Pixel Scroll 2/12/16 Little Pixels Made Of Puppy-Scroll, And They All Look Just The Same

(1) THE TENTACLE RECONCILIATION. This just in — “Cthulhu Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize”.

OSLO, NORWAY — Dread Lord, and presidential candidate, Cthulhu has more to savor this week on the campaign trail than the vulture-picked carcasses of the campaigns of Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Martin O’Malley and others. Cthulhu has been officially nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, according to Henriette Berg Aasen, Nobel watcher and director of the Peace Research Cooperative of Oslo….

Aasen told the Kingsport Star Herald that Cthulhu has been nominated, as He is yearly, by the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu (known also as CTHU). Cthulhu joins a long list of historical luminaries nominated for the coveted prize like Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Rush Limbaugh, Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin.

Aasen says CTHU selected the independent candidate and demon god because “when He rises from the Deep, humanity will finally know peace and understanding. Our conflicts will disperse. Our prejudices will fade. The Truth of existence will fill us. And those of us left will join as one in praise of Pax Cthulhia.”

(2) TORT SOLO. The BBC reports “Star Wars prosecuted over Harrison Ford injury”.

The production company behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens is being prosecuted over the incident in which Harrison Ford broke his leg.

The actor was struck by a hydraulic metal door on the Pinewood set of the Millennium Falcon in June 2014.

The Health And Safety Executive has brought four criminal charges against Foodles Production (UK) Ltd – a subsidiary of Disney.

Foodles Production said it was “disappointed” by the HSE’s decision.

Following the incident, Ford was airlifted to hospital for surgery.

Following an investigation, the HSE said it believed there was sufficient evidence about the incident which left Ford with serious injuries, to bring four charges relating to alleged health and safety breaches.

(3) PUT TO THE QUESTION. The characters in Redshirts are out of jeopardy, but not out of Jeopardy!

(4) MORE RECOMMENDATIONS. Black Gate’s John ONeill points out “Gypsies, Paupers, Demons and Swans: Rich Horton’s Hugo Recs”:

I cover a lot of short fiction magazines and novels, but I never feel adequately prepared for the Hugo ballot. But that’s okay, because I know people who read every single short story published in English, and can point me in the right direction.

Well, one person. Rich Horton. Seriously, he reads them all. No, really. All of them. When he modestly claims he doesn’t, he’s lying. He’s read some of ’em twice.

(5) HORTON’S RECS. The recommendations originated at Rich Horton’s blog Strange at Ecbatan.

For the past few years I have avoided the sorts of posts I used to routinely make, listing my favorite stories of the year and making suggestions for Hugo nominations. There are several reasons – one is simply that I thought my Best of the Year Table of Contents served such a purpose by default, more or less, another is time. And a third, of course, is a feeling of skittishness about the controversy that has arisen, from several directions, on the appropriateness of nomination lists, or, Lord preserve us, “slates”.

But hang it all, almost all I’ve been about for my time writing about SF is promoting the reading of good stories. Why should I stop? Why should anyone? I don’t want people to nominate based on my recommendations – I want people to read the stories I recommend – and lots of other stories – and nominate the stories they like best. I don’t want to promote an agenda. I don’t want to nudge the field towards any set of themes or styles. (Except by accident – I don’t deny that I have conscious and unconscious preferences.) In fact, I’d rather be surprised – by new ideas, by new writers, by controversial positions, by new forms, by revitalization of old forms.

This is, indeed, mostly the contents of my Best of the Year collection, with a few added that I couldn’t use for one reason or another (length, contractual issues, etc.). And let’s add the obvious — I miss things! Even things I read. There have definitely been cases where a story I didn’t pick seemed to me on further reflection to be clearly award-worthy.

I recently made a post on potential Hugo nominees in which I briefly discussed potential Best Editor nominations. I mentioned John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Trevor Quachri, C. C. Finlay, Sheila Williams, Andy Cox, Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, Scott H. Andrews and Brian Thomas Schmidt. And in all honesty, I think any of those people would be wholly worthy nominees. They have all done first-rate recent work. But that said, let’s be honest, I was being a bit timid. Who would I really vote for? I wanted to be a bit more forthright, and plump for a few folks I am really rooting for….

