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Below are the 50 most recent friends journal entries:[<< Previous 50 entries]
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12:16 am
jedediah
[Link] |
Hallelujah Choruses
http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/12/23/12634.html A few days ago, Amy S linked to a video of a fabulous performance: silent monks performing the Hallelujah Chorus.
And then on the mailing list where she posted that, other people posted other instances of silent monks performing the Hallelujah Chorus:
And most of them are nearly identical. Exactly the same shtick, right down to the short second-to-last monk in the row, and the foot-flipping.
Jim M got curious and looked for a common source. What he found is apparently a video from 1989: the Christmas Pageant of the First Baptist Church of Houston. And here, too, the shtick is identical. I might go so far as to say this is the best-filmed and best-performed of the lot, except that (a) the audience doesn't seem to be enjoying it quite as much as some of the other audiences, and (b) some of the other performances are really very exact copies.
So this thing's been around for at least twenty years, and apparently it's been performed just about identically all that time.
Now I wonder whether the Houston group came up with it, or whether they got it from somewhere else.
On a side note, one effect on me of watching these videos has been an earworm: the filk trio Technical Difficulties did a filk version of the Hallelujah Chorus on their first album, Please Stand By. (The album is now sadly long out of print, though there are apparently plans to reissue it on CD at some point.) Their version was all about the difficulty of finding time to rehearse, and looking for a lost guitar capo, and so on. And there was a bit in which one of them kept asking if she'd reached the right note and the others would sing "Make it higher! Make it higher!", ending with "That's high enough."
But my favorite line, and the one which has been running through my head the most lately, is "This song goes on for ever and ever."
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03:00 am
lukeski
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/74907848/2283066) [Link] |
Luke Ski's Annoying Daily LJ Twitter Post
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12:00 am
dilbertdaily
[Link] |
Comic for December 23, 2009
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/ukRIUTcqD4A/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-23/ 
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09:39 am
getfuzzyfeed
[misery_chick]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/82795880/1595406) [Link] | 
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11:59 pm
maryrobinette
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/72901226/5752136) [Link] |
Avatar, mini review
Rob and I have returned from seeing Avatar. His verdict? It’s just bad. Mine? It’s very silly, with horrifically bad science and yet, if you are a visually based person, it is worth seeing on the big screen in 3-D.
If you are a logic based person, then skip this film.
Question: If every life form on the planet has nostrils in their necks and six limbs, why do the Na’vi have noses like we do and only four limbs?
Question: Where do the feathers on the bow and arrows come from since we never see a feather creature, ever.
Question: Kiss? What is this thing you call kiss, James Cameron? I mean really, there are HUMAN cultures that don’t have kissing.
I could go on. That said, it’s some damn impressive CGI.
Comments? -- Link.
Tags: journal, puppetry
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03:16 am
gerisullivan
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/95681058/1308823) [Link] |
Knowledge is Power, all right
Several of my friends have a special talent for exposing dodgy publishing outfits and related scams. It looks like Improbable Research has turned up another one, in the form of Strange academic journals, and quite possibly conferences, too.
Can anyone figure out what's going on at Scientific Research Publishing?
They say "Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere." But that doesn't appear to be what they publish....
Tags: improbable research
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08:05 am
drplokta
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/6288805/566732) [Link] |
Author Watchlist
I just updated my watchlist at Fictionwise, of authors whose new books I want to be emailed about. It obviously only includes authors where I think there's a chance they might have new books coming out in the future.
A few statistics:
There are 78 names. Two pairs are actually the same person, with or without a middle initial, so there are 76 people. 14 are female and one is intersex (as far as I know). 24 are British, 2 are Australian, 5 are Canadian and the rest are American (as far as I know, and based on their predominant culture not where they happen to live now). Seven of them aren't actually available on Fictionwise's system, because they've had nothing previously sold via Fictionwise. I know 18 of them well enough to say hello if I pass them in the street.
ETA: Four people are on the list as editors rather than as authors.
And Fictionwise apparently knows ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) autopope as Charlie Stross, even though none of his books is billed that way.
