China Mieville takes on young adult fiction, and turns out an environmental fable; I guess that's not too surprising, actually. There are some great (and very Mieville-y) ideas in this book (the unbrellas, the Black Windows, Skool, the UnGun, the man with the head of a birdcage, etc) but ultimately I don't think it was very well-written. And besides, if you're looking for a fantasy about an alternative version of London, well, Neverwhere's better.

(Many thanks, though, to Julie for the signed copy!)

On our drive up to New Hampshire this weekend, Rachel and I found ourselves on Rt. 3 driving behind a car with the vanity plate TOTNKOPF. For a while I considered the possibility that it meant something else: maybe the driver had a young kid and was a police officer with a wacky sense of humor whose last name began with "F." Then we pulled along side and saw the red SS decal on the driver's side door. Creepy! (And of course, the car was a Volkswagen.)

Taco Bell has a new program called Feed the Beat where musicians on tour can apply for $500 to spend at Taco Bell. As someone who used to road manage a band and spent a LOT of time on the road, I have to say this is just amazing.
Some thoughts:
1: 8 of us on tour could probably stretch this $500 (though we would probably have figured out a way to get two $500 awards) to last an entire month long tour. This would allow us to keep ALL of our per diem (as opposed to starving to save most of it) which is a big deal when you're not a band that makes money.
2. Invariably, our guitar player would eat his share of the $500 in the first week of the tour and then bitch every day as the rest of us made him go there until we had spent our share.
3. Fart jokes aside, can you imagine 8 guys riding around in a van eating Taco Bell every day and then sleeping 4 to a hotel room or worse every night? There are bound to be issues.
4. I wonder if this applies to only Taco Bell or Taco Bell AND KFC.
5. More companies should follow Taco Bell's lead and support traveling musicians.