nominees have either paid me for my fiction, or had dinner/drinks with me online, or taken me to Disney, or have been more than willing to chat about Arrow with me on Twitter (but I swear that is not actually why I nominated Abigail Nussbaum for fan writer; I've been urging people to nominate her since before Arrow started). So this cannot be considered an even slightly unbiased response. I am biased all over the place here.

1. I am beyond delighted to see that my post urging people to nominate new names for the Hugo Fan Writer award actually worked, and that this year, everyone on the Hugo Fan Writer has been nominated for the first time. Not that I can take all or even most of the credit - you'll note that the final shortlist doesn't match my list. (And I'm really kinda surprised that Adam Whitehead wasn't nominated, especially given what happened in the Best Novel category, but we'll get there.) But that's even more encouraging – the point of my post and Twitter and real life blatherings was to encourage the Worldcon voting membership to go beyond the usual suspects and start looking at all of the really interesting stuff out there, and voters did. Yay.

2. Which brings me to a slightly less comfortable topic: the fancast category. Less comfortable because I personally know and like the people who received Hugo nominations here - I just had dinner with a lot of them last month, and at least one person in this category has bought fiction from me. So on a purely personal level, YAY and HUGS all around and I'm really happy and congrats to all of you and I'll buy you a celebratory drink when we next meet.

On a less personal level, however, I have to note that despite some new entries here, the fancast category looks rather similar to previous years. And….it only generated 396 ballots.

I don't know if this is because there aren't that many good podcasts out there (quite possible) or because Hugo voters as a rule don't listen to podcasts and therefore don't feel comfortable nominating them (I don't know if this is a rule, exactly, but a number of people at last year's Worldcon did confess that they don't listen to podcasts.) All I can say is that I would like to see a lot more nominations in this category.

3. Which brings me to the fan artist category. I don't know any of the nominees in this category, but all of their nominated stuff looked pretty cool. So that isn't the problem.

What is the problem: this category received only 306 ballots - out of the 1923 valid ballots.

Given the wealth of fan art out there, this seems a bit low. Plus, this is another category with repeat names (though, to repeat, the work looked cool, so I'm not against anyone on here.) So, this is my little pledge to you all: next January/February, should I have the time, I will pop over to Deviant Art and Tumblr and see if I can find Interesting Things. There is at least one other person out there also trying to increase knowledge/nominations for the art categories, so maybe we can bring some attention to some of the other fan art out there.

4. In the short dramatic presentation category, Doctor Who/related stuff again had four of six nominations. I realize Fringe is no longer with us and, let's face it, we were all disappointed by Defiance, but, still?

5. On a cheery note, "The Rains of Castamere," - yes, that episode of Game of Thrones - also popped up on the Hugo short dramatic presentation category, and I gotta admit I'm kinda hoping whoever shows up to represent this shows up wearing some sort of nod to the final scene.

6. Michael Damien Thomas was disappointed that the nomination for Queers Dig Time Lords in Best Related Work didn't generate any controversy, so, if you have any feelings about this, go at it in the comments. If it cheers you up, Michael, I'm sure that this would have generated controversy and attention in any other year!

7. There does seem, however, to be a genuine if minor controversy regarding the Best Editor (long form) category.

I would humbly like to express a completely different opinion on this, and suggest that the nomination in question that is generating, how can I put this, feedback, has less to do than what the editor in question actually wrote in a blogpost (though I expect several Hugo voters did agree with the blogpost – Hugo voters are not a monolithic entity, as this year's nominations proved), or whether or not one of the authors from her publishing house enthusiastically promoted her and other names on a Sad Puppy slate, or even whether or not voters like the publishing house in question, and more to do with a completely different factor:

Voters at least knew her name and what books she had edited.

This is a perennial problem with the Long Editor category. With Short Editor, it's less of a problem: voters can clearly see the editor's name on the masthead of the journal/webzine or right on the cover of the anthology. With Long Editor, even people involved in the field often don't have a clue.

7. I need to apologize to nearly everyone I nominated in the fiction category, because, clearly, my nominations doomed you, and I'm sorry. Which also means that if you weren't nominated in this category you should go ahead and curse me, since that seems to have been the common link.