( So here's the list. )
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03:03 am
eviljohn
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/80139333/613301) [Link] |
Twitter Posts
Tweets For Today
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12:01 am
catrambo
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/60441251/448876) [Link] |
Things I Tweeted Today
Today I used my bandwidth to say:
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12:59 am
karnythia
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/87671075/1023563) [Link] |
Creepy....amazing...a little of both?
yeloson showed this to me and it confirmed what I've always known about those collectible dolls. Don't watch it before bed. Really.
Current Mood:  awake
Tags: toys that make chuckie cry
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10:32 pm
jlassen
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/81875476/1399229) [Link] |
Hello San Francisco: Your football team hates you
Dude. 49ers say that if santa Clara won't build them a stadium their plan "b" is to move to Oakland. Good riddance you bunch of living in the past primadonnas. I'm sure the folks in oakland will ralley around the red and gold.
LOL. Go chargers. Oh wait. They want to move to LA. Fuck them too.
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12:57 am
avt_tor
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/66190750/2030659) [Link] |
Avatar was great.... really!
In 1986, mvt and I went to Vancouver for Expo 86, the World's Fair that year. In what is now BC Place, we saw some 3-D animation in IMAX films. They were cool. Honestly I don't recall what the movies were about, but the technology was amazing.
Many years, later, and many years ago, when we were talking about splitting the "dramatic presentation" Hugo award into film and television categories (I know they call them "short" and "long", that's fandom for you, and that's another topic). I was discussing this at a convention with someone who was trying to make the point that books were somehow so much better at storytelling. I did not agree. I think books and films and television are different media, not just different ways of telling the same stories, but ways of telling different kinds of stories. Certainly you can cram a lot more scientific exposition, and plot and characterization and everything else, into a 400-page novel than you can into a 100-page movie script (with a lot of whitespace at that). But reaching the viewer directly through visual and auditory senses allows media to bypass the filter of preconception and imagination and pour the story more directly into the viewer's brain. Suspension of disbelief is many times stronger; the story becomes a real part of the viewer's experience.
That's what Avatar did. I don't know that it was a giant technological leap, but it was interesting; more a matter of a director realizing his vision in a new way. The technology and the skill of putting this movie together made it far more vivid, far more than the mere story line would have been otherwise. I will remember details of this film for years to come, because of the way it was done. In terms of how I experienced it, I was there.
Yes it was Dances with Wolves. So what? I read some of the "white guilt" reviews, and I just don't care. I didn't kill the Aztecs or the American aboriginal groups, or the Jews, or the French at the Plains of Abraham, or the Vietnamese, and I wasn't in favor of bombing the Iraqis either. I just don't feel a lot of guilty. History is the cars we were dealt. I only have to go back half a dozen generations to find plenty of ancestors fleeing war, tyranny, famine, and death. Everybody has their share of history, and that's not to say the potato famine or the tyrannies of the post-Napoleonic regimes compare to slavery or the Holocaust. But I wasn't there to cause every injustice in history, and all this baggage isn't the point. Science fiction isn't history, it's fiction. It's about the choices we could make, or maybe those that we are making, but it's not about the choices our distant ancestors made. Maybe we can make the world, or other worlds, a better place, and maybe we'll learn a thing or two about the choices we can make. And yes, for every blockbuster film, there are a hundred science fiction novelists putting more original ideas per page into books that will be read by, maybe, thousands or tens of thousands of readers. But the way things work is the Hollywood meatgrinder takes the best ideas and blasts them out to millions or tens of millions of viewers, and that's how those ideas are disseminated to society at large.
There are plenty of moviews with profound stories that deserve to be told. What I saw in the theater was, maybe, the beginning of the end of two-dimensional media. This technology is going to get cheaper to use and companies are going to find more ways to give this to people. This is as big as HD or color. Fifteen years from now, we'll snicker at people who only have two-dimensional home video the way we now do at people who still use VHS. Directors and producers are going to use this technology to reach further into our experience and memory and make their stories part of our lives, with much deeper stories than this pretty fluff. "My cup is empty." It's not Shakespearean dialog, but we're still going to remember it, because of the way we saw it and heard it.
