Month: November 2009

Monday various

  • “TIGA, the computer games industry body, is facilitating links between publishers and computer games developers by inviting its members to create briefs for live publishing-based projects. That’s right. No more video games based on popular movies based on popular books; these folks are going direct to the source. Which naturally begs the question: which books would you like to see made into video games? [via]
  • Speaking of games, here’s two: Small Worlds and Quizapedia. [via]
  • Let Them Sing it for You: does exactly what it says on the tin. Amusing, though your mileage may vary. [via]
  • An interesting exchange between stand-up comedian Paul F. Tompkins and Improv Everywhere founder Charlie Todd. I’m not really sure which one of them I side with here. [via]
  • And finally, SCI FI Wire cancels its columns. I can’t say I’m at all surprised. Its steady race to be a weak clone of io9 (which isn’t always so terrific itself) continues.

Random 10 11/13

Last week. This week:

  1. “Turning the Gun on Myself” by Teddy Thompson
    New York is loud, it’s wonderfully loud
  2. “Oh What a World” by Sonos (orig. Rufus Wainwright)
    Beautiful on a New York Times
  3. “29” by Gin Blossoms
    So hang your hopes on rusted-out hinges
  4. “Don’t Ask Me Why” by Billy Joel, guessed by Nyssa23
    You can say the human heart is only make-believe
  5. “I Told a Lie to My Heart” by Hank Williams
    I told my heart I didn’t love you
  6. “Deeper River” by Dusted
    I have fallen to troubled waters
  7. “Strangers” by Portishead
    Did you realize no one can ever see inside you view
  8. “Hot Soft Light” by the Hold Steady
    It tightened up its tentacles
  9. “Day Is Done” by Peter, Paul & Mary
    I know you’re frightened, like everyone
  10. “Set the Fire to the Third Bar” by Snow Patrol (w/ Martha Wainwright)
    As drunken men find flaws in science

Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. Good luck!

Wednesday various

  • Anybody need a cool jewelery box? I actually own these books. (Though a little part of me cringes at thought of any such book mutilation.)
  • Speaking of books, word on the “new” Vladimir Nabokov “novel,” The Original of Laura, isn’t exactly good [via], suggesting that it’s at best a curio for Nabokov scholars. But at least we have these neat re-imagined covers for all (well, mostly all) of his other books. [via]

    Man, it’s been way too long since I’ve read any Nabokov.

  • So yeah, Dollhouse was canceled, and I don’t think anybody is exactly surprised. I still think the show was some of Joss Whedon’s best and worst work, capable of some truly brilliant and startling moments, but also never really comfortable in its own skin or sure of exactly what kind of show it wanted to be. There’s a lot I love about it, but I won’t mourn it the same way I did Firefly (and to a lesser extent Angel), and I’ve long been resigned to its many flaws and limited chances for survival.

    • Speaking of Dollhouse, here’s an interesting look at the role of neuroscience in the Whedonverse that somehow manages to mention all his shows except for the one where people’s brains are erased and rewired on a regular basis. [via

  • And finally, Neil Gaiman on A.A. Milne and Kenneth Grahame:

    I once read an essay by A.A. Milne telling people that, of course they knew Kenneth Grahame’s work, he wrote The Golden Age and Dream Days, everybody had read them, but he also did this amazing book called The Wind in the Willows that nobody had ever heard of. And then Milne wrote a play called Toad of Toad Hall, which was a big hit and made The Wind in The Willows famous and read, and, eventually, one of the good classics (being a book that people continue to read and remember with pleasure), while The Golden Age and Dream Days, Grahame’s beautiful, gentle tales of Victorian childhood, are long forgotten.

    If there is a moral, or a lesson to be learned from all this, I do not know what it is.