Sorry for the sparse content; busy, tired, distracted, all of the above. Last night was the first night in a couple of weeks I’ve been too tired to do any work on the book at all. The not working is its own punishment, as always.

• The Old Hag interviewed in her capacity as Empress of Girl’s Life on a beigey web site. (I posted her calll for submissions awhile back; more information about what GL is looking for in the interview.) (And I’m buying Ms. Skurnick’s poetry chapbook as soon as the wallet recovers from the Car Bill of Doom.) Oh, and she’s running a contest. (Interview link via Cynsations.)
• Toni with an excellent long post about writing and publishing (read it!). Hard work and "luuuuuuuuuuuuuuvvvvvvvvvvvve" are the watchwords.
• Jenny D recommends the most excellent sounding The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine by Paul Collins. Sez she: "… lots of skeletons and weird medical-history facts, aside from its other charms." I’m in.
• Mely at Coffee and Ink adds cooking to her polymath list — a long, charming, envy-making post (me + kitchen + cooking = emergency room visit) about her first three months learning to cook.
• New Mary Roach book. (If someone sent me a copy, I’d be very, very happy… Just saying.)

• A Hallmark card erodes, but spiders in amber last forever.
• Emma Garman and Lauren Cerand (aka Le Cineclub) discuss Going Shopping. (Sometimes, I think reading their back and forths would actually turn out to be better than seeing the movie.)
• To celebrate the giant squid find, fabulous poetess Erin Keane posts her "The Giant Squid Mourns the Loss of His Privacy," which is also in the latest issue of Full Unit Hookup.
• Matthew Brooke, 26, was charged Friday with felony theft of library materials and criminal damage to property. He went to the Historical Society on Thursday, according to a criminal complaint, and smashed the window on a second-floor antique display case with his elbow. He allegedly swiped the "Pennsylvania Evening Post" from inside the case. And later in the story: Brooke told detectives he took the book because he wanted to read a story on page 106 about a historical figure named William Hill. Dan Brown and Nic Cage: call your agents.
• Is this The Jet Li?
• Dr. Shrinker: who knew?
• Bizarre little NYT story about Threshold, which looks down its nose at SF the entire time. (Yeah, it must not be science fiction if it’s good, right? This is STILL happening?!)
• Rebecca Skloot on the truth about quicksand and how to get out of it.

Feeling slightly better, good enough to spend the day writing/editing and things. Everyone who goes to see Firefly start saying what you think; I want to talk about it. (But I’m going to see it again before I post about it.) The only review I’ve read so far is Salon’s, which is right on target. If you read any other reviews worth taking a look at, drop a note in the comments.

• Sources have informed me that the awesome Colleen Mondor has a new blog, and if the first couple of posts are any indication: it’s about time. Go chase Ray (Bradbury) with her.
• Ed Champion is cracking me up, as he frequently does, with a series of Auctorial Doppelgangers that starts here. My favorite so far is number two: Michael Chabon and Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Gallactica. (And Tito joins the fun as well.)
• SuperLibrarian Nancy Pearl recommends her favorite short story collections. Anyone read A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories  by Victor Pelevin (translated by Andrew Bromfield)? That sounds fab.
• Over at the LBC, which I hope you agree is way more interesting this time around, Steve Stern responds to the dialogue and Paul Slovak, uber-editor (and the book’s publicist), gives his thoughts on the process of editing Stern.
• Scientists think they’ve found Homer’s Ithaca.
• Congratulations to you crazy kids. Much happiness!