Good or bad, I have to leave to professional revieweres. What I can say is this movie was worth seeing. I'll probably go again when the lines are shorter, just to take in the experience again. Might be a year or three before we see something quite this remarkable again.
Current Location: M5T
Current Mood:  awestruck
Tags: movies
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09:52 pm
yeloson
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/60743662/1278230) [Link] |
Alma
This is why children should watch the Twilight Zone.
Tags: cartoons
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05:00 am
xkcd_rss
[Link] |
Christmas Plans
http://xkcd.com/679/ 
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12:30 am
todfox
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/90045885/136749) [Link] |
Recipe: Thrice-baked potatoes
With another buddy of mine, I recently took an advanced lesson from a very engineering-minded friend on better cooking with magic. I’d made special butter before, but she gave me valuable lessons in optimal temperatures and techniques. Later that night the three of us threw together the following recipe, which should therefore be considered a joint effort. You could easily leave out the special ingredient and do this with conventional butter that isn’t a federally scheduled substance; you could probably cut back on the butter then since you weren’t using it as a carrier for mind-altering goodness. I’m not going to include instructions on making cannabutter here, but you can find them in many places on the Intertubes. No, these were not full of plant material as we sifted our butter with cheesecloth.
Ingredients:
- 1 5lb-bag of potatoes
- Chives
- Sour Cream
- Ricotta Cheese
- 2.5 cups of cannabutter
- Kosher salt
- garlic powder (optional)
Bake potatoes in an oven at 350 until done. Cut potatoes in half and carefully remove the insides, leaving thin shells behind. Mash up the potato-guts and mix in the butter and salt. Then add ricotta (we used about a cup, or half one of those larger containers), probably a 1/2 cup of sour cream, and chives. When I do this again I plan to add a little garlic powder, but we didn’t and they tasted delicious. Bake them a second time, just long enough for the cheese to get melty and everything to bind together, probably 10 minutes or less. The goal here is not to brown the potatoes; although cannabis is relatively heat-tolerant there is no sense weakening it by exposing it to more than necessary.
We made these late one night and then served them at a party the next, gently reheated, to rave reviews. With a little alteration, these would also make probably fantastic pierogis.
Originally published at approximately 8,000 words. You can comment here or there.
Tags: food
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11:55 pm
domynoe
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/44270355/4207779) [Link] |
Just a little fairy dust...
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08:15 pm
boing_boing
[Link] |
Dear Google: You keep using that word...
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/-kNgEacwkY0/dear-google-you-keep.html Google's Jonathan Rosenberg wrote a paean to 'open,' in which his company's commitment to 'open' is pitched at great length. The most remarkable paragraph, however, is the one dealing with things that Google keeps closed:
While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users.
How odd that of all the products Google would be forced to keep proprietary by its commitment to an open internet, it just happens to be the ones that make it all of its money.
 
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07:26 pm
boing_boing
[Link] |
$75 tablet touted
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/IvnMS6IftIE/75-tablet-touted.html Forbes on another tablet: "The $75 Tablet Computer." You'll never guess who!
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03:39 am
larbalestier
[Link] |
More on Unhappy Endings
http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/12/22/more-on-unhappy-endings/ http://justinelarbalestier.com/?p=7216 I started to respond to comments on the last post and realised it was turning into it’s own post. So, um, here it is.
Reading all your responses has crystallised something for me that I’ve been thinking for a long time: That there’s a gap between my expectations as a reader and what I do as a writer. The reader me desperately wanted a good ending1 for Lily Bart in House of Mirth and was furious with Edith Wharton for all the misery. Why, Wharton, why?!
The writer me though is unmoved by such readerly desires. I write the books the way they have to be writ. They have their own logic and I cannot force them to go where they don’t want to go. Trust me, I tried to force Magic’s Child to go in the direction I had planned for it. Wound up having to rewrite that ending a kajillion times until finally it was somewhere near where it was supposed to be. Yes, some readers are unhappy with it. Whatcha gunna do?
