Month: June 2009

Random 10 6/5

Last week, we didn’t do so well. I don’t know how we’ll fare this week, but here are the random lyrics:

  1. “Somebody to Love” by Queen, guessed by Kim
    They say I got a lot of water in my brain
  2. “Everybody’s Talkin'” by Harry Nilsson, guessed by Thud
    Going where the weather suits my clothes
  3. “You Don’t Know Me” by Ben Folds (feat. Regina Spektor)
    I’ll say something that I should have said long ago
  4. “Napoleon” by Ani DiFranco
    They told you your music could reach millions
  5. “Tender Mending” by Brooke Waggoner
    We vacuumed up the carpets and we mopped up the floors
  6. “I Can’t Be With You” by the Cranberries
    But it’s bad and it’s mad and it’s making me sad
  7. “Wild Is the Wind” by Nina Simone
    I hear the sound of mandolins
  8. “Danny Callahan” by Connor Oberst
    Stop reading the weather charts
  9. “As Tears Go By” by the Rolling Stones, guessed by Kim
    I want to hear the children sing
  10. “O Canada Girls” by Dar Williams
    I guess it’s got to feel like some exodus

Good luck!

Wednesday various

  • Does faking amnesia permanently distort your memory?

    In other words, pretending to have amnesia doesn’t hurt your memory, but rehearsing the correct answers improves it. [via]

  • A horror novel on toilet paper?

    Here’s the spooky rationale behind the story: “Toilets in Japan were traditionally tucked away in a dark corner of the house due to religious beliefs. Parents would tease children that a hairy hand might pull them down into the dark pool below.” [via]

  • Take the Amazon Statistically Improbable Phrase Quiz. I like it in theory more than practice, mainly because in practice I couldn’t guess any of them correctly. [via]

  • Two zombie links: the Zombie Bible [via] and, in the scary real world, parasitic flies turn fire ants into zombies [via]

  • And finally, not a new link — but it’s new to me — the case against Candy Land:

    I realize that games of pure chance have a long history, but that doesn’t make them any less moronic. (And it goes without saying that Checkers, Chess, Go, and other strategy games are great tests of decision-making.) I take this as another example of how much more mentally challenging kids’ culture has become in recent years. The digital generation doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite for games structured around total randomness. [via]

Tuesday various

“My industry butchered itself”

I always feel slightly depressed after listening to David Simon talk about the state of the world today, but the man always say something worthwhile to say. Here he testifies before Congress on the death of the newspaper industry:

Reporting was the hardest and, in some ways, most gratifying job I ever had. I’m offended to think that anyone anywhere believes American monoliths, as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives, can be held to gathered facts by amateurs presenting the task—pursuing the task without compensation, training or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care who it is they’re lying to or who they’re withholding information from.

The whole thing’s worth your time. Via Gerry Canavan.

Monday various

  • Ursula K. Le Guin on “Calling Utopia a Utopia“:

    To define science fiction as a purely commercial category of fiction, inherently trashy, having nothing to do with literature, is a tall order. It involves both denying that any work of science fiction can have literary merit, and maintaining that any book of literary merit that uses the tropes of science fiction (such as Brave New World, or 1984, or The Handmaid’s Tale, or most of the works of J.G. Ballard) is not science fiction. This definition-by-negation leads to remarkable mental gymnastics. For instance, one must insist that certain works of dubious literary merit that use familiar science-fictional devices such as alternate history, or wellworn science-fiction plots such as Men-Crossing-the-Continent-After-the Holocaust, and are in every way definable as science fiction, are not science fiction — because their authors are known to be literary authors, and literary authors are incapable by definition of committing science fiction.

  • Theodora Goss gets at a problem I’ve seen with at least a couple of submissions to Kaleidotrope in her quick review of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes, calling it

    …both gripping and dull at the same time. I wanted to know what was going to happen, but at the same time I didn’t care all that much; the narrative structure kept me going, but the narration didn’t particularly engage me.

  • Gwenda Bond shares an interesting feature she wrote for Publisher’s Weekly on trends in the romance genre:

    Let’s face it–romance is probably the most ghettoized, dismissed genre around and yet it’s full of smart writers and editors doing extremely interesting things, AND without romance to buoy sales the rest of publishing would probably sink like a stone. Romance readers will visit other sections of the bookstore without a blink, read tons of books a month, and yet face constant disrespect.

    I read the article on the train last week, and it’s fascinating because romance is a widely popular and hugely profitable section of the publishing world, and I don’t think I’ve ever read a single book in it. I think we ignore and marginalize romance novels at our peril, yet honestly, I still don’t want to read any of these books. Is that wrong?

  • I have to agree with Irene Gallo. This week’s New Yorker cover is distinctly unimpressive, even more so on the physical magazine than online. It’s certainly not a ringing endorsement for creating more professional artwork on the iPhone.

  • And, speaking of The New Yorker, here’s an interesting tale from Dan Baum, who used to work there. It’s a story he told initially via Twitter, hence the sometimes choppy sentences, but it’s an interesting (albeit one-sided) insight into the magazine. I’m most fascinated by the work-for-hire nature of the employment: writers like Baum are exclusive to The New Yorker but receive no retirement or health benefits, just the prestige of working there. [via]

    Personally, I’m a subscriber, but all too often I find myself not reading much of an issue. I often wish it was a monthly magazine.