The Swirling Vortex of Verisimilitude

12:37pm: Stripmall Architecture @ Le Chateau - June 27th



An Evening with Stripmall Architecture (formerly Halou)
@ Le Chateau de Jambon
Saturday, June 27th 2009 @ 8pm

With two weeks to go before showtime and still some limited space left, we thought it fitting to openly post for any last calls interested in attending a wonderful night at Le Chateau. Though it had been in our heads for years now, it's a great pleasure to finally announce this show. Otherwise known as Halou, Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom will join cellist Erica Mulkey (Unwoman) for an intimate evening of music in our front room, and we're lucky to have them.

The door will open at 8pm and there will be two sets (approx 45 minutes each) with a brief intermission in between. The set lists will include songs from Halou, R/R Coseboom, and Stripmall Architecture, with a focus on the more electronic, downtempo material and featuring songs that have rarely or never been performed live before. There will be light hors d'ouevres and a selection of wines available - all of which are included with the price of admission. Entry will be $15 per person.

If you'd like to reserve a space, please visit the show's info page and sign up via PayPal. You will then be sent a confirmation letter detailing the event and its full location. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to leave them here or contact me at funkyplaid at mac dot com.

Hope to see you at the show!

9:12pm: Another Round of Blather
Beating the drum on the off-chance that you like this sort of thing; my yearly War College lecture at KublaCon is on deck once again and it's worth a mention to chums that otherwise wouldn't see it posted. As per usual, we'll have a nice meal and some drinks afterward in the hotel, and, if you're so inclined, we can have a proper catch-up on the back of the elation that comes from the end of a month of busy work prep for this blasted event. You'd think we'd learn year after year.

Saturday, May 23rd 7:00 PM
Hyatt Regency San Francisco, Bayside Room A
1333 Bayshore Hwy, Burlingame



While sometimes celebrated at home and often reviled abroad, the 18th-Century British solider was undoubtedly the prehensile digit on the arm of empire. Who were these formidable redcoats and how did they find their places in the ranks of one of the most adaptable, effective armies of the period? Examining both willing and forced volunteers, line infantrymen and officers, this presentation will seek to explain the daily life of a new "lobster" recruit in Britain, on the Continent, and in the New World during the Age of Enlightenment.

---------------------------------------------------

As with former years, it's part of a larger conference, but I have no compunctions about telling people that they don't have to register to attend this particular event. The entire store schedule is here, and we're pretty excited about the line-up this time around. Regarding the lecture, after three years of Scotch-infused Jacobite ramming, I figured it was time to try on the ol' red-and-buff and see how the audience draws. I promise to cover the sporran-wearers, the Highland recruiting parties pre- and post-Forty-five, and even some recruitment rhyming verse from the brave 42nd. In this world, the two can exist peacefully.

1:37pm: EUP Bares All.


By accident or providence, I came across a little treat from EUP:

FREE access to ALL journal content for 2 months!

We are happy to announce that the content of all EUP journals will be free to all users throughout January and February 2009. 

Articles are available in PDF and PDF Plus format. PDF Plus is an enhanced PDF file format in which references are hyperlinked to the abstract for the referenced article on its home publisher website. 

Please feel free to browse the site and look at the features on offer which include: 
* Table of Contents alerts 
* RSS feeds 
* Supplementary material 
* News and announcements with information on special issues, forthcoming events, prizes and calls for papers. 
* Article citation tracking (by email or RSS feed) 
* Bibliographic information downloads to a range of citation managers 
* CrossRef Cited-by linking 
* Top downloaded articles 
* Recommend to Librarian form 
* Featured articles and free sample issues

Take advantage!

9:23pm: Squeezed Out.
Not to belabor the point to you fine, principled people. We all know it's important to shop locally, to support the little guy. Regardless of the fact that big box stores have everything you need - and they have it cheap and easy; taking into consideration that online purchasing from Amazon, et al., is amazingly fast, convenient, and delightful. We desire Zappos because they offer free shipping and one-day service on any kind of shoe you can put on a foot. We traipse through the isles at Bloodbath & Beyond because of those nifty, never-expire 20%-off coupons they keep sending us in the post. I do it, we do it, and we get lots of stuff that we need and enjoy, regardless of our understanding that it can spell death for the independent business owner. This is nothing new, and you already know it. You already live it, because you're from San Francisco, or you voted for Obama, or you've just been released from prison and are starting a new life of utter awareness and altruism.

I am one of those shady characters who spends much of his money in the small stores, and I also take advantage of the big ones. There is no magic expenditure percentage that will ensure that online services continue to make our lives more convenient while keeping the smaller, local places afloat during difficult economic times. But as time rolls on and the nature of business changes...as things become more digital, easier to produce, able to be beamed directly into our skulls instead of read and intellectually absorbed like we've been doing for generations and eras, we're bound to lose the staples of our communities to the staples of convenience and cost-effectiveness. In fact, we're bound to lose our communities, but that is another topic to consider at another time.

