Kieran Mulvaney

I hate to be a tease - oh, who am I kidding? I love to be a tease. But my agent and I have agreed on the subject of my next book proposal, and I know it's a topic in which the publisher of my previous book is interested. I'm going to spend theholiday season fleshing out my two-paragraph pitch into a full proposal, with summaries and chapter outlines, and see where we go from there. I'm optimistic that by the end of January, and certainly the end of February, we'll have a deal.  Read More 

Astonishing.

Cheetahs on the Edge--Director's Cut from Gregory Wilson on Vimeo.

So I ordered a Kindle Fire HD a while back, and last Friday, Amazon sent me an email to say that it was on its way. Hooray! But when, the day before Thanksgiving, it had yet to arrive, my brow furrowed. I checked my order and clicked, "Track Package" and it turned out that it had arrived at the depot of some company called Lasership on Monday, but nothing had happened since.

I emailed Lasership on Friday, and they said, "Oh, it's out for delivery now, you'll get it today." It didn't arrive. So this morning I called them up and the woman who answered said, "I don't know why they told you that. The information I have says that the local delivery station does not have control of the package." This conjured up images in my head of a very angry Kindle galloping around the warehouse, but in fact meant, she continued, that they had lost it. So I got back in touch with Amazon, who are sending me a replacement. Hopefully not via Lasership. Lazyship, more like.

Anyway, the lady I spoke to at Lazyship, who was very nice, was called Ashanti. I thought, "What a nice name." Then I thought, "Whatever happened to that singer Ashanti? She was well fit." Which made me think of this video. The end.

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Another new look to the site - I change things up around here more often than Paris Hilton changes outfits - and a proposal sent off into cyberspace that may propel me on yet another new venture. It's just all so new.

The Oatmeal defines the life of a writer and content creator, particularly one who writes for the Internet.

One more election-themed post.

Yesterday, Mitt Romney was recorded speaking to supporters about why he lost the election last week.  Read More 

I predicted 294 electoral votes. In the end, it wasn't even that close: 332-206, with President Obama carrying Colorado and Florida, as well as the states I had guesstimated. Here's the thing: it threatened to be close in a number of states, but day after day, week after week, the polling was clear. The president was ahead, and was clearly favored to win. But going into November 6, the right-wing punditocracy insisted otherwise, truly, genuinely believed that Mitt Romney would not only win, but would do so handsomely.

Yet there was absolutely no indication that this was the case. Polling, and analyses of polling, pointed only in one direction. The response of conservatives to all this evidence was to ... decry the evidence, to claim the polls were skewed and biased. So comprehensively did they convince themselves and each other of this that they were in absolute disbelief, not only at the defeat but the scale of that defeat, epitomized by Karl Rove insisting on air that Fox News was premature in calling Ohio, and thus the presidency, for Barack Obama.

This election, and that reaction, encapsulated so much of what is horrifically wrong with elements of the right wing in the United States today. It is one thing to have your own opinions; it is another entirely to think you are entitled to your own facts.  Read More 

Two days from now, the United States will vote for president. It has not been an especially distinguished or edifying campaign, but then campaigns rarely are, it seems. It will be my second presidential vote since becoming a citizen in 2007, and I will vote this year as I did in 2008: for Barack Obama.
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I love science fiction. Actually, I love good science fiction. Good science fiction takes its basis in science fact and stretches that to create fictional scenarios that, while not necessarily probable, are at least plausible within the bounds of scientific theory. There are exceptions, of course: on 'Star Trek', the 'Enterprise' can communicate instantaneously with Federation headquarters across millions of miles of space, which simply couldn't happen. There's that little thing called the speed of light - which, of course, the 'Enterprise' itself appears to at least push up against at times.  Read More