8. If I'd published a novelette last year, I'd doubtless have more to say. As it is, bring on the popcorn, because this is going to be fun.

And, on the bright side, the novelette category has already taught us to be very careful to get the dative case right when using Latin in a novelette.

9. I've only read one of the novellas that popped upon the ballot. Based on names alone, good thing we got the popcorn out for the novelette.

10. In the novel category, the big news for most people is the nomination for the fourteen book Wheel of Time series as a single book.

I'll be completely honest, my initial reaction hasn't changed: Holy ()&&%*%&(^*, they actually pulled this off.

If you missed what happened, it more or less went like this: fan Jennifer Liang read the Hugo rules, and realized that yes, according to those rules, The Wheel of Time series as a whole could be nominated for the Hugo Award for best novel, even though it consisted of a lot of novels that began to be published back in 1990, since the last book appeared in 2013. This would be a way of getting a Hugo nomination for the series and ensuring that both the original creator, Robert Jordan, and the guy who went through the hell of trying to end the series, Brandon Sanderson, were recognized for their work.

So Liang spoke out on Dragonmount, a Wheel of Time blog, and reached out to other fans, making the argument, and lo, here we are, with a Hugo nomination for The Wheel of Time.

And I have to say, not only am I impressed, but I have to say that of everything on the ballot, this, more than anything, seems to fit in with the spirit of the Hugo awards: enthusiastic fans banding together to make sure a work they believe in gets major recognition. Congrats to the Wheel of Time fanbase, especially since I honestly didn't think you could do this. You proved me wrong.

Regarding the rest of the category: I was honestly surprised not to see Neil Gaiman on the ballot – I assumed he was in a shoo-in here. That's two predictions for this category completely wrong (although I was right about Ann Leckie's novel making the ballot) which suggests that, once again, I'm too out of touch with the general Hugo voter base to address any other potential controversies here.

And after all that, congratulations to everyone for their Hugo nominations!

Victorian murders: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

Ah, Victorian England: prim, proper and also touched by the occasionally horribly gruesome murder of a three year old, as detailed in Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which I just finished and highly recommend.

But first, a bit of a rant: throughout the internet and on other forums, I keep coming across the insistent myth that the labor force greatly changed in the 1960s when women started to work outside the home and/or in professional jobs for the first time.

And then I read books like this one, discussing events in 1860 and the later 19th century, where nearly every woman discussed or mentioned in the book at one point or another held down full time jobs – most for their entire lives.

These included, I need to add, middle class women. And a woman convicted of murdering a child.

The jobs varied. The second Mrs. Kent worked full time as a governess and housekeeper before marrying her employer. Once married, she employed three young women in their 20s as full time servants: a cook, a housemaid and a nursemaid, and also hired a fourteen year old girl to come in and assist the nursemaid on a daily basis and a charwoman to handle the heaviest cleaning. Even with these servants, and with sending the laundry out on a weekly basis, the evidence given at the trial shows that her two oldest step-daughters, technically members of the middle class, continued to do significant amounts of physical labor with household chores – preparing food, running errands, carrying the laundry, cleaning, helping to supervise their younger siblings, doing the household sewing (apparently no small task) and other jobs. They later worked full time as governesses and nurses.

It is possible that these servants were slow, lazy, inefficient workers, which is why the household (a three story home described as "comfortable") needed so many of them and still needed the oldest girls to help out? Maybe, but Mr. Kent never hesitated to fire unsatisfactory servants, and even in the midst of a murder investigation, no one accused the cook and the housemaid of not staying busy and working. The same went for the oldest two girls. The nursemaid was accused of sleeping around and not immediately reporting a missing child – but one reason she didn't report the kid's absence was that she had so many tasks to do in the morning.

Outside the household, we see women working as bakers, as novelists, as skilled, professional naturalists and watercolorists focused on creating scientific books, actresses, singers, nurses, artists, schoolmistresses, laundresses, governesses, innkeepers, boarding house managers, and seamstresses.

Even the convicted murderer worked as a skilled artist in mosaics – her work is still displayed – and later as a highly skilled, trained and greatly respected nurse.

