So, the other day I was poking around Netflix, as you do, and I saw something that said "Borgia," and I remembered that I'd been sorta interested in The Borgias and was in the mood for something full of blood and betrayal, which is sorta a Borgia thing, so I clicked, and about, ten minutes in thought, hmm, Rodrigo Borgia (probably better known to most of you as Pope Alexander VI, but in the first episode he's not pope yet) REALLY sounds off, and about twenty minutes later, thought, wait, where's Jeremy Irons, and then realized, thirty minutes later, that I was watching the wrong show.

Yes, yes, it took that long to click in my head, but in my defense, I've only seen the promo material for the Borgias and had no idea who Jeremy Irons was playing (as it turns out, Rodrigo Borgia), nor was I was aware that two separate production companies had decided to film the lives of the Borgias at about the same time and air it at about the same time.

So. This Borgia piece is called Borgia, not Borgias, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Showtime series. It does, however, have several of the same elements advertised for the Showtime series: blood, violence, sex, nudity, betrayals, rape, that sort of stuff. The Borgia period is really not my field, so I can't tell you if it's historically accurate or not, but I can tell you it's Nicely Dramatic. People are having fun sexy times in bed, and then they are Bleeding Everywhere and Feuds Erupt and people March Naked Through Rome and Whip Themselves all over. So far, so good.

The problem, and it's a big problem, is Rodrigo Borgia/Pope Alexander I. Most of the cast in this production are European, speaking with light to thick accents, which really works for the show -- I realize it goes against the usual belief that all period actors speak in perfect Oxford accents, but I liked hearing the mix of accents here, giving a very cosmopolitan sense of Rome, which pretty much fits in with the multiple languages/dialects that probably would have been heard in Rome in the period (lots of people travelled in and out of the city.)

Rodrigo Borgia, however, is played by an American, speaking in a flat American accent -- not even that cultivated mid-Atlantic accent that some Americans put on when attempting to fake British accents, or when they somehow end up with a hybrid accent. Surrounded by European accents, it REALLY stands out here, and not in a good way. I get that the show is trying to convince us that Rodrigo Borgia is an outsider, blah blah, but the thing is, he's an outsider from SPAIN, so if he's going to have a different accent than the rest of the cast, it should be a Spanish accent. He's also the only character from Spain with an American accent; the others have Italian or Russian accents.

And, bluntly, he's not very good.

So I'm not sure if I'm going to be continuing. Bits of the show are very good indeed, but the narrative is choppy and the main guy is distracting me. I'd feel more encouraged if I could believe he's going to be a sidenote in later episodes, but if my dim memory of the period is at all correct, and the show is even mildly following that dim memory, Alexander VI played a rather large role in what followed. And Netflix does offer other temptations.

A couple people suggested I pull out this paragraph from yesterday's long, long Bluebeard post:

I write fairy tales because they can be dangerous, because they can allow us to explore truths and deceptions we would often prefer to ignore. That even in a place of seeming safely, you can find yourself trapped in a crystal coffin. That you can lose your eyesight thanks to forces beyond your control. That you may leave bloodstains as you walk before you reach the end of your quest. That sometimes, love may be tangled with the secrets of the past; that opening doors can be dangerous, or can bring you freedom. The original tale of Bluebeard is all about this. I don't argue that you should believe in all parts of fairy tales. But I do believe you should listen. It's less dangerous that way.

So there you go.

I'm alternatively compelled and repelled by the story of Bluebeard, that cheerful little tale about a serial killer, his young wife, and her completely useless freaking sister Anne. So when Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard film popped up on Amazon, I figured I'd give it a try.

And now I'm half regretting that decision.

Because the original tale is extremely short, Bluebeard the film tells and intertwines two stories: the fairy tale, set in some vague Renaissancy time period, and that of two 20th century sisters telling the tale. It is dull and disturbing and distracting all at once, but I was mostly enjoying it until the end.

( The film, and why we write and read fairy tales. Cut for spoilers about the modern part of the film. I think we all know how the fairy tale ends. Right? )

I actually hadn't planned on blogging anything about the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season until the official start of the season, June 1st. But the Atlantic, as it generally does, decided to pay no attention to me whatsoever and get started a bit early.

