it's just you... :-)

After reading your Rectomo post, it was all I could do to avoid asking about arses instead of faces. :-)

If by 'face' you mean 'sarlaac mouth', yes.

I didn't say it had to be a humanface... :-)

Yes I can see it too,
Now we just have to work out if it is the face of God or Stephen Hawkings?
But then again Stephen Hawking is God to some people?
Scott : )

I was going to say it's just you, but then I tilted my head just so, and there it was. So I'll revise it to "It was just you, but shortly it will be all readers of your LJ... NOOOOOOOO!"

I'm currently reading Earth Ascendant. My work has conveniently moved to the city (of which move the less said the better), and we're now one block from Galaxy Books. Dangerous! I walked in mid last week, looking for The Starry Rift as it happens, and instead I walked out with (the US edition of) EA. Excellent, as always. Also should be receiving Magic Dirt in the mail tomorrowish from punkrocker1991, along with another Ticonderoga book, yay!

You're the first person I know of to have EA. How exciting! I hope you enjoy it.

And thanks for seeing the head. To me it looks like ET with a pancake covering half his face.

Good on you for supporting small press!

Seriously, you don't anyone else who has it? I wonder how they appeared there on Galaxy's shelves. There's no doubt that other people had bought copies too though :)

I think small press is really important, as are small record labels and the like - but I must admit that if there's something out there I'm keen to read I'll just go and buy it. It helps that I've seen Russell's recent Ticonderoga books and they look lovely - I've certainly seen some small press publications in the past that have strange font choices, low print quality, dodgy cover art etc, but less so these days. And it never stopped my buying the books. Sub-standard or no editing could be another reason to worry about small press but let's be clear: all these concerns can be equally applied to any book you're likely to pick up, or not.

Alisa & Ben's 2012 anthology is a fabulous example of a small press publication done right, from their attention to detail in editing, their choice of stories and the quality thereof, and the quality of the object itself. I've no doubt the books I'm expecting tomorrow will be too!

I'm looking forward to reading 2012. The buzz on it is really positive.

Russell & Liz/Ticonderoga do a wonderful job. I'm really really pleased with how Magic Dirt turned out, even if Adalita didn't end up on the cover. :-)

Re EA: I'm sure there are copies out there, just no one's checked in apart from you. Only received my copies of both US and Oz versions last week, one day apart. I was going to post about the different covers but have been swamped. Hence my tapping away late at night when I should be getting the Zs...

Got any dates here in SA coming up? One day we will meet here!

I'm interested to read your comments on the two covers! I've seen the cover at Amazon UK and it looks lovely - indeed I'm not that keen on the font choice on the US one, the colouring in of the title, and it's quite a complicated cover, with a busy (albeit awesome) image surrounded by typography.

But on the other hand, I don't think the UK/Oz cover is quite as striking as Saturn Returns was. I kept seeing SR in the bookshops and becoming terribly jealous (even though it was nice to have read it before it even came out here!), so I'm glad I have a reasonable-quality 2nd-hand one on my shelf anyway...

No giggage to speak of in the near future. Ange & I are going on a fab holiday to Europe/UK (with Shanghai/Tokyo briefly on the way back - cripes!) mid-June to end of July, and Shenzo's getting married shortly and going o/s too, so I think the next touring will be October basically, to launch the next album!
Next album! Also, we are working on more remixes, including some pretty cool international (and local) names, so yay.
Of course will be in Adelaide for launches, so I'll keep you posted.

VERY excited about the new album, Pete. Amanda and I are really looking forward to it.

It'd be so much easier to chat about covers etc over a hot chocolate. Why can't work send you to THIS city? :-)

I do agree! Or, why couldn't the Sydney Writers' Festival have you here again?
I was really peeved at the way our last trip to Adelaide worked out, and I don't mean the fact that you couldn't come, which was sad - but we couldn't really have had much of a chat there anyway. I was hoping we could've arrived in Adelaide somewhat earlier, although it appears we couldn't have gotten together anyway then, and I would've also liked to have been leaving in the afternoon on Monday so that a breakfast meet-up could've been possible - but various organisational difficulties got in the way. In the end it's hard to see where to lay blame, and I don't want to go there, but...

I'll keep you posted! Re. the new album too.

The jet-setting lifestyle is not how it seemed when we dreamed of it long ago. Ah well. :-)

I'm hoping to get to Sydney at some point this year, and not just to go to that great Lindt place again, honest.

