So how was my Saturday? I’m glad you asked.

1. The book fair was open to the public today, and it was completely insane; there were times when it was impossible to move forward because so many people were jamming the aisles. Really sort of amazing. Like Comic Con, only larger, and with more books. Tomorrow will apparently be even more insane since they allow sales of the books on the last day. Can’t wait.

2. My evening event went well; people seemed to have fun with the reading and the question and answer period went smoothly. I signed several books, met and chatted with some very nice fans, and then went to dinner with my German editor Sascha, Carolin my handler, and Miriam, who works with the Consulate. Good food and great conversation.

3. I am finding that my understanding of German is improving as I go along; instead of following 30% of what’s being said I figure I can understand about half, most of the time. Who knows, by the time I leave I may actually understand most people here. Of course, I still speak German like a drunk lemur. I don’t expect that will improve much. Alas.

And yes, still having a fantastic time. I really like Germany.

For those of you who just happen to be in Frankfurt, Germany this evening, a reminder that my reading is here at 6:30 tonight:

Kunstverein Frankfurt
Markt 44 (Room D)
60311 Frankfurt am Main

Please come. And bring every single person you know.

For those of you who are not going to be in Frankfurt, Germany this evening, well. I hardly know what to tell you.

About to set off to the book fair for the day, at which I will probably spend a reasonable amount of time loitering at the Heyne booth. If you’re at the fair, come by and say hello.

So I called my wife at nearly 10pm here in Germany and it was still only 4pm there. Wow, that’s weird. Maybe not as weird as when I was in Australia and I would call and it would be an entirely different day in Ohio. But still weird enough.

Notes on the day:

1. Despite sleeping a little on the plane, I pretty much passed out once I got to my hobbit-sized hotel room and slept until 2pm. Now it’s a bit past 10 and man I am so ready to collapse again. Apparently, Germany makes me tired.

2. While I was awake I met Carolin, my handler here in Germany, who will be accompanying me through the country so I don’t take a wrong turn and end up in Austria. Given my discombobulated nature at the moment, this is very important.

3. I met some of the folks at Heyne today, and they are lovely. It’s great to be published by these folks.

4. Holy God, the Frankfurt Book Fair is huge. As in, you could take all of BEA and it would fit in a corner level of huge. I walked an unspeakable amount.

5. Despite the immense immensity of the fair, I just happened to run into a friend of mine, Lawrence Schimel, as I walked into the International room. Coincidence? Or fate? Well, probably coincidence. But a nice one.

6. My big event of the day was a reception hosted by the American ambassador to Germany, Philip Murphy, who was nice enough to include me in his prepared remarks to the crowd. I also had a nice chat with his wife Tammy, and met some of the Consulate staff who brought me over here in the first place. Made me feel like a big shot, it did.

7. And then off to dinner with folks from my publisher; we went to a place serving traditional Frankfurt cuisine, and before you ask, no, I did not have a Frankenfurter. Really, now. I did have Apfelweinbratwurst, however, and it was fantastic.

8. And now I can feel the food coma coming on. Night, all, even those of you for whom it is still afternoon.

Quick updates:

1. Have arrived in Germany. Flights in uneventful; taxi ride to hotel slightly terrifying; hotel room has the exact dimensions of the “coffin single” dorm room I had in college. It was the only room available at 6am, when I got in. They said, “it’s a room with a small bed.” I said, “I am a small man.”

2. Yes, everyone, I knew that the Velvet Wesley would be shown in The Big Bang Theory last night; they had contacted me about it ahead of time. Surprise! I hope you enjoyed its appearance.

3. My German wifi hotspot works but is hella slow. As hinted before, do not expect long updates.

4. Me sleep now.

Answer: Currently loitering in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. Which is not actually a bad airport, when you have a long wait between connections, as I have today. As you can see the gate is positively packed. But then they’re not boarding the plane for another 90 minutes; I suspect it will fill up before then. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and have a semi-deserted flight to Germany, in which case I will get to stretch out. I’m hoping for the latter.

How’s your day going?

As most of you know by now, I’m off to Germany tomorrow to do my book tour (here are the cities and dates), and I’ll be there through the 23rd (and probably sleeping through most of the 24th). Here’s what you need to know about the next several days.

1. The cute little object above is a German mobile wifi hotspot that I have rented for the duration of my trip, so the good news is that (schedule permitting) I should be able to update here from time to time whilst I am on the road. I suspect I will be doing most of my updating whilst on trains, because I will be on trains a lot, and what else is there to do on a train besides sit.