It fascinates me that, on the one hand, I can be angry with a writer for breaking my heart while, on the other hand, I’m more than happy to break readers’ hearts with some of my own stories and novels.
As a reader I would like to go back in time and force Edith Wharton to make it better for Lily Bart. Kind of a la Stephen King’s Misery. But, you know, without kidnapping or breaking ankles. But were I her I would tell me where to go. It’s not her fault I was under the misapprehension that she was the USA’s Jane Austen. Wharton wrote the best book she could with the ending that made sense given the world and characters she had created. My desire for the ending to be Pollyanna’d is my problem, not hers.
As a writer, nothing will convince me that we owe our readers anything other than the very best books we can write. And, we’ll be the judges of that, thank you very much.
As a reader, who just read a book she was not in the right space for, I think all you smelly writers can go rot in hell.
Yeah, sometimes it’s confusing to be me.
Thanks, so much for the wonderful comments on happy endings. It was lovely to see such a diversity of views.
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12:02 am
raaven
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/85733712/378937) [Link] | Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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10:41 pm
ellen_kushner
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/84385539/4995478) [Link] |
Cowardly Revenge
"In the losing battle that the plot fights with the characters, it often takes a cowardly revenge. Nearly all novels are feeble at the end. This is because the plot requires to be wound up."
-- E. M. Forster
Tags: quotes, writing
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10:34 pm
matociquala
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/86506082/863621) [Link] |
if this were my last glimpse of winter
Got some work done on The White City tonight, Mostly, it amounted to comma fiddling in the opening scenes--I haven't touched it since September, and I will have to get back into its skin to work on it, of course. But the writing in the early bits is quite creditable, and it's easy to fall back in love with these characters.
Of course, the structure is still broken, and the mystery plot is flopping on the floor like a dying and unhappy fish, and then there are those scenes that are currently indicated by something more or less reminiscent of this: [Put a scene in which Abby Irene figures out that Sebastien is withholding information here].
It's funny. The more I learn about writing--the better I get at it--the worse my first drafts get. They're all big loops and lines now, incomplete arches and spans. Sweep and movement, and the structures don't hold.
But I enjoy the process of taking those pieces and building a narrative out of them, and the narratives themselves are growing more complex and self-supporting. I've been saying for years that writng is too complicated to do well consciously--that for me it takes iterative passes and a lot of it needs to take place down in the subconscious. And this... more relaxed startegy seems to be helping with that, now that I've successfully internalized my tools.
It took a lot of conscious application to develop those tools, mind you--study and intellectualization. But now I think I might be learning to jam.
Which is what we play all those fucking scales for, after all.
Current Mood:  pleased
Current Music: :Wumpscut: - Die in Winter
Tags: abby irene, new amsterdam, the white city, writing craft wank
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09:08 pm
skylarker
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/61595515/1034621) [Link] |
The hunt goes on...
( Today I applied for this: )
At the caroling party the other night some friends suggested that I take a new tack with my applications by writing something that would distinguish mine from the hundreds of other applications potential employers are getting these days. I thought about it and decided to try a new cover letter.
( This is what I came up with; I tried it out for the first time in replying to the posting above. )
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10:07 pm
matociquala
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/81988394/863621) [Link] |
let's get high on art supplies and hibernate
The only problem with the baby ashacat made is that I have a great big winter CSA order burning a hole in my crisper drawers.
And some of it wants to be borscht, dammit. And I have no time.
I have celeriac and beets and tiny potatoes and tiny sweet potatoes and parsnips and carrots and red cabbage and delicata squash and butternut squash and winter greens and no time to eat any of it.
Also, my good knives are still at the Grinch's shop at the North Pole. It's like an itch.
Next Thursday, little vegetable drawer. Thursday. You and me. We're going to have some fun together.
And I'm probably going to make Chaz's tiny potato salad for the Xmas eve open house thingy, and maybe I will just make a damned pot of borscht, even with the bad knives. I've cooked with worse and it's seasonal, dammit. Though I'll have to get more garlic.
