Well, lookee there -- the final Nebula Ballot has been released, and includes Flytrap contributors Jeffrey Ford, Christopher Barzak, Karina Sumner-Smith, and Theodora Goss! (See, Flytrap has good taste in contributors.) Along with other friends like Bill Shunn and Paul Melko, who by god we will publish in Flytrap someday, I hope. Plus stuff I love from M. Rickert, Ellen Kushner, James Patrick Kelly... good works on the ballot this year!

Today was my day off. The sun was out, so it was pleasant. Since I finished my novel line-edits last night, today was pretty mellow -- just did my freelance work, and then a little extra to get ahead so I can be a bit lazier for the next couple of weeks if I like. I took a nice walk down to the lake and back so I wouldn't feel like a total couch/desk potato.

Heather's out with a friend tonight, so I've been sitting around rummaging through the Tivo. Watched The Chronicles of Riddick, which I actually rather liked -- totally different from Pitch Black, and yet still a reasonable sequel in terms of Riddick's character. I mean, the world of the movie doesn't really make a lick of sense, and the plot falls apart if you poke it, but there were some neat fight scenes, and I like that -- unlike in Pitch Black -- nearly all the monsters were human, and sometimes, the hero was one of the monsters. Though Riddick was a bit more tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold in this movie, basically pretty decent apart from his obvious love for murdering people. It's been a few years since I saw Pitch Black, but I remember him being more of a real anti-hero in that one. There were some good glimpses of the weird religion espoused by the stupidly-named "Necromongers." There was Judi Dench in a totally pointless role -- I mean, maybe she infodumped a bit, but otherwise she was pointless -- but with neat special effects. I also like what I saw as the unstated implication at the end of the film: Riddick has lost everything he cares about, and now he commands a relentless, unstoppable conquering empire.. somehow I doubt he plans to use his power to make the universe a better place.

I tried to watch the movie version of Spawn but it was so bad I couldn't even watch it for laughs. I was at least hoping for cool cape-and-chain effects, but if they exist in the movie, they must have appeared after I gave up on it.

Otherwise, I've just been watching episodes of CSI, which I quite enjoy. I don't care at all about the characters, really, but I like the mysteries. My brain doesn't really comprehend the construction of mysteries, which is why I seldom write them, and why I can enjoy watching and reading them mostly uncritically.

One annoying thing about gmail: I'm on a few writer mailing lists and the like with my gmail account, so there's a fair amount of novel-related messages there... and all the text ads I get in the sidebar are from PublishAmerica, AuthorHouse, and other evil book mills. Since just seeing the names of those companies makes me seethe a little at how they rip off the clueless, it makes working in gmail a bit irritating...