January 6, 2009

The Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop at UC San Diego is now taking applications until March 1, 2009. The application form etc. is available here:

http://clarion.ucsd.edu/apply.html

This year's instructors are Holly Black, Larissa Lai, Robert Crais, Kim Stanley Robinson, Elizabeth Hand, and Paul Park.

I graduated from the '95 class when it was still held at Michigan State, and I learned a tremendous amount about writing and publishing in my 6 weeks there, and a met a bunch of really interesting, vibrant people. It was a heck of a lot better than any other six weeks I had in graduate school. And as much as I hate that the workshop left the Midwest, I must admit that trading raccoons and mosquitoes for the beach is probably a fair trade ;-)

Anyhow, if you're in a place in your life where you can take off for six weeks and go to California, and if you have tuition money (although they do give out a lot of scholarships), and if you'd like to become a professional science fiction or fantasy writer, Clarion's a good way to go.

Today I woke up on the couch with a lot of meat in my pants. The troubling thing about this, other than the obvious natural discomfort of having meat literally shoved down your pants, was that I did not know or remember how the meat came to be where it was (in my pants). Then I remember that due to recent shakiness and tremors I have been writing down (using a hand suffering from shakiness mind you) what I was doing before I forget what I was doing so I know what I was doing after I have already done it. That way there can be a better job of explaining done if what I have done is in any way reprehensible.

Now with the use of paragraph tags I will begin a second paragraph which will be about remembering what I have done that may have been in some way reprehensible. I apparently, and that should be in quotes, went to the supermarket and apparently was ripping open cellophane wrapped meat and shoving the bare and unencumbered by styrofoam plate underneath the meat meat into my pants. And this was not discovered by any employees working in the supermarket possibly due to fear of a black planet and other goings on in our nation's capital.

The meat stayed where it was unencumbered and in my pants for a long period of time in which the meat began to turn bad especially due to things of a scrotal contact nature. While I cannot explain how or why I did this reprehensible act I do have notes written down about it. These notes don't make a great deal of sense to me or any other sensible man but I wish to make a public apology to the parties injured or hurt by my actions and their families here on this website which is read by everybody.