27. [CANADA]. BARBEAU, MARIUS. HAIDA MYTHS ILLUSTRATED IN ARGILLITE CARVINGS. [Ottawa]: Department of Resources and Development, National Parks Branch, National Museum of Canada, [1953]. First edition. 8vo. Bulletin No. 127, Anthropological Series No. 32, National Museum of Canada. Pictorial stiff wrappers, ix [blank], 417 pp., preface, introduction, illustrated, plates, bibliography. All illustrations are Argillite carvings with a few wood carvings. This is the first volume in a series of three which is designed to illustrate Haida argillite carvings. Although the myths or tales all belong tp the Haida, this cultural growth at first germinated and developed in Asia and Europe. Over time it spread by word of mouth in migratory tribes to the New World at large, and then to the Haida on the Queen Charlotte Islands in the North Pacific. Near fine, tight copy of a scarce item. $225.00    (28989)

17. HAYES, BENJAMIN. PIONEER NOTES FROM THE DIARIES OF JUDGE BENJAMIN HAYES 1849-1875. Los Angeles: Privately printed, 1929. First edition. 8vo. Dark blue cloth, gold stamping on front cover and spine, xi [1], 13 - 307 pp., frontis. [portrait], foreword, illustrated, plates, portraits, map, facsimiles, index. A good account of early California, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino. Chapters titled SAN DIEGO AND SAN BERNARDINO, 1856-1857

4. (KANSAS). [PHOTOGRAPHS]. [n.p., n.d.] Five original photographs of damages caused by a locomotive boiler explosion at Atchison, Kansas sometime in the late 1880’s or 1890’s. Photographs are all 5.374″ in width and vary from 3″ - 3.25″ in height. Three of the photographs show extensive damage to the tracks, platform, and bricks. Two of these show executives of the railroad, Dr. Dan and C.M. Rathburn, President of the Atchison Union Depot & Railroad Company. The other two photographs are of locomotive #17 and 2 train men, but it does not appear to be the one that caused the damage. A very good set. $100.00 (29273)

It’s easily the most cultured and interesting spam I’ve ever attracted. If I were rich I would buy so much of this crap. But reading the descriptions is almost as good.

In one hundred years’ time, when U.S. civilization has collapsed, and the entire south-east is a slick black reeking oil-coated wasteland, as hostile to organic life as the surface of Mercury, empty of everything except sometimes the preserved forms of long-decayed seabirds and palm trees and ghost malls, all of it periodically catching fire whenever the superstorms hit, and the oil is still ceaselessly gushing, the ooze always expanding, swallowing what we once called Kentucky and inching into Ohio and Colorado; what rituals will the tribespeople of the north and the western coasts use to ward off the enroaching Evil?

For instance: will they lay out their trash-built temples facing toward the Evil, the better to make propitiatory sacrifices to it, or north-east away from the Evil, to deny its power? Will the words Deepwater Horizon be a curse, or an obscenity, or a Name Of Dread Power, Never To Be Spoken?

(The altar in the temple is made out of parts of an old pick-up truck. The pointy thing that sits on it, made out of bent plastic forks and straws and bits of chickenwire and bone, was once supposed to be a model of an oil rig, though no one remembers that any more. They sacrifice to it by burning pelicans).

Anyway: new contest! The first person in comments to propose a method of plugging the Deepwater Horizon Gate to Hell will, if it proves successful, win a signed copy of my new book.  Cost-effective solutions only, please.

This is my way of doing my part.

“Own your ambitions,” Carrie says. Hers is good work and family.

My 100% sincere life goal is never to have to do anything at all ever again except sit quietly in a cool darkish room eating cake, where the cake is provided either by the government or by a trust fund or by kindly private benefactors. I don’t care which, so long as no one ever makes me interact with the benefactors.

At Madam X I read a very short and very silly story about a mechanical ostrich. The theme for the evening was steampunk, and it’s the one thing I’ve written that I know for sure counts as steampunk, because it was created to order for the VanderMeers’ forthcoming Steampunk Reloaded anthology. Steampunk ex cathedra, so to speak. It was stupid as hell but it got some laughs. I was going to go on to read something from the new book but my voice crapped out. The acoustics of the room are not good at all and I am not good at shouting. Cat Valente, Cherie Priest and George Mann read stories that I was able to hear to varying degrees. I spoke to some nice and interesting people.

The signing at BEA went well, in the sense that we got rid of all the free copies we had to give away, some people had heard of me, most people were friendly and no one was gratuitously weird or rude.  I was two tables away from Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, who was signing god knows what. Another one of those books about the talking helicopter, or a tell-about book about Prince Andrew’s sex life (ugh) or a celebrity cook book or diet regime? Your guess is as good as mine. Her wikipedia page doesn’t mention any new books. She had three or four serious-looking Men in Black standing behind her, glaring at everyone else’s publicists if they wandered too close. The queue for her signing was enormous.  It formed a solid wall of people that enclosed the entire signing area and reached out to enclose neighbouring booths. Cory Doctorow was there too and it was entertaining to see the difference between Cory-Doctorow-level internet celebrity and real proper supermarket-tabloid-oh-my-god-let’s-all-gloat-over-these-zoomlens-photographs-of-a-stranger’s-cellulite celebrity. Anyway my question for you, America, is why? And indeed, what the hell? She was a peripheral member of someone else’s royal family twenty years ago. Why have any of you even heard of Sarah Ferguson?

There were a couple of very brief interviews at BEA, and a panel discussion, also steampunk-themed, by which time I was so tired and so increasingly uncertain and uneasy about the whole steampunk concept that I have no idea what I said.

Also note that the BEA signing and panel is at the Javits Center, which is where I took the bar exam. I may get flashbacks. If I suddenly start twitching and get that thousand-yard stare and start muttering very quietly and intensely about Secured Transactions and Commercial Paper and the Rule Against Perpetuities you’ll know why. If this happens do not touch me or attempt to interrupt me! The recommended safe treatment is to buy me a drink.

the panel and the reading are both steampunk-themed, by the way.  This remains my definitive statement on the whole steampunk thing. Steampunk is like a dead bird, its guts full of plastic. Cheers, all.