Current Mood:  cheerful
Current Music: Violent Femmes - Holly Jolly Christmas
Tags: food porn
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03:00 am
stevegreen
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/85102187/7979519) [Link] |
Okay, It's Time...
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
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09:21 pm
matociquala
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/81464804/863621) [Link] |
stick our fingers in the ground. heave and turn the world around.
National Geographic photo essay on the current state of prosthetic bionics.
I especially commend you to the photographs of kindergarten teacher Amanda Kitts. This is the technology that will someday lead to the kind of prosthetics I wrote about in Hammered.
Jenny Casey's birthday, by the way, is in 2012.
Current Mood:  contemplative
Current Music: Leona Naess - Christmas
Tags: i got yer jetpack right here, jenny casey
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08:03 pm
skylarker
[Link] |
Sing Along!
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09:00 pm
haniaw
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/5984053/717272) [Link] |
Sigh
So on the second day of my "vacation", I did the following:- worked for 3 hours
- picked up air cleaner filters at the furnace store
- picked up prescriptions at drug store
- wasted 20 minutes at the bank trying to get a Euro draft to send to Poland - turns out their system won't let them do that - sigh
- got gas
- worked for 1 hour
- went for a drive on the Niagara Parkway
- stopped for coffee at Tim Horton's (of course)
- went to the deli and got lovely meats and yummy chocolates
- went to the bookstore: returned one book, bought another book, got a gift card for my nephew
- went to the craft store and picked up supplies
- worked for 2 hours
- went to store get my glasses fixed (screw fell out dammit) and bought some blank CDs
- went to the dollar store to buy Christmas gift bags
- made dinner
- ate dinner
- bought some music on iTunes
- made backup CDs of the newly purchased music
- downloaded bunch of family pictures from my brother
- loaded selected pictures onto the new digital photo frame I bought my Mom for Christmas
- finished reading the newspaper that I started reading at 10:00 am
- framed a small cross-stitch piece that I'm giving to a friend for Christmas
- fell down in exhaustion
Current Location: Niagara Falls
Current Mood:  tired
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07:57 pm
annesible_feed
[Link] |
Link Love: LA Weekly on M/M Romance
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/anneharris/~3/wOZskq8YUgk/link-love-la-weekly-on-mm-romance.html Here's an in depth article from LA Weekly on m/m romance featuring Jet Mykles, James Buchanan and many other notable authors. I like this piece, because, apart from categorizing female m/m fans as universally straight, which is the rookie mistake everyone makes, for the most part, the article gets it right. And it's supportive, not sneering or judgmental. Overall, a win for our genre, I think. http://www.laweekly.com/2009-12-17/art-books/man-on-man-the-new-gay-romance/1 |
07:26 pm
beamjockey
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/76417226/1777361) [Link] |
1978 Obituary: Warren Scott Fitzgerald, Mysterious Founding Father of Fandom
Thanks to crack librarians in Boise, we have an obituary for Warren Fitzgerald.
Since he dropped out of active participation in both the Scienceers and the rocketry group by the end of 1930, he may well be the first fan ever to gafiate.
(If you wish to comment, please do so here.)
Tags: aiaa, ais, allen glasser, american interplanetary society, american rocket society, boise, fan history, fandom, first fandom, fitzgerald, history, idaho, obituary, rob hansen, rocketry, science fiction, scienceers, sf, spaceflight, warren, warren fitzgerald
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08:11 pm
supergee
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/68718517/834056) [Link] | ( bad words )
Tags: rude
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06:56 pm
elisem
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/40155922/501500) [Link] |
ArtLog: in progress
I've been working. (That's the Habu papery 2mm linen ribbon in there, after crocheting and wetting and drying and distressing and silver wireworking and all sorts of things. It's very reminiscent of old carbon paper. Quite interesting.)
There will be at least a few New Shinies tomorrow evening.
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07:40 pm
foc_u
[afro_dyte]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/94168478/13942958) [Link] |
fandom resolutions
What are your fandom New Year's Resolutions?
Here are a few of mine:
- Seek out and/or request quality femslash with WOC protagonists.
- Write at least one fanfic - preferably femslah - with a WOC protagonist.
