Day: September 16, 2012

First, the video, which explains why roller derby girls are covering me in frosting on Neil Gaiman’s lawn, and the subsequent photodocumentation. Stick around for the time-lapse photography!

Second, the image, which illustrates everything.

Three: The poster offer!

Yes, indeed, you can get this awesome picture as a poster, via NeverWear.net. When you buy it, 100% of the profits go to two worthy causes: The SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, which helps out science fiction and fantasy writers in times of medical crisis, and City Kitties, a non-profit going to help out the stray cat population of West Philadelphia. Kittehs and Writers! You can’t go wrong!

For those of you wondering if Neil himself was involved with the production, if you click through to the poster order page, you’ll see a picture of Neil preparing to plaster the last bit of frosting onto my face, right over my mouth. There’s symbolism there, I’m sure.

For more on this madness, check out photographer Kyle Cassidy’s post about it, and Kitty’s Neverwear post as well.

And what what is it actually like, being covered in frosting?

Sticky.

And that’s all I am going to say about that.

Seriously, though, this was ridiculous fun, and the idea of making a pilgrimage to Neil’s place to be covered in frosting by roller derby girls was just too awesome to pass up. My life is strange, but it’s the best kind of strange, i.e., the kind that’s really quite a lot of fun.

Now I have think up what I will do when I reach 40,000 Twitter followers. Hmmmmm.

(And yes, please feel free to blog, tweet and otherwise blab about this to everyone you know. We’re trying to save kittens and writers here. Through the mystical power of frosting.)

Update, 10:36pm: Our first delightful fan art, from Cameragrrl, taking off on a popular internet meme:

I can’t wait to use these in my arguments on the Internet!

 

Which is to say I am fiddling with technology again and seeing how it’s working. Obviously, so far, so good. In case you’re wondering, the keyboard I’m pairing with the iPad is the Mac keyboard at my desk, because it’s bluetooth capable and I just wanted to see how it wouldwork. I went ahead and ordered and actual travel keyboard/case for the iPad (one of the Logitech ones, because it came highly rated and because I’ve generally had good experiences with Logitech stuff), but it won’t arrive for a little while. But this suggests to me I won’t have too many problems when it shows up.

It’s also making the point that we are indeed beginning to move past the PC age, or at the very least, that I am beginning to recognize that the PC age is getting past us. I’m not entirely sure I am ready to abandon the idea of a laptop, given how much I travel. But then again if with the addition of a physical keyboard I find that my new iPad can do everything I want a laptop to do (which is, generally speaking, to allow me to do writing and editing), there’s not the incentive to drop a whole bunch of cash on yet another laptop, is there. These options were not fully baked two years ago, but they might be doable now, and in another couple of years it probably won’t even be a question. We’ll see what the future brings.

In the meantime, here in the present the keyboard occasionally seems to lose the ability to type letters into the WordPress blog entry field, usually when I press on the iPad screen to move the cursor around. I have to save a draft to get the typing functionality back. Interesting, although not necessarily in a good way. I’ll have to try it with a couple of other writing programs and see how it does.

I’m pretty sure it’s a review of Old Man’s War. It looks like it could be amusing. I can’t tell if it’s ultimately positive or not, but on the other hand, who cares? I like that someone put in this much effort.