Stacey's Bookstore is closing after 85 years of business in San Francisco. No surprise, really, as we're seeing bookstores wink out faster than lighters at the Shoreline just before the end of Coldplay's "The Scientist". Like Cody's before them, like Black Oak on Irving...like Afterwords, Odyssey, and Mandrake in San Rafael - three of which were on the same street my own small business is also on, we're losing one of our area's greatest commodities. Like Kepler's...almost...and perhaps again. Aden on California. The list continues.

Not preaching, promise. We all do it. We have to live the way we live until we realize that we need to change for whatever reason. No judgment nor contempt here. And it's not really Amazon's fault, nor Target, nor Walmart. It's the manufacturers who make the product, who sell to these companies in bulk for massive discounts, who in turn can sell them cheaper than the small stores can purchase them for. Yes, it's you, you fascist bastards Hasbro. You slimy pieces of shit. Your product stinks as much as you do, and you're winning this battle, this battle of wills. You're manipulating the expectations of the mass market to believe that they deserve things for free, for cheap, for easy. That they can get whatever they want when they want it with no consequence. And they're wrong, but you're telling them they're right.

In my own small business, we usually have delightful customers. If some quibble over prices, my rule is to tell them to get it cheaper elsewhere. But I always explain the state of the industry. The fact that manufacturers offer the mass market exclusive items, that they deep discount to move things fast. I tell them these manufacturers restrict small stores on what they can sell and even offer us different catalogs based on our yearly expenditure with them. Usually they want no part of that kind of system. But the other day, I overheard a customer on his cell phone - in my store, with a game in his hand - say that he was going to go home, look up the game on Amazon and see if he could get it cheaper before shopping at the store he was already in, with product in hand. That pissed me off. And I only kept from "calmly explaining" to him why that utterly sucked because he was on the phone, and I didn't want to interrupt.

The game, by the way, is the exact same price on Amazon.

No guilt-mongering here; not focused too much on loyalty with these words. Just thinking about choices and how to make them. Putting money where my mouth is? Not always. Just wanting to be a good man and to see other good businesses and good people flourish because of their hard work and excellent service. And sad, oh, so sad about Stacey's. They're there until March, if you fancy seeing one of San Francisco's best bookstores...before it's gone.

6:49pm: It's Coming.


This is what change feels like, and many of us, all throughout the world, are breathing a sigh of relief. A friend told me he felt like handcuffs were coming off for the first time in eight years. It's the first time in my life that I have earnest hope for the future of our country; we've been sliding backward for so, so long.

I told the guys at work months ago that if he got in, I'd be literally dancing in the street. After a very special bottle of Kosta Browne Pinot with the 'Sted, I'll be doing just that.

Now, let's not let our focus and interest and momentum end here; let's not let our movement calm, not for a second.

1:10am: Tuesday Night's Plan
The 'Sted and I will be popping 'round the Brass Monkey tonight soon after 8pm. Would love to catch up with Edinburgh folk if you've got the time and would finally like to meet the cygnet. No commitment, but if you're up for a drinkie, stick your head in - would be great to see you.

1:46pm: Around the Rosie.


A good place for it, and a good answer. I am a lucky man.

10:47am: And Off We Go Again.
It's somewhat embarrassing for me to somehow expect people to follow the things I write here when I've been such a miserable correspondent for the past half a year. The routines that we easily make - especially when liberally dosed with avoidance shame - only serve to cement the patterns silently affirmed by non-action. There's always something to fill the hole of what you intended to do. But that's my only apology, even though it is a genuine one.

What I notice with certainty is that not writing anything at all is no good for me. It creates a barrier of understanding for and of myself, and keeps me out of touch with the gentle parts of my ego and the ferocious elements of my id that guide important and mundane choices every day. Though sometimes I feel that I should lose that privilege if I don't scour each RSS and post from thirteen different services that my loved ones use, I know that the truth has nothing to do with not wanting to know. It's simply that I'm over-stimulated and underestimating my own need for contact with myself. People have been writing in journals for centuries, and yet my imagined debt has dried the ink in a very fine collection of pens. Nevermind, there is too much to do that doesn't need to involve apologia ad infinitum.

I'm throwing this out there, in the last hours before our departure, that this morning sees the triumphant shuttling of myself and cygnoir to Scotland. For me, it's a yearly trip - one that I always look forward to, dream about, waggle my fingers in excitement of. For her, it's a desperately-needed vacation - she's not had a proper one in two years and her current job is extremely high-stress and massively demanding. For us, it's a very important earmark, for many, many reasons. Suffice it to say that we've both been waiting a very long time for this trip, and, while it's a bit shorter than we would have liked this first time, splendid things are planned all along the way.

There's no doubt that I often feel pangs from being away from the place. This time, I'm overwhelmingly moved at the prospect of seeing my friends there again. There will be plenty of time to tour and walk and point and marvel, but my craving this year is really just to spend quiet time with those amazingly dear folk who mean so much to me, who are in my daily thoughts, even so far away. I know that my traveling companion will be beside herself with wonder and purpose, as I was the first time. She must be daunted at the thought of going to this place which I cannot stop lauding, of seeing our future patterns and the city I wish to grow old in. But she is a seasoned traveller, sure and open to everything, and I'm extremely thankful that after five years of wishing, we finally get to see my second home together.

