You break it, you bought it.
An article on the Fashion page on Tuesday about the British designer Alexander McQueen misstated a phrase from his remarks on the common professional desire to create a signature product. He said, “And you’ve just got to keep on striving until one day you’re waking up, having your marmalade on toast, doodling on a cigarette package—and bingo, Bob’s your uncle”—not “you bought an uncle.” (The slang expression means, roughly, “You’ve got it made.”)
—The New York Times correction page, via The Minor Fall, the Major Lift.
Oh, hell, while we’re on about uncles: Chris Bertram linked a wickedly funny piss-take on evolutionary psychology over at Crooked Timber.
[H]ere’s Pinker on why we like fiction: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?” Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance.
(Of course, Pinker’s original example has a po-faced absurdity all its own: just ask these gentlemen.)
You best believe I mean love l-u-v.
If same-sex marriage is allowed, it is going to be nearly impossible to prohibit the sanctioning of any other kind of human “relationship”—from close relatives of different sexes who wish to marry (that has been outlawed because of biological and incest considerations) and polygamists to adult-child “marriage.”
Oh, Cal. Cal Thomas. You have no idea. Once our godless footsoldiers succeed in destroying heterosexual marriage, why, the sky’s the limit. Here’s a little of what I, myself, will marry on that happy, blessed day:
- “Flim,” by Aphex Twin (or, “Flying North,” by Thomas Dolby);
- the sensation of presque vu;
- Kahimi Currie;
- Queen Elizabeth (as portrayed by Miranda Richardson);
- just about anyone else, so long as they’re drawn by Paul Pope;
- the scene at the end of Rushmore at the cast party for Max’s latest play, when he signals to the DJ and everybody starts dancing in slow motion to that song they later tried to fuck up in a car commercial but just barely managed not to;
- and, apparently, Orson Scott Card.
(Advantage Johnzo. Pass it on.)
Gimme that sky back, you gao yang zhong de gu yang!
“Houston, Serenity is go. Repeat, Serenity is go.” (I found the motherless goat thanks to this site, a “pinyinary” of the various Chinese curses scattered throughout the original television show.)
Let no one put asunder.
At about ten of nine, West Coast time, this Hampton Roads news site lists Multnomah County as being in Washington.
Multnomah County is actually located in the state of Oregon.
But I’m linking to it anyway, since it gacked the photo of Tai Jungcker and Kathy Belge from KGW.com (who want you to fill out a friggin’ form before they’ll let you read the news).
AP photo of Tai Jungcker and Kathy Belge, posing with their marriage certificate after a news conference for Basic Rights Oregon.
Tai Jungcker and Kathy Belge got a marriage certificate today.
They’re going to get married tomorrow, right here in Multnomah County.
God, it feels good to be on the right side of this wall.
update— The invaluable Jeff “Emma” Alworth provides some sobering but vital context.
further update— The illimitable Zoe Trope provides some giddy and equally vital photographs.
Sexing the pronoun.
A friend’s been going on about a recent inamorate: “Zie sent me a mix CD,” he’ll say, or “I can’t wait to see zir.” And on the one hand, I’m looking on with the bemusement of the comfortably entwined: gosh, aren’t they cute at that stage? On the other, my teeth are slightly on edge. Kids these days, with their hopped-up language, haring off after the latest fad without the least concern for tradition. Zie? Zir?
What the hell is wrong with hi and hir, huh?
At least, those are the gender neutral pronouns I recall as having (relatively) broad circulation, back in the day. But: as I teased my way back toward the day in question, trying to pin down the where and the when of how I’d first come across them, I was finding them decidedly slippery. I’d used them, of course, in a fanthing from 1987 or so—the androgyne sidekick of the steely protagonist of some third-generation xerox of Neuromancer: “Hi yanked hir ceramic throwing knife from the plastic telephone case and climbed out the window, lowering hirself into the neon-stained night,” that sort of thing. But I hadn’t invented them: who had? Who’d been using them? (I’d been reading a lot of Orbit , sure, but can we get more specific?) Had they just been in the air? Why had they gone away? Where had this zie and zir come from, and when, and was I out getting a beer or something while it happened?
And so we Google.
