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I just passed a busker on the street playing Thus Sprach Zarathustra on an accordion. (The thing that makes me wonder if it wasn't a hallucination is, it wasn't half bad.) I had this strange encounter returning from the plenary session of the 23rd annual meeting of the Society for Utopian Studies, which featured myself, Nalo Hopkinson, Jim Munroe, and Karl Schroeder in a 90-minute free-for-all on literary world-building. We got a great meal out of it, free post-prandial drinks, and the discussion was lively. I think it went over well. I haven't seen those guys in too long.

There would be, at the best of times, an irony in the role of Peter Watts as any kind of authority on utopias — ("You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means")— but the irony is especially pungent this week. I am about to embark on a battle of principle with City Hall that might get me evicted; Revenue Canada is pretending that they never got the seven grand in taxes I sent them last spring and is demanding I send it again; and someone very close to me has just been extracted from a nest of two-month old pizza boxes and institutionalised. Let's just say I am not feeling especially utopian at the moment, which may also account for the lack of recent activity on this 'crawl.

So, sorry for the lapse. I'll try and get back into the groove over the next few days. At the very least I'll try out a new color scheme, given the resounding thud with which the current "blueberry-light" motif has landed.