We leave this afternoon, and will arrive in Glasgow around 1:30 on Friday. We'll be sequestered in Saddell Castle for the weekend before nabbing a car and heading north. Inverness by the 15th, Aberdeen by the 18th, and Edina on Monday the 21st. Back home on the 25th. If you're around and in the mood to catch up, please do let me know. We'll have access to e-mail the way through, and our phones will work for calls and texts. Mine is, as always, 1 (415) 990 7415.

We've set up a multi-media trip blog at Tumblr, if you'd like to follow what we're doing and seeing in Scotland. I continue to sincerely hope that all is well with you and yours. The fall, season of crackly leaves and pumpkin spice, is here, and it's our favorite time of the year.

9:33pm: Transportation Reconciliation.
On a rare day of respite from the furnace-like heat-wave of the past couple weeks, cygnoir and I left the house this afternoon to find that my car had been stolen. Going, gone, nothing there. A few heart-skips later, we called the polis and waited two hours too long to have them come by the house for a report, which never came. Handful of trail mix and gargantuan cup of tea later, we decided to abort and take the claim to them. But her car was also gone. The city, this time, had it from a minute "hazard" violation. This means that some terribly picky homeowner had her vehicle impounded because her bumper was in a block of red that bordered their driveway. This kind of thing happens all the time in San Francisco. Except we never let our bumpers stick out if we can help it. Nor did she this time. But San Franciscans are picky. They're not happy with a warning note, as we plaster to windshields so often in our neighborhood. They want justice.

Shock and awe. MUNI ride to Bryant and the car yard, skirting a man who pulled down his pants in front of us and literally shit all over the sidewalk, then kept on walking right on down the road. Paid the ridiculous holding and administration fees and then off, driving again, to the police station to file the claim. The dealership told me when I bought the car that it was the #1 color, make, and model stolen within San Francisco limits. Its parts are worth ten times that of the car itself on the black market. But it's never been stolen until now, ten years on. I keep the seats clear of tempting items, I have an alarm system, and I'm careful about where I park it. I'm mindful of these things, but sometimes it doesn't matter. This was directly in front of my house, must have been in the middle of the night. And while we have a garage, we share it with our housemates.

Both the police and my insurance company were concerned about the nature in which the car disappeared. Just one week before, it was in the shop getting repaired after some unaccountable Marin Country twat entered our private work parking lot and destroyed the front of the Acura without leaving a note. The repairs were worth thousands and I had just gotten it back, shinyclean. As for the heist, there was no broken glass. My alarm system cuts the engine when active. It was absolutely locked and alarmed, as per usual. The police said that some professionals use tow trucks to remove their quarry, but how coincidental is it that my keys were just in the possession of who-knows and a week later, for the first time in a decade, it gets stolen cleanly from directly in front of my house? Without implicating anyone explicitly, there will certainly be an investigation taking place.

I lost some personal things from within the car, it's true. Dozens of CDs, mostly made redundant by the digital revolution; some ornaments that I've loved greatly; my wool tartan blanket from the trunk. Other things as well, but nothing monumentally devastating. Nor is the loss of the car. I've been oddly calm for much of the day, though a little miffed at the frustration of it all: mostly regarding monetary expenditure and knowing I'll need a daily commuter that does what the Acura has done for years. She was in great condition, and she's the only one I've ever had. I mean, the bastards just got away with a topped-up $50 tank of gas. What a waste.

But I've taken some things from this experience, and I believe they're for the better. I'm upset that something like this happened, and I certainly feel violated. But I simply cannot plug into the mindset of unconscionable assholery that plans and executes robberies like this. And as they go, this was a minor one. I still have everything I need, and the best things in my life are immaterial. There is a prevalent feeling that I do my very best to be good and kind to the world, and that I don't deserve such treatment from others who don't even know me. But I'm comfortable knowing that the world is not good and bad - it just is. We can be good and feel good and hope to brush up with mostly good by our choices great and small...and bad will still happen. It's how we choose to deal with that adversity that makes us who we are. And shouting and stomping and hating my fellow humankind - which I often do, anyway - won't help me here. In fact, I'm shrugging it off and realizing that it comes down to this: I have not a single problem hoping that the bastards who took the car make a wrong move in their lives of crime and selfishness get their brains dashed out upon the very windshield which they pilfered. I'd have not a single regret about it. The world needs less of them. But all the hoping and cursing in the world won't get it back, and I can go on feeling much lighter, thankful that I live a good life with good people around me. It's the closest thing to rolling with the punches that I know how to do.

And I'll miss the Acura, and I won't expect to see her or any of the sundries within ever again. They'll probably find the steering column and seats ripped out somewhere in the East Bay. But we had some good times, and I loved zipping around in her. Now, as a Taurean control-freak, I do my best to let it go and look ahead to other transport, to other rides, and the fact that I'm lucky enough to do so. You can take my car, but you'll never take...my Fritos.




