Random Thoughts On A Random Day

I’m feeling random today, so have some random.
Today’s 4/20!
I’ve never really liked marijuana, and as such I can never really find a celebration of it all that entertaining.
I dunno.  Maybe it works for other people, but every time I’ve smoked marijuana I have really stupid thoughts that never seem to produce anything interesting in the light of day, then I eat until I’m sick.  Then the next day I feel tired and unmotivated.  It’s better than cigarettes in that at least I feel a radical initial high (as opposed to just coughing a lot), but the fetishization of pot just always makes me wonder what I’m missing out on.  So much of pot culture seems to idolize sitting around the house watching TV, and that’s mystifying.
I mean, hey, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it.  Pot should be legal, and I don’t have to get something to say, “Hey, you go ahead and have fun now.”  But in this case the experience of what other people have with pot deviates so much from my own that it’s actively bizarre to me to see people excited to smoke pot, let alone posting excitedly on Twitter going, “It’s 4/20, man, I can’t wait!”
On The Nebulas
Jim Hines said today that everyone nominated for a major award has the “What if I win?!?!” freakout.  I think it says something about me that I have not once ever thought that I’d win, something confirmed by Sauerkraut Station‘s lack of nomination for the Hugos.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have been nominated.  It’s a major honor!  But my brain immediately went, “That’s as far as you’re gonna get, you’re going up against Rachel Swirsky and Geoff Ryman and Charlie Jane Anders, and those three alone would bury you.”  And I’ve gone on happily going, “I’m gonna attend the Nebulas!  As a nominee!” and never once attached the word “winner” to my head.
The things my brain chooses not to freak out about are odd indeed.
On Levon Helm
I think everyone who is lamenting the loss of music great Levon Helm should read Bart Calendar’s essay on his death, and feel shamed.
The short version is that Levon, a rich and successful man, was bankrupted by fifteen years of cancer.  And I think that’s the myth that conservatives are peddling to stupid people: that hey, if you’re smart and rich and have good health care, you’ll be okay.
Except, as anyone who’s ever actually fucking met someone who’s been through a large-scale disease knows, this is not actually true.  You can do everything quote-unquote right and still get fucked by our system.
I’ve talked to idiots who’ve said, “Well, if I get sick and I’m getting substandard treatment, I’ll just switch to a better insurance company,” as if the term “pre-existing condition” didn’t fucking exist.  I’ve talked to morons who’ve thought that if you had really good insurance, you’d be completely safe, and that the insurance would never run out or refuse a claim.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you don’t know how good your insurance actually is until you get direly ill.  Every insurance company looks good on paper.  But they can screw you bureaucratically in a thousand ways.  And they’re incentivized to, since a for-profit organization loses money every time they pay for a sick person’s treatments.
And yes, I’m sure you’ve had your insurance claims go well for some major illnesses, conservatives.  That’s fine.  I’m glad yours went well.  But you don’t get to use anecdotes about the horrific failures of the European system as evidence that socialized medicine is evil without acknowledging the fact that some pretty damn well-off people have to work through cancer in order to keep their family afloat.  To acknowledge that the idea that “good insurance and wealth is a catch-all” is not a 100% shield against going bankrupt.
(G’wan.  Talk to my wife, the bankruptcy lawyer, about this.  She knows how many bankruptcies come from medical claims.)
In short, if you’re a fan of Levon Helm and against the socialized medicine and Obamacare, then take a look at the hell that you – yes, you – put him through and decide whether you’re really a fan.  Or whether your policies were fair.

My Own Image Macro

So Bart Calendar posted this image macro an hour after I posted a Twitter status on this topic, so I felt it kismet to create my own:

Covered in Bees, 2012: Installing a New Hive

Last year, Gini and I had a very odd argument about which one of us was going to open up a box of 10,000 bees and dump them into a hive. This argument was made odder by the fact that both of us were arguing that we should be the one to do it.
I won the right to install the hive, and the rather quickly taken video can be found here.  But this year, I got to be cameraman as Gini handled the bees, and so we have much more extensive videos.  For example, if you want to see what a box of 10,000 bees looks like, here is Gini holding three pounds of live and flying bees in a wooden box, with my explanations about how the bees survive the trip and the mechanisms of what one has to do to open it.

Now.  What was not captured on video was THE MOST TERRIFYING SOUND OF MY LIFE.
See, when you get a wooden box full of bees, you have to put it in your car to bring back with you.  In our case, we wisely stored it very far away in the trunk.  And I was getting some honey-bee-healthy out of the front seat when Gini opened the trunk and I heard “Oh shit!” followed by the sound of clattering wood.
When you know you have 10,000 bees contained in a small wooden box, this is a sound that encourages pants-filling.
Fortunately, it was just the new hive top falling out of the back, but for a moment all and sundry imagined how we would deal with an angry swarm of emerging from a broken bee-box. (Even if it probably wouldn’t have been overly bad – I mean, if you watch the third video you’ll see what happens when they’re dumped out, and it’s actually rather lackadaisical. Still, the business of scooping up a bunch of bees from our driveway using magazines would have been a hoot.)
Having survived that, I now explain how you prep the bees before opening them so they’re nice and mellow:

This next video is the money shot, as it’s a close-up look as Gini, yes, dumps a bunch of startled bees out of their box and into the hive.  Unfortunately, this video’s about two minutes longer than I wanted, with lots of dead space, as Gini and I debated techniques for a bit (i.e., we bickered) about how to put the queen in and when to remove the can of syrup.  Still, if you want to see a close-up of how you actually transfer bees into a new hive, this is your best bet from La Casa McJuddMetz.

