The Magpie #015: Barely Legal Babes of Innsmouth
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Magpie, a wire service for the weird compiled from the open tabs of writer Alex de Campi. Here’s what’s going on:
We already know it’s a bad week with terrible things seemingly happening every hour. I’m not going to talk about any of it here because I’m exhausted and I think maybe we all just need a space to be silly and escape. Sorry to anyone who expected incisive political commentary.
Today’s subject line comes from a conversation I had with two online pals about using AI art for painting reference, where my friend (and cover artist for my upcoming middle grade fantasy adventure graphic novel REVERSAL) Corey Brickley called the result “hundreds of artists who all paint sexy baby women with pointlessly complicated clothing.” And they all have a slightly piscine look to them, as if they lock themselves in the bathroom on Fridays so they can turn into fish. It’s true, we’ve hit Uncanny Valley, and it’s an upper middle class suburb of Innsmouth.
66 million year old fossilized vomit discovered, researchers puzzled by pieces of carrot in it, saying “carrots hadn’t evolved yet.” Dinosaur in question admits “I just popped out for a swift half with the lads, but things got a little out of hand.”
Wonderful roundtable interview with syndicated political cartoonists on Anne Telnaes leaving WaPo, and on the future of the industry—also, just like comics awards, getting a Pulitzer doesn’t put you on easy street.
The Stevie Nicks guide to escaping your chaotic, toxic bandmates and going solo. I love her so much.
Los Angeles’ private firefighters. (Complete article can be viewed easily in Reader.) There’s a thriller story in this somewhere but I’m too deep in other things to focus on it now—it’s on the list, though. (Yes, I know Scott High-Concept Snyder did a story like this but the day I can’t outwrite him is the day I give it all up. Sorry but he’s mid)
Another Rolling Stone piece on the messy, messy life (and wife) of songwriter Eric Carmen, once again proving that falling down right-wing conspiracy rabbitholes will destroy you. The sheer he said/she said between family members is like watching a car crash in slow motion…
Time to read Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man? Sure feels like it.
On Jan 30, the Video Game History Foundation is opening its extensive digital archives to the public. Cool!
For Your Consideration, Ultimate Supervillain Car Edition
An exhibition of imaginary books at book collector mecca the Grolier Club in NYC, and a course on binding your own imaginary books: take me there
If you write fiction, fanfic, or literature while queer, especially if you are trans or nonbinary, this long piece on preserving your work against the efforts of an increasingly hostile and dictatorial government is critical reading.
A labyrinth for trapping AI training bots. Probably a nightmare for hosting costs, but worth it
Sticking a knife in the traditional image of the Roman Army as an exclusively masculine environment.
Ritesh Babu’s long reflection on the state of comics and his changing attitudes towards it echoes my own; it also comes with a list of books he enjoyed last year that all look interesting/like stuff I should check out
Yes I do absolutely want to read a paper titled “Sodomy and the Late Medieval English Church Courts”—it was presented at a conference in Leeds and hopefully will be available ok Jstor or something soon
The world’s northernmost coal mine is closing for good, but it’s unsettling the people of Svalbard and emboldening Russia… and leaving little future for the mine’s remaining 50 workers. I’m very pro-renewable energy but this is a fascinating look at the social costs of closing something down without providing another form of employment or an economic reason to stay in the region.
RIP cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who met writer and architect Norton Juster in the most New York City way possible: checking out some of his thrown-put belongings and furniture to see if there was anything he could use. Together, they went on to make The Phantom Tollbooth, a book I loved as a kid.
WEEKLY WIKIPEDIA PAGE OF INTEREST: extremely Gil Scott-Heron voice Tardigrades on the Moon
RECIPE: I was given poppyseeds by a visiting friend about a month ago and in a quest to use them I finally found a good recipe for lemon-poppyseed muffins. A few caveats: the recipe is very wimpy with the amount of lemon juice and zest it uses; just juice and zest a whole lemon and throw it all in. (Obviously lemon juice goes in last or it won’t play nice with the yogurt.) Also, the lemon-sugar glaze the recipe suggests is a bit meh, I made a simple powdered sugar and milk frosting and that was much better—my friend Andrea also says you can sub lemon juice for the milk and make a powdered sugar and lemon frosting if you want more lemon flavor. Anyhow, kiddo ate four of these as soon as they came out of the oven so they are definitely a success chez nous.
MUSIC:
Orchestral music day!!! First, this amazing Ben Nobuto digital glitch piece done live at the Proms, I would like six albums of this stuff immediately please:
Also here’s a fun pair. I saw Peter Greenaway’s formalist masterpiece Drowning by Numbers at far too young and impressionable an age, and that explains a lot, honestly—its soundtrack by Michael Nyman riffed off the andante of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and I listen to both the soundtrack and the entire Sinfonia on an extremely regular basis. Compare/contrast:
That’s it for this week. I have a couple books coming out in April, REVERSAL (middle grade fantasy, published by Dark Horse) and an inexpensive mass-market reprint of TRUE WAR STORIES from Image. Also, the final arc of my all ages space opera FULL TILT BOOGIE starts soon in 2000AD! If any of these look interesting to you, please consider preordering them or indeed checking out my books in general. Digital editions for both will be available.
I’m also happy to sell signed/dedicated copies of my books directly to you (non-US people, shipping is likely to be prohibitive, alas)—I don’t have copies of Reversal or TWS yet but I have most other things, just reply to this email and we can talk.
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