Our first stop is the vaguely dismissive Wikipedia entry, which doesn’t list my remembered set (hi, hir, hirs, hirself), but does inform us of two warring pronoun factions: sie, hir, hirs, hirself, and zie, zir, zirs, zirself, which was coined to address the possible confusion some saw in sie/hir’s overly femme tilt. But Wikipedia is criminally light on etymology and morally deficient when it comes to sourcing. “Some science fiction writers,” it says, helpfully hyperlinking science fiction, “have been known to use the sie and hir pronouns for fictional hermaphrodite characters.” Which authors, though? And what other pronouns? (Like hi, instead of sie?) —Trust me, in a herd of cats like “science fiction writers,” there’s no consensus. Especially for something so small as a pronoun.
(Wikipedia does list the first recorded usage of hir on Usenet, back in 1981—but the nominative form of this variant seems to be heesh.)
From there we move on to Dennis Baron’s “The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word that Failed.” We have, it seems, abandoned the vagueness about our dismissal. —Baron’s list gives us a glimpse of how far back the quest for a gender-neutral English pronoun has stretched; how many have been tried; how none have caught on. He cites science fiction—we learn that LeGuin’s 1985 screenplay for Left Hand of Darkness used a, un, a’s (the novel, written in 1969, used then-generic he, his, him); we’re told that Klingon has the gender neutral ghach, and that Vulcan has no common gender pronouns—but that’s just ice skating over deep water, there. He does note the sie/hir faction (listed here as se/hir) is common on alt.sex.bondage in 1992.
(Baron also gives me at least a word that would probably have been useful all along: epicene. But: take a look at its dictionary definition, and you’ll start to get some idea of the problems we face when tackling something like gender and neutrality and pronouns. How can a thing which has characteristics of both the male and female also be sexless? How can it as well be effeminate and unmanly? —Baron also lets us know hi was indeed in use: in 1884, but as part of hi, hes, hem.)
From there we move on to the motherlode: the admirably monomaniacal Gender-Neutral Pronoun FAQ. The history page starts with William H. Marshall’s observation of the English epicene pronoun ou in 1789 and hares off into an impressively extensive listing. But again: light on the science fiction authors (then, why look to the words science fiction authors use? We want to know what real people say when they really talk about these things), and hi is still only noted as part of that 1884 set. I’m no closer to figuring out where my “broadly circulated” set came from, and when.
(It occurred as I was typing this up that maybe I’d been thinking of Medea: Harlan’s World; it’s about the right time, and the fuxes have a sexless if not entirely gender-neutral life-stage. But a quick browse through the usual suspects turns up no hits, and there’s no bloomin’ index. —Then again, maybe it was Alan Dean Foster?)
So why are all these attempts to give our language something it rather desperately needs doomed? (Are they doomed?) Well, it’s an attempt to consciously hack the way people speak and think, and the hack has a more-than-vaguely hectoring air about it: the way you normally think and speak is wrong, it says; this is the right way. That the champions of epicene neologisms do have a point exacerbates the effect. And we all know how popular Puritans are at parties. Call it the problem of utopia; like vegetarianism and dress reform and suffrage and free love and anti-vivisectionism and a fascination with esoterica and Asian religions, epicene pronouns bubble up every now and then, here and there, and when they recede yet again, well, maybe the high-water mark is a little higher than it was last time.
Progress.
Anyway: epicene pronouns aren’t enough. In a system of two genders, you need five sets of pronouns to cover all the bases properly demanded by an egalitarian politesse:
- male;
- female;
- androgynous, or epicene;
- sexless;
- assuming no gender at all, or non-specific.
The epicene pronouns, after all, still privilege gender (and sex): the person in question is assumed to partake of both. (This is how, by the way, epicene can at once mean “partaking of both sexes” and “effeminate, unmanly”: masculinity, after all, is a pure state of grace, from which one can only fall.) It would be best to have as well a pronoun set that one uses when it would be if not inappropriate then unnecessary to refer to a person’s sex (or gender) in the capacity in which one is addressing them: presidents and police officers, reporters and handyfolk, letter carriers and committee chairs. But it would be rude to say it: to deny their gender and imply they had no sex. Best to assume nothing.
(That’s the meaning of peh, the Spouse’s contribution to the field. —A modulation of penn, coined by Chas for use by his aggressively egalitarian Siblinghood of Wreckers and Freebooters, in our off-again on-again joint fantasy world. Saying “penn” in the game to refer to a hermaphroditic character got to be second nature rather quickly; unlike a lot of the aforementioned attempts at epicenery, it’s put together with an ear towards speaking: based on one rather than he/she, it runs penn, penn, penn’s, pennself.)
But if an epicene can’t make it, what hope has a true non-specific?
And anyway, we’re no closer to who planted hi and hir in my brain. Not that it’s all that pressing an issue: hi and hir might solve the bias problem that the overly effeminate sie and hir has, and it isn’t nearly so aggressively ungainly as zie and zir (the words, not the person): but say “hi” out loud, in the sort of context where one uses pronouns, and it’s all too quickly confused with “I.”
I think I like Delany’s game with pronouns best. In Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand—after an opening set on a grimly “normal” world (that is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful pæans ever to the sheer power and beauty and necessity of reading) he rolls us into Marq Dyeth’s first-person narration, where she, her, hers, herself is the pronoun set of choice for addressing everyone you meet—except someone you desire. —Then it’s he, him, his, himself.
(And anyway, there’s always they. Are you not legion? Do you not contain multitudes?)
Peletaa kuullaah da-Qraabay Kawkbey.
To enhance your experience of The Passion of the Christ phenomenon, the Guardian has prepared a compilation of useful Aramaic phrases.
Auget largiendo.
Scott McCloud, cartoonist.
APE, 2004; we all went to Bucca di Beppo’s on Saturday night and sat at the Pope’s Table.
Further photos forthcoming. (Email me with any name errors or corrections, would yez?)
Canadian television.
Yes, DeGrassi Junior High, and all those American shows that shoot Toronto for Manhattan and Vancouver for Jersey, but you’ve got to give it up for a sitcom that scores both David Frum and Noam Chomsky as guest stars.
The mind, reeling.
The president’s trying to enshrine the first discriminatory constitutional amendment as a bloody-shirt tactic to drum up more votes. His supporters are smearing war heroes while puffing up their own and blatantly lying about the record of his most likely opponent. We are finally hearing the truth about what the administration knew going into Iraq, and how little it had to do with what was said or what we did; the pay for soldiers on the front lines has been cut, the promised support for first responders never materialized, and callous privatization is hiding the true cost of this disastrous blunder. The president’s budget is a transparent joke, larded with boobytraps set to expire after his increasingly theoretical second term; every federal source of once-credible objective data and analysis has been poisoned by his political goals. Even science and the public health is subject to the political whims of the Mayberry Machiavellis. And if they are successful in openly stonewalling the investigation of the most devastating terrorist attack ever on American soil, we can at least rest assured that their obscene attempts to capitalize on the tragedy this coming September will not go as smoothly as expected.
Also, Kenny-boy still walks free.
(Aw, shit. I almost managed that with a straight face. I’m sorry. Lemme try it again—)
Further, not-so-meaningless internet-related activities.
Billmon has uncovered the most glorious hack. It seems georgewbush.com has a really keen tool: enter your ZIP code, and it’ll bring up a list of your local papers. Type in the letter you wish to send to the editor(s), check off the papers in question, press the “send” button, and presto! You’ve siphoned off a tiny chip of his 200-million–dollar war chest and used it for truth, justice, and the American way. (If you’re at a loss, Billmon suggests you take the HRC or Lambda Defense Fund letters as boilerplate.)
What are you waiting for? Go” alt=”” /> Go!
The devil’s ice skates.
Seriously: Andrew Sullivan’s dish today is well worth your browsing time. No one thing: just email after email, pouring over the transom—
I am (or, I never thought I’d say it, was?) a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who (much like you) has spent the last two years proselytizing my liberal friends for GW. I am also a woman who has been in a committed same-sex relationship for 25 years. I feel like I was body-slammed today. What a quandary: I don’t know for sure that the Dems will be worse in the war on terror, but I do now know for sure the Republicans will be worse in protecting my equal rights. This is just a depressing day.
And this—
We’ve witnessed a shift in Republican politics. The Republican establishment used to pay lip service to religious conservative interests while openly courting independent voters with moderate policies because it knew it could get the religious conservative vote regardless (who were they going to vote for, Clinton!?). But now, it seems Bush is paying lip service to independent interests while openly promoting religious conservative policy. Who are we going to vote for, Kerry?
Well, yes.
But also—
President Bush didn’t “declare war” on the civil rights of homosexuals; left-wing activist judges, mayors, city bureaucrats and the gay movement have declared war on the rule of law and the institution of marriage. President Bush has merely responded to what others have started. The battle is now joined and I believe that the overwhelming majority of the country will be in the President’s army, as you’ll soon find out.
(Confidential to that last: you’re probably thinking of Arnold’s promise of blood in the streets if the marriages aren’t terminated right this minute, but you might want to re-think that whole “army” motif—considering the current C-in-C’s track record in that particular regard.)
Meaningless internet-poll–related activities.
Oh, go kick some homophobic wingnut ass, would you?
Andew Sullivan also has some interesting numbers for the currently faint of heart. (This is what it’s come to: I now stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Andew Sullivan. The mind reels.)
And der Gropenfuhrer’s veiled threats of riots and blood in the streets aside, look at it this way: whoever supports such an amendment—whether it would nuke all civil unions and partnership benefits currently negotiated piecemeal in states and municipalities across the country, like Musgrave’s grossly misrepresented proposal, or whether it scales back to merely mandate groin checks before the issuance of first-class marriage licenses—now has to walk up to very specific people and say, “You aren’t married anymore. I’m destroying your family.” This is much, much harder to do; then, the abstract’s always easier than the concrete.
Also, via Atrios: the Fidelity Pledge.
Mars tanked; this will tank. (Remember Mars? We were gonna go to Mars. In a rocketship. Zoom!) —There might be a brief plateau in the plunging polls, but there won’t be a bounce; that’s all this is for, after all: a toehold, a chance to catch a breath on the way down. A bit of red meat for the slavering hordes, but get real: who the hell else are the slavering hordes gonna vote for? (Run, Roy, run!) It might pass the House—the perennial flag-burning amendment always does—but it won’t pass the Senate, not in its current form: and if that famous second sentence is stripped out or rewritten to allow faggots and dykes the rights to marriage in all but name, well, you won’t end up making anyone at all happy with that, now, will you? And if it or something like it does pass, we merely have to hold the line in thirteen states for seven years to keep it out of the constitution. Or less—I’d lay money that if the Senate did pass this, it’d be with a hellishly tight ratification deadline. If the people want it, they want it now, right? (Otherwise, they’ll just keep getting married in Massachusetts and San Francisco while solons natter…)
The rat’s cornered. The scales are finally falling from too many purblind eyes; whole divisions of his reserves are packing up and melting away by dark of night. His hardliners have pushed him into a rash and ill-advised kulturkrieg, but we can contain him. We haven’t won yet, but we will.
Today’s half-assed declaration was an act of rank desperation, and everybody can smell it.
Cookies (and bourbon).
So we’ve got boxes of Samoas and Thin Mints and even a box of Tagalongs in the freezer, and there’s an open box of Lemon Coolers on the table, and much as a friend might haul a carton of milk out of the fridge, sniff it, and make that face and then hold it out to you saying, “God, this is foul, you gotta smell it,” Patrick Nielsen Hayden points out Girl Scout cookie time again.
So pick up a box or three and spread the word. The Girl Scouts will doubtless weather this storm the way they have weathered storms going back to the ’50s and beyond, but they weather them largely because people like you and me support them by, among other things, buying cookies. And hey: you get cookies! Those Lemon Coolers, for instance? They’re pretty good to nibble on as you’re savoring an I-just-flew-back-from-San-Francisco-and-boy-was-that-a-rough-landing drink.
I’m just sayin.’
Political action.
When Jenn and I got married, we had to go to the county to file for a marriage certificate, so I figured sending an email to Portland’s mayor, Vera Katz, might not be the most direct route toward seeing that Portland joined San Francisco and New Mexico and maybe soon Chicago on the right side of history. But Vera must be hearing from a lot of people on this subject these days; not an hour later, I got back a form email—
Thank you for sharing with me your thoughts about same-sex marriage and your recommendation that such benefits be extended to citizens of Portland. Naturally, the recent action by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has raised questions about whether or not I have the authority to grant marriage licenses.
In both Oregon and California, the county serves as the instrument of the state for recording marriage licenses. However, Portland and Multnomah County are two separate governmental entities. This contrasts with the City of San Francisco and San Francisco County, which are unified. There, the Mayor shares an administrative role with the County Board of Supervisors. Therefore, Mayor Newsom had the authority to ask staff in the Office of the County Clerk, which is located in City Hall, to issue marriage licenses to interested couples. While I share your conviction for full civil rights for all citizens, I have no such authority over county functions.
She goes on to outline her role in working with the county to set up our domestic partnership registry. “The only role the City has ever played has been to refer individuals seeking license information to the County,” she says, or rather her email says, or rather the email composed by her assistant says. “However, at the appropriate time I will make known my sentiments about the right to marry.” And she closes with a plug for Basic Rights Oregon.
Not too shabby, one supposes, for an elected official. It might have been nice, though, if she’d gone on to point out who, exactly, one should contact in the Multnomah County government to pass along one’s thoughts on the matter. So here’s the contact page for Diane Linn, current chair of Multnomah County.
(So we’re here in San Francisco for APE, and in a little room in Patrick Farley’s house in North Berkeley I can plug a yellow ethernet cable into the iBook I brought from home and then read about a quick action taken by an old friend up in Olympia who was inspired by what’s happening just across the Bay here, and without getting up from my seat I can engage in a little back-home political activism with a quick Google and some email. Yes, it’s old hat, and yes, we’ve heard it all before, but still: this brave new world has its terribly cool moments.
(Though it would’ve been cooler if my iBook were wired for wireless, I know. Sigh. Always room for improvement.)
And then, as I’m making my last-minute live final edits, this—
The Sandoval County clerk’s office granted licenses to 26 same-sex couples before New Mexico attorney general Patricia Madrid issued a late afternoon opinion saying the licenses were “invalid under state law.”
The clerk’s office stopped issuing licenses and told newly wed couples their licenses were invalid. A crowd outside the office reacted with boos and shouts as a deputy clerk read the attorney general’s legal advice.
—via Alas
Especially noteworthy is this passage from the AP article:
“The governor has always been a champion for human rights. He supports equal rights and opposes all forms of discrimination. However, he is opposed to same-sex marriage,” said Marsha Catron.
Breathtaking, ennit?
Bringing it on.
This made me weepy. (But in a good way.)
This, though? This made me cheer.
(While I’m at it, Barry makes a good point about post-noting the fourteenth amendment.)
Send flowers. (Did you know you could send flowers? I’m getting weepy again.)
update— More cheering!
Mars
or, Mappa Mundi (the vague direction thereof).
- There are striking differences between “Canal” Martians and “High” Martians. Putting it bluntly (which, you should remember, almost always is misleading), Canal Martians are much more like Earthlings than High Martians, who are rather, well, not. Some might call them two different species; it remains to be seen how true this is. There is some intermarriage, but it’s almost entirely of a ceremonial nature, and almost never results in offspring; when it does, said offspring are always venerated as near gods or hated and despised as demons incarnate. Or so the stories go, anyway. There aren’t all that many around these days for anyone to go and do some objective verification. Perhaps because intermarriage is almost unknown, these days. Population pressures have fallen off to the point that they just aren’t as necessary as they used to be, to secure alliances and formalize territorial claims. Perhaps.
- Then again, that could just be horseshit (or the nearest Martian equivalent), and those ghettoes of pie-bald untouchables by the abandoned canal sump are the result of what happens when High Martians rape and pillage a Canal Martian caravan or suburb or bazaar and then the kids are turned loose to fend for themselves. Who knows?
- Of course, it isn’t “Mars.” Or “Martian.” Or “Ares.” Depending on who you ask, it’s Melender, or Gheltok, or Lipirh, or Laskar. The first two are terribly old, and though they pop up all over the planet, one can trace them to High Martian languages if one is patient enough. “Lipirh” and “Laskar” are more recent coinages (as old as Babylon, say); found more commonly among the Canal Martians, especially where tensions between the new school monotheists and the old school pantheists are high. (Lipirh being the Widowed Mother, name of choice among the pantheists; Laskar, the Blood of God, and we know who likes to go for that kind of crap.) But most Canal Martians—to whom actively asserting a religion is either intellectually gauche or not really something they think about, from day to day—just call the planet Melender, or some derivation of same, more often than not; it’s the closest equivalent of “Earth” here on, well, Earth. (Erde. Myr. Terra. Etc.)
- Which begs the question: what do they call Earth?
- High Martians—those I’ve bothered to think about—speak a language rather remarkably like Cornish, or so a linguist might well note. Thus, I will call them by their “proper” name: the Gaurgathi. There are, of course, as many names for Gaurgathi as there are languages among them, and as many nasty little nicknames as there are nasty little imaginations to dream them up. (Koska and Plati leap to mind, for instance.) Similarly, the Canal Martians—at least that branch whose locus happens to be in and around the religious dispute alluded to earlier—speak a language which, remarkably enough, would seem to partake of Carolinian and a smattering of Indonesian; they are referred to (as a race, in these parts) as Gehelender, or Choltoc, or Opais, or Liannan. None of which came from either of the actual languages which I’ve pillaged. So sue me.
- Most Liannan (to pick one; we’re talking about the Canal Martians, here) are sallow: pale yellows, oranges, ochres and reds abound in skin tones. Eyes are typically gold, hazel, yellow; the occasional dark hazel, green, or exceptionally rare brown are named “mud-eyes” and are generally considered to be terribly lucky. Pupils are slit, like a cat’s. Most have a faint down on their skins, and what hair they have tends to grow close and tightly matted, like thick curly hair or short fur. (There’s a qualitative difference between hair and fur, or so I’m told. Damned if I know what it is.) Gaurgathi have low brows (criminal intelligences) and high-set ears and noses that tend towards the big flat squashed variety. They tend to be much more hirsute and actually grow long manes and facial hair (males and females). They tend to be slim (most inhabitants of Melender are ectomorphic) but with enormous, bellows-like chests to better breathe the thin, thin air.
- There are also some “blue” Melender. Mostly among the Gaurgathi, though they occasionally pop up among the Liannan—mostly far, far away. (From where we stand here and now, by this as yet unnamed canal, near this brewing religious conflict.) Their skin is a deep indigo black, the color of the sky at zenith; they are known as Bhel, Dulas, Sienni, Bwong’iit, and they tend to keep to themselves.
Elysium and the surrounding environs.
The inhabitants of the city-state of Ammwel follow a bizarre cult-like set of strictures: the Ocqotong. They must keep detailed journals of their daily transactions, and diaries of their innermost thoughts; these writings are gathered together, encoded and read through some sort of double-blind system (so that no one currently living can be identified with their writings—well, not easily), annotated, collated, cross-referenced, and shelved among the collective memory of the entire city for the past couple of millennia in the great Perpus Takaan, a magnificent example of Later Hy’attit design. These are used to examine recurring patterns in history and to correlate and attempt to identify reincarnations of previous Ammweli; once someone dies, their writings are released to whatever priestly hierarchy runs the Takaan (the Ppappalepal, perhaps, who are dour, and wear silly codpieces), and an attempt is made to fix their past identity, their place in yon Great Scheme of Things. (Since ancestor worship is a big deal, having a relative who just died turn out to have been the reincarnation of someone important from eleven hundred years ago—based on the similar style with which they composed their grocery lists—well. This can be quite prestigious, if not lucrative.)
The Hellas Basin.
The Ampaiya League— Comprising the city-states of Tokkotoomwo Leeimw, Out, Batta, Diiyo, Paanak, Hagun Magur, Schuul Moghur, Leehoralowah and Leehor Mwouguug, the Ampaiya League is one of the richest and most cosmopolitan on Mars, vying with the Schoorhugullang in industry and agricultural output. Its network of canals is also arguably the best maintained, counting among its number the Offriina, the Liibw, the Uumhaidasch, the Werefat and Ayuufat, the Ffranogh and Afittikka, and the mighty Talimaat corridor. Ampaiya is a major source of liftwood, and, through trading along the Werefat and Ayuufat canals, is one of the only outlets for the narcotic attigha, grown in the cool, dry foothills of the Kaahtch. Though Lisounguunguuppwu is these days considered more a member of the Schooyeelagh, thanks to the Duul Mennesch caravan trade, close ties are nonetheless maintained with Ampaiya, and the water pumped from the Ppilwaaihet along the Lisounloomw canal is another important factor in Ampaiya’s vitality.
The planet Mars, with major canal systems indicated.
APE.
If you’re looking for me over the weekend, you’ll need to look in San Francisco. The Spouse and I will be attending APE: her to promote Dicebox, me to stand around looking at comics and try not to get in the way too much. There’s no particular table involved; we’ll be found more likely than not in the company of Patrick Farley or Lori Matsumoto or Kris Dresen or Madison Clell or Scott (or Ivy, or Winter, or Sky) McCloud or one or another of a variety of Pants Pressers, not to drop names or nothin.’ Plus, copious amounts of sushi will be eaten, and we’ll probably try to get to 826 Valencia Street again (this time, when it’s open), and there’s apparently a bookstore I need to visit, and we might even try to squeeze in a trip hereabouts, though I think all our evening meals are already spoken for, darn. Anyway.