Tropical Storm Alberto formed today in the Atlantic, a couple weeks ahead of schedule, mostly predicted to stay offshore, with a chance of affecting South Carolina in the next few days.

Interesting notes:

1) This is the earliest-forming tropical storm to appear in the Atlantic basin before the start of hurricane season since 2003.

2) This is also the first time tropical storms have developed in the historical record in both the Atlantic and East Pacific basins before the official starts of both hurricane seasons.

3) This is a good reminder to me to buy batteries. We're in a fairly safe part of the state, but if sea turtles are anything to go by, they apparently appeared early in Fort Myers this year...presumably because of the warm sea surface temps in the Gulf of Mexico. So, batteries it is!

I just ate half a passion fruit from the yard this morning.

The first taste was -- sharp, unexpected, overly sour. (It does not go well with coffee with coconut syrup. I have learned.) But I took another bite, and another, and found that the taste really grows on you.

Along with the passion fruit, we've successfully harvested blueberries (we have one happy bush and one less happy bush, enough in theory to pollinate each other, though we may need to pick up a third blueberry bush) and three raspberries (not bushes; actual raspberries. The squirrels didn't go for the blueberries but they apparently think that raspberries are crack, and the canes did not exactly produce many to begin with). We've also planted a grapefruit tree that's alive, if not exactly grapefruiting, added a lemon tree and two orange trees, a banana tree, and muscatine grape vines (these are the grapes native to Florida). In the front, next to the huge rosemary bush that was here when we arrived, we now have a couple of types of mint (I used some last night), basil, sage, oregano and lavender.

Aside from some of the fruit trees and the rose bushes (roses were already here when we arrived; we've just been trying to add some more bushes to that area so they don't look so bedraggled), and a couple of bougainvilleas near the windows for security (they have long, sharp, thorns), we've mostly been going with native Florida plants out of sheer laziness. I have to say, you put those firebushes in, they go, yay, Florida, and that's about it for the firebushes, one solid reason to go native.

The yard still looks scraggly in places, but you can see where it's going now. And eat things from it.

And yes, let a few squirrels bounce around in it.

Two bits of small news this morning:

1) The storySouth Millions Writers Award Notable Stories List has been released, and I'm very pleased to note that my short story, Love in the Absence of Mosquitoes, earned a mention on the list.

Equally importantly, several other friends, publications and excellent work ended up getting honored. It wasn't a huge surprise to see E. Lily Yu's The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees on this list (small note: I'm really hoping this short story pops up on the World Fantasy World nominee list (hint, hint, hint, nominators currently filling out ballots!) so that she sweeps the award nomination lists. But also joining her were Aliette de Bodard (aliettedb), A.C. Wise acwise), and Kristine Ong Muslim, which is all very cool. And the Journal of Unlikely Entomology earned a nod as well.

2) Here, We Cross, a chapbook of queer and gender-bending poetry, is now available from Amazon.com. I have a poem in it, but the more important part is that sales of this chapbook are going to support Stone Telling, the little speculative poetry zine that has been producing some really marvelous work, and Stone Bird Press, the micropress currently behind Stone Telling and inkscrawl that I'm hoping will be producing various chapbooks and more in the future.

This week's Freddy the Pig post chats about Freddy the Politician.

My summary: if you are going to read one Freddy the Pig book (of the ones I've read so far) it should be this one. War! Fascism! Dirty banking tricks! And my single favorite cow in all literature.

First, the very good news: Issue 7 of Bull Spec is finally here, featuring the usual mix of excellent short fiction and fascinating interviews, along with a small poem, "Laurels," by yours truly. You can pick up either a print (directly from Bull Spec) or online (through Weightless Books or Wizard's Tower Books) edition.

Second, for those of you heading to Wiscon, I'm pleased to note that you'll be able to find my little poem "Encantada" in Stone Telling's Here, We Cross chapbook, which will be available at the con. Also available at the con, a book I'm not in, but which is also edited by the same person who brought us Stone Telling in the first place, Rose Lemberg: The Moment of Change. Rumor has it that if you go to the launch party for that particular book you will get cookies. Excellent poetry AND cookies, yay!

