General Rubbish

Me + Hospital = NONONONONO!

Hey everyone, thanks for all the well-wishings over on Facebook, through emails, and over the phone. Here's a short version of what's going on... I'm pregnant.

Okay, kidding aside, I woke up last Saturday and coughed up blood a few times. However, I felt fine so I hope it was just a fluke. You know, like peeing out of your ears, or inhaling through your thumb.

I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Saturday morning and attended a couple of panels, and around 1:30pm I just felt generally uncomfortable, so I headed home and got some lunch.

After I ate, I started feeling really short of breath, and so I called a friend to take me to the hospital. I thought I'd just drive myself, but I just had a tire fixed and the car had been feeling wobbly on the way back home from UCLA.

Once we got to the hospital, it took about an hour to see a doctor in the ER, another hour to get checked out and have an xray, and then another hour in the waiting room while they checked things over. They finally called me back and put me in a room with about four other beds, each separated by curtains. A doctor visits me, I get a shot for the pain (thankfully) and they tell me that they're going to do an EKG and a cat-scan, but that they're pretty sure I have a blood clot on my lung.

Okay, what?!

Anyhow, I get the tests done, which takes a couple of hours, have a breathing treatment where I breathe this white fog stuff (one of my lungs had become partially deflated) and then they told me yes, the cat-scan confirmed blood clots. On both of my lungs.

So, they admitted me to the hospital, and I was checked into an extremely dingy, narrow room so they could run more tests. Since Saturday I've had blood drawn at least 20 times, had a chest x-ray each morning, had several ultrasounds, and three breathing treatments each day. Oh, plus I am hooked up to oxygen, a heart monitor, and two IVs with drips containing antibiotics, blood thinners, and saline.

Also, they have me on several meds; a painkiller (which I can request every 2 hours, wahoo), anti-nausea meds (because of the painkillers), and some sort of stomach meds because of all the other meds. Oh, and an oral blood thinner in addition to the one I have via IV.

Fun, right? Anyhow, I've been confined to bed and unable to get up. Which also means unable to shower. Which means I got a sponge bath the other day. I wish I could say they had a celebrity lingerie model charity sponge bath service here, but they don't.

I've been hearing from doctors (4 or 5) the whole time, and no, they don't know how they all formed. They all kept asking if I'd flown anytime recently, because you can develop blood clots on long flights, but I had only taken a short flight to Austin in March. Then they thought I might have a genetic history of blood clots, which I don't, nor does my immediate family.

Which is why I've been getting tons of blood tests. They're trying to rule out the genetic factor. If they do, I only have to take blood thinners for six months. If they don't, I might have to take them the rest of my life. Yikes. We've heard back from some of the genetic tests, and so far they've all been negative, which is good.

Now, I told them I'm a writer, and sometimes I'm in the same position for long periods of time. They said that could definitely have caused it, so for everyone else out there in one position each day, remember to break it up with walks and stretches! I tended not to do that because of all the freelancing I'm doing. Aye carumba.

Anyhow, on Wednesday morning I had my oxygen tube off, and they asked if I took it off for discomfort, and I said no, I had just wanted to rub my face. The doctor happened to come by then too, and they checked my blood/oxygen levels, which were good. So, they decided to take me off oxygen. Later, they took me off all my IVs and the heart monitor as well. I was free! The first thing I did was take a long shower because I looked like a vagrant who had stumbled in from a mental ward.

Wednesday night, they told me they'd be moving me to another room, and seriously it's been like moving from The Fleabag Motor Inn to The Ritz, because my new room is so much nicer. Let's just say it's a plus that I don't have to listen to the man in the room next to me moan, or hear 48 beeping IV alarms. I'm still on the pain shots every now and then, and I get blood thinner shots in my stomach (ouch) twice a day now. But, they've told me it looks like I'll be going home in a couple of days.

So keep me in your thoughts and prayers. At this point, I'd love to get home to get over all of this and not see a hospital until I develop super powers or something. My Mom and Dad both flew out (despite my warnings of "I'll be fine!" and "Don't worry about me!") and they literally made this week a billion times more bearable. Several of you have come to visit me, and I thank you immensely for that. The hospital is a depressing place, and it's been great to see all of your faces.

I'll post an update as soon as I have one. Thanks again, everyone.

My day job is science fiction: io9

Are you an unrepentant neophile? Do you sometimes think post-apocalyptic futures and alien invasions are pretty cool? Want to know what's going to happen next to the climate, the shape of skyscrapers, the contents of your genome, or your favorite scifi TV show?

