Month: March 2010

Wednesday various

  • Juliette Wade on How much description?

    My general rule for description (of people or places) is that you need to stick with the rule of relevance: if it’s relevant, describe. If it isn’t, don’t. It sounds simple, but evaluating the degree of relevance in any location is where the tricky part starts. There are three big kinds of criteria I generally use to assess this: point of view criteria, plot criteria, and story criteria.

    I get a lot of stories for Kaleidotrope where I learn more about a character’s hair and eye color than a do about who they are or why they’re doing something. Most of the time, if it’s just window dressing, you can drop it. Writing isn’t a visual medium. You have the reader’s imagination to help you, and moreover will often have a less satisfying story if you don’t let it. [via]

  • I really like Warren Ellis’ challenge to artists to redesign Superman…as if the artists had never heard of Superman. Some of the results are really interesting.
  • Along a slightly similar route, the Hypothetical Library: “imaginary book covers designed for actual authors.” [via]
  • And along a very slightly similar route, John Seavey imagines a universe in which only the first Star Wars movie is canonical.
  • And finally, I just like this quote from Jonathan Carroll, so I’m posting it.

When a sandwich is the most exciting thing that happens to you all day…

Today wasn’t particularly eventful. Sure, some people on Twitter wanted to make a lot of the fact that I had a miso mustard glazed tempeh Reuben with avocado, ginger sauerkraut, spicy Russian dressing, on 7-grain vegan bread for lunch. But, honestly, who hasn’t done that from time to time?

In all seriousness, though, I bought the sandwich here in Midtown, and it was surprisingly good — especially for vegan food, which in my limited experience is often not very good. Certainly vegan and vegetarians get the short end of it at most restaurants, especially at lunch hour take-away. The place I got this sandwich was a little too far from the office, and certainly much too expensive, to be a regular lunchtime spot for me, but I was pleasantly surprised. I’d never even heard of tempeh before this. I have mixed feelings about soy in general. I like edamame, for instance, and don’t particularly dislike soy milk. But I pretty much hate tofu. So, again, it was a pleasant surprise, even if the sandwich wasn’t even remotely like a regular Reuben.

And that’s about it for Tuesday.

Tuesday various

  • So Yoko Ono only okayed the Citroën car commercial to keep Lennon in the public conciousness? That’s good, because before this, I’m sure many people were thinking, “John Lennon? Who’s that?”
  • Another from the fine line between irony and hypocrisy department: Sarah Palin Crossed Border for Canadian Health Care. Why does she hate America? [via]
  • Having just recently rented or purchased some DVDs and Blu-Ray discs where this is a particular problem, I can totally get behind John Scalzi on this:

    …if someone were to introduce legislation requiring home entertainment companies to have a “just play the damn movie” button at the start of every DVD, Blu-Ray or any other future movie-playing technology, I would call my Senators and representative every fifteen minutes until they voted “yes” on that bill.

  • Charlie Stross on how books are made. [via]
  • And finally, A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever [via]

Onward to Tuesday

Today, not at all unexpectedly, was very Monday-ish. I spent it mostly marking up a couple of chapters on counseling older adults, because there’s nothing like reading about dementia to get the week of to a rollicking good start!

According to my Forgotten English desk calendar, today is not only International Women’s Day — which I guess means that every woman gets the Kathryn Bigelow “I Am Woman” treatment today? It’s also the Feast Eve of St. Gregory of Nyssa, who despite what you may be thinking was neither a capper nor a Doctor Who character. Apparently, he was a fourth-century Armenia archbishop.According to the calendar, he “relates a story of a nun who forgot to say her benedicte and make the Sign of the Cross before she sat down to supper, and who in consequence swallowed a demon concealed among the leaves of a lettuce.”

Which is neither here nor there, but it’s more exciting than my day, that’s for sure. I spent too much of the evening playing this Comedy Central game, and now I’m just getting ready for bed.

Monday various