#

In hopefully untrue news, Twitter is reporting the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His work has had a pretty profound influence on me, and this is sad news. ETA: Internet hoax.

As most of you know, the U.S. Department of Justice instituted a lawsuit against five of the Big Six publishers and Apple, accusing them of price-fixing/colluding when they chose to set up an agency price model to sell ebooks. Three of the publishers agreed to settle.

Here is a very detailed response to the settlement from one literary agent, which also contains some very interesting statistics about ebook pricing. Long, but worth a look.

The Guardian reports that London will be deploying sonic weapons as a defense thingy during the 2012 Olympics.

I must confess myself disappointed. Previous reports chatted about missiles zooming over London, so with that as a start, I was rather hoping that between gymnastics and swimming events, we'd get to see lasers! Or, barring that, arm all of the archery teams with flaming arrows, and have the fences put their foils on fire, because that would be pretty awesome. Instead London is just going to go boom!

I admit also that having only toured the Thames on one of those little tourist boats (the trip down to Hampton Court -- that was fun) I'm not as familiar with London or the Thames as I'd like to be: are boats on the Thames really supposed to pose that much of a threat?

Meanwhile, in related Olympics news, our mail keeps threatening that we are just NOT going to TRULY appreciate the Olympics unless we get Dish TV like RIGHT NOW (presumably so I can get used to it and know how to flip the channels -- Dish TV must be quite aware of my ongoing issues with the remote for the digital receiver we currently have.) But they haven't mentioned the possibility of real live laser or sonic weapons battles. Their missed opportunity.

This amused me: Cleanup costs for the Avengers (warning, pdf file)/

Years back Marvel Comics had a hilarious little comic called "Damage Control," featuring ordinary humans who had the unhappy job of cleaning up after superheroes and supervillains -- and trying to present them with the bill. I rather hope that Tony Stark's insurance bills will be a subplot in either the next Iron Man or Avengers flick.

#

In completely unrelated news, I am feeling considerably more cheerful and relaxed today, either because of some unexpectedly good publishing news (combined with a rejection slip, but you can't have everything, and at least this time the rejection slip was mingled with decent news); finally managing to finish a short story this year (it's more than past time) and get close to finishing a second; adding bits to Sekrit Project; and watching my brother invest in some more plants, to fill the back yard with greenery and give a bit of a green wall between us and the neighbors on one side. Also, coffee with coconut syrup, which is a reason for living.

I'm always amazed at how much better I feel right after depression creeps away; I don't particularly like myself at those periods (and I don't think anyone else likes me either), and end up oversharing in a desperate need for validation, and end up regretting that afterwards, instead of just, well, living. As this morning. The difference is just...I often don't have the words.

This week's blog: Freddy and the Clockwork Twin.

These are really light, fun little reads, even if, as in any series of this length, the quality invariably varies. This was not one of the better books, but still entertaining.

Shorter version: The best Hulk film, like, ever. Hulk Smash! And I don't even like the Hulk.

Longer version: Things go boom! Tony Stark quips! Thor makes sure we can all see how well cut he is! The one woman on the team isn't given any superpowers, but makes up for it by actually doing kick ass stuff. The film otherwise massively flops the Bechtel test, although it does spend quality time staring at the butts of the three women characters with speaking lines. As films do. (Gwyneth Paltrow arrives briefly for the twin jobs of snarking and showing off her legs.) I would have been offended if we had not gotten some equal exploitive time with Thor and to a considerably lesser degree Captain America and Hawkeye. Frankly, I think the next Thor film should just cut to the chase and call itself, "Thor: The Abs. The Shoulder Muscles. The Butt." to, you know, save time. But I digress.

This is not, to put it mildly, a deep movie. It is, I grant you, a bit more thoughtful than last year's Thor, but that's not saying much. Sure, a couple of characters try to speak deeply about freedom and choices and trust and heroics and an old guy stands up to remind us that Fascism and Dictators are like, bad, yo, and Captain America isn't really sure that the current world is an awesome place, and some Wall Street offices suffer collateral damage, yay, and if you head out to the bathroom you might miss the conversation about Guilt. But whatever. It's not going for deep. It's going for fun.

