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Randomness for 1/26

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1) Which TV jobs go to which character?

2) The Comics Code Authority is dead.

3) I feel safer knowing this woman is in prison. Great work, authoritarian assholes!

4) The United States of Shame. Although I have no idea why Iowa, Ohio, or Utah should be ashamed of those things. (Go WA state!)

5) Dine like a Basil Fawlty customer (for some reason).

6) “If there’s a camel up a hill then it’s Gong Li with me…” Video. I laughed so hard at this that I actually cried, I kid you not.

7) A more serious video on redesigning medical information. Hell yes.

Randomness for 1/25

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1) A dating service for people who like white hats with anchors.

2) A hotel that’s free to stay at… but it’s decorated with beach trash.

3) You should date an illiterate girl.

4) From boiling water to instant fog. Video. Now that’s cold.

5) Casting the 1940’s version of Harry Potter films. Too many of the biggest stars of the day, but fun to think about.

6) Phelps family protests the movie RED STATE. A counter-protest breaks out. Some NSFW text.

7) Five Angry Birds status updates.

Randomness for 1/20

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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.

Something interesting to read.

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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.

Randomness for 1/15

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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.

Reviews, part 23

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1) Charles Stross gives both Child of Fire and Game of Cages a thumbs up. “More, dammit!”

2) LiveJournaler Zornhau liked Child of Fire very much. “Imagine James Elroy characters on a fast-paced, shit-kicking mission in a Stephen King small town horror scenario, underpinned by a cosmology so coldly alien that by comparison the Lovecraft Mythos seems anthropomorphic and anthropocentric…”

3) LiveJournaler Spartezda enjoyed Game of Cages a great deal. “Urban fantasy with smart interesting opposition for the MC, fast-paced action, a clear-eyed take on the issues it raises, and an intriguing magic system that we’re slowly learning more about.”

4) Game of Cages received a terrific review from Colleen R. Cahill for the Fast Forward Contemporary Science Fiction video podcast. “Fans of Jim Butcher and Dean Knootz will find Game of Cages a great book, with plenty of excitement and thrills; this is one worth ignoring the cover and diving in.” That’s a link to the direct transcript of the review, but there’s no video to watch. Apparently, this is from October, but I didn’t know about it until Google Alerts found the blog post announcing it last week. They do have an interview with Jane Linskold still, which is pretty cool.

5) Priscilla at Cult of Lincoln really enjoyed Child of Fire. “Superb. I love the costliness of the magic system–it brings a freshness into the urban fantasy genre.” But I had to turn to Google to find out who Kristin Chenowith is.

6) Former SFBC editor and current book-a-day blogger (among other things) Andrew Wheeler gave Game of Cages an excellent review a short while ago, and now, in his end-of-year roundup, he’s named that book best of September over some pretty stiff competition: “… an urban fantasy that short-circuts miles of the standard justifications and romanticizations of the genre.”

7) Rich Brassell calls Game of Cages “pretty decent stuff.” It’s another instance of a reader looking forward to the next book in a series when they only gave it three out of five stars. I wouldn’t follow any series that got fewer than four stars, but there you go.

Randomness for 1/13

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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?

Randomness for 1/12

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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.

Hey, writers (and other office/desk people)

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You should read this.

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.

Randomness for 1/6

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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.

7) A new white person complaint, daily.