1) Mary Jane Watson, master of the obvious. Now THIS is writing!
2) Thomas Kinkade, if Thomas Kinkade was cool.
3) I know I’m behind the times linking to this, but damn! This is cool.
4) Look upon the face of evil.
5) Night Of The Killer Lamp: 23 Ridiculous Horror-Movie Adversaries
6) The Stockholm Library. It’s a rare library that gives me vertigo. There’s this one and the main downtown library in Seattle. Brrrr.
7) Star Wars, now with more pants.
1) Tee hee.
2) All fame is fleeting. Best-selling books of decades past.
3) Somehow, I don’t think Syfy is taking their movie originals very seriously.
4) How to keep someone with you forever.
5) A friend made a documentary called THUNDER SOUL about a famous high school funk band from the 70’s
and their reunion tour. Listen to the band here.
6) Quote from article: “The findings do not directly link playing video games to reckless driving. They only show an association. Researchers say the impact of playing games like “Grand Theft Auto” is minimal.” Headline to the same article: “Study: Video Games Linked To Reckless Driving.”
1) Ever wonder what happened to the Star Wars Kid?
2) Corpse flower blooms in Pasadena.
3) Examining the economic struggles of the publishing industry, graph-style. Part one. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five.
4) I guess the PMRC didn’t take up all her time. I especially like the glacier and portrait portfolios.
5) Line art and the brain. I’m going to show this to my wife when she gets a quiet moment.
6) Do YOU want to help a legendary high school funk band play a live show when the documentary about their time together in the ’70’s and their modern day reunion plays at the LA Film Festival? They’re asking for donations to cover travel costs. There’s swag, too.
7) How sad am I that this is only photoshopped? Considering that I’m laughing like an idiot over it, only a little sad. I wonder if Patrick Stewart has made peace with the fact this sort of thing is going to dog him for the rest of his days?
She was a good person and I liked her. I’m not going to talk much more about it than that.
1) Never plan a crime through unsolicited queries.
2) The next step in the development of our robotic overlords is complete.
3) How many companies think to put ASCII art in their html codes? Warning: using View Source on that site is probably NSFW.
4) This one is for Hannah Wolf Bowen (and everyone else, too): A Batman costume… for your horse.
5) Forced perspective, using Legos. Really amazing.
6) The scale of celestial bodies.
7) A unique promotional idea. I don’t think it’s such a terrible idea, mainly because the idea is going to get her more attention than the actual actors she hired. Still, promoting your book based on pretend enjoyment doesn’t really work for me. I’d be more swayed by honest responses.
On Thursday, my color inkjet printer finally gave up the ghost. It had been iffy for a long while–the paper feed hasn’t worked correctly for years–but if finally started chewing on the paper, and when I reached in to clear it, it sprayed multi-colored ink all over my hand.
I didn’t wash it off quickly enough, either, and I still have weird colors on half my left hand, 36 hours later.
Worse, I no longer have a color printer. The truth is that I don’t use it much; my black Samsung laser printer is great, relatively cheap on a per-page basis, and super reliable. Is it worthwhile to drop a couple hundred bucks on a replacement? We don’t use it often, but we do use it. Not to mention an expensive vacation coming up and a looming (and equally-expensive) family emergency coming up. Dunno yet.
On another note, while waiting for a bus yesterday, I saw a homeless man with a really alarming look about him. Judging by his features and reddish-brown beard and hair, he was a white guy, but his skin was a blotchy purplish-gray. The internet suggests he might have an excess of silver, but at the time I was worried he’d fall over dead right there.
Folks are dropping “creepy nice guy” links on me. Like this one.
It already made the rounds a couple years back, but… yeah. Another creep.
edit: The goodness doesn’t stop! This one is a link farm criticizing the “Nice Guy” phenomenon. Personally, I like the “Something Positive” comic; it’s a quick read and I’m supposed to be writing.