Ol' Bessie, modeled by the inimitable hermiston a few years back in West Marin.

2:47pm: Summer Show at Le Chateau!


This is a brief but special invitation to join us for a night of music, warmth, and libation at our home in San Francisco. On a rapidly-approaching evening in late June, Le Chateau de Jambon will be graced with the very special presence of In Gowan Ring, excellent songsmiths and delightful performers surfacing on the whispers of the wind. On a rare jaunt down the West Coast, B'ee and Jessamyn will be joining us for a lovely evening here in the City. Now, we hope you'll also accept.

The time: 8:00-10:00 pm
The date: Saturday, June 28th
The place: Le Chateau de Jambon - RSVP for the address

What to expect:
An evening to fill the senses. You may show up as early as 7:00 and of course you're welcome to stay for chats and drinks after the music. We'll be serving wine and tea, as well as light snacks throughout the night. We'll have lots of pillows and candles and, if it's chilly, a warm fire in the hearth; this will be a very comfortable, intimate affair! Feel free to bring some sitting pillows of your own or a drink of your choice to add to the mix. Please note that we will be charging $15 per person at the door, all of which will go to the band and toward refreshments for the evening.

In Gowan Ring (Birch Book) can perhaps be best described as warm neo-folk with a dark, ageless feel and the show will be all-acoustic.

"B'eirth of In Gowan Ring is a not merely a minstrel and a troubadour, a prophet and a living poem. Featuring resonant drones, hand-made instruments, and warmly-quiet vocal pieces, his songs reek heavily of time and place, infusing stories of the natural with the supernatural and holding up the spiritual (or meta-spiritual) string that connects us with our surroundings. With closed-eyes and a nearly magical effect, B'eirth invokes the vocal confluence of David Tibet and Nick Drake, tempered by a gravity and creativeness all his own. I learn something arcane and feel something special every time I listen to this band." (DSL, Ixmae.com)



We are very limited on space, so we hope you'll RSVP as soon as possible with your intention to join us. We kindly ask you to not invite more than one friend to come with you, and please make sure their presence is cleared first by contacting me by e-mail or by commenting here. Spaces will be offered first to those who are quick on the draw. Thanks for your time, and we hope to see you soon!

Fondly...Darren
funkyplaid at mac dot com

10:53am: Back to the Lectern.
While it's ridiculous that I haven't noted anything of value here in a long number of days, the reason becomes self-evident when I mention the event below, amongst other life-changing-for-the-better paradigm shifts. Please feel free to join me if you've got the inclination, as this has become a yearly thing where a lovely gaggle of people tend to re-engage after far too much time apart.

Saturday, May 24th 7:00 PM
Hyatt Regency San Francisco, Room 7052
1333 Bayshore Hwy, Burlingame



Once derided as inhuman by both the British politic and popular eye, the 18th-century Scottish Jacobite soldier later made a re-emergence as a British national hero - ironically integrated into the very military body against which he once fought. Some were conscripted to escape the unthinkable punishments for treason dispensed after the failed Jacobite Rebellions; others were loyal to the Hanoverian government throughout the entire turbulent century. Detailing the organization and behavior of the Scottish regiments in the New World on the eve of a wholly different revolution, this presentation will examine the martial and social conditions of their peculiar integration with the British army and the Scottish soldier's metamorphosis from "rebel" to "hero."

---------------------------------------------------

As per usual, it's part of a larger conference, but I have no compunctions about telling people that they don't have to register to attend this particular event. Bring a pillow and a drool cup if you like, but be prepared to see nasty propagandized broadsides about the Scots and their choices of apparel, amongst other malignant aspersions. Do not fret: the inexorable flux of time and weakness of human memory means everything turns out okay in the end. If you're lucky, I'll even let you fondle my gorget.

9:59am: The Day Before May (Now Two Days Late)
This year, another year, whistles past like comet and streamer and bottle rocket, explosive and entertaining, a spectacle to behold in the midst of the claw along to build a better day-to-day. This year is the 35th year, consummated locally and unabashedly to the gusts of wind blowing in from the Western ocean, picnicking on long strips of tartan and throwing out arms while flinging frisbees through scent-laden pine needles amidst the remnants of Victorian gardens. Some of the best people I know ran and snapped, juggled and swilled, and it's hard to imagine that everyone in the world doesn't have such quality to set their own meters by, such gorgeous, talented souls who effortlessly create seemingly without trying. This is the first year in years I've remembered how to make a special moment to celebrate, rather than celebrating the whole every moment. It's a slow down, a deep breath, and a care to the wind, and despite my life being split amongst two continents, I've rarely felt more whole. Not as fit as perhaps I should be, but impish and gleeful, thankful and warm inside...just in time for summer, it seems to be the summer of my life, this 35th year.

