Randomness for 12/2

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1) Perils of translation: Emailed out-of-office autoreply text from translator used on road sign.

2) Seductive monsters, Batman-style. Has to be seen to be believed. The “best” part is that this is part of a villain’s origin story.

3) “The slush pile seems, in some sense, to serve as a sort of representative sampling of the collective unconscious of the American public—a surreal landscape of vengeance, conspiracy, otherworldly beings, and really big guns. Sexual relations between ladies and gentlemen are fraught with peril (especially given that one or more participants in any romantic endeavor may very likely be aliens, demons, were-vampires, undead, or in a coma); queerness is almost nonexistent, as is any sort of radical politics (unless by “radical” one means “hoping to overthrow the government and install in its place a parliament selected by extraterrestrials from a more spiritually advanced dimension”); and people of color exist only as grotesque caricatures.”

4) The NY Times 100 Notable Books of the Year. No, I’m not going to read it, either. I loaded the page, “control f” searched for my name, and of course found nothing. Now I’m done with the list.

5) Cormac McCarthy donates his typewriter to charitable auction. The most amusing part is that the dealer handling the auction thinks it’s astonishing that McCarthy wrote all that fiction on such a primitive machine. Someone should explain to him that it’s the machine in McCarthy’s head that did the real work.

6) Celestial Soul Portraits. The perfect gift for your most hated enemy. via tnh’s Particles.

7) Maureen Dowd in a telling misstatement: “Barack Obama is the ultimate party crasher. He crashed Hillary’s high-hat party in 2008 and he crashed the snooty age-old Washington party of privileged white guys with a monopoly on power.” A quick note for Ms. Dowd: Barack Obama didn’t crash a thing. He was invited by the only people empowered to give out invitations.

SETI@home and recipe contest followup

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As a followup to the previous post about a guy fired for loading SETI@home, apparently, he’d done other things as well, such as “bring home” 18 computers, download pron at work, and claim to have done work he hadn’t done.

So, it’s not the wacky story the idiotic cnet writer made it out to be.

Also, we ate the T-Day leftover empanadas from the recipe contest for dinner on Monday. Verdict: we liked it! The next time I make them, I’ll cut the salt in half for the pastry–it was a little thirst-inducing. Least favorite for everyone was the bacon and cheddar mix. The favorite was different for each, with the boy liking the gravy best, and my wife and I favoring the cranberry.

Yeah, I’ll be making them again.

You know how your read an article that makes you want to slug the writer in the gut?

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Yeah, you know. But aside from the ignorant and infuriating he-wanted-to-talk-to-Klingons! tone of the article, the author reports a claim (without checking it, obviously, since that would have required work) that startled me.

Let me back up for those who didn’t want to click the link. The article reports that the Higley Unified School District asked an employee to resign after he installed SETI@home on all the district computers. More backing up: SETI@home is a program that uses idle time on your computer to scan radio signals for signs of alien communication.

This is what caught my eye: “And his alleged downloading of alien-hunting software might well have used additional energy resources and caused other related damage or accelerated depreciation to the hardware. The school district estimates these losses at between $1.2 million and $1.6 million.”

Over a million dollars, maybe up to a mil and a half, just for SETI@home? Is that fair or complete bullshit?

Suspect shot

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I haven’t been online all that much for the last few days, but the news here has been filled with stories of the four murdered police officers in Lakewood (a suburb of Tacoma). Coming hard on the murder of a Seattle police officer on Halloween night, it’s a tough time to be an officer of the peace in the northwest.

The suspect in that Halloween shooting was killed by police while the cop’s funeral was going on. Maurice Clemmons, the troubled Arkansas man who was the leading suspect in the shooting, was also shot and killed by a police officer investigating a stolen car early this morning. Early reports indicate he was carrying a gun taken from one of the officers who were murdered, but I’ll wait to hear if that’s confirmed.

I hope they got the right guy, and I hope the inevitable questions of “How could this have been avoided?” don’t run rampant. I sympathize with Mike Huckabee (for one of the first times ever) for the way “Governor frees convict who goes out to shoot cops” meme has been spreading. I sympathize with the Washington state government officials who only allow a suspect to be held without bail in capital crimes. Both tried to do the right thing, and no one has a crystal ball.

But we still have a chance to do the right thing here. Those four officers left behind 9 kids between them. You can donate to help support those families through the donate button on that page (which should be larger and more visible) or you can mail in a gift. Checks should be made out to the LPIG Benevolent Fund at P.O. Box 99579, Lakewood, WA 98499.

Reviews of Child of Fire, part six

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Continue reading

Black Friday Non-Shopping and Leftover Contest Winner (Exclamation point!)

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And the winner is…

(drumroll)
Continue reading

Book too short?

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I don’t often give out writing advice here on my blog (seems pretty presumptuous at this point in my career[1]) but on message boards you can’t shut me up. So instead of writing something original this morning, I’m going to link to a post I made for people who find they need to add plot to a novel that came out too short in the first draft.

Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, there or here, or offer additional ideas.

[1] Holy crap I just called it a career.

Game of Cages on Amazon.com

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Game of Cages has an Amazon.com listing already. The publish date is listed as August 31, 2010, which is a month later than I’d heard. It’s not surprising, though, considering how late Man Bites World is.

There’s no cover art yet, but jeez, there it is.

Randomness for 11/28

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1) Can this be true? It sounds like an urban legend. Peruvian gang spends 30 years murdering people and extracting their fat for use in European cosmetics. Where was *your* makeup made? via lilaschow

2) Now, a palate cleanser: Freelancer funny. Via autopope.

3) Evil kisses? I think I’ve found my first “Nick Biter” title.

4) Ten percent off King Tractor Press comics until Christmas!

5) This link is a serious one: Patrick Stewart describes his personal history growing up with domestic violence. Heart-wrenching stuff. via James Nicoll

According to Google

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According to Google, the search term:

“Nick Biter” vampire

gets no hits. Yes! If the Twenty Palaces books don’t take off, I know what I’m writing next!

(Yes, work is dead slow today and I’m getting antsy.)