funny

Randomness for 10/1 (as promised)

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1) Suburban fantasy. Heh.

2) Chris Sims writes up another issue of the Anita Blake comic. Double heh.

3) “Is this a typo or are you being experimental?” Comments written by actual students extracted from workshopped manuscripts at a major university.

4) This is the best use for a droid I can imagine: R2D2 as mobile gaming unit.

5) I laughed while reading this: “Shitasmia,” or the first Mac/Windows/Linux rant worth reading, ever.

6) Who is HOBODARKSEID? And Why Should You Care? This, along with Shit My Dad Says, make me want to sign on to Twitter.

7) The true nature of Superman’s powers. Warning: pdf file.

Randomness for 9/25

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1) B&N demands authors link to their site or they will not order their books. Which… really, people? I should say that, months ago, my editor emailed me asking me to link to as many online booksellers as possible on my bookpage, which I had already done. However, unlike Amazon.com, B&N makes you go through Google to set up an affiliate account, and in general is a pain in the ass.

Still, link to our site or we won’t sell your book to our customers? What if their customers actually want that book?

2) Thorin Oakenshield as Nigerian phishing scammer.

3) Powell’s Books has only one copy of my book “left in stock at $5.50!” … four days before it is published.

4) Who knew? The London Review of Books has personal ads… and some are hilarious.

5) Our local library is having their semi-annual Friends of the Library book sale. I will not be going. Part of the reason I’m learning to read faster is to clear off some damn shelf space.

6) Finally, a confirmed sighting of Child of Fire in a brick-and-mortar bookstore. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Offered without comment

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Randomness for 9/16

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I was planning to take a break from these for a couple days, but the universe has other plans.

1) The Philadelphia Free Library is closing for lack of funding. The city of my birth is about to join southern Oregon as a place I will never, ever live in.

2) On a lighter note, a haiku about the Sub-mariner, in comics form.

3) The Dan Brown sequel generator, which I can’t see at work. Is it funny?

4) Birth of a meme! “Whose responsible this!” via glvalentine

5) Dungeons and Dragons, the sodas! I’m going to be all over Digby’s Crushing Thirst Destroyer.

Randomness for 9/13/09

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1) Glenn Beck “doesn’t think the race thing works anymore.”

2) The Facebook Song. I know, you’ve probably already seen it, but I’m kinda new to Facebook, so I’m just catching up.

3) Animals with lightsabers. via matt_ruff

Randomness for 9/12/09

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1) Toilet Birthdays. Because every blog needs a purpose. Or every purpose needs a blog.

2) You know that new show The Vampire Diaries? Well, it’s based on some very strange books. Very.

3) “Whiteout” is so staggeringly bad that it achieves a kind of transcendent poetry. It’s ignorant of how things are in the real world, of what makes a thriller a thriller, of why people seek out entertainment. It’s a movie made for an irony-free world populated by impaired moviegoers who are amused simply by shapes and sounds and shiny things…

A chimpanzee could’ve finger-painted a better movie. A chimpanzee, somewhere in the world, probably has.

Attention, chimpanzee: Send your finger-painted screenplay to Tom Skerritt. He’ll sign on for it. He signed up for “Whiteout,” after all.

4) How to hide an airplane factory.

5) Writer Beware examines the myth that you have to know someone to get published. ::raises hand:: As a data point, I didn’t know my agent or my editor before I signed with them, and I didn’t have any connections, either. I did it by cold-query.

6) A Main Force Patrol T-shirt. I’m thinking my friend Mike would love this one, but check out the categories. The designs are really well done. via serialkarma

An R-rated Harry Potter

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Over on his blog, Nathan Bransford is asking people if children’s books should have ratings, the way films and video games do.

Me, I think this misses the point. Books don’t need ratings stating which age groups they are appropriate for. All that does is embarrass readers who are enjoying a well-written adventure that lacks cursing or violence, and makes kids seek out forbidden ratings.

What I want are labels. Here is my suggested list:

Rated S: Contains stereotypes
Rated HP: Contains “helpless princess” characters who must be rescued by a male character.
Rated J: Contains Jingoistic attitudes toward foreign peoples/governments
Rated MN: Contains “Magic Negro” character with no life beyond the assistance character gives to Our Hero
Rated DA: Contains dead animal for purposes of unbearable pathos
Rated DV: Contains characters and plotting that you’re seen a hundred times before, but might be new to an 8-yo.
Rated LM: Lacks Monsters or other supernatural elements.
Rated MBS: Mocks Belief Systems
Rated NF: Not as Funny as it thinks it is.

Any others I should have included?

Atheists promise to care for pets…

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… Of people taken up in the Rapture.

For a fee, of course.

Randomness for 9/7/09

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1) MightyGodKing’s latest Stab at Relevence, the card game.

2) F=MA? Or F=MAWill(MagicNecklace)? From a blog created by filmmakers planning their first hard-sf indie feature film.

3) RT Book Reviews gives Child of Fire four and a half stars. (I hope that’s not out of ten) Unfortunately, I can’t read the review because I don’t subscribe.

4) Don’t settle for cheap knock-offs! A dieselpunk ray gun commercial

5) Outrageous burgers across the nation. Starting with, you guessed it, a burger with a donut for a bun.

6) 20 Neil Gaiman Facts. Reader, I lolled.

Speaking of Randomness

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Here’s something that’s random and 100% AWESOME

via Josh Jasper on the aforementioned health care discussion on John Scalzi’s blog