GET OFF THE BUS INC

Friday, February 4, 2011

National Post: Craig Davidson: The things you have to endure to do the one thing you must do

So Apt, a must read for writers second guessing themselves.

National Post: Craig Davidson: The things you have to endure to do the one thing you must do

Special to the National Post
Friday, February 4, 2011

Illustration by Sarah Lazarovic By Craig Davidson Before Christmas, I was at a literary gathering, which I don

You received this email because your friend Lee thought you would be interested in the article linked above.

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Thursday, February 3, 2011

SHORT STORY: THE CLIPPING OF CUPID

The Clipping of Cupid

We could never got the smell of urine out of the precinct house, gave up trying a long time ago. I quickly began to associate the yellowish odor as being home. It soothed and calmed my sixty something nerves. In secret, I matched the warmth with heat from my incontinent bladder as it released tiny rivulets of piss in my adult diaper. I was content in my incontinence and I tried not to question why, because I probably didn't want to really know the answers.

The perp was a perv. Ironically he was dressed in his own adult diaper, but that was it, no pants to cover his shame. His chest was bandaged by a half toga from a torn Disney's Pixar Toy Story movie sheet, the cartoon caricature faces of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen were unmistakable. He was found sitting among a mound of pigeon feathers in Central Park around the Cherry Hill area, a long bow in his hands and a quiver of arrows on his back.

He sat across from me in quiet dignity and although his feet were not long enough to touch the floor, he did not kick them back and forth like a child. He looked me directly in the eye, never once wavering away from my face. This was rare today and I respected his manners even though he was without question a looney tune.

"Name?" I asked.

"Name what?"

"I want your name Twinkles?" God, I hoped this guy wasn't gonna be a putz and defy my previous observations. "What is your name?"

"Cupid or Eros, your choice," He replied.

"Do you realize that it is illegal to hunt in Central Park?"

"Sure, everybody knows that, but I wasn't hunting."

"Buddy, you were found with a bow and arrows and feathers all around you like ticket tape in a ticket tape parade, plus you've got an indecent exposure charge too."

"Love is like that..."

To be cont…

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Life Imitates Art or Art Imitates Life?

How life is imitating science fiction in Egypt
Walter Jon Williams — "Walter Jon Williams' Deep State, out next week, picks up the themes of viral marketing and social media from his previous novel This Is Not A Game. And a lot of the stuff that Williams wrote about is very similar to what's been happening in Egypt and Tunisia. Is Williams a prophet of the internet age, or just lucky? Here's his take on what happened.

As I watch the Egyptian demonstrations on CNN, I'm fascinated. A people-power revolution against an Arab autocrat was completely unknown until a couple weeks ago, when the Jasmine Revolution pitched Tunisia's Zine Ben Ali out of his luxe presidential office and into exile. As I write this, it seems as if another people-power revolution is on the verge of success in Egypt.

I'm fascinated as I watch, but I am not surprised. I knew that this was going to happen.
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Oh, I didn't know it would happen in Egypt, or first in Tunisia. But I was very confident it would happen somewhere, sufficiently confident that I wrote the blueprint for this type of revolution in my novel, Deep State, which started appearing in stores just as insurrection exploded across Egypt. Very interesting timing, this.

Once established, the Internet is like a river: it tends to flow around obstacles. The Chinese government has employs tens of thousands of civil servants to maintain what has been called the Great Firewall of China, its massive attempt to restrict information and discussion among Chinese. But any Chinese hacker worth his salt knows about proxy servers and software that will enable him to conceal his IP address, and that hacker will flow around the Great Wall to do his surfing and communication in near safety.

Anyone with access to the Internet can find out what's going on around the world whether his government wants him to or not. Anyone who wants to keep their discussions and interests private has a very good chance of succeeding even against so formidable an obstacle as the Great Wall. The tools are there, ranging from Freenet to Tor to darknets..."

Rest of article here:
http://io9.com/#!5751156/how-my-new-science-fiction-novel-predicted-the-egyptian-uprising

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More Music Warren Ellis Approved

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The Singularity

What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?
Annalee Newitz — "If you read any science fiction or futurism, you've probably heard people using the term "singularity" to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today's io9 flashback.

What is the singularity?

The term singularity describes the moment when a civilization changes so much that its rules and technologies are incomprehensible to previous generations. Think of it as a point-of-no-return in history.

Most thinkers believe the singularity will be jump-started by extremely rapid technological and scientific changes. These changes will be so fast, and so profound, that every aspect of our society will be transformed, from our bodies and families to our governments and economies.

A good way to understand the singularity is to imagine explaining the internet to somebody living in the year 1200. Your frames of reference would be so different that it would be almost impossible to convey how the internet works, let alone what it means to our society. You are on the other side of what seems like a singularity to our person from the Middle Ages. But from the perspective of a future singularity, we are the medieval ones. Advances in science and technology mean that singularities might happen over periods much shorter than 800 years. And nobody knows for sure what the hell they'll bring.

Talking about the singularity is a paradox, because it is an attempt to imagine something that is by definition unimaginable to people in the present day. But that hasn't stopped hundreds of science fiction writers and futurists from doing it..."

Click below for the rest of the article:

http://io9.com/#!5751345/what-is-the-singularity-and-will-you-live-to-see-it

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