Reading: Harper's Magazine
Music: Anti-Flag
TV/Movie: El-Hazard
Link o' the Day: Fanac.org’s MilPhil Gallery

I blame the spammers. Who wouldn’t?

lately I seem to be having all sorts of problems with my mail. Apparently, over the past few days, I’ve not been receiving any mails that included attachments. This is bad news because I get a lot of mail with attachments related to freelance work. And is it just attachments? Who knows what’s being lost. the people sending these messages haven’t been getting bounce-back warnings. It’s as if they just fell down a dark well and will kill anyone in seven days who watches a certain videotape.

Anyways...

To add insult to injury, sff.net had a system-wide error which resulted in the loss of all the mail people had stored on their webmail accounts. This time, it wasn’t just me, but hundreds of people losing copies of Worldcon contact info, submission tracking info, personal e-mails, and other important mails. All lost. They’re working on restoring the files, but I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m chewing through the desk right now.

Fortunately, I have an alternate email account setup. Anyone who needs to get ahold of me, or has tried and failed recently--try e-mailing me at jdteehan(at-sign)printsource(dot)com. Hopefully sff.net will regain their former dependency, but in the meantime--a guy has to have something.

But back to spammers (and virus kiddies). the reasons why people have so much trouble with their e-mail is because the mail service providers have to put so many filters in to keep us 9and them) safe from floods of unwanted mail and killer programs, that even the legit stuff doesn’t always get through. These are hard times to be a liberal, because while I am all for freedom of speech, I have other opinions about other people’s free speech disrupting my work. Opinions that include baseball bats with rusty nails and “conferences” behind Munden’s bar.

Bring band-aids, you creeps.

* * *

So I seem to be writing a lot of horror these days. I recently finished yet another horror story (actually, a three-parter done in flash-fiction style).What’s up with that? Of course, I don’t take horror too seriously, so all of the recent horror stories have had a certain amount of the ludicrous tossed in. I have a couple of fun stories in the works--one of which being a science fiction story where I get to play with language. I enjoy making up slang and argot for my characters, although I understand it can be a little trying for readers. Still, I hope I put futuristic slang together well enough for people to be able to gig on it out of context. Ja? No huhu.

* * *

Freelance is steaming along. Maybe even picking up steam. I recently sent off to the printers the Bickersons bio, a collection of Bickersons scripts, and a collection of Twilight Zone scripts. Soon to go will be the spike Jones book (if I can evewr get the discography to come out right), a book on the radio show “Let’s Pretend,” a book on silent movie stars, a book about Underdog, and a collection of essays and poems by June Foray. (I’m sure I’m leaving something out.) Oh... a Guy Williams book is in the works as well, and something is coming down the pike about comic strips on the radio.

* * *

Today’s link goes back into the past a couple of years to the Philadelphia Worldcon. This is Fanac.org’s MilPhil Gallery. I show up in a number of pictures that I didn’t know existed. Howzabout that?

Cheers!