Lazy summer day in March...

What a lazy damn day...my outside thermometer reads 92° F (but it's in direct sunlight...the actual temperature is probably closer to 75° F...but I'll still take it). I sat outside and read about 75 pages of Gilead, and my Malamute took a nap on the cool cement patio next to me. If you live somewhere where it's cold today, just remember this before you throw a shoe at your monitor: in only a few short months it will break 100° here in the Mojave desert, and then it will break 110°, then 115°, and it will stay there until September, and then ramp back down about 10° a month. This is one of two seasons when people actually leave the house in Las Vegas. Weird, huh?

#

I won't write until later tonight, but I've had a couple of >2,000 word days in a row on Aquarium, so I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm at. Should break 15k before bed.

#

It's been beat to death this past week; so the only thing I'm going to say about the Kindle 2 text-to-speech controversy is this: yes, authors are struggling for cash right now--just like everyone else in the world. No, the Kindle can't replace a professional audiobook. Yes, it's worthy of discussion. All true. But the important thing that Roy Blount doesn't seem to have acknowledged (or realized) is that by taking a hard line stance on this issue and leading the charge to protect the author-members of the Author's Guild from this minor so-tagged threat, he is risking turning the guild (and, by proxy, all professional writers regardless of if they belong to the AG or not) into the puppy-killing protectionists that the internet has twisted the MPAA and RIAA into. Reading as a pastime is tenuous as it is, and current and prospective authors don't really need someone pissing in the pool right now over a minor issue that is looking to get  overblown in another case of the Streisand Effect.

#

If you're one of the 1.2 million people who haven't seen this short video about superheroes Piderman and Baman, enjoy in preparation of going to see Watchmen next weekend...