DJT did us one big favor. He made 9-11 almost seem like a bump in the road, and he's the gift that keeps on giving.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
123120c
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
123020
By the time the 21st century rolled around, I expected to be so old, I wasn't sure I'd make it. It never occurred to me, reading Mack Reynolds novels 45 years ago, that A) gay marriage would become "Eh, of course" for most Americans, B) we still wouldn't have a lunar colony, and C) the minority party would throw all its energy into destroying the country and making it a vassal state of Russia. SF editors were buying such outlandish stories back in the 70s, but at the time we regarded them as fiction.
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Monday, December 28, 2020
Sunday, December 27, 2020
122720c
Dreams and Nightmares 117 (January 2021)
CONTENTS
Denny Marshall, Before the Crown Fell (cover)
From the Brain Stem
Bruce McAllister, Isn't Life Grand?
Hansen Tor Adcock, They Have Nothing To Wear
Baishampayan Seal, illo
John W. Sexton and Rich Magahiz, darwin cyclone
Denny Marshall, The Encounter
Gerri Leen, Aurora Violatio
Anne Carly Abad, Dissociation
Geoffrey A. Landis, In the Male Utopia
Timothy E. G. Bartel, Extinction Elegiacs
Mary Turzillo, In the Female Utopia
Chris Friend, illo
Calie Voorhis, The Cherry Witch
Mark Hartrick, Life Partner
Denny Marshall, Basement Experiment
Robert Frazier, The Rains on Venus...
Chris Friend, illo
A six-issue (two year) subscription to the print magazine is $25. PDFs are $1 per issue. A sample print copy is five dollars. Use PayPal to jopnquog@gmail.com
122720b
With every bite I take
there is more left on my plate
and pretty soon, you'll see
there is so much more of me
122720
orgasmic fantasy
straight-jacketed ex-prexy
dragged bump bump bump
down the White-House steps
and then
like Disney Snow White
butterflies and roses
fawns and bunnies
pop up across the lawn
Saturday, December 26, 2020
Friday, December 25, 2020
Thursday, December 24, 2020
122420d
And In the Post-Human World
Somebody cried out
deep in the word
and fell silent
the forest was on the move
the sun rose
on a savanna
large animals browsed
others grazed
there were no dwellings
only the termite mounds
organic towers
and burrow systems
dug by sloths, beavers
small rodents
and innumerable invertebrates
122420c
Fishmonster sharply inflated its gullet and the boat flooped below the water. A couple of oars and a hat bobbed to the surface.
122420
My office is also our library, which makes it feel very welcoming. It is also one of the smallest rooms in the house, which keeps it warmer in the winter than any of the others. It has a relatively large south-facing window — the icing on the cake. I didn't appreciate how wonderful this room is before my spinal-cord injury. Yet another benefit of the injury. Today I plan to do some geology work, and then get back to laying out Dreams and Nightmares 117. Then get back to reading Boroson's "The Girl with No Face."
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
122320d
The Seals eventually did kill Godzilla (just how is top secret in case they have to do it again) but when he came back, it was another matter. He was a ghost, you know. Bullets wouldn't stop him.
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
122220b
Reports from the
front
(close to the window
where the plants live):
the
young anole lives
(and may be
terrifying to southerners)
I
haven't seen any insects--
its food source
still a mystery
122220
Dreams and Nightmares update:
Keeping up with submissions. If you submitted something more than a week and a half ago and you haven't heard back that means it made the short list.
The January issue, number 117, is being laid out. That is going slowly, because of other things keeping me busy. One of those is definitely not reading volume 6 of the complete Pogo newspaper strips, published by Fantagraphics, which brings us up to 1960, because I have finished reading that book. Lots of good stuff that did not make it into the books Kelly published when he was alive.