That said, don’t expect long updates over the next several days, and I may not update every day. Hey, I’ll be busy being a cultural ambassador for my country. That takes time out of the schedule. As I have the hotspot, I should also be able to update Twitter now and again as well; indeed, I suspect that will be my primary mode of communication to all y’all when I am in Europe.

In short: I still plan to be mostly gone until the 24th or so.

(Also, before you ask, yes, I am aware that electrical sockets and voltage are different over there — I have already bought the requisite cords and adapters and made sure my computer’s power brick is capable of handling twice the volts. I think ahead, I do!)

2. While I’m away, I’ve asked my friend Kate Baker (who some of you may recall as the site manager suring my six-week hiatus last year) to watch over the site and have handed over the Mallet of Loving Correction to her, with the admonition to mallet when in doubt. So please be polite to her and each other while I are away, because if you’re not, wham, baby. Kate may also post here, depending on her own inclinations and interests.

3. No Big Ideas while I am away, but you’ll note I did three in a row this week, and I have another three scheduled for when I return, so you’ll be all caught up.

4. While I am traveling I will not be answering anything but what I consider absolutely critical e-mails, so unless you’re on fire, if you have something to e-mail me about, it should wait until October 24. And if you are on fire, why are you e-mailing me? Dude, you’re on fire. Put yourself out.

To the surprise of almost exactly no one around here, the name “Cthulhu” took first place in our “Name the Bunny” poll, with “Lord Snuggleston,” coming in a reasonably close second. Athena liked both names, so we’re combining them to give our rabbit the rather grand name of “Cthulhu, Lord Snuggleston.” Because if ever there was a noble ruler of Cuddlyshire, it would be the squid-faced lord of insanity, wouldn’t it. So, meet Cthulhu, Lord Snuggleston. I imagine for short we’ll call it “Hey, bunny.”

And for those of you no doubt slightly alarmed by the picture above, a somewhat more adorable picture for you:

There, that makes it all better, doesn’t it.

Update: 3:03pm: Please to find Cthulhu, Lord Snuggleston’s first fan art, from Dave Branson:

Adorably terrifying? Or terrifyingly adorable?

This week at FilmCritic.com I go over some things that science fiction film has ruined for me, and, yes, this includes Antarctica, the setting for both the 1982 and 2011 versions of The Thing. The penguins can keep the whole continent, as far as I’m concerned. As always, if you have some choice comment to add, add it there, where the bosses can see you doing it, thus making me look good.

I’ve been a fan of John Wesley Harding (aka author Wesley Stace) since he was nothing but a snide punk covering Madonna and Depeche Mode songs among his own acerbic tunes 20 years ago, so it’s not terribly surprising that I was interesting in getting The Sound of His Own Voice, his latest, when it came out today. Here’s how I did it: I went to Amazon, bought the MP3 version, and then as soon as I did, I popped up Spotify and started listening to it there.

Why didn’t I bother to download it?

1. Because Amazon will happily store it the cloud for me, where I can download it whenever I feel like getting around to it;

2. Because Spotify (or Rhapsody, to which I also subscribe) lets me play it even quicker than downloading it would, and these days there’s almost nowhere I’m going to be where I can’t stream it, either through wifi or my phone’s unlimited data plan — and if I am going somewhere these things aren’t possible, I’ll probably know about it ahead of time and can prepare accordingly.

3. Also, and I think probably most importantly from a philosophical point of view, the money I paid for the album at this point is not for a physical object or sole possession of electronic files but as an affirmative act to Harding/Stace to say “Hey, thanks for work.” I’ll note that this sort of thing doesn’t work for all forms of consumable media, but for music in 2011? Shit, man. It’s hard not to find everything you could ever possibly want to listen to out there in the aether. Harding’s entire discography pulls up on Spotify in less than a second; i.e., less time than it would take for me to locate the actual files on my computer. Music’s ubiquitous to the point that it’s simply not worth the bother to download and clutter up my hard drive. So, in this case: Money for the effort, not for the object.

(Which is not to say I won’t pay for physical objects associated with musicians; I just punted $100 to Jonathan Coulton for one of his Artificial Heart bundles, for which I understand I get t-shirts, a CD, and also, perhaps, a pony (I’m a little unclear on the details). But the music? Heck, JoCo streams it off his own site.)

