Trousers

A deluge of messages, many hundreds of them, and all of them are dog-name suggestions. Some of them I've tried, but they don't seem right -- they sound wrong coming out of my mouth, or, mostly, they are terrific names but don't quite fit him, or, in a few cases, Maddy doesn't like them. (I wanted to go Arthurian, but the front runner, a Maddy pick, currently seems to be Thor.)

(Dog update. Vet today: Dog weighs 78lb and still needs to put on a little weight; is now microchipped; is also on antibiotics to deal with early stage Lyme Disease, and got all the various shots he needed. Also taken into the vet at the same time: Fred the Cat, who, with half of his face shaved and drooling thick slobber from being car-sick, looked like something from a horror movie, the sort of movie that makes you shake your head and wonder whatever happened to subtlety in horror.)

I've walked more in the last two days than I have in months.



I'm just going to go to close a bunch of tabs...

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Scott McCloud has posted the first two parts of his on-line graphic novel "The Right Number" for free. Back when he originally posted the first part I signed up for the micropayment scheme, and gave them five dollars so I could pay Scott my 25 cents for the first part, and then, a year or so later, couldn't remember the email address, details or password when he posted the second part, so I'm glad they're both up for nothing now. It's a wonderful story. I can't wait for him to do the last part. http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/trn/intro.html
is the link.

The fabulous Fabulist has a streaming radio station option up. I've been getting so much of my new music from them it's silly, and this is a great way to find out what I like before I download, put on my iPod and buy the CD. http://www.fabulist.org/archives/2007/04/streaming_fabul.html

There's a great Michael Chabon interview over at Salon: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/05/04/chabon/index.html

The PEN World Voices Town Hall reading is up at http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1305/prmID/1376 -- you can listen to the whole thing or to individuals. For some reason, I've wound up with Nadine Gordimer's MP3 if you click on my name -- mine is actually at http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/2007_world_voices/home_away/Neil_Gaiman.mp3 but listen to the whole thing (http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/2007_world_voices/home_away/Town_Hall_Readings_HomeAway.mp3). It's worth it just for Steve Martin, or Kiran Desai or Salman Rushdie or... well, trust me and listen to it.

All of the PEN events should eventually be up in Audio. Keep an eye on this -- a link to the MOTH event -- http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1340/prmID/1412. (Here's Laila Lalami's take on it: http://www.lailalalami.com/blog/archives/004691.html.) Incidentally, I got an email complaining that we had obviously all "written our stories first and then learned them". Nope. We just told them -- one rehearsal the previous afternoon, when we talked them through to the director, who gave us notes, and then on with the show.

Lucy Anne's collection of links over at http://del.icio.us/thedreaming is now so efficient I no longer feel like I have to make sure I keep the world updated with links to news articles about me and the Stardust movie and everything. I've told Lucy Anne that she can go into the old pre-labels world of this blog and tag everything from the first six years, because she has a much more sober attitude towards tagging than I do.

Hey Neil,

My wife and I had a great time at your Helena appearance and we really appreciate you coming out to Montana. So, thanks for that.

Also, I wanted to let you know that you're a special guest star on Brotherhood 2.0 today. My brother (John Green who's also with Writer's House and has a couple of YA novels out) and I have a somewhat popular video blog at Brotherhood2.com. We've stopped emailing and instant messaging and, instead, are communicating through daily video blogs for all of 2007.

Since so many of our viewers are your fans, I figured I had to include you in the project. Which, if you were wondering, is why you said "Good Morning John it's Monday May 1st" into a camera last weekend.

Sorry I didn't take the time to explain fully then, but the line was quite long and I didn't want to take too much of your (and everyone else's) time.

If you want to see the video it's up at brotherhood2.com.

Thanks,
Hank Green

And the link to the actual entry is http://www.brotherhood2.com/?p=101.

It's the kind of thing that makes me reconsider my attitudes to video blogging (mostly I don't like it, because I lose, as reader, control of the time axis of the experience. But this I liked).

Hi Neil, did you hear about this weird story?

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/blog/?p=44

http://threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2007-04-30

The world's becoming curiouser and curiouser by the minute.

Greetings from Fernet country,
Jan.

(Shakes head ruefully.) Then again, this in a country in which you can be sued for $65 million for losing a pair of trousers...

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Finally, I'm enjoying John Scalzi's book tour. (I am possibly enjoying it most because I'm not on it, if you see what I mean.)

Labels: Dog, Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, Lucy Anne, one of those posts that covers lots of things I can't be bothered to label, stuff