For the record: Gini’s bee-tamping technique is inferior, but her bee-dumping style trumps mine.  So in an ideal world, I’d thump the bees to the bottom of the box and then hand it to Gini for an efficient transfer.
Finally, the hive installed, I took a video of what it looks like when it’s done, explaining the various parts and functions of the hive.  Gini got stung once when a bee crawled up her sleeve and got scared, but there’s also a rather vivid discussion of the dangers (or not) of being stung in beekeeping and bee docility.

Now we have to leave the bees to themselves for a week, and check in. We have not yet opened up the other hive yet because it’s been a series of crappy weather days, but we hope to do that soon – and yes, I’ll document.

The Many Hives Of La Casa McJuddMetz

So!  Tomorrow, I’m doing something I’ll wager most of you won’t be: I’m picking up a box of bees.  That’s right, we’re so bee-crazy here, we’re getting a second hive at La Casa McJuddMetz.
Which brings up a question: up until now, it’s only been one hive.  Now we’ll have two.  I’m notably awful at pet names, having not named a car or a laptop or my iPhone anything in the past decade…. But people seem to like them, and now it’s not just “the hive” but “the old hive and the new hive,” we need to have a differentiation for properly clever blogging.
So.  What names should we give to each of our hives?  Points given for extra cleverness.  Open to all entries.  As always, if Gini is sufficiently clever, she may trump you all.

New Stories! Of Mine! For You To, Like, Read! (Or Listen To. Listening's Good.)

So I’ve been pretty terrible at writer-marketing, because I don’t think I’ve told you that one of my favorite stories of all time is available for you to read. Plus another story that’s sillier and, er, flighty.
If you’ll recall, “‘Run,’ Bakri Says” – the tale of a girl attempting to rescue her time-travelling terrorist brother from prison – was one of two stories I’ve ever written where I finished the first draft and said, “Yeah, that’s getting published.”  And lo, Sheila Williams at Asimov’s agreed, and so it was published to generally good reviews.  It’s certainly one of the few stories I’ve gotten spontaneous fan mail on.
Escape Pod thought it was worth a podcast, and so you can now read (or listen to Mur Lafferty’s emotional reading) today!  Just so’s you recall the opening:

“I just want to know where my brother is,” Irena yells at the guards.  The English words are thick and slow on her tongue, like honey.  She holds her hands high in the air; the gun she’s tucked into the back of her pants jabs at her spine.
She doesn’t want to kill the soldiers on this iteration; she’s never killed anyone before, and doesn’t want to start.  But unless she can get poor, weak Sammi out of that prison in the next fifty/infinity minutes, they’ll start in on him with the rubber hoses and he’ll tell them what he’s done.  And though she loves her brother with all her heart, it would be a blessing then if the Americans beat him to death.
The guards are still at the far end of the street, just before the tangle of barbed wire that bars the prison entrance.  Irena stands still, lets them approach her, guns out.  One is a black man, the skin around his eyes creased with a habitual expression of distrust; a fringe of white hair and an unwavering aim marks him as a career man.  The other is a younger man, squinting nervously, his babyfat face the picture of every new American soldier.  Above them, a third soldier looks down from his wooden tower, reaching for the radio at his belt.
She hopes she won’t get to know them.  This will be easier if all they do is point guns and yell.  It’ll be just like Sammi’s stupid videogames.
“My brother,” she repeats, her mouth dry; it hurts to raise her arms after the rough surgery Bakri’s done with an X-acto knife and some fishing line.  “His name is Sammi Daraghmeh.  You rounded him up last night, with many other men.  He is — “
Their gazes catch on the rough iron manacle dangling from her left wrist.  She looks up, remembers that Bakri installed a button on the tether so she could rewind, realizes the front of her cornflower-blue abayah is splotched with blood from her oozing stitches.
“Wait.” She backs away.  “I’m not — “

Want to read the rest?  Go, check it out.
And if you’re looking for some lighter fare, my comedy tale “In The Unlikely Event” – about some horrifically standardized preparations for space flight – is now available at Daily Science Fiction.  This one may make you laugh.  Or wince.  Or both.

The flight attendant speaks as though he will win an Olympic medal if he finishes this safety speech in record time.
“Today’s interstellar flight to the Taurean cluster will take approximately seventy years external-time, racking up six hours on your biological clocks. To avoid unnecessary amputations, please keep all hands, feet, and other protuberances within the boundaries of your personal cryogenics chamber….

Bee Frenzy!

This is what our bees look like in the spring. There sure are a lot of them.
I took this footage wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and slacks and was not stung.