This prelude to the season, the bastard May, is always tent-staked with deadlines and ultimatums, and I like to pretend it's my most productive month of the year, but really it's my most procrastinatory and dreaded. At the end is the promise of calm, of time to do everything that needs doing, but we all know that's just a mirage, for this is the pace of it, and we move along or fall to skinned knee. And even amidst the thousand commitments there is the inventory manager within, putting late nights into taking stock of just what I'm amounting to these days, though it seems like there's nothing but kitten strokes, 1757, and the three horrific wings of Tempest Keep. There is some activity within, and instead of being wordy and hyperbolic I could just come out and say that I'm happy, I'm getting past the ghosts and finding my legs, putting life-rending fears to bed and trusting in the years of training and testing that I've been through. Occasionally words aren't enough, despite them being all that we sometimes have, especially from afar. But sometimes they are enough, our words, and sometimes they are all we need to heal our biggest rends, over time and over distance.

Tomorrow, on the eve of the summer of my life, cygnoir shuttles her belongings across the city to Le Chateau and we start another chapter of Us together. It's hard not to make light of this because of its gravity, because of the statistic-shattering chance that somehow we had the opportunity again, when we thought we had lost all opportunities. To know that all this love and joy and beauty was so near to being missed because of simple life choices is unfathomable, because I cannot imagine life without it now, and without her now. I'm a slow, methodical bull, never one to rush or jump without hoofing each blade of grass and pill-bug worming its way through dirt-clot and flower stem. So it's no surprise that this decision carries some ferocious measure of deep commitment, the same that I've put into everything I've ever done. Last night, then, was our last night apart.

There are gargantuan volumes in each day, and my biggest failure, the biggest one of all, is to forget committing these pages to memory so that in some measured time from now - tomorrow or next week or five decades away - I can sit in a room with white walls and white noise and pore over each and every one again and again. But it will happen. An entire second life of all the gorgeousness and horror that we've wrought over the years...you and I, she and I, us. Every us we've ever known will be there and come flooding back, and we can examine them with microscope and white coat, laughing and crying at the same time, thrilled that we had the opportunity to do this. Whatever the season of life, this is the reason to take notes. There will be no test at the end, but other people will be studying from our scribbles in the margin.

5:14pm: Cuppa?


Via dougygyro, for which I don't think I can ever thank him enough.

9:01am: At It Again.
Looks like ol' Hugh Cheape is Mythbustin' again, which is what we've come to know and love about him, among other things. One of the kinder, more helpful historians out there, always on the forefront of cultural sleuthing and diverse corpus-building. I think if I could choose one scholar's portfolio to ingest that would represent Scotland as a whole, it would be his.

I'm certainly not a hanger-on in supporting Balmoralization, et al., but this was a morsel I had not considered; wouldn't have believed it totally if it weren't Hugh speaking up. Looking forward to the book!

12:10pm: Bloodsports.
I find it wholly despicable that, considering the state of the puglism/mixed-martial arts schism currently permeating these sports' audiences, the pay-cable channel Showtime would cross-promote MMA interviews and commercials during their boxing broadcasts. The biggest flap currently in boxing circles is how the sport is losing large amounts of its viewer base to MMA, which, in my opinion, is terribly brutal and not a small bit sensationalistic - like professional wrestling with real elbow blows to the head. Putting different styles of fighting against each other is like expecting to gain a mutually-agreeable result from a debate between two lobbyists who are speaking different languages. Boxing pundits and writers are complaining that the color and flash of MMA is pulling people away from "the Sweet Science", and they're right. Part of this is purely the fault of the corrupt promoters and sanctioning organizations who create spurious titles and dirt-poor matches between cardboard "champions" and try to pawn it off as good sporting. There is no national commission for boxing, and there is virtually no non-cable broadcasting of matches in this day and age. Showtime and HBO have declining, boring, and biased commentary and will slap a pay-per-view charge on the most mundane of bouts, which kills the viewer base and lessens the permeation of the sport into mainstream viewership. Now Showtime has launched their EliteXC MMA-or-whatever-they-call-it and are featuring interviews with homeless street fighters-turned-TV stars in between bouts during their boxing broadcasts. Showtime, who has recently raised the bar of boxing presentation above that of long-time rival HBO, is now, with these antics, pounding the nail into the coffin of this sport once again.

11:24am: Residence.
Fresh off their tour with Bob Mould, Halou will be playing three local shows this month in residence at Café du Nord. I'll be pinned behind the merchandise table, hawking fine musical product and must-have accessories. Pop by and say Hi! if you're around and want to see an amazing show or three. First one's tonight.

HALOU
@Café du Nord
2170 Market St.
San Francisco
8-11pm

Wed, April 9th
Wed, April 16th
Wed, April 23rd

2:01pm: Penniless but Blissful and Literate.
I'd been after a very elusive tome for the better part of a decade, a work that fits nicely within my collection of Jacobite scholarship and primary source material.
Culloden Papers is the collected correspondence of Duncan George Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session. The collation was published in 1815, but most of the letters within are from the mid-18th century. Forbes was, among other things, a British patriot who poured his emotion and money into attempting to keep the Union together through the turbulent years of the Jacobite Risings. Ironically, the final battle of the final rebellion was fought on his land in Inverness-shire. It is, of course, a goldmine of information for the aspiring scholar, full of Forbes' enthusiasm, influence, and abject horror as the nation around him became embroiled in open conflict. He is effectively the Scottish version of Lincoln and Franklin combined, perhaps with less historical celebration due to his central part in putting down the stirrings of revolution. Forbes should be regarded as the ultimate nationalist, but his actions then are derided now as preventing nationalism from taking hold. But we know that in the modern sense, that word is loaded.