Then it's time to check out io9.com.

io9 is a brand new blog about science fiction and futurism published by Gawker Media (and edited by yours truly), and it is now live! We'll be bringing you the latest about science fiction in all media, as well as futuristic science, design, and art.

Ride the nanowires over to io9.com today. Brain implant sold separately.

Amazon offers up Science Fiction HD-DVDs for 30% off

Either this means that HD-DVD really needs a shot in the arm, or Amazon is feeling particularly gracious with their stock of HD-DVDs. Either way if you love science fiction and have an HD-DVD player, you win.

Now's your chance to stock up on things and finally get that copy of The Last Starfighter in high-def.

Wave your hands in the air like you moderately care

Andy: "Sparky, look! What's that?! A spaceship?"
Sparky: "Woof, woof!"

*cue weird alien music*

If you've ever seen a classic science fiction film from the 1950s and watched a dish-shaped UFO fly into view, then you've most likely heard a Theremin. It's the electronic musical intsrument that provides the "OooooOEEEeeeeeOOoooeEEEE" sound that you usually hear during those moments. Plus, you play it without touching it, which is just plain weird, and very cool ... as is evidenced by this video of someone playing "Video Killed The Radio Star" on one. A note you can take from this: remember to turn it on.

Now, you can't really stroll down to the corner music store and pick one of these up, so what better way than to roll up your sleeves and build one yourself? Make: magazine has a PDFcast that will take you through the steps, and you'll be waving your hands around in the air maniacally in no time.

Science Fiction armaments for your protection

It's no secret that fans of science fiction love to spend money buying things that you wouldn't find in say, the White House. That is unless the First Lady has added a replica of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Lincoln Bedroom. Something that would probably benefit the current administration. Of course, so would a dictionary. You can just see the president approaching it slowly, like the monolith, opening it and exclaiming, "My god ... it's full of words!"

Now, if you're a self-respecting fan of science fiction, particularly of the 1950s and steampunk varieties, then you may be sorely tempted to hand over your hard-earned cash to the New Zealand based special effects house Weta. In exchange, you'll be picking up one of Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators. Or as the laymen like to call them, "rayguns."

Yes, some bored techies at Weta workshops decided to tinker around and build these pretty nifty rayguns. Then a bright marketing person must have had the gem of idea to sell these, in specially designed, velvet-lined cases, to gullible science fiction fans around the globe. What better way to show your love for retro sci-fi than with a non-working hunk of die-cast metal that costs hundreds of dollars?

I've already pre-ordered the Victorious Mongoose.

Ender's Game vs. The Last Starfighter

Fair warning: if you haven't read Ender's Game or seen The Last Starfighter, then you probably don't want to keep reading this unless you're in the mood for spoilers.

So your race is facing intergalactic extinction. You've been pushed to the brink of existence. What do you do? Spend time training new troops, building a mega-spaceship to take your race to another galaxy or ... develop a video game that looks for a prodigal savior to come and prove themselves through skill with a joystick?

Apparently if you're Orson Scott Card or Robert Preston, that's exactly what you'd do. It’s actually pure (evil) genius if you think about it. You know all of those Wiis, PlayStations, and Xboxes sitting dormant in living rooms, bedrooms, and basements across the country? Perfect little training units. With a little tweaking of code you could churn out an army using The Sims 27 in no time.

In a nutshell, that's the plot of both Ender's Game, the classic science fiction novel from 1985, and The Last Starfighter, which hit screens 1984. Race faces extinction, video game gets programmed to train potential saviors, if they beat the game ... then they suit up for the real thing.

In Ender's case, he didn't know that the game he was playing all along was actually the real battle. It's a good thing he didn't decide to just screw around in the game and try and smash his ships into the nearest planet, because those were real pilots in those ships. Who knows what would have happened if he had to keep hitting the 'continue' button.

Now, the real rub lies with The Last Starfighter's Alex Rogan. He was playing an actual quarter-sucking arcade game, and when he hit the high score, lights and celebration ensued. Then The Music Man himself appears from the sky in a flying limousine and whisks him away to fight interstellar battle. Sounds simple, right? Well, consider this. In Ender's Game, Ender literally wipes the enemy out completely, unwittingly committing genocide. However, Alex only destroys Xur and the Ko-dan Armada, meaning there are going to be some really pissed off Ko-dans somewhere who are going to come back and whip the snot out of someone as revenge. Of course, Alex decides to become a teacher for future Starfighters, and takes his eye-candy girlfriend with him. But if the Ko-dans pour on a little speed, then Alex and the human race are
pretty much sunk.

