We’re up to episode 87 of Gilmore Girls, “Raincoats and Recipes”, here in Australia. The US is up to episode 122. Who knows if Channel 9 will deign to show the rest of it? I guess we could order it from amazon.com, but that seems excessive.

Can I just say one thing? I’m going to preface it by saying that I like creative people. Some of my best friends in the whole world are artists and writers and such. They’re good, cool, fun people. There should be more of them. What sh*ts me, though, is the twee creative person who wants everyone to be creative, and really only values you as a ‘real’ person if you’re an artist of some sort; the person who thinks you’re only whole and complete if you’re writing or drawing or painting. One of my friends actually referred to what I do as secondary creativity, or creativity gone astray. What I do every day was somehow less worthwhile, less valuable to the world than sitting in a room by myself producing my own ‘art’. Can you spell f*ck off, girls and boys? The only true art you have is your life and how you live it. So here’s a New Year’s wish. In 2006, may you spend time with the ones you love and do something that fulfills you. This has been a venting by the management of Coode Street.

If you don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions of your own, then borrow someone else’s. Here Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman hook up to present New Year’s resolutions for Crowley and Aziraphale from Good Omens. Maybe it’s a sign we may see a new Good Omens story some day, which would be cool.

Oh yeah. As I know kdl would appreciate, all of this blogging is avoidance. I am overdue for a year-in-review column for Locus. I need to talk to CHARLES about it, just to get his angle on a few things, but I’m delaying. Still, I didn’t get it in till January 11 last year, so another two days won’t kill anyone. I’m also avoiding a LOT of other deadlines, still…

I’ve been meaning to replace the photo at the top right of the blog for a while. It was originally taken by Beth Gwinn in Oakland back in 2002. It doesn’t really reflect how I look now, which is older, greyer, larger, and less likely to wear contact lenses all the time.

With that in mind, I’ve borrowed the photo here from Ellen Datlow’s flickr journal. She took it at Madison back in November so (sadly) it pretty accurately reflects what I look like.

As I rebuild the blog over the next few weeks I’ll be replacing the old photo with a new one and making other changes.

What else? I’ll be 42 tomorrow, and yet somehow I don’t feel like the answer to life, the universe and everything. Still, it should be ok. One question I’ve been meaning to put to all of you Coode Streeters out there is this: in April I’m traveling to Brisbane for Conjure where I will be a guest of honor. I’ll be doing at least four panels, and some other stuff. My question is, is there anything you’d like to hear me talk about it? I actually think I might dive back into the Australian SF question, but I’d like to do something more interesting than the ‘year in review’ panel, which always seems dull to me.