- Two words: yarn bombing.
- A cute comic: Superman in England. [via]
- And I thought things were uncivil on the floor of Congress. We have nothing on the Ukraine.
- I shirked my social responsibility this past weekend by not seeing Bridesmaids. I’m not really sure how I feel about this argument, although I do think it’s a sad state of affairs when the very idea of casting smart, funny women comes in a (possibly) smart, funny movie comes down to the success of one single film. [via]
- And finally, Find racist robots in Transformers 3, get $25K from Michael Bay. I’d try to collect, but then I’d actually have to watch Transformers 3.
doctor who
Tuesday various
- Zadie Smith’s rules for writers:
When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would. [via]
- “All these worlds are yours except Europa…and possibly Titan.” [via]
- The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything:
It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re “supposed to see.” Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think. [via]
- So long and thanks for all the fish: Underwater Translator May Finally Let Us Talk to Dolphins. [via]
- And finally, My Little 11th Doctor [via]:
Monday various
- Novelist proposes to girlfriend in print. I suppose there are worse ways to go about it. [via]
- The house from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Shunned House” is for sale. I don’t think I’ve ever read the story in question. I know I don’t have $925,000 to spend. [via]
- Super Mario propaganda posters. I like these, although I do sometimes wonder about my generation’s continued obsession with all things Super Mario. [via]
- Tom Baker’s touching tribute to Elisabeth Sladen. [via]
- And finally, China Mieville’s re-interpretation of Marley & Me is…interesting.
Easter parade
It was a quiet day at home, spent celebrating Easter with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law. We had a nice midday meal of filet mignon and some gorgeous, if a little too hot, weather all day. It’s only within the past hour that it’s started to rain again, hopefully cooling off but not returning to the genuinely chilly weather we had all last week. Today we actually took the covers off the air conditioners, and even used the one in the living room for a while.
Beyond that, I did the Sunday crossword, watched the latest episode of Doctor Who (which I think I may actually want to watch again), and went to the local nursery to buy my mother a plant for Easter. About it, really.
The write of way
This evening, I went here, to hear author Peter Straub talk about the craft and process of writing fiction. The talk, which was a lot of fun and full of lots of interesting “tricks of the trade” and stylistic “rules” (like, for instance, how your prose should never rhyme), was free to subscribers to One Story — which, thanks to Heather, I happen to be. And to think, I had never even heard of the Center for Fiction before, much less realized how close — a ten-minute walk — it is to my office.
That was about it for the rest of my day, which was spent back at work but with not much else to report.
I was deeply shocked and sad to learn that Elisabeth Sladen, Doctor Who‘s Sarah Jane Smith, had passed away. She wasn’t a formative part of my childhood — if anything, I was more familiar with her recent work on the series and still-on-the-air spin-off — but she did always seem like one of the best companions the show ever had. She died much too young and will be missed.
And that was Tuesday.