Technical Difficulties

1. I should mention that OddCon was awesome. I'm no good at con reports (fellow GoH robin_d_laws is blogging his con experience, though), but I had a wonderful time. Thank you, Odyssey Con!

2. My friend Marissa Lingen (mrissa) has just made her eightieth short fiction sale. (Yes, that's eightieth--80--not eighth.)

3. Today is Carol Emshwiller's ninetieth birthday. Happy birthday, Carol!

4. Drabblecast is doing matociquala and my story "Boojum," which--for those of you playing along at home--is set in the same universe as "Mongoose." Drabblecast 202 is Part I.

5. Taronga Zoo in Sydney has a baby red panda.

I've just been reading some really horrible information about snake venom and the ways in which it can fuck your shit up. (Yes, it's for a story. Almost everything is.)

So, as a palate cleanser, and in case anybody else needs this today, I offer you baby red pandas at the Knoxville Zoo. And another red panda, about to break the camera with pure undiluted cuteness. The Knoxville Zoo was the zoo of my childhood, and I remember the red panda exhibit, but things have obviously improved since the 80s, because the red pandas now have a village.

As well they should, says I.

(Also, I now totally want to write a early-Cerebus-style sword & sorcery send up with a heroine named Red Panda. Or, more accurately, I want ursulav to write it for me.)