(6) DEFERRED GRATIFICATION. “20 Year Overnight Successes: Writing Advice” is a set of Storified tweets from Maria Dahvana Headley about writing.

Mark-kitteh sent along the link with a modest disclaimer: “Obviously I have no way of knowing if they’re good advice or not, but as Neil Gaiman commented on then approvingly I’m assuming they’re good…”

She begins:

Gaiman’s comment:

(7) RANDOMNESS. Don’t know what this actually relates to, just found the stand-alone comment amusing.

(8) IAN WATSON. At SF Signal, Rachel Cordasco’s “Eurocon 2016: An Interview with Ian Watson”

RC: This Eurocon is taking place in Barcelona- what is the state of Spanish scifi today?

IW: Spanish SF (including, as I said, Fantasy and Horror) is thriving, but not nearly enough gets translated into English nor is published visibly enough. Félix Palma’s Map of… trilogy is certainly a best-seller in English (as the New York Times says) but consider a genre-bending author such as veteran Rodolfo Martínez, a major award winner in Spain: you can get a Kindle ebook of his novel

The Queen’s Adept in an English translation so good, of a book so good, that it reads like an original novel by Gene Wolfe, but you’ll find it in no bookshop in the USA or UK. (While on the subject of actual books, devour The Shape of Murder and Zig-Zag by José Carlos Somoza.)

Recent professional labour-of-love productions include The Best of Spanish Steampunk (big, edited and translated by James and Marian Womack, whose Nevsky press is based in Madrid), the crowdfunded Castles in Spain put together by Mariano Villarreal, and (in progress) the likewise crowdfunded competition-winners anthology Spanish Women of Wonder edited by Cristina Jurado, title courtesy of Pamela Sargent. Mariano Villarreal is also responsible for an admired series of original anthologies entitled Terra Nova, published by Rodolfo Martínez’s own Sportula press, of which one is in English translation: Terra Nova: An Anthology of Spanish Science Fiction. Ebooks only, these last three.

On the whole, things are humming.

(9) ALBERT FANDOM. Einstein is not only on a bubblegum card, he’s on a Star Wars gif too –

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born February 12, 1915 — Lorne Greene, who played Commander Adama.

(11) MEET THE RABIDS. Vox Day adds to his slate: “Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Graphic Story”.

(12) WRITERS OF THE FUTURE. The L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers & Illustrators of the Future Annual Awards Ceremony invitation was extended to LASFS members on Facebook. Information about the ceremony is here. The event is April 10, 2016 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Doors open at 5:30 pm – Event starts at 6:30 pm. Party and book signing immediately follow. Black tie optional or Steampunk Formal. RSVP HERE

Past winners of the Writers of the Future Contest have gone on to publish well over 700 novels and 3000 short stories; they have become international bestsellers and have won the most prestigious accolades in the field—the Hugo, the Nebula, the John W. Campbell, the Bram Stoker, and the Locus Award—and even mainstream literary awards such as the National Book Award, the Newbery and the Pushcart Prize. The Illustrators of the Future winners have gone on to publish millions of illustrations in the field.

 

(13) CHARACTERIZATION. At All Over The Map, Juliet McKenna has some interesting advice concerning “The importance of thinking about ‘local values’ when you’re writing”.

On the other hand, you can turn this issue of local values to your writerly advantage, in the right place, for the right character. When I said minus three degrees or minus thirteen a few paragraphs back, I meant Celsius, because my local weather values are centigrade. When I come across temperatures given in Farenheit in US crime fiction, I always have to pause and do a quick mental conversion calculation. It disrupts the flow of my reading, so as far as I am concerned, that’s a bad thing.

But if I was a character in a book? If the author wanted to convey someone feeling unsettled and out of their usual place? Sure, that author could tell us ‘She felt unsettled by the unfamiliar numbers in the weather forecast’ but you could do so much more, and far more subtly, as a writer by showing the character’s incomprehension, having her look up how to do the conversion online, maybe being surprised by the result. It gets how cold in Minnesota in the winter?

(14) ALPHA HOUSE. To better organize the presidential candidates competing in the New Hampshire primary, Mic sorted each candidate into Hogwarts houses from Harry Potter. Still funny, even if the primary’s over.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mark-kitteh, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jenora Feuer.]