The exceptions? A wife who seems to have been too sick to work, the first Mrs. Kent, and various thieves and prostitutes. If we put "prostitution" under "job," the percentage of women working full time increases.

Look, I don't want to sugarcoat things. The types of jobs available to women were clearly limited. At no point does anyone suggest that one of the Kent girls can go and study marine biology with William Saville-Kent at the British Museum or Brighton Aquaria, for instance (although both of his wives later helped him with his work). The detectives and police are all men; the lawyers, judges, and members of the jury are all men; the doctors are all men; the government employees are all men; the major religious figures (with the exception of one Anglican nun) are all men; the journalists are all men; the politicians are all men. And so on. The women who did manage to work as novelists, scientists and artists on their own were clearly limited in their options – Constance Kent eventually gave up mosaic art for the more lucrative nursing profession which based on her possessions when she died was not all that lucrative. (She may also have had other reasons for giving up mosaic art beyond money.) It is also clear that most of these jobs were very badly paid: at one point, people point out that one of these working women, a seamstress, is near starvation because her job pays so little money. It's very clear from contemporary reports that working as a nursemaid – or at least Mrs. Kent's nursemaid – was a thankless job even if you didn't end up getting suspected of murder. But it was work, paid work, and it is fully documented in the historical records.

And of course, the history of women is not particularly linear – at any given decade in history, women might be doing very well in one place, and not at all well in another place. Louisa May Alcott made some pointed observations on the roles of married women in the 19th century United States, comparing them, not all that kindly, to women in 19th century France. It gets even more complicated when we look at other eras where the historical record is more scanty, or non-European cultures where some of the underlying principles differed. And even in those cases we see variation: the roles and rights enjoyed by women seem to have varied from city to city in the ancient Roman Empire, for example, if the documents we have are any guide – including documents often very hostile to women.

But what I do want to counter is the idea that women just began to enter the labor force in the 1960s, since this is not borne out by the historical records.

What makes this particularly notable is that this is not even a focus of this book, which is interested in how Victorians viewed detectives, not women's labor. The jobs are mentioned casually – in part because they were taken for granted by contemporaries. Victorians did worry about governesses and servants and allowing these outsiders into the inner sphere, and worried about whether or not they were effective (since most of the first Mrs. Kent's children died young, and since the second Mrs. Kent lost a child to murder despite having two servants specifically directed to care for her children, this worry apparently had a pretty valid basis). But for all of the mythology that the Victorians believed that a woman's place was in the home, they also accepted that women could and did work.

Ok. Rant over. Back to the book, which is actually a lot more interesting than I just made it sound since it's about murder not Victorian employment options. Summerscale uses the evidence given at the various trials and investigations and newspaper interviews to reconstruct what happened in the home of the Kents on Friday, June 29. Or at least the agreed upon details, since by the following morning, Saville Kent, the three year son of the household, a cute if occasionally mischievous child, was found brutally murdered, throat sliced through, stuffed into an outdoor privy.

Suspicions immediately fell on the nursemaid, who did not immediately report that the child was missing. The nursemaid countered that she had assumed the kid had gone to his mother (another child did sleep in the parents' bedroom). Many assumed that Mr. Kent was sleeping with the nursemaid – he had, after all, married the governess of his oldest child. Rumors ran rampant. Scotland Yard sent one of its first detectives, a Mr. Whicher, to investigate. Mr. Whicher had another theory: the murderer was the young teenage Constance Kent.

As I noted, Summerscale's main interest here is in murder, and in the development of the detective in both a literary and real life sense. The Kent murder mesmerized the British press and many readers, who all turned themselves into amateur detectives, much like the Casey Anthony trial would years later. It also helped to inspire a number of mystery and sensation novels, eventually leading to the great Golden Age of detective fiction.

And it also offers a mystery for contemporary readers to solve. After all, someone did eventually confess to doing the murder – but did she? Or was she covering for someone else, or deciding to sacrifice her life to save an otherwise innocent person under suspicion?

Summerscale doesn't say, since it's impossible to tell, which may leave readers somewhat unsatisfied – but there's enough here for anyone to create a theory, not to mention a variety of other tidbits.

