Unquiet Desperation

Woke up far too early this morning, so I spent a couple of hours working
before heading out. One of my co-workers and I hit a little place in
Westwood Village called The Novel Cafe. Very tasty breakfast and some
really good coffee.

We split up…he headed back to the apartment to go for a run, and I set
out to explore the village. Westwood is almost charming…fully grown
trees line the streets, small shop and restaurants lure folks inwith
promises of bargains, coffee, or sushi. There are at least three movie
houses in the area I explored, though none of them were showing anything
I wanted to see.

As I write this, I’m sitting outside the Peet’s Coffee & Tea at the
corner of Westwood and Wilshire. It is sunny,and I’ve just left Jay &
Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. Neat storer with the added bonus of some
cool Kevin Smith memorabilia. I like Smith and his work, so shopping at
his store was something of a treat. Picked up some comics for myself
and a Mooby’s T-shirt for my sister. Planning on sitting andf reading
for a bit before heading back to the apartment to do some work.

That’s it for now. More later.

Testing the wordpress moblog functions…

So, when I refer to “fundamentalist wackjobs,”, this sort of thing is what I’m talking about.

Boing Boing: Satan responsible for illegal immigration, says Utah delegate

Utah Republican Don Larsen believes that illegal immigration to the US is a Satanic plot and has submitted an anti-Satan resolution to be discussed at this weekend’s Utah County Republican Convention.

“In order for Satan to establish his ‘New World Order’ and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the Scriptures, he must first destroy the U.S.,” his resolution states. “The mostly quiet and unspectacular invasion of illegal immigrants does not focus the attention of the nations the way open warfare does, but is all the more insidious for its stealth and innocuousness.”

Of course! It must be Satan! If couldn’t possibly have anything to do with global economic integration, inadequate provisions for legal economic immigration, or the failure to sanction employers for hiring
unauthorized immigrants because of limited funding of interior enforcement or limited political will due to U.S. labor needs.

*sigh*

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I’m on my second trip to Los Angeles this week. I didn’t write about the first trip because I wanted time to sit back and think about what I’d seen and not approach it like some wide-eyed tourist. It might be unavoidable, but I prefer not to sound like some midwestern bumpkin who is going to the Big City for the first time.

People who have lived in LA are quick to tell me that, when I visit on business, I’m not living in the “real LA.” I’m staying in the company apartment which is not too far from the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood, in Westwood, about six blocks from the UCLA campus. If you take Wilshire west, you wind up in Santa Monica, and if you go east, you wind up in Beverly Hills. This, apparently, is not the “real LA.” Be that as it may, I’ve been traveling around a bit, and thought I’d share some of my observations with you.

• You cannot throw a rock without hitting a sushi joint. During my last trip out here I became enamored with sushi and sashimi, and one of my co-workers is telling me that he’ll take me down to Echigo, which is supposed to be one of the best places in town. Sushi knowledge is highly prized around the office, and if you bring up the subject, you’ll get an earful of recommendations, history, and even a little bit of argument. It’s heady stuff.

• There are a number of good cafe’s around town. Some, like Peet’s are chains, others are small and independent. One I hope to visit while I am out here is the Literati Cafe. Looks like fun.

• Bookstores and comic book shops are high on the list, since I’ll have a weekend free. The Golden Apple in Hollywood has come highly recommended, but there is also a Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash right around the corner. Also, I’m trying to remember the name of the place where Harlan Ellison used to sit in the window and write. Anyone? Anyone?

I have to admit that I like what I’ve seen, but the housing prices out here are madness. The apartment I’m staying in (2 bed, 2 bath) is $3,500 a month…nearly three and a half times my mortgage back home. I did some checking, and my house and the same amount of land would cost $600K out here. Good grief.

That’s all for now. More in the days to come.

Earlier this week, Howard V. Hendrix, vice president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, allows this to be posted to a Livejournal post:

I’m also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they’re just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they’re undercutting those of us who aren’t giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.

Since more and more of SFWA is built around such electronically mediated networking and connection based venues, and more and more of our membership at least tacitly blesses the webscabs (despite the fact that they are rotting our organization from within) — given my happily retrograde opinions, I felt I was not the president who would provide SFWAns the “net time” they seemed to want at this point in the organization’s development, or who would bless the contraction of our industry toward monopoly, or who would give imprimatur to the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch.

I could go into how wrongheaded and myopic this is, but Mike Stackpole (NYT Bestselling author, podcaster, and cool guy) just pinged me on Skype and let me know that he had already done so. While I personally think that “webscabs” are the most innovative and adventurous people I know, I think Mike’s comments are more salient, and come from a place of more experience in the industry. I recommend you listen if you’re at all interested in the future of book publishing.

Click here to hear Mike’s thoughts. (mp3)

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