Avast, me hearties! 'Tis the day ya been waitin' fer all year. Tha's right. Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! So put down yer mugs o' grog and listen up, ya bilge rats, ta what I'm goin' ta say.

Isabel, that old beauty, she blew through like the wrath o' God, fellin' trees, knockin' down power lines, makin' the flood waters rise...

Okay, I'm already sick of talking like this.

Anyway, despite all the damage that was done, I barely saw any of it. The trees outside my windows were shaking something fierce, hissing in the strong wind and shedding leaves like crazy. I only lost power for about three and a half hours yesterday, during which time I watched the weather outside and munched on beef jerky and lightly salted peanuts. I also managed to get quite a lot of reading done: Derrida, Jameson, Baudrillard, and O'Brien (Tim, not Conan) for PoMo, two Hawthorne stories for AmerRoma, and "Lord Stink" by Judith Berman for fun.

I also thumbed through my contributor copies of Electric Velocipede #5, and made sure that "Songstress" looked okay. (The illustration for my story is by Funkmaster Jamie, the only piece of artwork not done by editor John Klima.) I read a few of the poems and looked at the contributor bios (the one by Gene Lass is hilarious, and only somewhat true), but reserved reading the stories until after I've finished Berman's Small Beer chapbook Lord Stink and Other Stories and the latest issue of Realms of Fantasy.

I was actually paging through the non-fiction in RoF last night, and really enjoyed Heinz Insu Fenkl's essay on The Mermaid. It really reinforces the idea that there are stories and legends and myths as ancient as humankind itself. And I thought it was interesting as hell that Starbucks chooses to use the siren/mermaid as their symbol, and that the name itself comes from the first mate in Moby Dick. You learn something new every day.

NCSU was closed yesterday, but open again today. Only half of the students were in my American Romanticism class this morning, but we went on discussing Hawthorne, and I came to realize that I'm really enjoying his fiction. I read The Scarlet Letter in high school and absolutely hated it. I couldn't see the point, I didn't like the language, and I thought the Puritans were just stupid. I had a similar reaction to Beowulf, though when I reread it in college, I actually liked it. I have to read The Scarlet Letter a little later in the semester, and I wonder if I'll have a more favorable opinion of it. I do like Hawthorne's short stories quite a bit - to my suprise, many of them contain a fantastic element - and "The Artist of the Beautiful" almost made me cry. Those who want to write fantasy would do well to read this story.

Tonight, my friend Kyler is playing a gig at the Six String Cafe in Cary. And tomorrow night, I'm going to see Underworld with my buddy Jason. I'd like to see Once Upon a Time in Mexico sometime soon as well, since I liked Desperado quite a bit, and Johnny Depp looks like he's giving another cool and unusual performance.

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Now Reading:
Little Gods by Tim Pratt

Stories Out to Publishers:
6

Books Read This Year:
37

Zines/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
33