Posts by Kate Paulk

The only thing constant is change

We live in a constantly changing world. Some of the changes are relatively stable, like the cycle of day and night, or of the years or the seasons. Others seems stable but have a way of turning around and shocking the heck out of you. Then of course there are the bombs life drops on you, where everything turns inside out and forces you to either re-evaluate what you believe or get completely lost in your own delusions.

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Mrs Malaprop Lives On

She may never die, with the way spell checkers make malapropisms easy to perpetuate. And perpetrate.

Yes, I’ve been trawling fanfic archives again. And there are so many malapropisms, ranging from hilariously bad to “oh gawd, not that one again”. Tis truly remarkable how often in fanfic a character in great pain “withers”. I’m fairly sure the intended word is “writhes”, but somehow the correct word never seems to find its way to the file. Methinks the spell check sees the collection of letters and picks the one that makes the most sense to it – and as anyone who’s ever tried to figure out why in heck the predictive word algorithm chose  that word would know, computer algorithms have a long way to go before they can come close to human interaction. Read more

I is disgraced

I have committed a terrible sin against her royal highness Princess Buttercup. I closed a door and she was on the other side of it. She has been informing me of my sins for the last ten minutes or so.

If you couldn’t guess, this is a household where the feline rules. The “no doors” rule has been around forever – I have “fond” memories of the first night in a new house where there were only room AC units and Miss Shani Fluffypants took umbrage at being shut out. She was the kitty with no voice, so instead of crying at the door, she hit it until one of us got up and let her in. Read more

Muddled Musings

One of the things I resent most about the current round of political correctness and its attendant twitter-mobs and rabid shaming of anyone who does – or more likely, says – something that someone decides is heinously offensive is the way it’s shut down one of the most interesting aspects of writing science fiction and fantasy. Most interesting for me, anyway.

The whole game of taking something that’s familiar and dressing it in fantastical or sfnal clothes then exploring where it goes once it’s out from the limits of our current culture and history can lead to some really interesting places, but I haven’t seen it done much if at all lately (especially in trad pub).

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The thing about interesting times

… is that you don’t officially know they’re “interesting” until they’re over. Or possibly ever, depending on how your life intersects with the rest of whatever’s going on.

I have no doubt at all that the people who were around through both world wars considered their times excessively interesting, just as those who lived through the Great Depression did. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that every year of every decade qualifies as “interesting” to those who lived it, especially those who had the signal “honor” of being adults through it. Read more

There will come a day

… when I manage to remember to write the weekly post before it’s after bedtime and what passes for my brain has fried. This is not that day.

This is the day a Kate looks at the date and wonders where the heck the year went that it’s August already, and thinks that someone, somewhere is cheating because it took so much longer for a year to go by back when I was a kid.

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