195 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/12/16 Little Pixels Made Of Puppy-Scroll, And They All Look Just The Same

  1. @Jim Henley – So long as he gets the Devil’s solo. I always thought he was robbed in the song.

  2. Oh wait these are just my initial stuff, I’ll probably polish the turd later on”.

    Jesus, really? The whole thing’s in disarray, isn’t it? Even it it’s a cover for a Secret Slate – and I can’t work out how anyone could be idiotic enough to plan to burst out with a Secret Slate at some unspecified point and not expect anything other than jeers of derision.

  3. I would also think, if one has both a public slate and a supah sekrit slate, that one might risk confusing one’s herd, sending half stampeding one direction and the other half the other, resulting in neither getting anywhere useful. Can’t you just see the flurry of emails? “No, not THAT one. I want you to vote for this one! I know I said that was the slate, but that was just to fool… What? The head MRA guy saw the first slate and then his mom cut off the wifi to the basement and he can’t get my emails?? Curses! Foiled again!”

    In addition to not reading much, I am also guessing Ted’s research skills are none too nifty. Doesn’t take much to read a review of something that tells you a little about the plot elements and characters or do a basic search on a person (e.g. bona fide SJW Marc Miller) before putting them on your slate.

  4. @Stevie, @JJ, The Invisible Library and The Masked City will be receiving their first USA printings this year, in June and September. I had to order both from UK booksellers and I think I first heard about her here. Because her work is so fantastic (everyone to whom I’ve lent Invisible Library has also loved it), perhaps it will gain more traction once it is released in the US.

    (4) MORE RECOMMENDATIONS – I really like Black Gate and they’ll be on my Hugo ballot, but that blue on black thing is really hard to read.

  5. Dammit, I just found out that Genevieve Cogman is not eligible for the Campbell because of a 2004 short story published at Strange Horizons.

    The Invisible Library and The Masked City are absolutely fantastic.

    Oh, goddamn it. I was going to nominate her AND Marguerite Reed and NEITHER of them are eligible because of one fricking short story published eleven years ago!

  6. What do you do for a TV series that has story arcs? I consider the Steven Universe episodes “The Return” and “Jail Break” a two-part episode, but they aren’t labelled that way.

  7. @Jim Henley
    “Frighten the guitarists” indeed! Full disclosure: I once *blush* sketched out a new bass riff for one of my songs during a session and gave it to the very-experienced-and-talented bass player. When I listened to the recording later, I realized that he had played a cool riff, but not exactly the one I’d written. Upon reflection, I realized that mine had included at least two notes below the range of an actual bass, but he had kindly bypassed the opportunity to humiliate me by pointing that out.

  8. Someday we need “The File 770 Filk Album”. And then we can argue about which Hugo category it fits into.

    Need to publish it this year if we want it Hugo eligible as the filk has been online in 2016. Eligibility is hard. You have to think of it beforehand if it matters to you.

    Great filk everyone.

    I spent some of today pulling together and staring at the graphic novels, anthologies, and comics I Kickstarted last year. Now I have to research to see what’s eligible. Then read it again. Have to check what I have on Comixology also. Might be time to start my list for next year. Ahhhhh

    Reread Invisible 2 edited by Jim C. Hines today. It’s on my Related Shortlist

  9. Cheryl S.: @Stevie, @JJ, The Invisible Library and The Masked City will be receiving their first USA printings this year, in June and September. I had to order both from UK booksellers and I think I first heard about her here. Because her work is so fantastic (everyone to whom I’ve lent Invisible Library has also loved it), perhaps it will gain more traction once it is released in the US.

    I have The Invisible Library on my Hugo Top 5 right now, but I think I’m going to replace it with another novel. Because it was only published in the UK in December of 2014 and has not yet been published in the U.S., I’m pretty sure that it falls under the Hugo rules about eligibility once published in the U.S.

    And yes, I’m thinking that once U.S. publication of the book occurs, word-of-mouth on it will really take off.

  10. Jamoche asked:

    What do you do for a TV series that has story arcs? I consider the Steven Universe episodes “The Return” and “Jail Break” a two-part episode, but they aren’t labelled that way.

    You can nominate the two of them as one entry, in the appropriate category for their combined length. Here’s a finalist example: “The Pandorica Opens”/”The Big Bang”, appearing together under Short Form in 2011.