And that it delivers, mostly thanks to Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man) who is like, wait, I get to make fun of my coworkers? More please! Tom Hiddleston (Loki), who apparently looked at the script, said, well, if I have to say this crap, I may as well say it with far too much conviction, and, the surprise, Mark Ruffalo as HULK SMASH. He's also pretty good as Bruce Banner, but, let's face it, HULK SMASH.

AND SMASH AND SMASH. It's the main reason to see the film.

Also, there is a blink and you will miss it Oz reference. Just saying.

Looking forward to seeing the half hour of deleted scenes on the DVD, which apparently include Captain America meeting up with his love interest from the previous film. Also not here: any scenes between Thor and Natalie Portman "I'm not an astrophysicist, I just play one with great abs," although the film does include two lines of dialogue to explain her absence, without using the phrase "Ms. Portman demanded way too much money for a cameo" which was impressive.

Snarky version:

( As a reader service. )

...but I just haven't been in a blogging mood. Again. But a few things I ought to mention:

1) The weekly Tor.com post, about the next book in the Freddy series, The Story of Freginald, has popped up on Tor.com.

2) And as long as I'm chatting about Tor.com, also appearing on the site today is a preview of the cover for A Memory of Light, the last of the Wheel of Time books The double decade tradition of "And this is showing us what, exactly" continues apace!

3) My contributor's copy of The Baum Bugle also arrived today, along with the notice that The Baum Bugle is looking for a new editor. That editor will not be me, nor will I have any involvement in the hiring process, but if you are interested in Oz and editing stuff, I have the contact info.

4) After giving us one final delightful taste of coolness in April, the summer heat appears to be marching in, alas without the summer rain. Sigh.

Hulu.com planning to change to a system where customers must prove that they are "paying" cable customers in order to stream Hulu.com shows.

I assume this is an attempt to get people to pay for cable TV instead of skipping cable and just watching shows on Hulu.com instead. I also doubt this will work, because:

1) Speaking as a Hulu user, the main thing I watch on Hulu.com? Shows from broadcast TV (Fox, NBC, ABC) or, more rarely, Syfy and the USA Network. Thanks to the scattered way Syfy kinda throws, or doesn't throw, their shows up online, however, I've mostly switched to waiting for the DVDs from the library for those shows, and I'd have no problem doing this with Burn Notice, the only show I'm still watching from the USA Network. (I gave up on White Collar, which kept descending into greater levels of inanity, but this isn't that rant.)

Most of these shows? Do not require cable TV to view in this area. Granted, getting NBC (which apparently has its broadcast tower someplace on Mars) can occasionally require a mystical dance and a lot of beer, but the other stations come in just fine, thanks, from Daytona through Tampa. In fact, the only reason I bother with Hulu.com is --

2) I much, much prefer the experience of viewing television through streaming or DVDs. Fewer or no commercials, the ability to pause a show at any point and return whenever, should, for instance, a cat suddenly have a freak out attack, the ability to rewind a show at any point and see bits I missed thanks to a freaked out cat or if I need to confirm, "She said WHAT?" (ok, that's pretty much just Revenge this year), the ability to watch the show again immediately if it was really really good (ok, pretty much Downton Abbey, and not this season), and most critically, the ability to watch whenever I want. If this season's attempt to watch Fringe live has taught us anything, it is that I am just not good at remembering when particular shows are on. And sometimes I'm just not physically up to watching any given show at any given time.

I can't be the only person avoiding cable television not merely because of the cost (it's a factor, but not the main one) but because it's offering something I really don't want: live access to shows I don't really want to see, with lots of commercials.

Sure, I considered getting cable television with a DVR recording in preparation for the Summer Olympics (something both household members would watch) and for season two of Game of Thrones (which I would watch.) But in the end, I didn't want it. And that's the chief problem with this idea: customers are not leaving cable television because of Hulu.com (or, for that matter, Amazon or iTunes.) They are leaving because they don't want cable television. Will I change my mind later? Well, that depends on cable television, not Hulu.

....I just assembled the Christmas present for the cats. (It's a little cardboard plane that they can jump in and of. And yes, it was originally received at Christmas.)