Today’s writing session was cut short by a “nice guy.”
As I’ve mentioned several times, I usually do my writing out of the apartment–fewer distractions and it helps to get my work finished if I have a set time I have to stop. There’s a Starbucks close to my house that I used to visit all the time, but it became a pain in the ass. A lot of folks with serious issues began hanging out there. Sometimes they would carry on loud conversations in that small room. Sometimes they would do wound care right there next to me. It was distracting and gross.
Today I thought I’d give it a try again. Unfortunately, someone sitting nearby decided that he and I should have a pleasant chat. He kept trying to start a conversation with me, even after I told him several times that I was sorry, but I’d come to work and didn’t want to talk. It would go like this:
“Nice computer you have there. Apple right? Is it an eye-something? A MacBook?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk. I really need to work.”
“Work? You’re working, huh? I got my Master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Where did you get your Masters in Computer Science?”
“I never said I had a Masters in Computer Science.”
“Oh, so insurance or bank, huh? Which bank do you work for? Wells Fargo? B of A?”
I don’t answer. Three minutes of silence.
“You get movies on that thing? What’s your favorite movie?”
For an entire hour. He managed to keep a wide-eyed and polite tone through the whole thing, almost to the end, as though he was being perfectly friendly and polite. But there was something off about the guy. I still managed to meet my small word count goal, but not my usual Sunday goal. I’m not going back there again.
Also, yesterday I received a really crazy PM on LiveJournal from a complete stranger. He was trying to enlist me in this project to do something nice for a Third Party (who shall remain nameless). If this had been a quick “So and so needs X. Would you like to help?” I would have been tempted. Instead it was 800 words of how Third Party irrationality and inability to make sensible decisions, and how Third Party wasn’t letting the stranger offer the necessary help, so stranger wanted to do it through me as a proxy.
Ugh. It was creepy as hell, and a perfect example of the “nice guy” who thinks they’re entitled to steal someone else’s agency because they know better and they’re being caring and polite about it. It didn’t have the undertones of a criminal looking for a mark, but it made my skin crawl anyway.
This morning, in the Starbucks, the creep eventually became irritated with me. “I’m trying to be nice, here!”
“No you’re not!” I answered. He looked surprised. “I’ve been asking you not to interrupt me while I work, and you’ve been interrupting me anyway. That’s the opposite of nice.”
1) Producer Linda Obst on Why movies suck so much right now. Don’t miss the comics fanboy outrage in the comments.
2) 2010 Best illusion of the year. For best effect, watch the video before reading the article.
3) Robbing from the poor (writer)–how NOTTINGHAM, a script that featured the Sheriff of Nottingham using CSI techniques to track a wanted terrorist and which was the hottest script at auction in Hollywood for a while, became the completely tedious ROBIN HOOD. Aka why modern movies suck part 2
4) You know how neat-freaks have germ pron? This is vertigo pron. Gah! Heights!
5) Why I don’t get Archie comics for my son anymore.
6) via madrobins: A real-life Miss Marple for the internet age. International access to chat sites, fake online identities and suicide pacts. Jesus, this would make a great book (and I’m sure someone is already writing it).
On my LiveJournal friends list, which is where I do most of my internet reading, yet another fanfic (definition) discussion has exploded. No link, because it’s just like all the others: a pro writer said the usual dismissive things about fanfic. People who’d never even heard of this writer before swoop in to berate her/patiently explain she’s wrong/inform her they’ll never buy her work/tell her they’re laughing at her/etc to the tune of 300 comments.
Jesus, it’s like that old joke about the community where everyone’s known each other so long that they don’t even bother telling the same jokes anymore. They gave each joke a number and shout those instead.
Pro: Fanfic 6! Also 4 and 2!
Fanficcers: 12! 22! 19!
Anyway, I would like to offer a little expertise (not my own, ‘natch) on conducting an argument of any kind. Dale Carnegie, take it away!
