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Randomness for 6/1

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1) Negotiating with the British.

2) http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/ I really can’t do better than show that URL.

3) Who shot the serif? If you’re curious about fonts and typography, this is a good place to start learning about them.

4) A Tumblr devoted exclusively to Facebook status updates from people who believe stories from The Onion are real.

5) Autobiography of a vampire (former). This shit is why I’m careful to explain to my son that “non-fiction” doesn’t mean “true.”

6) This is cool: a library in NZ opens a public recording studio.

7) THE LESSER BOOK OF THE VISHANTI: A Companion to the Dr. Strange Comic Books. The spells, artifacts, world-building, and more to the Sorcerer Supreme’s end of the Marvel Universe.

Randomness for 5/24

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1) If this summer’s movie posters told the truth.

2) Patton Oswalt on the Star Wars prequels. Video (but really just audio).

3) This is so friggin’ funny, and it so perfectly encapsulates the utterly irrational gonzo appeal of comic books. Even if you don’t think you’ll be interested in the subject of this article, give it a look: The Greatest Dinosaurs in Comics.

4) A psychopath walks into a room: Can you tell?

5) Life-size baby T-Rex puppet makes kids scream. Video. This is awesome!

6) Tom Waits Theme for Iron Man 2 (Rejected). Video. Best comment on this video: “Quite obviously fake.”

7) Jonathan Coulter on being a fluke (or not), new business models, connecting with fans, and being compared to the Snuggie. Lots to think about for everyone who creates entertainment in the modern era.

Randomness for 5/18

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1) Better book titles, Strunk and White ed.

2) Brilliant street fliers.

3) Why SyFy cancelled SGU, in numbers.

4) Angry comic book fans are good for sales, apparently.

5) U.S. cities where women (childless, between 22-30 years old) earn more than men.

6) Mysterious “Surfing Madonna” mosaic appears in Encinitas, but city mayor calls it “graffiti”.

7) My son calls this the guy-cycle. Video.

Randomness for 5/12

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1) Sci-fi IKEA manuals.

2) The first five Harry Potter novels abbreviated in comic form.

3) Since when did diligence become a psychiatric disorder?

4) Japanese TV show pranks a man with a haunted mirror. Video. I’m a bad person for laughing as hard as I did, especially after things got crazy. Be sure to watch the whole thing.

5) TV writer Doris Egan on The Moment They Figure It Out: open and closed plot structures, realization, and turning points, with a little Doctor Who thrown in for good measure.

6) “I will tell you a secret to make you stand out.”

7) “Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says” Oh god, for once, read the comments on this “article.” Let’s be CLEAR this is not a VADER victory but a victory of our boys in white, not to mention the leadership of Lord Tyrannus the Count Dooku who started the manhunt in the first place. LOL via Jay Lake

Time to write a letter.

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“If the Justice Department fails to give the American people a chance to judge this case — if Goldman skates without so much as a trial — it will confirm once and for all the embarrassing truth: that the law in America is subjective, and crime is defined not by what you did, but by who you are.”

Matt Taibbi, writing about the crimes Goldman Sachs committed during the pre-recession bubble and how much evidence the government already has against them.

Will our government prosecute? God, I hope so. I’m going to write some letters to my political reps once I finish today’s pages.

Randomness for 5/6

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1) The world’s first zombie-proof house.

2) It’s the newest fad! White guys across the globe are going to be sporting this baby soon. Real soon.

3) Amazing WWII monuments in Yugoslavia.

4) “Who is Osama bin Laden? Is he famous?”

5) If Superman was an alien in other movies.

6) “Imagine a man who buys a chicken from the grocery store, manages to bring himself to orgasm by penetrating it, then cooks and eats the chicken.” The ten oddest sentences from conservative editorialist David Brooks’s new book.

7) Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day: Which offerings are good and which are not? And if you drop by a comic shop, be sure to buy something, too.

Randomness for 2/26

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1) This is crazy and awesome: Man builds functional CPU in Minecraft, using only redstone dust, torches, levers and stone. Of course it’s bigger than two city blocks (and I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about as he describes the parts, but it’s freaking awesome. via @laura_hudson

2) Try to watch this video without reading the comments first. It’s pretty funny and kind of brilliant.