These are large hardbacks, and the strips are reproduced at large size. Volume 7 is out, and I have ordered it. There are going to be 12 volumes in total, published at about the rate of one per year. If you like either slapstick or politics in your comics, and you don't know Pogo, this was the premier comic strip from the late 40s till the early 70s. Everyone since then learned from the master. You need to buy them.
Monday, December 21, 2020
122120c
Native life
emerges between solar flares
frenetic and frantic to procreate
hungry like you wouldn't believe
122120b
Emerging from the jump, the advance exploration ship Enterprise received the standard recognition signal. Satellites and geosynchronous stations circled the nearest planet. And several others. "Oh! You must have left Earth before the aliens brought their gee-whiz technology. Sorry you made this trip for nothing."
Sunday, December 20, 2020
122020b
The house finches have moved on to greener pastures, and the house sparrows have taken over the birdfeeder. So that's something, but they're both British immigrants brought to the states by some fool who wanted to import every bird mentioned in Shakespeare. Not good for the local ecology, and by local I mean all of North America.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
121920d
Goat-legged piper dance
worn stone altar in the wood
buried in the earth--generations
sacrificed to open the way
the stars wheel
slow dance heavens
bone piper dances
and the old gods die
121920c
Stars To Steer By
Working in the field
a part of Western Utah so empty
you only meet geologists.
Riding into town every few days
for water and food.
That was the year
they first sold bacon ends and pieces
I had bacon
fried in a pan on a single-burner
propane stove
three meals a day
never got tired of that stuff.
Didn't take long
collected all the trilobites I carry
followed a vein of pyrite crystals
big as the last joint of my thumb
collected them too
they make nice gifts.
All’s left from those days
one chunk of pyrite
a weatherbeaten box
of trilobite rock
a couple of notebooks
and a box of 4x6’s.
I've moved on
the desert’s still there
mummified sheep
riverbeds dry
for 10,000 years
probably a few geologists
cooking dinner in a pan
or in a can
amongst the coals.
Friday, December 18, 2020
121820c
The 60-foot bronze toad, a gift from the Athenian Prince, wasn't all that noteworthy. Not until its tongue shot across the plaza, snatching the Premier off his horse, and disappearing him into its widening maw, from which no trace of him ever emerged.
121820
3 finches
fighting over 6 perches
chill, ladies!
*****
Substitute "vulture" for "finch" and "perch" for "perch" and you get two for one.
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
121520d
A. I. Banks
paints the town each night
all must go by dusk
murals seen by squirrel and fox
city critters aren't impressed
121520b
Both ants were stalking him now, scissoring jaws agleam. A feint to left, roll to the right, and the last man on earth wondered...why bother?
Monday, December 14, 2020
121420c
If you are a geoscientist or a geoscience educator and you are not already a member of this organization, you should join!
Hello all –
The National Association of Geoscience Teacherssession, “Out of the Classroom, Out of the Box,” has been approved for Southeastern Geological Society of Americain Auburn, to be held April 1-2, 2021. In-person and virtual participation will both be available, according to the SEGSA meeting website:
https://www.geosociety.org/GSA/Events/Section_Meetings/GSA/Sections/se/2021mtg/home.aspx
Information about the session is as follows:
T7. Out of the Classroom, Out of the Box: Innovative Approaches to Geoscience Education
Organizers: Patricia H. Kelley and Renee Clary.
Description: This session focuses on nontraditional instruction, including virtual and informal learning approaches across the geosciences. We encourage contributions on learning outside the regular classroom: e.g., innovative approaches in the field; in settings such as museums, libraries, and community organizations; through extra-curricular activities; and through online learning or inventive technology use.
Abstract deadline is January 12. Please spread the word to colleagues, and we hope you will be able to participate yourself. Please let Renee Clary and me know if you intend to submit.
Thanks, and we hope to see you in April - in person or virtually!—Tricia
Dr. Patricia H. Kelley
Professor Emerita of Geology
Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Wilmington, NC 28461-5944
Pronouns: she/her/hers
121420b
After the primates wiped out both themselves and the dinosaurs (finally!) the job was up for grabs. Except the bacteria had really been in charge all along.