  11. @Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy:

    Full disclosure: I once *blush* sketched out a new bass riff for one of my songs during a session and gave it to the very-experienced-and-talented bass player. When I listened to the recording later, I realized that he had played a cool riff, but not exactly the one I’d written. Upon reflection, I realized that mine had included at least two notes below the range of an actual bass, but he had kindly bypassed the opportunity to humiliate me by pointing that out.

    Oh that story is great.

  12. @Stevie: Are you suggesting that one cannot both admire robot octopodes AND follow the Scamperbeasts’ Twitter? Hmph, I say. Hmph.

    @Tasha: So we’ve got a few months to record it! Obviously we have instrumentalists here, and if enough of us sing, we’ll be somewhere in tune… or at least the fannish key of Off.

  13. A bunch of people I respect said good things about Gunnerkrigg Court, so I went and read a big chunk of it from the beginning; but I found that it never succeeded in engaging my interest.

  14. @Stevie
    I see no reason I can’t want a Katsu the purple clockwork octopus because it’s cute and follow and laugh at the adorable scamperbeast. In my world both exist and are good. Life doesn’t always have to be either/or. Some of us are capable of liking many diverse things.

  15. @Lurkertype
    I’ll admire from afar. I was kicked off the Unitarian Universalist kids choir. Even the people who are all about kids self-esteem found my singing voice so bad they couldn’t keep to their principles. Being partly deaf but not diagnosed correctly didn’t help. I never held it against them. I agreed.

  16. Stand Still Stay Silent published volume 1 last year, and the last daily strip contained in it was from May 2015, so volume 1 is eligible.

  17. @Tasha: Then we will use the time-honored method of handing you a tambourine.

    When I was a little kid, I was always told I couldn’t sing, and agreed, for I simply could not make the noises the others did. I grumpily went out for 5th grade choir on my mother’s orders, whereupon the lovely teacher said, “Oh, you’re a second alto.” All was saved once someone realized that I COULD sing tolerably well, just not up in that ultrasonic peeping range of first soprano. Now my father, HE couldn’t sing in any key even when he had perfect hearing… which at least meant he didn’t get any worse as he got older!

  18. Tasha Turner on February 13, 2016 at 10:20 pm said:

    @Stevie
    I see no reason I can’t want a Katsu the purple clockwork octopus because it’s cute and follow and laugh at the adorable scamperbeast. In my world both exist and are good. Life doesn’t always have to be either/or. Some of us are capable of liking many diverse things.

    Although…an apocalyptic showdown between scamperbeasts and clockwork katsu does sound quite compelling.

  19. Books: Zero World by Jason Hough

    I guess I was expecting this to be an enjoyable, fast-paced, pedestrian science fiction adventure.

    It is all of those things — except pedestrian. This novel went places I never expected it to go. It’s got two incredibly smart, capable protagonists — one male and one female — each with their own narrative, and neither of them is just a prop to make the other look good (or bad).

    If you’re one of those people who needs your science fiction to go into detailed explanations about how all the science works, this book may not be for you.

    But if you’re willing to accept the world as built, oh wow, grab your seat and hang on for the ride.

    This book is so good, it may knock something else out of my Hugo Top 5. Obviously a lot of people feel the same way; it’s tied for 19th place on SFWA’s Novel Recommendation list.

  20. Red Wombat – About 36 years ago I was in a carpool with a guy hailing from Rising Fawn, Georgia. Right after “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” played on the car radio, he said in his lovely North Georgia drawl “The Devil plays a very avant garde fiddle”.

  21. (8) IAN WATSON

    For some bizarre reason I never connected the Ian Watson who wrote Queenmagic, Kingmagic with the Ian Watson who wrote surprisingly good Warhammer 40k novels. Todays 10,000, etc.

  22. @redheadedfemme – Thank you. I think I knew there was a Stylish option, but didn’t pursue it at the time. I will now, because I’ve been trying to read Black Gate regularly.

    @JJ, I think I will also leave Invisible Library off my ballot this year, not because it isn’t worthy but because I think it and its sequel will have a better shot next year.

