1) A Wrinkle in Time in 90 seconds. Video. So. Effing. Cute.
2) MEOW. Video. Zombies uber alles, yeah?
3) A jury of your peers, not a jury of your purrs. I deeply regret writing that previous sentence.
4) Before and after photos of the flooding in Australia. Mouse over the pics to change them.
5) Why I don’t pay much attention to reader reviews.
6) “Impossible” physics w/out special effects. Video. Trompe l’oeil made awesome.
7) Edgar Allen Pooh.
Death to novel-writing workshops! Check the comments, too.
I took a novel-writing class way way back in the day. You wanted to learn how to do something, you took a class, right?
Well, it wasn’t what you’d call useful. The teacher taught an odd, artificial system and workshopping a six- or sixteen-page chapter outside the context of the book was useless. Before printing up pages to hand out, I’d search the document for the word “eye” because it was a huge deal there if you made a mistake like “His eyes went around the room, searching for a face he recognized.” Sure, it’s bad writing. It’s also an extremely easy critique to make, and they would make it, every time, even if the word didn’t appear in the document.
What did help my writing was: smart critiques from smart people, and studying good novels.
It’s been a week since I screwed up my knee. Things are much improved, but I’m still a bit hobbled. I can bend my knee now, but not all the way. It also feels mostly swollen rather than deeply painful. It’s not a miniscus tear, since I can put weight on it. In fact, I can walk pretty well on it as long as I don’t get too ambitious and try to leave the apartment. In essence, it has improved to the point that it is back to the usual pain/impairment levels, although at the “bad” end of those levels.
In other news, the basic shape and structure of the fourth Twenty Palaces book fell into place over the long weekend, and like most revelations of this sort it looks so obvious in retrospect that I feel stupid for not putting it together sooner. As I said on Twitter, it’s all uphill from here but at least I know what hill I’m tackling.
And yeah, the new tag below is the working title for book four.
1) Why you shouldn’t text and walk. Video.
2) Five self-defense books for women who want to lose a fight. Comic Life put to good use, I say. via Martha Wells.
3) Casey Kasem might curse at me for following a funny bit with a sad one, but Reading as Comfort.
4) Perspective on the “Tiger Mother” book, via Douglas Triggs. It’s interesting to hear the way the WSJ edited Chua’s book to make it seem like she’d written a manual for creating “model minority” children. And by “interesting” I mean “fucked up.”
5) Nothing is Forgotten. A webcomic.
6) Pixar’s sculpture zoetrope. Wow. Video. via Tor.com
7) “But if you’re going to go there, you have to go there. If this feels safe, comfortable, or affirming, you’ve done something wrong.” Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Confederacy, but there’s a lot to think about for anyone who needs to do a little world-building.
1) “That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child.” Quality parenting advice from Amy Chua. More from NPR. And NMA TV in Taiwan offers one of their video parodies.
2) An alternate ending for RETURN OF THE JEDI: Video. At least we could have avoided the Ewok party at the end. via Tor.com
3) I’ve seen a couple of reviews that deserved this treatment. Video. via James Nicoll
4) Should you work for free? A flowchart.
5) The cost of torrented books, with numbers. The problem is, you can never get people to believe that what they’re doing is causing harm in a way that matters, because they refuse to see themselves as bad people. They just can’t imagine themselves that way.
6) Top ten fonts for book designers.
7) What is it about social media that makes people write these ridiculous articles?
1) Commissioner Gordon is a Jerk.
2) What’s it like living in Playboy Mansion? Apparently, the answer is: rigidly schduled.
3) Drill Close to Reaching 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake.
4) Hoping for a big time Hollywood deal? Hah!
5) Muslims protect Christians.
6) Don’t buy your comics from this asshole.
7) “Inland tsunami” sweeps away cars in Toowoomba, Australia. Video part one. Video part two.
I have set up temporary standing work stations in my home, but I’m going to see about creating a permanent one, with one or two easily put-together stations if I have to work in the bedroom.
But I wonder about my big old desktop. That’s not going to be easy to raise up above my desk.
1) Woman laughing alone with salad.
2) “How’s Your Poor Feet!” Manly slang of the 19th century.
3) The year according to Tom Toles. Excellent.
4) Amazon.com pulls ebook that explains how to game its sales rankings. What? You mean Amazon’s sales rankings aren’t worth anything? Who could have known?
5) Are you a Comic Sans Criminal?
6) Countries winning the fight against poverty, in a way that’s so simple no one in the U.S. will believe it.
1) Five skiffy death sports you can host in your own home. Reader, I lol-ed.
2) “America sends its best hunks to save the Earth.”
3) Dwayne’s Photo, a little family-owned shop in Parsons, Kansas, is closing down. They were the last processor in the world who could handle Kodachrome film, which Kodak stopped manufacturing in 2009, and now their equipment is going to be sold for scrap.
4) When are we happy? When are we not happy? Video. This one is long, but very, very interesting.
5) How It’s Made: PASS-ta. Video.
6) Robots Speak Out Against Asimov’s First Law Of Robotics.
7) The Most Epic Use of Google Docs Ever (aka Google-doc-based animation). Video.
1) Bronte Sisters Power Dolls! Video.
2) Burglar posts a photo of himself w/ stolen loot on his victim’s Facebook page. The cops were notified, but said burglary is such a low priority they wouldn’t bother with the case. Luckily for the victim, his dad writes for the Washington Post.
3) How A Christmas Story should have played out.
4) Rudolph (You Don’t Have To Put On The Red Light) Video.
5) The True Meaning of Christmas at Everything is Terrible. Video.
6) Santa Clause is Coming To Town, recut as a horror movie trailer. Video.
7) Comics writer Bob Haney’s version of Batman Saving Christmas.
