Brazeeeeeel....- June 30, 2008 Maddy and I are off to Brazil in a few minutes. Well, we're off to New York where we change planes. But basically, we're off to Brazil together. She has the disarming smile. I have the unlikely facial hair. We're like Green Arrow and Speedy, only without the boxing glove arrows, the costumes, the similarity of gender and... okay, not really a good analogy, but what the hell, we're hitting the road. Or we will if the car turns up....It turned up. We're now in JFK in the airline lounge. Soon we...http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/brazeeeeeel.html post interrupted- June 29, 2008 Let's see...A quiet sort of day. Took Maddy to get her eyebrows waxed. ("I can do that," I told her. "We have candles." She properly ignored me.)I went down to say hullo to the bees -- the Olga hive is busily growing two new queens, and it's nice seeing the Olga bees happily bustling around the two queen cells. With luck, one of them will leave her cell, go off on a successful mating flight and return to repopulate the hive and lead it on to glory.See the two things that look like peanuts Queen.http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/post-interrupted.html Holly's Birthday Post- June 27, 2008 Have you ever had the odd feeling that a headline writer exists in an entirely different universe to the one that you live in For example, you would expect an article headlined I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett to be, perhaps, about how Terry Pratchett now thinks there is a god. The subtitle, The best-selling fantasy author grew up not believing in a supreme deity - until the day the universe opened up to him as he was preparing for...http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/hollys-birthday-post.html The New Paranoia- June 26, 2008 I have friends who practice ultra-safe computing when crossing borders: examine their computers and you'll find yourself on something almost data-free, so you'd not be looking at encrypted files, you'd simply not be looking at files -- the same kinds of things that Cory Doctorow describes in Little Brother.And I've always thought they were being, well, silly.And then I read, in the LA Times, an article that began:Authorities need a search warrant to get at a computer in your home, and...http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/new-paranoia.html Not cute- June 25, 2008 Today I had, emergencies, houseguests, strawberries and a yellow fever vaccination, more or less in that order. (For the concerned, the baby raccoons were gone by yesterday afternoon, and I think it's a good bet that they went off with their mum. Today's cuteness quotient was filled by The Chipmunk In The Drainpipe, but I didn't take photos.)Hey, Neil! You're coming to Rio de Janeiro for an event in July, yeah Is there any chance you'll do signings anywhere other than Paraty Tickets for your..http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/not-cute.html looking at you sideways- June 24, 2008 I don't know. You turn your (still extremely jet-lagged, just in the opposite direction) back for one moment and the tabs to be closed are already breeding...First, the big sadness: Cody's Bookshop has closed completely. http:www.boingboing.net20080621codys-books-of-berke.htmlI've loved doing signings and events with Cody's over the years, thought they were special and will miss them very much. It makes me glad that Kepler's is still in business,I'm a Hachette author in the UK and much of the...http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/looking-at-you-sideways.html Cuteness overload- June 23, 2008 The dog startled sleeping raccoons this morning. The mother scampered off leaving two small grumble-whistly balls of cuteness.So I took my camera, found the telephoto lens (by asking Lorraine where it was) and headed down into the woods to sit patiently while being eaten by mosquitoes, hoping for a few photos.Lots of bad photos of the baby raccoons being blurred beneath leaves. Then I made the mistake of whistling back at them. They went "Whee-tweetle-thirrp!" and tumbled out of the leaves...http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/cuteness-overload.html Explaining- June 21, 2008 On the table when I got home was a neatly stacked pile of books that had arrived while I was away, most of them things I'd bought from across the wide internet. (These make me happy. Books people send to me hoping for a blurb make me feel guilty, as the pile of stuff-people-would-like-me-to-blurb is taller than I am.) The book that made me happiest was a copy of Jules Feiffer's Explainers, published by Fantagraphics, which I actually bought rather than obtained by asking Fantagraphics for it...http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/explaining.html weakly entertaining- June 21, 2008 Home. Very very tired. The dog is glad to see me, but the house is otherwise empty, making me half-wish I'd taken the thousand dollars and no change fee to take tomorrow's plane instead, and spent more time with family over there (Maddy comes home in a few days).Thanks to all of you who wrote in about last night's post...This is just a quick one to say that you can see Entertainment Weekly's list of the 100 most important books since 1983 at...http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/06/weakly-entertaining.html |