Mid-Week Blahs

Hot. Too hot to think. Humid. Oppressive.

From the Richmond Times-Disgrace:

Richmond’s temperature hit 104 this afternoon.
The previous record for the day was 100, set in 1977.
Today was the hottest day since Richmond hit 105 on July 6, 1977.
The record high temperature for the date broke today at 2 p.m. when the mercury hit 102 degrees at Richmond International Airport.
At 3 p.m. Richmond's temperature had risen to 103.
And by 4 p.m. it was 104.
The record is 100 and was set in 1977. The normal high for today is 87.

The cat has the right idea--climb atop his Kitty Kondo, which happens to stand directly in the path of some feeble air conditioner outflow, and sleep the day away. As for me, I'm engaging in vivid, sexy fantasies of moving to Alaska, escaping to Iceland, or working in an Antarctic research station.

A couple of quick notes:
According to Bookslut, science fiction writer Howard Waldrop has a blog, at least for now (and if you're not familiar with Howard and, believe me, you want to BE Howard, run NOW! and read his short story, "The Ugly Chickens." No Star Wars/Star Trek crap here, people, just science fiction the way it's s'posed to be).

Interesting and thoughtful essay by Matthew Skala entitled The Terrible Secret of LiveJournal. In case you didn't know, there's been all kinds of controversy surrounding LiveJournal's parent company's (Six Apart) decision to, well, enforce the law with regards to fan fiction (by which I mean slash) and fan art (by which I mean Rule 34). I spotted this on Ceejbot and loved her concise post: "Dear Fandom: Shut up. No, really, just shut up. >>Read mskala's essay and then just shut up." I have to say I couldn't agree more--I have a high tolerance for creepy, but these days Fandom regularly exceeds it. Guess I'm getting old.