Weirdest. Car. Ever.

Behold the Pivo 2, a new concept vehicle from Nissan. I am agog.



Yes, it's too strange to be believed, but if that disembodied robot monkey head comes standard, I know half a dozen simian-obsessed Texas writers who'd... uh, go ape for it.

Now Playing:

Friday Night Videos

I wanted to post Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" today, but the only version I can find has embedding disabled. Oh well. Instead, we'll got with a more recent gem, "Digging in the Dirt" from his spectacularly good Us album. Peter Gabriel is simply magnificent, and I regret that I've never managed to see him in concert.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Del Amitri.

Now Playing:

Hurt

Back around 2003 or so, my torpid, bloated self topped 265 on the scales, and I made up my mind to do something about it. Physically, I was uncomfortable. My clothes didn't fit right and my shoes--shoes--started wearing out with disturbing rapidity. Diet alone wasn't cutting it, so I bit the bullet and started working out with the goal of getting down to 220. One year later I (briefly) hit 215. I felt great. Physically, shedding those 50 excess pounds made a tremendous difference.

Only then, of course, complacency set in. I stopped working out regularly. I stopped swearing off second servings and junk food snacks. Basically, I fell back into old habits because, once you get right down to it, I hate working out. I dislike the sweat, the elevated heart rate, the muscle burn. I have never, ever experienced a workout high. I like the results, sure, but everything else about it sucks to high heaven.

So this past month I tipped the scales at 246. Discounting the brief dip to 215, that meant I'd gained 26 pounds from my goal weight of 220 over a period of 3-4 years. Not a drastic ballooning, but a steady, disturbing creep.

So I've recommitted myself to sweaty physical workouts. And I hate them just as much now--if not moreso--than I did four years ago. After two weeks' worth of sweating through some (very) mild cardio stuff (no weight training as of yet) I've shed three pounds. Not much, but the weight's stable and trending downward. The bad thing is that I hurt. Muscles, joints... every cell in my body seems to be cursing me, arguing stridently for me to stop this madness. Today the burn is particularly bad (even though I didn't work out today) because the Bug decided to play around from 3-5 a.m., and it was my turn to try and convince him that sleep is much more desirable an activity in the wee hours. Now I've got the exhaustion jitters and brain fog working me over but good in addition to the normal physical agony.

Did I mention I hated working out?

I'm just sayin'.

Now Playing: The Kinks Give The People What They Want

Woe is me

Remember that project I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that had run into a brick wall? Well, since then, it's been roughed up, cast in irons and walled up behind stout masonry in a scene disturbingly reminiscent of that from "The Cask of Amontillado." Plus, I also got a harsh tongue scolding for something completely unrelated, not to mention thoroughly unexpected. And Lamar Smith called my home so crazy people could rant about feeding Mexicans to alligators. Yesterday was not a good day to be me.

Here's hoping that today brings some improvement.

Now Playing: Clandestine The Ale is Dear

If you oppose alligators, the terrorists win

I just got off the phone with Rep. Lamar Smith. Sort of.

So there I am doing the dishes, and the phone rings. A recorded voice informs me that I've been invited to participate in a live town hall teleconference with Smith, who (unfortunately) happens to be my representative in congress. You have the option of keying in to ask a question, and in general it strikes me as an interesting concept apart from the bizarre unexpected nature of it.

I'm toying with the idea of asking a question--when the audio kicks in and I hear what's being said. Hoo boy. What sounds like a middle-aged woman is ranting about the border, and although she never actually says "wetbacks" you just know it's a struggle for her not to. She's angry at congress, see. Angry that they haven't already built a wall along the border to keep "them" out. Not only does she want an gargantuan Great Wall of Texas built along the border with Mexico, she want the government to stock the Rio Grande with alligators so that "we won't be responsible for what happens to them."

The scary thing is, she was dead serious. And good old Lamar, he didn't say anything to dissuade her of such notions. Always on the lookout to lock up a vote, he is.

At that point I abandoned any plans to ask rational questions and quickly hung up. Them dishes ain't going to wash themselves, you know.