Yup. I kinda agree with you on this one.

It's ET wearing one of those sleeping masks you use on aeroplanes.
And I think he's snoring...

Or at the very least grouchy from having to make the long Sydney/Aldebaran leg in coach *again*.

You're right. If it was black instead of red, it would look just like the worst candy I had while I was in Sweden! They were little hard liquorice-flavored skulls, coated in bona fide table salt, and after you were through the unpleasant outer layers, you were in for a real treat: a pocket of liquid salt that may or may not have tasted exactly like semen.

Eww! But brilliant. How do I get me some of those?

Hmm... I couldn't find a place to buy them online, but if you want to read about salted liquorice candy in general, Wikipedia has a good description. I mean, they didn't use the words "Why God, why?" but close enough.

They're very useful to have in a dish on the coffee table. The Swedes were nice and warned me of the horror (and I ate the candy anyway, thereby discovering their secret usefulness). Despite ugly rumors to the contrary, I'm not nice. I let people eat them and I still wish I'd video-recorded their subsequent hysterics. Sometimes I would then eat one too, and force myself to pretend it was good, so they'd think they were crazy or that they got a bad one and go for it again.

I highly recommend it as entertainment at the expense of your friends and family, or innocent proselytizers inviting themselves over to talk to you about the state of your soul.

ETA: I found a video of Japanese girls trying similar candy.

Edited at 2008-04-28 07:48 pm (UTC)

That does look like a lot of fun. Thanks for the link/tip!

If it's the face of God, then God is some sort of space mandrill. Because that's the face I can see.

Oh wait, there's a little skull-like face in the white centre too.

That's the one I'm seeing, the one in the centre. Weird and agonised. I can't take my eyes off it.

Why are the walls melting?

The skull-like thing, yeah. Eek.

I see a face with two big curling horns... actually it looks a bit like the big demon thing in The Satan Pit.

Holy crap. Now I can see that face too. How many things are there in the centre of the galaxy, peering back out at us???

That they're visible only in radio just freaks me out.

Yes, it's my face, okay? I guess it was inevitable that sooner or later someone on this piddling planet of pipsqueaks would notice. Well give yourselves a frickin' medal, and await further instructions from your almighty overlord. Oh, and you might like to stock up on toothpicks...

I see a flaming Skull. Does that help?

That's never a good sign. :-)

My brain's pattern-matching and symbolic functions are really quite strong, but even I can't recognize any pareidolia in the image. At least, not in terms of facial features. To me, it looks like a heart. A freshly-eviscerated one, at that.

I was doing fine only seeing a galaxy. Then I stared a bit & tried to work out how you would & now I see a "smiley" face but in that 'Scream' style way :o

Either that or reading The Changeling has attacked my psyche.... :)

Should The Changeling come with a warning? Whoops.

Definitely a Scream-style image, as I see it. The heart of our galaxy is not a happy place, it seems.

Either that, or it's had a really HUGE night before this shot was taken...

Curiosity question - which age group did you aim The Changeling for? I think the library I procured the copy from has not quite got it right (or my brain has left the building, which is a not uncommon occurrence).

Advanced 10s and up. What section is it in?

I think my brain might be off where yours is today.

Sorry for delay, life has been busy (but you already know what that is like *lol*).

It has been placed into the non J (junior) area with the spine of the book carrying a YA sticker. So I was expecting a more 'US' version of 'YA' ie 15yrs & up etc.

I was right after reading that I suspected you'd penned it for the 10s & upwards :)

I'm glad it's reading for the right age-group even if it's in the wrong section!

Looks like Eddie the Head to me...

Hurrah! I think we should rename the centre of the galaxy "Eddie". It's a lot more catchy than Sagittarius A*.

I see three different faces.
And they're all tracking me with their eyes...

Whoa. I'm up to two and that's bad enough. Sleep well tonight.

Looks like a heart!

On the topic of pretty astronomy stuff. my favourite is this movie (be warned, 321 Mb quicktime movie):

http://www.ukaff.ac.uk/starcluster/cluster1.mov

(drop the cluster1.mov off the URL for the full web page, with background and other cool movies).

It's a computer simulation of a single star forming region - a cloud of dust and gas that forms what ends up as an open cluster (like the Pleiades or the Jewel Box) over a few million years. If you've ever heard star formation described, it's always something like 'a cloud of gas and dus