Lazy Linkage (and an announcement)

Here's some stuff gleaned from the blogroll today. I usually only do "Lazy Linkage"-type posts when I'm either busy or sick, both of which apply: this month is going to be very busy for me, and I'm nursing a really annoying cold right now. August is a stupid month to get a cold. December, January -- those are months for colds. But August? When it's sunny out and 78 degrees? That's just wrong on so many levels. And this one must be pretty obvious, since in the course of wandering about The Store in my Dayquil-enhanced stupor today, nearly every coworker I encountered took one look at me and said some variant of, "Geez, are you sick today?" But hey, I got a lot of sympathy. I like sympathy. (But, to put things in a bit of perspective, one of my favorite coworkers had her first day back at The Store today after a lengthy leave-of-absence for medical reasons. It was good to see her back stocking the dairy cases.)

:: Michael Lopez links a piece on the easy access to porn by Naomi Wolf. It's a pretty interesting article, and I agree with quite a bit of it. It bugs me to no end that erotic mysteriousness seems to be an unknown quantity these days. Also check out William Moon's follow-up. (William is Michael's co-blogger.)

:: Sticking with Mr. Lopez, check out his advice for would-be re-enactors of The Paper Chase. I confess that I never, not once, considered going to law school. (And this will probably sound really weird and/or stupid, but I find law libraries really creepy. I don't like it when all of the books on the shelves look the same.)

:: Anne Zook links a piece by Eric Alterman on how on Earth "liberal" became such a dirty word, along with offering her own thoughts along the way. I've wondered this myself a bit. These days, George McGovern is often cited as the ultimate political loser, despite the fact that he got beat by the biggest political crook in American history.

:: TBogg makes a music recommendation, for the new kd lang album. He's the second blogger in a week I've seen recommending that album, so I'll probably be picking it up. Like Tom, I love her voice but her songs themselves usually don't thrill me. I do think she got kind of screwed-over on the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, for which she recorded a very good song that was used on the end credits while a much lesser effort by Sheryl Crow was used for the opening titles.

:: Aaron posts for the first time in a month, to show off his new fence. Next up: the front porch, on which he plans to sit and throw cans at passing kids on bikes while he shouts homilies about "back in the day".

:: Wanna get published, but are tired of the constant pessimism in the whole enterprise? Read this. I hope this is portable from the mystery genre to fantasy and SF. I can't imagine why it wouldn't be. And besides, I don't really have a choice: it's the stories, and me. They jump, I jump. Just like Jack in Titanic. (via The Book Stops Here)

:: Now, the announcement. I alluded above, and in a post a few days ago, that The Wife and I are expecting the imminent arrival of Kid Number Two at some point in the next several weeks. Aside from that, there's enough other stuff going on in August that is going to be occupying my time: stuff like the annual Toy Festival in East Aurora, NY; the Erie County Fair; my company's summer picnic thing; and just general writing stuff. So I've decided to go on hiatus starting now, and I'll return once Kid Number Two has emerged from his/her cloning cylinder/gestation tube/birthing cocoon. Sudden, I know, but I was leaning toward a hiatus anyway, and with The Wife entering her maternity leave this week, the time seems right. (And besides, there's the added incentive to keep visiting: that's the only way my fine readers will know when the latest offspring of Our Alien Overlords is pluck'd from its maternal chamber.)

(I do, of course, reserve the right to post occasionally, if I so desire -- say, if George Lucas brings all of his incomplete footage for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith to my home, or if Peter Jackson asks me to look over his draft for The Hobbit, or if George W. Bush inadvertently endorses John Kerry.)

Here, by the way, is my favorite picture of The Wife and The Daughter. (The original Move Over Britney! women, one might say.) I took this when we were in our "Six months in Syracuse" phase, more than a year and a half ago (wow, that long!), but they haven't changed in my eyes, anyway.



So farewell, readers, and hopefully I'll be back sooner rather than later!