- Seek out and/or request fanfic - preferably Uhura/Spock or genfic - that links Spock to Judaism. Seriously - Spock/Uhura could easily be a space-age Solomon and Sheba.
- Seek out and/or request kinky!Uhura/Spock fic.
What about you?
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12:06 am
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/23695253/1071362) [Link] |
Linkspam for 23-12-2009
Tags: add tags, del.icio.us, linkspam
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06:46 pm
theferrett
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/55488897/711176) [Link] |
Amusing And/Or Disturbing
This was posted on October 15th, which makes it a Cro-Magnon video in Internet Time, but I now present to you:
....the drunkest guy ever.
What terrifies me is a) how did he get to the store, and b) what is he actually on? There are those who think this is faked - I don't think so, I've (sadly) been this messed up. But there are those who think you can't be this stupid on alcohol. In any case, you have a mix of "wow, that's kind of comedy" and "wow, that's kind of sad."
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06:37 pm
novapsyche
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/44665121/356393) [Link] | British priest: Shoplifting by poor sometimes OK
Tags: odd news
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06:18 pm
novapsyche
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/43667058/356393) [Link] |
At Thirty, by Lynda Hull
At Thirty
Whole years I knew only nights: automats
& damp streets, the Lower East Side steep
with narrow rooms where sleepers turn beneath
alien skies. I ran when doorways spoke
rife with smoke & zippers. But it was only the heart's
racketing flywheel stuttering I want, I want
until exhaustion, until I was a guest in the yoke
of my body by the last margin of land where the river
mingles with the sea & far off daylight whitens,
a rending & yielding I must kneel before, as
barges loose glittering mineral freight
& behind me façades gleam with pigeons
folding iridescent wings. Their voices echo
in my voice naming what is lost, what remains.
Tags: poems by others
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04:34 pm
warren_ellis
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/32842427/5224632) [Link] |
Midwinterish
This is me with local musician Carolina Fasalo of The Voronas. Caz dumped a load of old photos on to her Facebook account and turned this up. Last summer, I think?
I was reading this interview with David Simon the other day — he gives good interviews, see if you can find the one he did with THE BELIEVER magazine sometime — and something he said stuck with me a little bit. As it often does in Simon interviews, as he’s good with a bon mot or two. I’ve hacked some connective tissue out to present it as a complete thought:
There would be a series of planning sessions. First, at the beginning of every season, we did a sort of retreat with the main writers, the guys who were going to be on staff the whole year. We’d discuss what we were trying to say… we weren’t cynical about having been given ten, 12, 13 hours — whatever we had for any season from HBO. All of that was an incredible gift.
So goddamn it, you better have something to say. That sounds really simple, but it’s actually a conversation that I don’t think happens on a lot of serialized drama. Certainly not on American television. I think that a lot of people believe that our job as TV writers is to get the show up as a franchise and get as many viewers, as many eyeballs, as we can, and keep them.
What we were asking was, “What should we spend 12 hours of television saying?”
Which, yes, should sound blatantly obvious. But it’s easy, when working in fast and deadline-intensive serial formats, to forget that bit: to trust to the process of pulp writing and the form’s innate effect of whatever you’re really interested in leaking out into the work regardless. It’s easy to forget what you turned up for.
It’s also an interesting process note. A good 95% of longform serials, I’d guess, turn up not knowing what they want to talk about. Sometimes they don’t discover what they showed up to talk about until the third or fourth season. And I don’t mean so much the working out of what’s now called "show mythology," the actual overarcing storyline — and we can all name shows that suddenly realised they’d payed out all the rope they had and they didn’t know where the plot went next. I mean the serials where they finally open their mouths and nothing comes out. They made the show because they were allowed to make the show.
In other news, Karl Urban has apparently been signed to RED. This brings the cast up to something like the eight thousand most popular actors in the world.