It just so happens that some strange, unholy blending of luck and providence conspired to provide such a treasure, and by way of eBay, no less. Up until this point, I'd seen two copies in my life: one battered and broken and terribly overpriced in Florida; and a rebound copy that I'd once worked with at the National Library of Scotland. I wasted no time in taking every measure to secure the book, and it arrived very recently to much jumping up and down and whooping like a fool. But I have that bedamn'd thing, now, and it's a lovely work, indeed. Its boards are perfect, bound in thick leather. It smells like dusty shelf. The previous owner kept it in good condition, and now I'm looking at archival safes to properly store the lovely collection.

A day after receiving Culloden Papers, I found that the New York Public Library had digitized the entire thing and put it up on Google Books. It is now in searchable form and anyone may have access to it. WorldCat shows 66 copies worldwide, one of which is resting a floor beneath cygnoir at SFPL. I know of one or two others that aren't yet cataloged there. LibraryThing shows one other holding, the personal collection of Walter Scott. Yet whomever entered the metadata did a crap job and garbled the information. Nothing I do seems to be able to fix it. And this is one more reason we shouldn't look to Scott to provide us any inkling of relevant historical information.

But I'm obsessing here, as well as digressing. I'm in love with my new book, the hunting of which could be seen as an allegory for my search for inner completeness. Other copies I'd seen were ratty, this one shines. The pages are weathered but still strong. It fills a hole in an otherwise hearty collection. Okay, perhaps not. It's just a book, and my lack of wholeness is contingent on my faith and reliance on material things. I'm okay with that after such a long search. And when I'm gone, off it will go...hopefully into the hands of a passionate, emergent scholar who will regard it as I do.

8:56pm: The Many Lives I Have Been.
I can't let pass the few words I want to say about the death of Gary Gygax, an epic-level hero to so many of us. Like others, I didn't realize how saddened I'd be by the event, a condition which I've heard repeated several times over the past two days. While of course we're crushed when our friends and loved ones fall ill, it's the celebrities who seem the most invulnerable, and it's always a shock when they are no longer in our lives...when they were never really physically in our lives to begin with.

It's been amazing to see how many people have contacted the store to find out if we're doing anything to memorialize our Dungeon Master. So we are. After all, we wouldn't be there without him - hundreds of people of all ages, gathering in the place every week around our many tables, rolling dice and painting miniatures with reckless abandon. The industry and the hobby is massive now, but it's simple enough to trace its beating heart to one small group of people in the early 1970s, and we're in business doing the things that we love because of those people, that man, and those minds. Of course, it's not just the pen-and-paper gamers who owe their alternate worlds to Gary Gygax, and the electronic game industry is lining up to give credit to the foundation of their own occupations and enjoyment.

I don't get too much of a chance to play games these days, even though I make a living from knowing them and selling them. Role-playing especially, like acting, takes significant preparation, time, and concentration. When I have participated in recent customers' games, it has been that much more special because of the rarity of the event. But it makes me reflect to my more youthful youth, when I whiled away so many recesses, bus rides, and before-bedtime daydreams of other lives and other worlds. Dungeons & Dragons was responsible for so much in my life - it taught me the importance of reading, learning mythology and history, and how to play well with others...and so much more. I see dozens of others each day who feel the same way, and it's lovely that in this day, with so many raging storms of argument going on all around the world, so many of us can all agree on something so simple: that our collective imaginations have helped us to be better people.

We can give thanks to Gary for defining what a gamer is. And we're going to memorialize his life by doing more of it, through the month and throughout our own lives. This is why I'm terribly proud to be a geek, my friends.

12:19am: What's Been.
It's been a long brace of seasons, last fall and this winter. Which is good, as it all goes by far too fast for my liking. This is slowed down, of course, by anticipation of good things to come, a blessing no matter which way you slice it. Which is, in turn, sped up by the busy days leading up to the little gems of joy with which we reward ourselves along the way. It's like existential traffic, all this stop and start. I've been leaning on the horn for months. And through the few words imagined but not written, I've been describing the great experiences of the past few months in my head for others to see, or perhaps just myself. And words are lovely, but fleeting, so here are many pictures with only a few words to keep them in line. My lesson and task this year is to celebrate memory as much as living now and the hope of things in the future. Temporal badminton, if you will. And because I'm late, Happy New Year, friends distant and close!



Dear Lori's birthday this year was punctuated by some of the finer, more luscious and hedonistic pleasures. We seem to always squeeze weeks into a few hours, after work, before returning to the City, and just before bed. I'm so pleased at the life she leads with Jeffy, and it is, indeed, a magical life well-led. That's an amazing Pinot, friends.