Bonus: a sidenote here is the biography of early marine biologist William Saville-Kent, who studied, drew, painted and categorized numerous species in Australia's Great Barrier Reef for the first time. His work The Great Barrier Reef was a standard reference book for years; you can still find it in many research libraries. (I've seen a copy although Pacific corals, not my field/thing.) He also liked owls. Those with an interest in this sort of thing, or in the history of cultured pearls, might want to check this book out just for this (I'll be honest, that's why I picked up the book) even though, as said, it's sidelined.

Lessons Learned From the Sun and Fun airshow, Lakeland, Florida

1. Blueberry muffins are awesome. (This wasn't at the airshow, but remains true.)

2. Florida has, indeed, built a toll road with only two lanes, showing once again that Florida needs to spend a lot of time thinking about how it handles toll roads.

3. On your way down to the airshow, you will see plenty of planes that look like they should be or could be in an airshow, but aren't. This will give you a false sense of where exactly the airshow is.

4. Florida continues to build a lot of things.

5. The actual airshow will turn out to be kinda but not quite in the middle of nowhere, unless a Geico office building counts as somewhere.

6. The Geico office building will not, to your disappointment, have a single gecko anywhere.

7. Apart from the fact that the disabled parking is ominously completely full when the rest of the parking area really isn't, you will be greatly pleased by the efficiency of the parking situation, and take this as a positive sign for the rest of the event's organization.

8. This will not be a wise move.

9. Bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce.

10. The first hint that just perhaps things are not going to be going well is when you arrive at the ticket line and find out that the ticket line is not moving. At all. Neither is the prepaid ticket line.

11. Fortunately, paying cash for tickets allows you go in.

12. Although this is an airplane event, all sorts of booths will show up to it, including, but not limited to: jewelry makers, homemade root beer, the Puerto Rico tourism board (you are encouraged to fly your private jet to that island), gourmet cooking pots (complete with demonstration), welding demonstrations, World War I reenactors, electric tricycles (not as cool as mine so I didn't get one), light sabers, DVDs and Blurays, barbeque sauce, Sky-Chairs (one of these days I really do have to just break down and get one even if I currently have no place for it), tarot cards, teddy bears, and things actually related to airplanes: engines, engine parts, seat covers, electrical systems, plane kits, and actual planes at a staggering variety of prices.

13. You will decide to ignore all this and hunt down the bathrooms.

14. The first bathroom you locate can only be reached by stairs.

15. Ditto the second.

16. The third portapotty location sort of has a "disabled" unit although it is placed so that it slopes and the entrance is about an inch above the ground.

(I'll skip over the condition inside for my more squeamish readers, though I don't actually blame Fun and Sun for that. People were doing a lot of drinking and it showed.)

17. The first exhibit, of a cargo jet, is completely wheelchair inaccessible so you can't go in. On the other hand this allows you to shelter beneath the shade of a large airplane wing while watching people jump out of planes so some compensation.

18. The second exhibit is also completely wheelchair inaccessible, as are the next three sets of bathrooms you pass.

19. You will begin to understand just why although there are some people in mobility scooters around (not many), there are very few people in wheelchairs, and all but one of these people is accompanied by family members.

20. On the other hand the one guy going around all by himself in a wheelchair was using a SmartDrive system which allowed me to see it in action, which was on its own worth the trip.

21. However, you are not here to complain about disability access. You are here to look at planes. You go and look at planes.

22. Nearly every little plane will end up looking very uncomfortable.

23. Except for the small private jets, which will end up looking very expensive.

24. The pavilion for one manufacturer of these small, expensive private jets, a pavilion selling related merchandise and drinks, will be set up a full foot off the ground with no ramp.

25. At this point I will go ahead and credit Cessna for having one of the few (I think two) accessible airplane pavilions/airplane displays and for being the sole one to offer assistance if I wanted to look inside the corporate jet. Thank you, Cessna.

(To be clear the smaller airplane manufacturers – those just selling one or two planes or kits, who did not have actual pavilions but just tents near their planes, were mostly disabled accessible since the planes were small and on the ground so I could get to them and look at them. I'll get to more of those in a bit. The ones with pavilions and larger planes, not at all.)