  23. I think there’s a problem here that carries over between a number of categories; the Hugos are geared to stories, i.e. things that have beginnings, middles and ends. Some series (of books), some TV series, some comics have beginnings, middles and ends; others don’t. But the difference between those which do and those which don’t is often not the most obvious thing about them. (For instance I know that Paul Cornell intends his London supernatural police series to have an end, while Ben Aaronovitch doesn’t. But you wouldn’t know that just by looking at them.) So when the rules say ‘It’s eligible in the year in which it’s completed’, we may in some cases be left saying ‘what does completed mean?’.

  24. @Lurkertype
    Thanks 🙂

    @All regarding VD
    Does he have a secret slate? Do we really care? I don’t know where you all find the time. I don’t have a job. I’m barely able to keep up with my favorite Internet places, read 2015 stuff, start reading 2016 stuff, read stuff just because (favorite authors, file770 TBR mount of doom, my regular TBR, new stuff I back/crowdsourced, etc.). And I really don’t have a life outside of the few hours I see my husband at night and doctors visits. VD conspiracy theories just don’t fit in my life. Knowing what’s on his posted ballot helpful and fun to mock (a bad habit but everyone needs a vice). Other than that I leave conspiracy theories to… Well those kinds of people. LOL

    Some of the Graphic category I’m looking into (no particular order)
    1. Stand Still Stay Silent
    2. Valor edited by Isabelle Melancon & Megan Lavey-Heaton (eligible?)
    3. Chainmail Bikini: The Anthology of Women Gamers edited by Hazel Newlevant (eligible?)
    4. Moonshot The Indigenous Collection edited by Hope Nicholson
    5. The Secret Loves of Geek Girls edited by Hope Nicholson
    6. Beyond the Queer Sci-Fi & Fantasy Comic Anthology edited by Sfe A. Monster
    7. Drawing the Line Indian Women Fight Back North American Edition edited by
    Priya Kuriyan, Larissa Bertonasco, Ludmilla Bartscht, and Nicole Marie Burton (eligible?)
    8. Ms. Marvel volume 2
    9. The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace and Babbage

    I’m sure I have more. Those were the easy ones to find over Shabbos as they were in the pile for my husband to read/reread on his headboard/bookshelf. I just had to unearth them from the 100 books they were mixed in with. I have another pile of 20+ comics to go through after I reread and prioritize these.

  25. Darren Garrison on February 13, 2016 at 8:55 am said:
    Inspired by the post about the Chinese Star Wars ripoff comic, I’ve been doing some web surfing for free English translations of Soviet-era Russian science fiction.

    Here’s one I found a little while back, which I first read many years ago as “Crabs Take Over the Island”

    Lots of other stuff from familiar names (Strugatsky, Bulichev, Varshavsky) under the heading “Russians Classics” on the same site if you go up one level; how much of this is SF I haven’t yet investigated. If you do go there, be warned: the links don’t work properly (you have to delete a duplicated bit in the address)

  26. Is SSSS even eligible? I see the printed Vol. 1 came out in 2015, but the comics which it collects started in 2013. That would seem to disqualify it just like Nimona.

  27. On Stand Still Stay Silent according to the webcomic the paper volume ends on

    http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=276
    February. 2015
    I suppose this is the opposite of a cover or something, I made it for the book and felt like posting it here too, because why not? And that’s right, this is where the first SSSS book will end, instead of before the last chapter. I didn’t want to promise anything until I knew just how long chapter 5 would end up being, because if it ran too long I simply couldn’t include it due to the added weight/shipping cost. But now I know the final page count, and with the book clocking out at around 320 pages (instead of the previous 260) I have made the informed decision to throw in this fifth chapter too. Yaaay~ I think it’ll be a much nicer book in the end, and I’m sure I won’t regret this decision years down the line. :3

    The above information is from a quick search. I haven’t read it online. I vaguely remember updates from their crowdfunding about additional stuff being added which was part of the delay in fulfillment. Since part of it was still happening in 2015 online I believe it qualifies. I could be wrong on the additional stuff 2015 as I’m relying on the above and my hit by a truck memory. 😉

  28. @Tasha Turner

    @All regarding VD
    Does he have a secret slate? Do we really care? I don’t know where you all find the time.