But what's really puzzling is how the aliens decided to put the Starfighter game on Earth to begin with. Were there tons all over the planet? Only one? Did they go to other parts of the galaxy? Do they even play video games near Alpha Centauri? One disappointing fact about the actual arcade game used in the movie comes via Wil Wheaton, whose scenes were cut from the film. He told me "The one thing I remember clearly about that film was how disappointed I was when I saw the totally awesome video game on the set, and the only thing in the cabinet was a 4x4 grid of incandescent lights in varying colors." Not very inspiring. It boggles the mind. Since there never was a The Last Starfighter 2: Even Starfightier, we may never know what happened to the other cabinets.

Blog like an Egyptian

So, a couple of weeks ago I got an email from a PR firm that I'd worked with in the past. "Unique opportunity to travel to Egypt!" etc etc. It sounded a bit like one of those junk emails that you get every so often, "Hello, I represent the Crown Prince of Burundi, and I need your help in withdrawing his majesty's 100,000,000 pound fortune." Too good to be true, right?

Anyhow, I didn't respond right away, but eventually I thought "How many times will I have the chance to go to Egypt, even if it is part of some grand scheme to get one of my kidneys?" I wrote back, and they outlined the event: We'll send you to Cairo, pay for the trip, and you will cover a concert at the pyramids. I hadn't heard of the singer at all, which concerned me a bit, but luckily it wasn't the Crown Prince of Burundi. So, I told them I was in, and they said they'd get back to me.

I didn't hear from them for several days, and finally decided that they were chasing after bigger reporters. What was Wolf Blitzer up to? Maybe Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight was taking my place. I was at a press junket for the Special Edition DVD of William Friedkin's CRUISING (which was great, and comes out on September 18th), when the PR firm emailed and asked me to give them a call. Just as a note, that's a pet peeve of mine. When you get an email that says "Call me", I always wonder why they couldn't have just put whatever they were going to say on the phone into the email?

I emailed back and said that I couldn't call as I was in junkets all day, and the reply came back "If you want to go to Egypt, we need to talk." And so it began. More soon, but in the meantime you can entertain yourself with a ton of photos.

My iTunes

Just testing this out to see if it works.

I love the smell of construction paper in the morning.

Hello blog! I'm back, somewhat. Sorry for neglecting you, but thanks for holding onto my links and photos so well. You're doing a good job.

I had to buy a new notebook recently, because I've either filled mine up, lost them, or left them in dusty corners under sofas where I'll find them months from now and say "Why the heck did I write that down?" I stopped by a couple of places looking for the Moleskin notebooks that I use (if you haven't tried a Moleskin notebook ... you really need to), and I think it was at Aaron Brothers where I smelled a full pack of construction paper that someone had opened, and that smell always takes me back to first grade in an instant. Other things that do that are the smell of Elmer's glue, the wobble sound of a posterboard, and green-handled left-handed scissors, which were always so hard to find. I think that I was forced to learn how to cut things with my right hand because the teacher could never find those things.

Anyhow, I'm freshly back from E3, which you can read about extensively over on Joystiq, and I'm soon off to cover Comic-Con for a week for Cinematical. I'm bracing myself for the long hours and the hordes of fanboys and fangirls, and wondering if I should try wearing a costume one of these years.

SXSW 2007, writing, work, and other fun stuff

So I survived SXSW '07 and lived to tell about it. There's a few hidden gems, photos, and videos I need to share, but right now I'm just too gosh-darned tired. They will be forthcoming, so sayeth I.

I really enjoyed the giant booming thunder and torrential rains Austin had to offer, because normally when we get rain in Southern California, it just, well ... rains. The sky will gray up and rain will slither down wetly. In Texas you have magnificent lightning streaking across the sky that you can see for miles and miles, and the thunder will make the base of your spine tickle. That will be missed.

Austin is growing by leaps and bounds since I was in college there, and I truly hope it doesn't get too big for its britches. Downtown is really bursting at the seams, and they are putting up lofts everywhere. If it doesn't lose the Austin-ness that makes it special, then I don't mind. The Whole Foods downtown is literally the biggest grocery store I've ever been in. They even have a bar, a sandwich counter, and a chocolatier in there. You need a golf cart to get from the eggs to the milk, it's that massive.

For now, you can check out my SXSW 2007 coverage on Joystiq.com, where there will be a lot more up soon. Tomorrow I'm visiting the set of NBC's Heroes and interviewing Masi Oka, Kyson Lee, and the man himself, George Takei. Look for that report up on TVSquad.com sometime soon too. In the meanwhile, I leave you with a collection of robot heads to glance at.