26. You will want to go and see the Maverick flying car partly because it's a flying car, and partly because, well, you can.

27. The Maverick flying car will, frankly, turn out to look pretty silly in real life. Also unsafe, but mostly silly.

28. Your attention will be drawn from this by the roar of an F26.

29. You are not actually here to see an F26 but this is a very, very difficult plane to ignore.

30. If you haven't seen one, these things are a) loud as hell, b) big, and c) capable of doing some pretty impressive stuff in the air.

31. So impressive that even the most jaded airplane people will all stop and watch the F26.

32. After this you will go back to doing what you are actually here to do which is to go look at the ultralight airplanes.

33. Since these are the cheapest airplanes available they are naturally displayed only at the far, far, far end of the show after

34. bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce

35. and there will be some difficulty getting there because in the midst of everything else you will have lost your little wristband.

36. Apparently feeling that dealing the bathroom situation is bad enough the volunteers will wave you through anyway.

37. bounce bounce

38. The ultralight planes turn out to be very cool. Some of them have open cockpits which yes, means flying right in the air. Some of them look like they should be on superhero shows.

39. You will realize that flying these will involve a certain willingness to crash in the middle of nowhere after hearing your third story about crashing/landing in the middle of a cowfield in one of these with no cell phone reception.

40. Getting back to the rest of the show requires bounce bounce bounce and also going through the military aircraft and a lot of historical aircraft.

41. A rather distressing number of World War II airplanes have pictures of scantily clad women on them. I'm just saying.

42. World War II airplanes create great shade. This, in Florida, is important.

43. The exhibit for the Berlin Aircraft plane is completely disabled inaccessible. In revenge, you will touch the plane (it was one of the planes that participated in the airlift). In revenge the plane will get grease all over your hand.

44. To your astonishment, you will actually finally see an exhibit of a historical plane that is totally wheelchair accessible with a ramp and everything and –

45. You will realize you spoke WAY too soon. Oh, the ramp is there (very steep, but there) but between the ramp and the exhibit is two feet of air, about ten feet up in the ground.

46. No one wants you to go on planes.

47. BATMAN!

48. Batman deserves capital letters because the Batmobile and the Bat-copter from the 1960s TV will turn out to also be completely accessible. Yay superheroes!

49. At this point it is more or less time to find a spot to watch the Blue Angels.

50. As soon as you realize this, you will also realize that just about everyone else at the event has the same thought.

51. This will not prevent you from finding a place near a very excited kid in a Spider-Man hat.

52. The Blue Angels are, to repeat, LOUD.

53. LOUD LOUD LOUD LOUD LOUD LOUD.

54. Also when you mention them on Twitter they tweet back at you (I honestly wasn't expecting that.)

55. Once the Blue Angels are done you realize that you will have to leave relatively quickly in order to get home for the Florida Gator game which is not really one of your priorities but is the priority of the person who is driving you. Also, there is a nice bathroom at home which is an incentive.

56. Note with hope that although quite a few people are also taking off, most people are staying to watch the fireworks show, which means that bounce bounce bounce you will make it home quickly.

57. Note with alarm as you are heading to the truck that none of the cars on the exit are moving.

58. Like, at all.

59. Really at all.

60. Arrive at the truck in time for the pre-show game talk which would be very interesting if you were not slammed with a major dizzy attack.

61. Spend the next several minutes wishing the planet would stop moving.

62. When the planet does slow down, realize, with alarm, that the cars on the path to the exit have still not moved.

63. At all.

64. This is 25 minutes in.

65. Optimistically decide to head to the left on the grounds that the traffic on the right exit has moved two feet in 25 minutes which is more than can be said for the traffic on the right exit.

66. Realize the planet is moving again.

67. Realize that the planet is moving more than the cars heading the exit are.

68. Realize that no, this isn't exactly true, given that the cars on the planet are hurtling with the planet through space and around the sun and around the Milky Way in an endless race to get as far away from where this all started –

69. You ARE NOT GOING TO THROW UP.

70. The traffic still hasn't moved.

71. The parking lot does have an elevated platform with two people standing on it looking at the parking lot.

72. This will not seem to be helping much.

73. After more time, find yourself directed to head back to the right exit.

74. Realize that forty five minutes later, you have now managed to edge another 30 feet closer to the road.

75. The road, for the record, is visible from where you are. And has traffic moving on it.

76. This forty-five minute period has allowed the little ultralight planes from earlier in the day to head up in the air so you can see how they work.