3) The Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint presentation.

4) Silent security cam footage of a tornado hitting St. Louis airport. Video. Brr.

5) Animated gifs as art.

6) Awesome! Check out the new trailer for THOR… as made my mockbuster crap-slingers Asylum Entertainment. Video.

7) Cousins fight over GAME OF THRONES tv show. lol.

Man With High-Paying, Prestigious Job Expresses Interest In Extending Current Employment

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This is the sort of story that annoys me, I have to admit. For those who don’t want to click, it basically says that Taylor Lautner would be interested in continuing his role in the TWILIGHT movies, if the author decided to write a spin off series.

And how is this news? The guy’s an actor. Actors want jobs. I imagine Lautner has a whole SHARKMAN AND LAVAWOMAN pitch carefully folded in his pocket, just in case he runs into Robert Rodriquez at a party or something.

You know what would be news? An actor who said they hated a role and never wanted to do it again. Even better: An actor that loved a role so much that they were raising funding to pay the novelist to write a sequel. Wake me up when that happens.

In more personal news, over on my LiveJournal account, user Ms_King asked me about outlining, and I answered, describing my odd way of pseudo-planning the books I write. So naturally, what should happen? Later that morning I realized I had rushed into the draft of A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark, before I was ready because I had some half-baked character interactions and not nearly as much of the book worked out as I needed. In fact, I was almost at the end of my synopsis at only 34K workds.

No worries, though. I have plot elements and under-utilized characters, so I’ll just have to work out how they all come together, and I’ll be ready to draft again. Today is a long(ish) writing morning, so I’ll be on that for the next few hours.

Also, Twitter, where I’m @byharryconnolly.

Randomness for 4/21

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1) “Speed-climbing” the Eiger. This dude is nuts but the footage is gorgeous. Video.

2) “You will ripen with my child, faerie girl.” I don’t like to take digs at romance novels because so many people do it out of ignorance and misogyny, and I think the genre is unfairly maligned. Still, these excerpts from bad romance novels are pretty damn funny.

3) Curious to see what a professional comic book script looks like? Greg Rucka helps you out.

4) DIY Bacon Roses. via Jay Lake.

5) Ten Important Tax Charts.

6) Ten Deadly DIY Gadgets. The “flame gloves” pretty much qualify you as a Batman villain, and the crossbow that shoots machetes would be perfect for a zombie apocalypse, but it’s the car you can drive with an iPhone that really scares the hell out of me. via Jay Lake

7) An interactive map showing how much oil each country produced over the last fifty years. Just click “play.”

5 Things Make a Post

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1) I have three things left to do before I send Twenty Palaces to my agent: clean up some formatting issues like chapter headings, spellcheck, and check every instance of “him” in the script to see if I should have changed it to “me” when I went changed the book from a third person pov to a first person pov. So incredibly dull but I’m really catching some embarrassing errors, like “I jumped to his feet.” Oh well.

2) Here’s my Norwescon schedule:

Friday: Whatever I want.
Saturday: Whatever I want.
Sunday: Stay home and hang out with my son.

Hah! I’ll be there as a regular attendee, mainly to look around and see whatever this is to be seen. It’ll be my first convention, so I don’t expect to know anyone. If you’re going to be there and you see me, please feel free to say hello. I look like this. Also, I have a terrible memory for faces and names, so don’t be offended if it takes me a couple of seconds to “place” you.

3) Seattle is enduring the coldest April on record. I’m sorta sick of it.

4) Revisions on Twenty Palaces have taken control of my life. I can’t wait to send them off, if only so I can go back to responding to comments promptly (as opposed to passive-aggressively complaining on my blog, like this post) and reading books. Honestly, I can’t wait to spend some hours every day reading.

5) This NY Times article (only available if you haven’t used up your 20 articles/month) isn’t the first time I’ve heard that fidgeting has a powerful effect on weight gain and loss. I’ve been using my standing desk more often (thanks to the Topricin my wife just bought me) but I attribute most of the weight I’ve lost recently to the fact that I’m getting the sleep I need. I still have a long way to go, of course.