realthog | in the eating

Proofs (in the form of PDFs ready for me to print out and read) will be arriving tomorrow for Bogus Science.

This is always a nerve-racking time with a new book, I find, because it's really the first opportunity I get to look at the text objectively. In theory that opportunity came earlier, when I was polishing the text preparatory to delivering it to the publisher, but of course that was soon after I'd written it: it was all too easy to read not so much the words that were actually there in front of me but the thoughts I'd been intending to express when I set those words down. Now I'll be seeing everything cold, and it'll be revealed to me in a stark, icy light quite how ghastly it all is.

Whatever, since my first warning of the proofs' arrival came this afternoon, and since the corrections are wanted a bit quickish, there's a certain level of ungentlemanly panic going on at Snarl Towers right at the moment.

To add to the sense of rabbits staring into headlights, I've also said that, before the end of what was already looking to be a busy month, I'll write 1500 hellishly witty words -- or at least words filled with a witlike substitute -- about pal Ian Watson for a convention program book. Plus there's a huge ghosting/editing job to finish off, and stuff to get ready for BookExpo America in a fortnight's time. And, oh yes, a couple of anthology editors have very flatteringly asked if . . .

This might be about the right moment for y'all to express sympathies to Pam for everything she's going to have to put up with over the next few weeks. I'm sure she'd be touchingly grateful for this small gesture.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'll wager Pam has already started knitting your straight jacket.

Now I'll be seeing everything cold, and it'll be revealed to me in a stark, icy light quite how ghastly it all is.

Tetley's, dude . . . Tetley's. Grab 'em and sally forth with your shillelagh.

In fact, I'm still working my way through a sack of Sainsbury's Red Label we brought back from the UK last time we were over there. (The sack of FairTrade is, alas, a mere memory.)

"shillelagh"

Irish. Not Scots.

How are you getting along, S.T.? We've been thinking about you lots.

"Irish. Not Scots."

Snob. What's the Scots version? Since I'm a blend of both I should know . . .

"How are you getting along, S.T.? We've been thinking about you lots."

Thanks for asking, P. Not too well, I'm sorry to answer. The grief is profound. No comfort in anything but the passage of time; although even this can't blunt the mourning, as you and Pam and all those who've had special relationships with four legged family members know. Zilla was special, and the way she died horrific. I fell like Lady Macbeth, although through no fault of my own, in that I can't seem to scrub up the blood and smell from deep in the carpet where she initially began to hemorrhage. And I can't stop crying.

I love you and Pam. Miss you.

Scots don't/didn't use shillelaghs.

Sorry to hear that it's still tough going for you. Warm thoughts are being sent your way.

No, the bagpipe has generally been held to be an even deadlier weapon. Its range is certainly greater.

"No, the bagpipe has generally been held to be an even deadlier weapon. Its range is certainly greater."

And it's difficult to strangle someone using a shillelagh . . . although I'm sure many Irishmen have tried . . .

I'll say nothing on that subject.

I was wondrin', like . . . as ornery as Scots are they must have at least one weapon for clubbing their opponents . . . (if you correct this sentence . . . well, need I say more?)

Ask Thog about the Moderator of the Kirk.

Don't get me going.

Oh dear. What have I done?

You haven't done anything, friend. It's just that in my family, the Riddells have been locked in eternal combat with their mortal enemies, the Riddells, for about 1000 years, so we know a little something about bagpipe violence. My father's side of the family has members on both sides of the England/Scotland border (according to family legend, the Scot side got into the cattle trade by rustling English cattle), and my great-great grandfather left the ancestral homeland for London to try to find a better life that didn't involve living up to our founders' Viking standards. (My great-grandfather emigrated to Canada due to rather enthusiastic celebrations of Guy Fawkes' Day that involved throwing fireworks at him and other Catholics in the vicinity.) Even to this day, the filthiest four-letter words you can speak at a Riddell gathering are "last call", and both of my brothers are enthusiastic supporters of the concept of bagpipes that can double as nunchuks.

Me, I take after my mother's side of the family. I'm a big supporter of the uses of violence, but in applied circumstances. As the joke goes in my family, my brother Eric was the only five-year-old in all of Michigan who knew how to make black powder, but it was his seven-year-old older brother who gave him the recipe.

I think I shall avoid your family gatherings.

Good. You'll just be doing what I'm already doing. I've missed out on the last three family reunions, where I was specifically left out of receiving an invitation because everyone thought I lived too far away. That's the good thing about living 2500 miles away, because it also means that none of 'em are going to show up on my doorstep, drunk and without pants, at three in the morning.

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That's strait-jacket (or, better, strait-waistcoat).

"That's strait-jacket (or, better, strait-waistcoat)."

Ere! Prissily editing people is *my* job, d'ye hear?

Prissy? What do you call somebody who is spending the day reading sentence fragments like this: 'But looking at the past, even all the way back to 1714 when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America even though the Native Americans where already settled in present day US'? 'Prissy' is not exactly the word I'd use.

"What do you call somebody who is spending the day reading sentence fragments like this"

Dan Brown's copyeditor.

Ka-zing. Now I know what Scots use for clubs: language.

"Now I know what Scots use for clubs"

Empties.

Laughter helps heal the heart.

Thank you. :)

I'm not half as well-paid, alas.

Yeah, it is your job. So don't spare me, even when I'm down in the dumps. I soak this stuff up.

Freaking English instructors . . . but thanks. I always get those two screwed up.

I am not a teacher of English. Fortunately.