Now Playing: Dire Straits On the Night

HEROES: Lizard

After watching "Lizard," the second season two episode of Heroes, I'm really starting to believe that the production crew has learned from the missteps of season one and are firing on all cylinders. Of course, that assertion goes out the window if next week's installment stinks to high heaven and returns to the treading water mode we saw all too often last year. But for now they're getting it right.

The difference is that the narrative is moving forward. Last year, there was an unfortunate tendency to fill episodes with padding if they weren't one of the key waypoints in the overarching "blow up New York" plot. So there was a lot of unfocused character interaction and inaction. This time, though, they're pacing themselves much better this time around. There are several mysteries at work here, several distinct plot lines, but instead of saying "This is the mystery--how do we solve it," the story structure is essentially one of picking up enough clues to define the mystery. Granted, the deaths of and attacks on the older generation of metahumans can be viewed as an outright murder mystery, but the fact that survivors thus far know exactly what's going on and (presumably) who is responsible adds to the complexity, and hints that there's a lot more going on under the surfact. So much so, in fact, that learning who killed Mr. Sulu, and why, will only open a much larger can of worms that will take the second half of the season to resolve. Nice.

Good things about this episode include Cheerleader Claire cutting off her little toe and then watching a new one grow back. I kept waiting for the severed digit to start growing a new body to attach itself to--if Claire was split in two, say, by being chained to a log being run through a saw mill, would we get two copies of her? I was bugged by the fact that she snipped the little toe off using the tip of the scissors, since to get enough leverage to do the deed she's need to force the toe deeper into the scissor joint, but I'm just a stickler. Her Flyboy school mate is no less creepy this episode than he was last. Nothing good will come from his discovery of Claire's secret.

Maya and her brother are just getting creepier and creepier. Apparently they were infected with the Black Oil from the X-Files and are trying to reach America where they can contact Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Weird.

The telepathic confrontation between Parkman and Mrs. Petrelli was nicely handled.

The Hiro and Kensei plotline is seven different kinds of awesome. I love period pieces, especially when multiple super powers are involved.

They finally, FINALLY put together a cool fight using super powers. Peter Petrelli, despite being in Ireland, having amnesia and not fulling understanding the abilities he has, escapes being tied up and puts a serious hurting on a number of goons. What's more, he used telekinesis to knock one gun away, which means that he has internalized all of Sylar's stolen powers. That's cool. If Peter weren't such an inherent weenie, he'd be the baddest mofo on the planet.

I can't wait until next week.

Now Playing: The Cars Greatest Hits

The Makeover Men

I've just spent the last hour sending this release out to just about every media outlet I can think of. So now I share it with you:

"The Makeover Men," a dark and troubling near-future novelette by Jayme Lynn Blaschke, has been published by the online science fiction magazine HelixSF #6 in the Fall 2007 issue.

"The Makeover Men" can be read online at www.helixsf.com.

"The Makeover Men" takes place in mid-21st century Houston, a city of the future that is both alien and familiar. Radical cosmetic surgery is accomplished in almost cavalier fashion via genetic engineering while religious fanaticism lurks beneath society's superficial facade like a bomb waiting to explode.

"This is the most difficult story I've ever written. It's the closest I'll ever likely get to doing something in the James Tiptree, Jr., vein," Blaschke says. "It's a cautionary tale, in the mode of a lot of classic SF. It's brutal and graphic. I had to travel down some dark roads while I was writing it--places I wasn't entirely comfortable visiting--but as a writer, you have to be true to the story. 'The Makeover Men' is a wicked little story with a cold, black heart, but it's one I'm proud of."

HelixSF was founded in 2006 by noted science fiction authors William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans as a reader-supported venue specializing in stories too fierce, too eccentric, too politically incorrect or simply too weird for publication--the stories that just didn't fit in any of the standard niches.

Blaschke is a resident of New Braunfels and works at Texas State University-San Marcos. His short fiction has appeared in various anthologies as well as the long-running British science fiction magazine Interzone. He is also author of Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction & Fantasy Speak, a critically-praised collection of interviews with 17 editors, authors and comic creators, currently available from the University of Nebraska Press.

So what are you waiting for? Go read the story, and feel free to throw some coin my way if you're so inclined.

Now Playing: Howard Shore The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring