The Mumpsimus

December 18 1832 After passing through the straight of Le Maire at Tierra del Fuego, the Beagle anchored at Good Success Bay. Here Darwin had his first encounter with savages [sic] . He was shocked by the primitive way of life they led but was also fascinated by them. A group of four male Fuegians met the landing party. After an attempt to communicate with the Feugians the party presented them with some bright red cloth and the Feugians immediately became friendly with them. The natives initiated a dialogue by patting the crewmen on their chests. Apparently they had the most amazing ability to mimic the crew's gestures and even the words they spoke, often repeating whole English sentences back to them. Darwin was bewildered by all this.

Always one to be behind the times, I'd not heard of Improv Everywhere until today, but a quick scan of the website explained an event I'd unwittingly witnessed a few weeks ago: No Pants 2k8 , where hundreds of people in seven cities around the world took off their pants (that is, trousers -- in London I once made what I thought was an innocuous comment about "pants" and everybody thought I was making a ribald comment about underwear) and rode the subways. I'd ridden a train with one of these groups, and assumed they were participating in some sort of marathon. Or something. I don't know. You see weird stuff in NY all the time. But the latest Improv Everywhere event is marvelous -- be sure to watch the video of Frozen Grand Central . Hilarious and beautiful. Long may they improvise!

Pindeldyboz is migrating from being a print-and-online magazine to being only an online magazine, and so they held a party Monday night, and I went. So did other people. Including Richard Larson , Dustin Kurtz , Ed Champion , and Sarah Weinman . The last print issue of Pboz is actually only appearing as a free PDF download . It's 16 megabytes of worthwhile reading. Of last night's readings from the last issue, I was particularly taken by two. Here are excerpts: As internships go—is that still what this is? -- you could do a lot better than zig-zagging through no man’s land carving up no man’s cows all summer. It’s not for credit, what the hell kind of major would give you credit for that? It’s more like an apprenticeship, but with no hope or desire to take over the business. Every Wednesday $250 is direct-deposited into my account back east. This job makes a lot more sense on Wednesdays. --from "Every Creeping Thing of the Earth" by Patrick Rappa I agreed with...

Tempest and I spent the day at the Brooklyn Book Festival , mostly just wandering around harrassing various vendors. I finally got to meet Hannah Tinti, editor of One Story , in person, and she told me about the Save the Short Story project , and even got a picture of me reading Calvin Baker's "Dominion" , a very fine story indeed. We also got to meet Tom Roberge of A Public Space , another person I'd exchanged plenty of emails with, but had not yet encountered in person. I convinced Tempest to subscribe, which was one of my better accomplishments of the day. There are only a few magazines I really wouldn't want to be without for even one issue, and A Public Space is one such magazine. Gavin Grant and Jed Berry manfully manned the Small Beer Press table. Tempest and I had discussed the fact that there haven't been any good, physical literary fights recently -- plenty of internet flamewars and such, but nobody actually punching somebody out -- and so we...

James Patrick Kelly is touring New Hampshire at the moment as part of the NH Humanities Council's year-long Speculate program, and I went to his presentation at the Pease Public Library in my hometown of Plymouth. Jim, Meghan McCarron , and I went out for dinner beforehand so that we could be geeky and talk sci-fi. (Meghan and I had, earlier that day, caused a slight scene in the dining hall of the school where we work, because we were discussing some writer or another, book deals, sub-subgenres, conventions, etc. all in the space of about a minute and a half, because we share common reference points and can thus speak in what sounds to everyone else like a different dialect. We stopped when we realized everybody around us was silent and staring at us in bemused horror.) It was a marvelous dinner, and Meghan didn't insult New Hampshire, the state Jim and I have lived in for much of our lives, too vociferously, which disappointed us somewhat, because there is nothing a tru...