1) Hoarding TV shows cured my hoarding.
2) Old comic book Hostess and Twinkie ads repurposed for the KFC Double Down.
3) An old Randomness entry revisited: House made of Lego blocks destroyed.
4) Propaganda posters for 80’s arcade games.
5) 3D without the glasses. Not for folks who are drunk, hungover, or slightly queasy.
Does anyone reading this use MacSpeech Dictate? How’s it working out for you?
1) Want Star Trek gear? A warehouse full of ST: The Experience props and costumes is up for auction.
2) Nicolas Cage’s Ugly Mansion. Eight pictures, each worse than the last. No, actually number four is the worst. This living room is a disaster, though.
3) These aren’t new, but maybe some folks haven’t seen them before: Recut move trailers that make kids movies seem like horror films, and horror films seem like domestic dramas. SCARY MARY is my favorite.
4) Businessinsider.com offers 15 charts about wealth and income inequality in America. Some of the charts have small text, but there’s a link beneath that’ll take you to a larger version. Also: Wow. via Ezra Klein.
5) One unfortunate way to express displeasure over medical advice.
6) “Who put these unpeeled grapes in my fruit bowl!” In which John Scalzi lives a blessed life–one he’s totally earned–and that’s a beautiful thing.
1) Which is nerdier: Dr. Who or the X-Men? From the Extremely Bad Advice column.
2) Barack Obama looking at awesome things. via @Scalzi
3) Tricks for better Google searches.
5) How MMORPG designers keep you playing, even when you’re not having fun. More about this later, I think. via Kate Nepvue
6) An instance of Nerd Rage examined. –although this isn’t relegated to nerds (“geeks” whatever you want to call them). The Kindlegarteners dropping one-star reviews on Amazon.com because they can’t buy a Kindle edition in Australia, or because they think the price point is too high are no different than these bitterly angry LOTR fans.
7) 11 Tips for bookselling success at brick-and-mortar stores.
1) Quentin Tarantino is playing a smurf? Um, okay, I gues.
2) Protecting IP the stand-up comic way. One of my friends was (unfairly) accused of joke-stealing. It was painful to see him (voluntarily) ditch a ten-minute routine about sitting at the big table over Thanksgiving because someone else had a single joke about it. This probably deserves its own post, but I’m not the one to write it.
3) I liked Speed Racer, too. However, I don’t have to call it an “art film” to justify that. It was definitely inventive and non-realistic, and it had a powerful emotional affect on me. I’ve been meaning to rewatch the ending to examine that a little more.
4) Insectophobes, do not click! That sucker is two and a half feet long. If you drown in deep waters and your corpse sinks to the bottom, that thing will be one of the creatures feasting on you.
5) Batman goes to jail for stalking L&O actress. Fate of his two daughters, Harleyquinn and Batgirl, undecided. (More seriously, if you’re a famous person, you get stalkers–freaky, creepy ones–and the only way they hit the news is if they’re colorful in some way or it’s a slow news day.)
6) Beautiful new library in Battery Park.
7) Big house vs short commute time: Which will make us happier? It’s interesting how this just assumes people will be in cars. I wonder what variables public transit adds in? Personally, I like my bus time; it’s pretty much the only dedicated reading time I have left.
1) Non-Adventures of Wonderella is awesome.
2) This one is NSFW: Forehead Tittaes. via SmartBitches
3) A horror film that calls YOU!
4) Somehow I think this is not an official traffic law.
5) This made me laugh myself sick. via barbarienne
6) “He thought if he could save one chubby girl, he’s done his job,” Lutz said. Pft. That’s what every guy going crazy with a hunting knife thinks.
7) You know what? This shouldn’t have been a TV show in the first place, let alone a damn movie. Did you know that box office poison smells like almonds? It’s true.
1) The fully compiled results of Jim Hines’s First Novel Survey.
2) Marriage vs. PhD. via @ccfinlay.
3) I’m sure this guy can get a divorce at the same court appearance when his wife gets her conviction.
4) President Obama’s Facebook page, HCR edition. “I smell Democrat.”
5) Literary troll is trollish.
6) What can surprise Werner Herzog? “It’s not a serious wound.”
7) The future of text?. They’d like you to think so.
1) This makes a school bus trip seem like a delight. Actually, I’d probably homeschool.
2) Guys who pay women to play video games with them.
4) And, as an antidote to those of you who were annoyed by the critique of police procedure in CASTLE: A show that get’s the procedure right. FYI, I don’t post these links to harsh peoples’ buzz on their favorite shows; there’s a lot to learn here for writers and readers.
2) “… Bloggers aren’t real writers…”
3) The Strange Sad Death of Alan MacDonald.
4) How to take surreptitious photos on the planet Belvedere.
5) The lonely life of a super-hero.
6) Casting call for Pirates of the Caribbean 4: No fake boobs.
I was going to drop this into the latest random link compilation, but it’s too cool to be buried there. Check out this news report on a story from more than fifty years ago in Scotland.
Yes, hundreds of children hunting vampires in a graveyard after dark–a vampire “with iron teeth” no less.
The story ideas that little news piece prompts are undeniable. The two simplest ideas would be to tell it from the POV of one of the children, if only for the chance to write about kids high on adrenaline because they’re doing something forbidden and dangerous. Some other writer might be able to write it from the POV of the vampire as it’s being hunted, frightened by the attention being drawn to it and indignant at being threatened by children.
It’s the POV of the parents that I find most interesting, naturally. A village where every kid has to be home by dark, and no one will talk about the local undead nasty, but what happens when the little ones find out on their own, and decide to be heroes?
I wonder if I can steal this for my next project.