77. It has also been long enough that the Florida pregame show is now REALLY excited. Because –

78. The game is starting!

79. Wonder if you will be able to leave the parking area before the end of the game.

80. It feels unlikely.

81. Traffic is still not moving.

82. You will find yourself looking wistfully up at the little ultralights realizing that if you had bought one earlier you could have crashed into your house by now.

83. This thought will make you very dizzy.

84. Wow, sports announcers are excitable people.

85. Then again they aren't in this parking lot.

86. Which means they can be happy.

87. You want one of those gyrocopter things so you can be a superhero and go take out people who do poor parking planning.

88. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, traffic moves out!

89. This will turn out to be because the police have finally and I might add belatedly arrived, finally convincing people not to try to make a left hand turn into incoming traffic (some of whom were coming out of one of the two other exits) when several thousand people behind them were trying to leave.

90. (For the record, it took us two and half hours to go from a spot fairly near the entrance, to the truck, sitting at the exit, and out to the road. This is a distance of about 1/4 mile, under a kilometer, close enough to see the road and the traffic moving on it at a decent clip.)

91. You will feel very optimistic. And dizzy.

92. Even though you are not exactly near I-4 and the road home yet.

93. Sometimes, I-4 is a beautiful, beautiful road.

94. And sometimes home is a beautiful, beautiful place.

For the record, Fun and Sun is in many ways an awesome event: huge, with plenty to do, not to mention all of the stunt flying (a lot more than I'm mentioning here.) And if you are looking to buy a plane it's a good place to go – the little planes offer test flights and so on. Most of it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went.

The disability access, however, left much to be desired. I do understand that arranging ramps or lifts to reach the entrances of military/cargo jets would have been tricky, so I'm willing to give a pass there. For other issues, no.

Now, they're taking $70,000 of someone's hard earned money:

Even stuffed and dead, squirrels are evil. Just read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/when-these-stuffed-squirrels-went-on-the-auction-block-bidders-went-nuts/2014/04/08/b792b472-be5e-11e3-b195-dd0c1174052c_story.html

Game of Thrones, Season four, episode 1

Game of Thrones, Season Four, Episode One

Yes, this is up a bit late. It's not my fault: the Lannisters crashed HBO. (Really. This even ended up on the news.) Anyway, general, partly snarky reactions on the episode:



1. So, the show had to miscast one person along the way, I guess, and once again, it's Daario. I'm not sure what's going on here or how this managed to be now two seasons in a row of miscasting the character, but…sigh.

2. However, we are not with Daenerys to see Daario seducing her into bed! We are here to see dragons! Which are all large! And feisty! And dragons, so they can't be tamed, even though they can put their huge heads into your laps and start cuddling. GO TEAM DRAGON!

3. I forgot the crucifixes. GO TEAM DRAGON! EAT EVERYBODY THAT USES A CRUCIFIX!

4. Though, seriously, this show is not leaving me convinced that anyone wanting to rule the Seven Kingdoms should. Still, I am going with Dany as the least bad of a terrible group so GO TEAM DRAGONS!

5. Since I mentioned it, this show has cheerfully kept up with the death count, with bodies like EVERYWHERE, not to mention the KILL KILL KILL scene at the end.

6. Speaking of which, I have to agree with the general consensus: if the Hound says he wants to eat a chicken, BRING THE DUDE A CHICKEN.

7. I liked that this show twice had to remind Tyrion that really, his family does seriously awful things to people like arranging to have the throat of his wife's mother cut before tossing her into the river and arranging to kill two cute little children, as if he could possibly forget.

8. Speaking of, go, Red Viper, go. I know I won't be able to cheer you on for long, so, go, Red Viper, go.

9. Ah, Jon. Nice to see that your emoness is still with us and will never ever go away. This will be Jon's last scene:

Show: We are nearing the end!

Jon: EMO!