And you may say: But what if Amazon goes out of business/stops keeping things in the cloud for you/is hit by a meteor that vaporizes the whole of western Washington state? In the former cases, I’ll have time to download; in the latter case, we’ve got bigger problems, now, don’t we. Today, the cloud works. I’ll keep this album there for now. The money, on the other hand, goes to the artist. Hope he enjoys the cup of coffee I paid for.

(Also: the album in question? Pretty darn good. And if you’re a bundle sort of person, check these out.)

Handcrafted for your delight. Yes, ice fairies launched themselves into the sky to make them. You can see their trails crisscrossing below the sun! What? You don’t think those are ice fairy tracks? Well, believe what you want, atheist.

So long, sun. It was good to see you. Don’t be a stranger, you hear?

The Scalzi Family Rabbit is looking nonplussed at being at the house for several days and yet still not having a name. Fear not, unnamed lagomorph! We’re nearly there.

Here’s the deal: a few hundred of you suggested names to Athena for this here rabbit. What she’s done is pick a list of finalists, and tossing the list back to you to vote for in a poll. Whichever name has the most votes by, oh, let’s say, 11:59:59 pm Eastern, Tuesday, October 11, will be the rabbit’s official new name.

Clearly, this is very serious business — perhaps the most seriousest poll I’ve ever had here.

So, here’s the poll:

Once again, Athena thanks you for your cooperation.

A tweet from the estimable Neil Gaiman informs me that the online version of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is now up as “beta text” — i.e., still a work in progress. Work in progress though it may be, it’s still pretty impressive, with 3.2 million words of information on science fiction authors, notables, themes and culture. It’s a pretty impressive way to lose an entire day or three.

If that’s not enough to keep you busy, check out its sister site, SF Gateway. Yes, now you have lost all productivity for the week. You are welcome.

Today marks the third anniversary of Whatever’s association with WordPress.com, via its VIP hosting service, and the best compliment I can think to give WordPress.com in this regard is that it’s been three years since I’ve had to think about whether my blog is up and running. It is, and WordPress.com just works. For someone whose personal level of competence in handling blog software is only slightly above “caffeinated lemur with a hammer,” this is a fine thing indeed.

Aside from placing a modest “Powered by WordPress VIP” badge on my site (you’ll see it in the site’s footer), the folks at WordPress have never asked me to bang the drum for them, but such is my positive experience with them to this point that I am happy to do it annually and without prompting. So: If you’re looking for hosting for your blog, consider WordPress.com; I suspect you’ll be happy with them. I am. If you are a business with a need for a serious Web presence backed by a lot of competent tech folks, consider WordPress VIP; I suspect you’ll find they work as well for you as they do for me.

And there we are!

Over at Forbes, blogger Susannah Breslin wishes to suggest that crazy people make better bloggers, and likewise volunteers herself as an example of a crazy person who is one of those better bloggers. Her argument, basically, is that crazy people are willing to be unfiltered, honest and entertaining, which makes them more interesting than sane people.

I’m not particularly persuaded by her argument. I am neither here nor there with her opinion that she is crazy; she may be, and I have no reason to doubt her self-assessment. But I don’t buy the argument that being crazy means that you are inherently more interesting as a blogger than the average neurotypical human being. I know a fair number of people with diagnosed mental disorders of one sort or another; as a class, they are no more or less unfiltered, honest or entertaining than anyone else. Conversely, I know a fair number of people who pass for “sane” who are perfectly happy to be — depending on one’s perspective — either the guy who’s just saying what everyone’s thinking, or the guy who delights in dropping the turd in the punchbowl. Likewise, speaking as someone who’s done his share of ridiculous things simply because he felt like it, being diagnostically mentally disordered is not a prerequisite for such behavior.

It’s possibly more accurate to say that Ms. Breslin is as crazy as she says she is and she’s also gleefully unfiltered. Good for her; I hope both bring her joy. But as far as her thesis is concerned, the only thing I think she’s 100% correct about is that no one wants to read your blog if you’re boring. You don’t have to be crazy not to be boring. You just have to be not boring.

Two different kinds of bruschetta, one the traditional sort with tomatoes, the second with wild mushrooms. Here, the chef shows off her plating skills. Not too bad. The food was mighty tasty as well. Inasmuch as I can scorch boiling water, Athena’s aptitude with food no doubt comes down from her mother’s side. This works for me.

Athena’s having a hard time coming up with a name for the bunny, so I asked her if she’d like to crowd source it to you folks, and she said, yes, thank you, that would be lovely.

So: Any ideas on a name for this bunny? Note that “Rorschach” has already been rejected.

Athena thanks you in advance for your efforts on her behalf.