Sunday, January 30, 2005
Because I must never, ever prove to be certain of anything, the power has yet to do more than flicker a few times. But I am grateful, even if it is yet another example of the world conspiring to prove me wrong. The storm is over. The ice is melting. The temperatures are supposed to rise towards the mid forties (F) today, I think. Maybe the mammoths will leave again.
Yesterday, I was able to finish the first round of proofreading on To Charles Fort, With Love. All thirteen stories have now been read. Numerous corrections and a small number of revisions have been made. The second round of proofing will come when the ARCs are printed. Yesterday, I read "The Dead and the Moonstruck," then "A Redress for Andromeda," "Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea," and "Andromeda Among the Stones." I think I finished about 5 p.m. All together, about 25,700 words. Too much for one day, at any rate. At the end, I was exhausted, weary of my voice, and annoyed about the stories that won't be in this volume. But it's done. This part of it, at least. I still have the preface to write, and I should try to force myself to get to that today. I haven't truly had a day off in so long I can't recall. A couple of weeks, surely.
Daughter of Hounds is growing impatient with me.
There's not much else to write about. Around here, it's been ice and proofreading, proofreading and ice, and not much of anything else.
An announcement has been made that the Preble's meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius preblei) will be losing federal protection in about a year's time. I wanted to write something here about the perversion of science by pro-sprawl politics, but I think I haven't the stomach for it now. The greatest loss here is the 31,000 acres of land in Colorado and Wyoming that will be opened up for strip malls and suburbs. What's one mouse subspecies, one way or the other. Hell, this extinction is progressing at such a clip that we are presently losing species worldwide at a rate of 70-700 species per year, up to 2 each day (the Earth's normal or "background" extinction rate is probably closer to 1-10 species each year). What's one mouse subspecies when humans must have room to breed and build cheap housing and park their automobiles and turn a fast buck or two. Rural Wyoming needs Starbuck's and Burger King, Wal-Mart and Home Depot, not land set aside for the preservation of mice. Mice won't put bread on the table or a new car in that new garage. Mice won't get senators reelected. Mice can't create new jobs in the service industry. They don't make developers rich. Come to think of it, mice aren't good for much of anything. Damned environmentalists. Damned mice. Can't they see the One True Parking Lot at the End of Time? Don't they understand the imperative to bury the world in the shit and thoughtless discards of humanity? When will they ever, ever learn?
11:55 AM
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