Show:….no, the dragons are burning things up and other people are burning up the dragons and there's drum music. Exciting, Jon, not emo.

Jon: EMO! EMO! EMO!

Ghost: I can't take this anymore. CRUNCH.

10. Cannibalism, show? We really had to go there? Especially since some tastier meat was available?

11. Oh, Sansa. It's perhaps not as bad as taking candy from a baby, but taking necklaces from drunken knights and agreeing to wear them, especially when said drunken knight just nearly scared you to death?

12. What I also like about this show is just as you think Joffrey can't possibly get any worse, he….gets worse. Joffrey, I get that you've happily rewrriten all of your memories to make yourself look amazing, but insulting your relatives? Perhaps not the best move.

13. Oooh, the Sword of the Morning was namedropped. Let's see where that goes.

Lessons Learned From Flash Mobbing:

1. Flashmobbing can be indeed organized with a few days notice (like, two) and two hours of practice.

2. When following the directions of flashmobbers, it will often feel as if Google Maps is your best friend. Or even your only friend.

3. As is shade. Shade is good. Shade is very good. What happened to Florida this April? I miss you, delightful Florida Aprils! Oh, wait. This is supposed to be about flashmobbing not weather. Back to that.

4. Astonishingly, about one third of the people who show up will claim to have never flash mobbed before. About half of them will claim to be unable to dance.

5. You will wonder just how this is going to work.

6. As it turns out, this works by choreographing a dance specifically for people who can't dance. Also, fist pumping.

7. As it also turns out, thanks to this, people who are not, in fact, professional dancers can, in fact, do flash mobbing on a regular basis – say, at least once or twice a week.

8. Which also means that Orlando and Tampa are the sorts of cities that host flash mobs at least once or twice a week.

9. Orlando and Tampa may be a bit weird.

10. You can, as it turns out, fist pump and air guitar from the wheelchair.

11. Hiding in the back corner will not prevent people doing what is apparently meant to be a King Tut dance move from King Tutting right into your wheelchair.

12. You will be told that the one thing you never, ever do as part of a flash mob is call it a flash mob.

13. You will then decide that you are calling it a flash mob anyway.

14. First grade teachers join flash mobs to get out their frustrations. "At a certain point you need more than crayons."

15. Since everyone has to type things into tiny, tiny, keyboards, it will take a surprisingly long time to tell everyone where the flash mob is actually going.

16. "Everybody knows this Hilton, right?" "It's the one across from downtown Disney!" "Right!"

17. That will turn out to be wrong.

18. Orlando has far too many Hiltons, even if the first Hilton you head to turns out not to be a Hilton.

19. The second Hilton is, in fact, a Hilton, but is not the Hilton you are looking for.
20. Google Maps is your friend.

21. Parking garages are not your friend.

22. This particular Hilton will turn out to have not only a convention center and a splendid view over a championship golf course but also a lazy river and 24 hour chocolate.

23. You will realize that certain things have been missing from your life: namely, lazy rivers and 24 hour chocolate.

24. What high powered, wealthy attorneys call "business casual" and what the rest of us call "business casual" are two entirely different things.

25. You can be in "business casual" and feel terribly, terribly, underdressed.

26. Until you see some people in Mickey Mouse hats and gloves and cheer up.

27. All of the planning that goes into a flash mob can be destroyed in a second when the flash mob realizes that the area they can flash mob in is considerably smaller than the already not large rehearsal area.

28. It is nearly impossible to have a casual conversation about not having enough space for a surprise flash mob without letting the audience know that a flash mob is coming.

29. Hint: if part of your flash mob experience includes having to put on bright orange sunglasses, make sure that you have not placed your bright orange sunglasses into a bag with a zipper that more than occasionally gets stuck. Otherwise the sounds of "WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK AND ROLL!" will boom out and you, rather than fist pumping, will find yourself wishing you had indeed bought a second bag with a working zipper from Target.

30. You can fist pump while putting on bright orange sunglasses.

31. Conga lines are much more difficult in a crowded room full of attorneys. They are much much much more difficult in a wheelchair in a crowded room full of attorneys.

32. A surprising number of people will want a picture of the group afterwards. You, however, will want chocolate. Because.