Sunday, December 13, 2020
121320b
The Wood Between the Worlds
Across the sweet sanguine sea
lit crimson by the setting sun
the canoe beached on the further shore
bark, as where its owner'd dragged it in
the endless plain of fissured wood
stretched on
she took a drink, shouldered pack
and kept the sun at her left shoulder
Yggdrasil must have its end
Saturday, December 12, 2020
121220c
Getting Old Be Like
All my retired friends
have gotten so much busier,
they scarcely have time
to turn around.
I'm not retired at all,
and I hardly have time
to delete spam,
much less shift my weight.
At this point,
I don't dare retire:
when would I eat,
or even breathe?
121220
Backyard Racket
Clatter and croak
how does so much noise
come from one small patch
of bamboo?
River cane, they call it
a fine privacy fence for the neighbors
and us.
Shoots coming up everywhere each spring
home to 10,000 fishing poles
if need be
and right now
some 50 grackles
settling in with their nightly
gossip and disagreement
Friday, December 11, 2020
Thursday, December 10, 2020
121020
A disturbing hangover from the weekend's illness. I have what's called an inspirometer. You suck as hard as you can on the tube and you thereby pull up a blue plug as high as you can. The scale goes from 0 to 4000 (it's otherwise not labeled). On a good day I can pull 2000. On a bad day, 1500. But this week: 1500 is my maximum. Two or three days without exercising my lungs and this is what I get?! So far nothing else seems to be wrong.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
120920b
First daughter's birthday today. The rest of us in the next 6.5 weeks. Every time around the sun let's us see the cosmos roughly 365 times, if we look at it once per diurnal cycle. Aw.
Lou Reed said it best: "But that's just some other time."
120920
I've been sick with something enervating, but probably not Covid, and am more or less back up to speed now. Here are a few book covers, which you might have seen before.
Saturday, December 5, 2020
120520b
Vlad Absent-Mindedly Answered in Medieval Hungarian
Immortality is hard!
You have to keep learning:
languages,
social mores (no impaling, for instance),
technology.
You have to keep forging new identities,
Finding lawyers willing to meet after dark,
Finding sweet young things of either gender
Eager for a Transylvanian kiss
(surprising how many think “kinky” is “cool”).
Your kids centuries dead,
You and Mina make your own children,
Adopted via transfusion,
No two alike.
Friday, December 4, 2020
120420
water rising
your blithe heels clacking the
marble tiles
the sidewalk concrete
the bright colors and drab
while underneath the Earth surrenders
the pores fill rock dissolves
on paper the original solid Earth
third-Day solid
but underneath
the big farewell
and you're falling
the Abyss has no floor
none at all
it's water
all the way down.
Thursday, December 3, 2020
120320d
We love this dragon
this knobby jeweled beast
breathing slow wisps
under the flat rock
too small to devour a whole cow
and we’ve never seen it fly
but that’s a wing peeping out
I’m almost sure of it
120320c
we must have been blind
the slow creep of years
as the dolmen moved closer
lost in troubled sleep
that morning brought
thunder to the door
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
120220
Meanwhile, in other news, 3 more senators succumbed to the brain-eating fungus that has littered the roof of the Capitol with headless corpses this year.
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
120120d
The real "Footprints in Stone" (300+ million years old, in this denialist state, available from indie bookstores:
https://bookshop.org/books/footprints-in-stone-fossil-traces-of-coal-age-tetrapods/9780817358440
120120c
My latest speculative-poetry collection from indie booksellers
https://bookshop.org/books/the-ambassador-takes-one-for-the-team/9781936021635
120120b
I have belatedly realized that there is a portal for indie bookstores. This book of fantasy/horror flash fiction can be purchased that way:
https://bookshop.org/books/gods-and-monsters-9781519729446/9781519729446
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