Tonight I am mostly clearing the house. Not enough strength left in me for proper writing. I’d actually really like to be digging into the outline I wrote for the GRAVEL film, and fixing all the stuff in it that looks broken. I’m delivering it at the end of the second week in January, so there’s plenty of time, and it’s actually in reasonably good shape overall. But the thing about distance from a thing — and this is actually not bad advice for any new writer — is that it gives you essential and often surprising perspective once you’ve been away from it for a few days. Walking away from something for a few days or a week is sometimes the best possible thing you can do for a piece. Again, not something we always have time for in the deadline game.
I’d also like to be working on the animated series I have in development, but, like I said. Burned way the fuck out. So I’m going to content myself with clearing the house, catching up on my RSS feeds, scheming about getting a new phone out of Vodafone, and making a few notes on loose ideas. Proper writing can wait a couple of weeks, now.
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)
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04:53 pm
marsgov
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/7013068/1314384) [Link] |
Music Tonight
Sarah Wiltfong of Mustang Sally will join our Irish session tonight at the Celtic Knot.
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02:09 pm
boing_boing
[Link] |
Greg Fleischut plays Andy Statman on guitar
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/oNzftnUBums/greg-fleischut-plays.html
I've posted before about my friend Greg Fleischut, a hypertalented young musician whose crossgenre passion spans bluegrass, freak folk, jazz, and alt.rock. Greg, now 18, is in college studying guitar. Here he is playing a tune by Klezmer clarinetist and mandolinist Andy Statman. Greg translated Statman's tune for the guitar. I find his seemingly-effortless shredding to be quite inspirational. Greg's indie rock band, The Audiophiles, are celebrating the release of their new EP, "Fairytales and Other Tales," with a gig on January 2 at San Francisco's Bottom Of The Hill.
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01:33 pm
boing_boing
[Link] |
"We named the dog Indiana"
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/I-O01STQLz4/we-named-the-dog-ind.html Reading an End-of-the-Decade baby name round-up, I ran across this:
The last few years have shown a dramatic increase in the influence of everything from blockbuster movies to celebrity babies on naming trends ... Marley, from the film "Marley & Me," is gaining numbers for both sexes.
"[Parents] may not be able to send their kid to Harvard or buy him or her a celebrity lifestyle, but names are free and can give a piece of that cachet," Murray said.
No Harvard for you, kid. But we named you after a dog. So there's that.
NBC: Emma, Aiden are top baby names of the decade
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05:31 pm
mindyklasky
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/91296869/8808037) [Link] |
Non-Writing Writing Tasks
So, I'm waiting to hear back from my editor on a project or three, so I'm resisting the urge to get started on writing. Yes, I write fast, but it's a bad idea to write without confirmation that I'm heading in the correct direction. Therefore, my work day was filled with Tangential Projects:
1. Super Secret Project, oh, what are we up to? Four. A perfect title came to me this morning, one which will serve as a unifying theme for the entire book. I'm happy, happy, happy. I have character's almost fully developed, and I know the overall plot; I just have to round out the plot to make enough happen...
2. Editorial freelance gig. I completed editing a 5000-word sample from a new writer. (I provide editorial services, as a side line to my writing.) This one had good things and bad things (they all do!) and I learned a new trick to make my edits convey more information without being too overwhelming to new authors. Go, me :-)
Outside of Tangential Projects, I had lunch with a new friend (a friend of friends, who is considering moving to the DC area.) It was interesting to talk with her, and to learn what interests her about DC. A lot of our conversation had me thinking about basic assumptions I live by (e.g., it's better to have a smaller home, closer in to the city, to have better access to activities...)
I also tried to corral an INSANE cat, who realized that the outside of our house was under attack by a dread squirrel. The squirrel climbed the outside of the house, and Poppy nearly tore down my window shades trying to police the space. Ultimately, I had to lock up Pop for a while, until she calmed down. That didn't work - she came back out and lunged back for the window, so I raised the shades entirely. Hello, world! (At least, this isn't a sweat pants day :-) )
Mindy, wondering if the days will disappear so quickly, now that they're getting longer!
Tags: editing, life in klaskyville, super secret projects
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04:23 pm
marsgov
[Link] |
No Avatar
I'm not going to see Avatar. I object to films where the cute fluffy bunnies with no military technology to speak of still manage to defeat the high-technology civilization.