Cheese, if you please, brings weakness to my knees. I've always said that if eating the stuff will take five years off my life, then so be it. Fast-forward to that point, and I'm sure to drop straight down to my cheese-knees and beg to turn back the clock. I've been branching out lately, and enjoying the pairing of these beauties with other food and drink – a kind of culinary alchemy with no horrible explosions or transmutations gone awry.



Effortless preparations, or ridiculously-talented friends who make it seem effortless, punctuated the little bits of downtime during the fall. Replacing resplendent leafy hues and other East Coast autumnal exaltations, we 'make do' with such things out here in the wilds of the Left. Nights like these with people like these make my branches stretch and my own leaves unfurl.



Green and Red came early this year, months before Christmas, and they brought part of their home to ours. This trip had been much anticipated, and the three weeks they spent here made it feel very much like they were always here, and always would be here. It's sometimes difficult to remember that there are so many miles between us, which is one of the profoundly strange things about being blessed with friends abroad. We expect to pop round the corner and meet for tea, but it's a bit farther than we figure. The fact that there are visitations and travel makes it fun to host back and forth.

( More pictures and few words... )

8:54am: Words that build and shine and kill.

do you want to know how i live well i will tell you i live with a small cat in a small room and there are things not mine in a corner and there are things not mine in another corner and i do not remember what is mine and what is yours or what is trash the boxes bags all look like they could still be mine or someone else's or yours

do you want to know how i talk i will tell you i use too many likes and i use too many ums and my hands attempt to keep stationary because that is the surefire sign that you are a WOP says junior-high voice inside and yet they can't so they strangle each other often like little murderous birds or hide gnomelike under my chin

do you want to know how i think well i will tell you i think all over the place i think in a big tomato sauce mess and everything stains and i forgot the bleach again things jumble together and what i remember from last night i also remember from three days ago from a month from last year from when was that i don't remember when that was and there are the darker times the times in which i doubt myself and beat myself up for never having enough time to do the thousand things i want to do with this life before i remember to just breathe

do you want to know how i touch well i will tell you when i am not afraid to touch i hug and hold and i smooth rumpled hair and gently grab an arm or a shoulder and on occasion i have been known to brush knuckles against a jawbone or reach for a hand or press my fingertips along a spine but when i am afraid i am somewhere else and no touch can reach me so i do not think to touch i just float away and away

do you want to know how i love well i will tell you i love with the edge of a knife of courtesy i love with the thickness of velvet and the transparency of glass and the strength of spiderwebs i love with furlined gloves i love with red wine held over the tongue i love with sunlight through eyelids and i love with the moonglow on black stones i love with a secret just about to be whispered into your ear i love with a cautious stride on a cold night i love with a brick to the temple and i love with an ice cube down your sternum but most of all i love with the space between me to you right before there is no space at all

© 2003 Halsted Mencotti Bernard

11:30am: London Kills Me.
NB: My most sincere apology for posting this so very late after the events (July 2007); there is much more to come when time allows. I must have no new experiences from here on out until I catalogue all the old ones. This is the LiveJournal way.


Do not grudge me my vanity, if I allow yours; or rather, let us laugh at both indifferently, and at ourselves, and at each other...

-- W. M. Thackeray

It's only from the cooling breeze blowing in from the Forth, hunkered in the calming shelter of stone tenements, part-dizzy from a pint of frothy 80/-, that I feel the comfortable ease to unequivocally state that London is an utter shithole. To my southernly-based friends, I mean no personal insult, but let it be said that I stand amazed at the fortitude of anyone who can face that misery on a day-to-day basis, especially in summer. When I first moved to Edinburgh, I was warned by nearly a dozen ex-Londoners that the place is abysmal, yet so many of my American friends love it to death, and have urged me to visit as often as possible. I've loved and appreciated the perspectives that both rudysyntax and velvetdahlia have revealed during their time there, and I held their experiences in my mind – both desirable and un – as we made our way around the sprawl to and from the Jacobite Studies Trust conference just two weeks ago. It was lost amidst the sticky heat, the exhaust and the cancer, the bigotry, cultural confusion, and claustrophobia. As I've heard it stated, London kills me.



This is not a disgruntled, complaining tale of woe, however, but rather a recap of the proceedings of the conference, which I attended with the very sharp and amiable hermiston over three very special days in mid-July. In a way, being present for such a marked event was really a milestone in my life, as it's obvious from recent posts here that my future years will unequivocally contain another academic stint in this discipline. Gathering together all the top names in the field to present papers, hobnob, and compare notes, it makes sense that such a conference would be the perfect place to establish a future plan.





( Footnotes and Endnotes... )


By all means, feel free to peruse more pictures here and here.

1:06pm: Ghost Story.
We've been enjoying the friendship and company of the very talented Erick Wujcik at the store recently, both as a regular customer and also as an event host. In between standard store upkeep and the totally whacked-out game scenarios that he tends to fabricate, we had a pleasant conversation about a real-life ghost story that he had the shock of experiencing. While not needing to get into details, I am impressed to relate that it took place in the late Roger Zelazny's homestead in Santa Fe, during a gaming session with Walter Jon Williams and George R. R. Martin – some roguish band of play companions, indeed!

