Monthly Archives: June 2009

A year on the bus

June 30th marks exactly one year taking the bus to work. I am used to it and I even know the names of some of the people that I see everyday (if you knew me you’d realize this is unusual). The advantages of the bus are that I have saved a ton of money and […]

Carnivale of Blood

Carnivale of Blood – A lurid name for a short story (3300 words) that does not actually have much blood. I’ve been writing this a few hundred words at a time for the last month. It is based on an idea from Lawrence Durrel’s book Balthazar about a vampire in Venice, Italy. Along the way […]

Cat Mouse Circus

Our oldest cat, Willie, is a thinker. He is slow and fat and does not like to exert himself. He uses his brains. He knows that since we fed the birds all winter that there has been a jump in the mouse population living off of the bird seed. He knows that the mice find […]

Mighty Starlites

Here is my buddy Bob Rucker playing bass guitar with the Mighty Starlites. You can see Bob in the intro, I can hear him in the music, but he’s off to the side. I’ve played harp with Bob playing guitar many times. He’s an incredible blues slide guitar player, but since he’s found religion he […]

Famous Person Death New Coverage

The blog where this comes from has been overwhelmed by traffic, so all I can do is show the image above.

Polymath, John Brunner (1974)

I have another dozen or so Brunner books to read, including Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up, and I am starting to really enjoy Brunner’s style. Polymath is an early Brunner Novel that first appeared in an Ace Double as Castaway’s World. This later revision has a good adventure plot plus heavy Brunner […]

Manshape, John Brunner (1982)

When you read a Brunner novel you never know if you’re going to get one of the lesser ones that he knocked off in great numbers or one of the great ones. Manshape is a much better novel than the ones I have been reading. It was published as “Bridge to Azrael” in 1964 in […]

Dibenzothieno[3,2-B]-thiophene

Eric’s son Ari is working on a chemistry project at college. He is doing a survey of certain types of molecules in order to find a new way of making solar cells. He writes: Dibenzothieno[3,2-B]-thiophene, one of our candidate molecules. I’ve been trying to figure out where the electrons are in the Highest Occupied Molecular […]