"Sticks and stones can break my bones but a cruise missile will blow me into smithereens." -- Me
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05:20 pm
50books_poc
[wordsofastory]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/91651604/576259) [Link] |
44. Jeniffer 8. Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
44. Jeniffer 8. Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
A pop non-fiction book covering pretty much every possible topic related to Chinese food in America. There are chapters on the origins of American-Chinese dishes (fortune cookies, chop suey, General Tso's chicken), a history of Chinese immigration to America, the risks taken by deliverymen (including a horrifying story of a deliveryman who got trapped in an elevator for several days, which I took the opportunity to retell when I was briefly stuck in an elevator myself last week, possibly terrifying the people stuck with me), the story of a family who buys a Chinese restaurant, people who have won the lottery using numbers from fortune cookies, and others. I think my favorite chapter was the one where Lee sets out to find the best Chinese restaurant in the world, outside of China itself.
Overall, this is a light, fun read. I have no idea how the book actually originated, but it reads a lot like Lee (who is a journalist) found some vaguely-related articles and reworked them into a book. Which is not necessarily a flaw; it makes for a very breezy book, which is sometimes what I'm in the mood for.
Current Mood:  happy
Current Music: The Simpsons on TV
Tags: a: lee jennifer, asian, asian writers, asian-american, china, chinese food, chinese-american, food/cooking, history, non-fiction, united states, women writers
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05:05 pm
supergee
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/84635916/834056) [Link] |
Serial stoopid
Before Garrison Keillor said stupid crap about Jews messing with Christmas songs, he said stupid crap about same-sex marriage.
Tags: teh stoopid
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06:34 pm
officialgaiman
[Link] |
Why all the lettering is getting smaller...
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/why-all-lettering-is-getting-smaller.html posted by Neil
I'm flying out tonight to the UK. I'll hole up in the middle of nowhere with my children and ex-wife and my mother as well, and probably be off-the-internet the whole time. There will be no TV in the middle of nowhere, so I will miss Doctor Who and miss "Statuesque" on Sky1 (10 pm Christmas Day).
Trying to deal with the last things I have to do before I get out of here. (Also realised very late last night that the problems I've had reading comics for the next Year's Best American Comics that I'm guest editing has nothing to do with losing my love for comics and everything to do with the fact that somewhere in the last year I must have started needing reading glasses for small print and had not realised this. I found a pair of reading glasses and the world became one with good, easy-to-read comics in it once again... I suppose more things like this will happen as I age. How odd.)
I leave you with a handful of links...
Okay. Back to last-minute things...
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09:00 am
smofbabe
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/70645058/3266187) [Link] |
Avatar
I'm afraid I am not joining the enthusiastic chorus of supporters of the new James Cameron film. ( Review with spoilers )
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03:29 pm
pameladean
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/3290269/752896) [Link] |
When icicles hang by the wall
We have no icicles at the moment, but I expect we will after the monstrous storm that is brewing up to hit us on the 25th. People on the East Coast may laugh hollowly if they like; it's still uncertain whether we are going to get buried to the extent that you guys did.
( The book )
( Medication )
I've just started a conversation with the relevant parties about postponing our Christmas celebration until the 27th. I doubt that David's mother, his sister, and her partner will be able to drive from Northfield if the forecast is accurate. It's even possible that we won't really want to try getting to Eden Prairie from Minneapolis. I will be making pies again. No apple this time. The 25th is Eric's birthday, so the third dessert will be pots de creme.
( Recent Reading )
( Cooking )
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01:23 pm
cherylmmorgan
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/66957830/13972819) [Link] |
Goodnight Clangers
Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there. If any of you in the UK did not see the BBC4 documentary about Oliver Postgate this evening, catch it on the iPlayer while you still can. It is marvelous.
Tags: tv
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03:23 pm
lsanderson
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/72989597/250167) [Link] |
No Shortage of Plum Pudding
There will be no shortage of Plum Pudding at my Hair-of-the-Dog party this year thanks to my sister. UPS delivered a whole one to my door this morning!
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