On reading The Silmarillion I was mildly bothered that, in a story mainly about Elves, Elvish children are never mentioned. (Half-Elf children appear in a couple of episodes, as baggage.) Children are relatively scarce among immortals (because they spend a smaller fraction of their time as children), but still, a number of prominent Elves were born during the period chronicled, and you’d think at least one of them might have done something memorable before coming of age.

This cartoon suggests an answer.

2006: That site’s archive has been reorganized and I can’t find the scene in question. It had several humans and a vampire chatting over coffee. Human: “You look about nineteen, but being a vampire you could be any age, right? So, are you centuries old?” Vampire: “I’m twelve.”

I’ve received the first half of the Vance Integral Edition, and it looks swell. The printing is crisp, the binding solid. I had doubts about the new typeface (designed by the instigator of the project, in what seemed an awful hurry), but it looks quite readable though intentionally archaic. My worst disappointment is that the frontispiece drawings – in a delicate style – are spoiled by a grey background. (I’ll have to ask about that.)

Because of software incompatibilities and whatnot, I was not able to contribute much to the project, and — in a fit of depression — asked that my name be removed. Of course I’m still disappointed not to see my name where it ought to be! (I was under the impression that all the volunteers would be listed in each volume. I worked on three short stories: “Green Magic”, in volume 17; “I’ll Build Your Dream Castle” and “Cat Island”, not yet printed.)

This is probably old, but it’s new to me, and a hoot: The Definitive Middle-earth Test

I moved some boxes out of the garage (where they have sat for two years) and found some books inside. Yesterday I finished reading The Spirit Ring (1992), the first non-Barrayar novel by Lois McMaster Bujold. I don’t know why I bounced off it the first time; it’s quite good. [Later: Indeed I liked it better than her second non-Barrayar novel, The Curse of Chalion.] Then I started Monument (1974) by Lloyd Biggle; I dimly remember reading it long ago but probably the short version (1961).

I dreamed that my housemate told me I stink of “egg rinds”. I woke and asked her whether that meant anything, and she expressed incomprehension. Then I woke from that epi-dream and asked her again, with the same result. Eventually I woke from the epi-epi-dream into the level of reality in which I’m writing this, and we shared a chuckle.

I’m reading Ken MacLeod’s Dark Light, the middle of a trilogy begun in Cosmonaut Keep and to conclude in Engine City. (I first re-read Keep; it was easier to follow the second time.) “Octopodia” as “the key insight,” how cheeky! But shouldn’t it be dekapodia?

Some quotable bits:

“All that twenty-first-century state-of-the-art information that got downloaded from the ship and printed off and shipped from Mingulay two hundred-odd years ago – it’s still being reprinted, in big leather-bound volumes. . . . The different encyclopedias have become the basis of fucking schools of thought. Grolierists and Britannicists at each other’s throats in the faculties, with a strong faction of Encartists among the students and junior staff.”

and

“Drawing lots is fair, even if it sometimes throws up a freak result. With elections you’re actually building the minority problem right in at every level, and lots more with it – parties, money, fame, graft, just for starters. What chance would that leave ordinary people, what chance would we have of being heard or of making a difference? Elections are completely undemocratic, they’re downright antidemocratic. Everybody knows that!”

Each of Ken’s previous books (The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal, The Cassini Division, The Sky Road) ends with a genocide of AIs by humans. In Dark Light a god is murdered (by other gods) two-thirds of the way along. But I haven’t given up hope that this (treating the trilogy as one) is the book in which humanity and the transcendent minds find a way to live in peace to their mutual benefit.

Found in the archives: my cast list for Walt Kelly’s production of LotR:

• Porky Pine as Frodo
• Albert as Aragorn
• Deacon Mushrat as Gandalf
• Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred as Sam, Merry and Pippin
• Hepzibah as Arwen
• Miz Beaver as Eowyn
• P.T.Bridgeport as Boromir
• Owl and Churchy as Legolas and Gimli
• Pogo as Bombadil

A Small Victory: protest porn. Some of the less naughty bits:

As all around them entwined and cheered, forming an orgy of peaceful feelings, Smash and Blaze came together in a frenzy of lust, passion and a desire to rid the world of capitalist pigs.

“Let’s do it for anarchy,” Blaze whispered breathlessly.

“Let’s do it for the children of Iraq,” Smash mumbled in Blaze’s ear.

Their breath was heavy, their chests heaving up and down as they explored each other’s tender skin and unwashed hair.