    I find his antics somewhat fun to follow (he reminds me a bit of The Monarch from Venture Brothers), and have a few theories, but I prefer not to discuss them in public because I know he gets most of his mana from rubbing his hands together contemplating his enemies contemplating him and, despite his being sometimes entertaining, I don’t like that he’s doing so while vandalizing something good. Trump is more fun for that kind of thing, though if he goes from vandalizing the GOP to vandalizing the office of the PoTUS… well, this game of chicken is starting to get scary.

  29. @Various: So folks are (as Petréa Mitchell says is valid, but I thought wasn’t) nominating Oglaf’s 2015 work as a whole, then? I’m a bit confused.

    Webcomic recs (I’ve previously rec’d “Alex + Ada”):

    Buying Time – interesting Flash format that allows the creator to do some cool things, but forget that – it’s an awesome comic regardless
    The End
    Galaxion
    Namesake
    O Human Star
    Skin Deep
    Sorcery 101
    The Young Protectors

    Yup this is more like a long list, isn’t it. And I just started reading “The Autumnlands” by Busiek and Dewey, so this may turn into a list of 10. For the ones above, I need to figure out if they have a particular chapter ending in 2015 that I should nominate. “Buying Time” is done, but it finished this year; it did have discrete chapters. For the rest, I feel like even if I can just say “all 2015 work as a set” . . . it would make more sense to nominate chapters.

    Of course, no one has mentioned any of these except “The Autumnlands,” so I’m throwing away my noms in this category, no? Le sigh. 😉

  30. @JJ: Yay re. Zero World – high on my list to read (blush). The sample was great; I’m happy to hear it delivers!

    In related news, I was out of town and had some quality reading time for once, and I finished A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. It’s a great book! 😀 I must read the sequel (but not right now; other 2015 stuff to read). This knocked a weak entry off my Best Novel short list (a book I expected to get knocked off).

    (Yeah, I’m days late on Pixel Scrolls – I was out of town.)

  31. @Andrew M: It sounds like you’re describing (in the case of Aaronovitch’s series) individual novels in an open-ended series – not a single work. So maybe nominate individual novels? I mean, how often are multi-novel series successfully nominated, anyway (rarely) and how often do they win (have they ever?)?

    But I’m biased against treating a series of novels as a single work anyway, so take that with a grain of salt. 😛 😉 In most (okay, maybe all!) cases for novels, IMHO people should nominate novels (that being the category name), not series (that not being the category name). YMMV.

  32. Darn, I see “tomorrow” (or “over a day ago” in the parlance of people who aren’t several days behind), @Oneiros suggested what I just posted a few comments up – curse me for being late! 😉

  33. Kendall on February 15, 2016 at 11:08 pm said:

    Buying Time – interesting Flash format that allows the creator to do some cool things, but forget that – it’s an awesome comic regardless

    Flash could cause it problems. As a friend with visual impairment says, “Flash is the devil”.

  34. Kendall on February 15, 2016 at 11:08 pm said:

    Of course, no one has mentioned any of these except “The Autumnlands,” so I’m throwing away my noms in this category, no? Le sigh. ?

    No, of course not. That’s block vote thinking.

    Look, even if your noms don’t overlap with anyone else’s plenty of people eventually look to the longlist of nominations for quality works they may have missed the previous year.

    *You* think they’re worthwhile. That’s what matters.

  35. @PIMMN: I’m not a Flash fan for other reasons, but I recommend this post-apocalyptic (I think; well, I’d call it that) story of same-sex love in a city where social interaction costs money, to anyone (a) for whom Flash isn’t a problem, and (b) who doesn’t mind (or may want) a different visual storytelling style.

    But yeah, not everyone would be thrilled with something like this. I wouldn’t expect to get a Hugo nom anyway; it’s one of my obscure-so-I’m-throwing-away-a-vote items, I suppose. 🙂

    ETA: Ignore the ‘throwing away a vote’ comment. (blush)

  36. @PIMMN: True, and thanks. And sorry, I wasn’t really trying to be as negative as I sounded! Plus I do get to mention things here. 😀 Hmm, I should’ve said a few words about each one. Maybe when I’ve had more sleep. . . .

  37. Sleep is good. I’m on sinus-related insomnia myself and should see if I can get comfortable enough to get some. People will be here to read things later.

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