Naturally, although the Little One attempted to help in the assembly, and both adore boxes of all kind, now that it's assembled, they are both steadily ignoring it. Well, to be fair, I'm not sure the Grey One knows it's here -- she is currently doing some very important napping on my bed just now, and is not to be disturbed.

I think I'll join her. Feeling kinda zonked from that - it's harder to assemble a plane from cardboard than you might think.

Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock

Writer Roald Dahl had perhaps two or three calm years in his life, those right after leaving school, when he worked for Shell Oil. Otherwise, his life was crammed with enough incident to fill three dozen biographies: losing a sibling at a young age, getting severely beaten at school, flying, crashing, spying, marrying a Hollywood actress still in love with Gary Cooper, losing a child at the age of seven and watching another beloved child suffer the effects of a horrific accident, nearly losing his first wife to an unexpected major stroke, sleeping with various famous and beautiful women, conducting a years long affair with the woman who would become his second wife, and, of course, writing books.

It's a lot. To his credit, Donald Sturrock manages to get most of this into this fairly long book, in a dispassionate, clear way. Sometimes too dispassionately: Roald Dahl was, by the accounts related in this book, brutal to his wife after her stroke as he pushed her towards recovery, but Sturrock almost bends over backwards to absolve the guy. He deals with Dahl's pain at losing his eldest daughter – a child both parents later idealized – almost clinically. And because Dahl's son Theo, who suffered a terrible accident with resulting brain damage, is still alive and helped contribute to the book, many issues with Theo are notably glossed over, with the focus mostly on how the accident increased Dahl's interest in brain shunts.

Dealing with Dahl's shifting attitudes towards race is another place where Sturrock struggles – partly because Dahl did. He accepted the concept of British superiority while living in Africa, but later changed his mind and argued for racial equality. When he was accused of racist attitudes in the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory he was horrified, but swiftly agreed to changes after the NCAAP pointed out the problems with the original depictions of the Oompa-Loompas, in a case of unintentional but institutional, unthinking racism. (He had originally planned to make Charlie, its young protagonist, black.) He had several Jewish friends, but did not think kindly of the Zionist movement or various Israeli leaders and said various offensive things. And so on.

A book like this almost invariably becomes a gripping read, even despite – or because of – the name dropping that was the result of Dahl's years of work in DC as a diplomat and a spy, and later his life with his actress wife, split between Hollywood and England. (After her stroke, Frank Sinatra stopped by. That sort of thing.) It also becomes a question of choosing which story might be true: Dahl changed his retellings of past events frequently, and his first wife disputed many of his versions – but disputed these versions after the stroke which by all accounts changed her personality and severely disrupted her memory. Other issues, particularly Dahl's work as a spy, remain classified. Sturrock does his best to reconstruct events; where he cannot, he quotes liberally from interviews with various people who knew Dahl.

Dahl was notorious for fighting with editors, agents and publishers; friends, family members and neighbors; and Britain's Inland Revenue. (I have to note that one common thread in all biographies of writers who lived and published in Britain in the post-World War II years: fighting with Inland Revenue.) But he was also notorious for unexpected and fabulous acts of generosity, of loyalty to friends, and above all, the ability to entertain children.

I'm not exactly sure when I'll be reaching the Roald Dahl books in the Tor.com reread projects – and I won't be reading all of them – but this was a good introduction to the imagination behind them.

1) It's my mother's birthday today! She's just turned 29. Or so she says. Since she's the mother of a science fiction author, I think we can go with that, can't we?

2) The latest Freddy the Pig entry is up at Tor.com. This one covers Freddy the Detective, which was a really fun book. But you may not be able to read it, because...

3) Also today, Tor.com released a small sample of the very last Wheel of Time book, in an attempt to reassure those of us skeptical that we will ever see the end of this series that it really, really, really is coming. Not for months, but still. Naturally this caused the website to crash earlier, so you may experience problems getting to my post.

4) Adding pear-infused balsamic vinegar to a mozzarella and tomato salad is an excellent idea. I just thought you should know.

I did a (very short) list of recommended genre reads for teenage girls over at SF Signal that just popped up today. Naturally, as soon as I sent the thing out, I thought of several books that I hadn't included; luckily, the other participants filled up that lack.

Tor/Forge ebooks to go DRM free.

I'm curious as to how other large publishers will respond.