Monday, March 3, 2008

The Appearance of Evil

I actually like this photo by Amelia Beamer, which runs with the Locus interview I mentioned the other day. It doesn't make me look like a goof. My face actually looks symmetrical for once, and the viewer is not overwhelmed by the magnitude of the nose. This is perhaps the most flattering photo of myself I have seen all year, which I hope has nothing to do with the fact that it is also the only photo I've seen this year in which a significant part of my face is actually hidden from the viewer.

I'm also quite tickled by the title of the piece, which is...

...not to mention the actual fonts involved, which suggest, I don't know, a certain background Baptisticity.

So while I'm feeling so good about myself, I might as well mention a couple of upcoming appearances: July 11-13 I'll be one of the author guests at Polaris, here in Toronto, and while I'm merely one of the grunts I expect to be reasonably visible because they made me sign a contract committing to a minimum number of panels. I was happy to be asked, although I would've been happier if they'd asked me last year when Katee Sackhoff was on the roster.

Closer in, March 15-16 I'm going to be showing up at something called SciBarCamp (which, I myself would like to pronounce cybercamp although I don't know if anyone else does). It's officially described as "a gathering of scientists, artists, and technologists for a weekend of talks and discussions". I'm told the Perimeter Institute has something to do with it, although my only in was via Karl Schroeder, who in addition to being one of the kick-ass sf authors I've mentioned now and then is also one of the organizers.

Less than two weeks away now. Evidently we're all supposed to give presentations or something. I should probably get started.

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4 Comments:

Blogger HannuB said...

Still waiting for my copy of Locus to arrive. Good title, although when I first saw it, it read as "lesser boils" to me. Need...new...glasses...
Nice pic too, but those headphones just gotta be pretty spectacularly awesome, (Logitech?) as you've apparently been wearing them since last year's Readercon. (Do they even come off? ;))
And the obligatory Jethro Tull
t-shirt, too! How many of those you've got anyway??

-Hannu

March 4, 2008 9:03 AM  
OpenID Branko Collin said...

"I actually like this photo by Amelia Beamer, which runs with the Locus interview I mentioned the other day. It doesn't make me look like a goof."

Would that be the photo in which you are wearing a Jethro Tull shirt, gramps? And the 1980s-sized earphones? (Oh, man, don't make these so easy.)

"My face actually looks symmetrical for once, and the viewer is not overwhelmed by the magnitude of the nose."

I fear you are being too hard on yourself.

March 4, 2008 8:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All these comments about the earphones and the t-shirt. When I first met you at least 25 years ago, you had a head of unmanageable hair, earphones and Jethro Tull T-shirts. The only thing that appears to have changed is the colour of the hair at trhe temples.

March 5, 2008 5:29 PM  
Blogger Peter Watts said...

HannuB said...

... those headphones just gotta be pretty spectacularly awesome, (Logitech?)

Sennheiser

And the obligatory Jethro Tull t-shirt, too! How many of those you've got anyway??

At the moment, three. One's pretty damn old, though— I keep them around to serve as burial shrouds for my cats. I can think of no greater honour.

Branko Collin said...

Would that be the photo in which you are wearing a Jethro Tull shirt, gramps?

I said I didn't look like a goof. I didn’t say anything about not looking like a fossil. Besides, the latest episode of Breaking Bad had the slacker/meth-head going all orgasmic about Tull. Plus there was a Tull nod not too long ago in King of the Hill. Some fossils are always current, even if the niche may flex over time.

Look at cockroaches.

And the 1980s-sized earphones?

I have seen many others, both hot and cool, similarly adorned. I'll have you know my phones produce much better sound than those ear-zits that keep falling off the iFolks's heads.

Plus they push the bottoms of my ears in closer to my head, which is a good thing. I've been looking for a solution to that problem ever since the crazy-glue fiasco of 1986.

March 6, 2008 12:26 PM  

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