Perhaps more stunning is the news that Wuj tells me: Zelazny apparently undertook his Master's thesis on Jacobite literature. Hopefully a reference is forthcoming, with great anticipation.

LitGeeks might be pleased to know that there will certainly be a imminent new edition of Amber Diceless. The publisher was just in the store on Saturday, and I'm very excited to see where it's taken this time around.

Finally, lo and behold! the return of the Wild Cards series – at least three new books in store and a series of Marvel comics with all new stories. I thought Martin would never get his head out of his Fire and Ice...




EDIT: Thanks to Erick's facilitations, we got a line on Roger's thesis, which actually is based on Shakespeare, and instead touches on the Jacobean rather than the Jacobite. Ach, weel.

5:28pm: The Thick of It.
S.F. peeps: a quick, last-minute scream that we'll be running the second IXMAE SF show tonight at Poleng Lounge. The food is massive, the music will be lovely, and they have a drink there called Monkey Love Juice. No excuses.

This latest incarnation of the Ixmae Soundscape Performance Series features prodigal cellist Zoë Keating, Trespassers William's Matt Brown (aka Disinterested), Japan's Lullatone, and local acoustic-maestros RF+Lili De La Mora.

Please note that the music actually starts at 10:00 PM. I'll be there running merch; feel free to stick your head in and say Hi.





-----------------------------------------------------

The Underground is in the Living Room

Call it what you like: experimental post-ambient, electro-acoustic, or electronic art-pop, the music that is currently being created by the living-room instrumentalist is anything but noisy, cold or inaccessible. Electronic music has grown up and gone through many rebirths in the past sixty years. It has long moved beyond the singularly conceptual and theoretical and has now merged with the human psyche to bring forth a heartfelt, evocative, and highly emotional art-form. Composing songs and albums often with only a laptop, a suite of innovative software, and an eclectic mix of instruments, a new genre has emerged from these unconventional studios around the world. Gusting out of the underground and the living room, it serves as a soundtrack to our modern lives.

The artists presented at IXMAE are a selection of composers that demonstrate the (mostly) calm, (sometimes) optimistic, and (always) wondrous aspects of this new form of experimental music.

IXMAE is a music resource created and run by the folks at Dynamophone. Our aim is to help people find new and interesting beautiful music. People usually find out about new music from friends, who found out from another friend, who may have read about it somewhere in the teeming mass of magazines and websites out there. We'd like to shorten that step by offering you the nod to good music all in one place.


NB: Tomorrow night is Halou at the Independent. I'll also be stuck behind the CDs and shirts; do come over and share a drink and a story.

4:40pm: Twenty-four Hours.
It's been perhaps many years since I've spoken of my heart. Not just in here, but in general. I'd lost that interest, in outwardly vocalizing things that have come and gone, and especially about things that may one day come, or come again. It's not that I'm a terribly private person, but for some years I've felt it would just do more good to get stuck in important tasks, lists of projects, and ways to make myself better than to ruminate on loneliness or isolation from romantic ventures. For years, then, I've turned inward and not bothered to write a word on this, and likewise, I've built some impressive bulwarks that are ready to be breached. I hope you'll forgive me for this queer and long-overdue fit of cardio-approbation.

This is a story that shouldn't exist. It's a tale of love lost and then found, once flowing with the strength of ocean waves and then crashing on the rocks of impossibility, only to wear down those jagged obstacles in order to continue its inexorable ebb and flow. It's a storybook love, one in which cruel fate tries to interfere only to be staved off by all that is good and right and true. It's a saga and a sonnet, a reconnecting through the years and fears to come out the other side more whole than any part could manage alone. This is a story about making fate our bitch.

( Click for syrup, treacle, and molasses... )

4:32am: Rest.

It's such a pleasure to be here once again. Holidays aren't always restful experiences, especially where travel is concerned, and while I could not have wished for more gorgeous sights and more apt and jovial traveling companions, the sheer level of input that road trips incur can be wearing. Capture everything on camera; mental and written notes about sites, graves, buildings; copious amounts of whisky and early breakfasts. The last few days at Froghall in Aberdeen were a welcome and relaxing delight, and I already miss my dear hosts there.

Edinburgh, though. Edinburgh is like none other. I've seen so many green and grey corners of this country, and every time I return to weave my way through these particular streets and spires, I settle into the most fulfilling and comfortable ease and sense of calm. This is where there are few plans for the next week, where a handful of days in cafés and closes and elephants will net a flood of words and thoughts and reflections. This style, and this substance, this confluence of atavistic and progressive, metal and glass versus stone and cobble. When you read this, you'll already be tired of me waxing on about being home, but I'm here.

And if Edinburgh is not the only one, she's certainly one of them.

Pictures and words and posts start tomorrow.

Local chums: We up for a toast and dram at The Monkey on Thursday eve?