I woke up pretty late this morning, ran some errands — post office, haircut, bank — and then spent the rest of the day not doing a whole lot of anything. I mean, I filled the bird feeders in the yard — it’s quite chilly outside, but they don’t all fly south for the winter — and I watched a little television. (Fringe and a British show called Misfits.) I did a little writing — the story I’m working on proved surprisingly easy to get back into, after too long a hiatus — and did a little reading. And then this evening I watched Ondine, which was really quite lovely. Every now and then a movie like that — or In Bruges — comes along and reminds me that that Colin Farrell fellow can certainly act.
writing
Wednesday various
- I like Todd VanDerWerff ‘s write-up of Dancing With the Stars a lot more than I think I would ever like the show itself.
- Popular Mechanics looks at shipping scientifically: “One disheartening result was that our package received more abuse when marked ‘Fragile’ or ‘This Side Up.'” [via]
- The Harry Potter series from Hermione’s point of view [via]
- John Scalzi’s accurate but misleading descriptions of famous science fiction films. Mild spoiler warnings all around.
- And finally, John Cleese on the creative process [via]:
Monday various
- Who among us hasn’t wondered what hospitals do with circumcised foreskins? Perfectly SFW, by the way, though it does acknowledge the existence of both penises and circumcision. [via]
- The Simpsons will never ever go off the air, will it?
- Speaking of which: Doctor Who characters drawn in Simpsons style.
- Speaking of re-imagined characters: Star Wars characters as typography
- And finally, the Fantasy Novelist’s Exam. [via]
That’s one way of putting it
John Scalzi on the value of teaching contracts and legal issues to MFA students:
If an MFA program is going to let a snake into the garden, as Columbia did when it dropped James Frey into that classroom, then it should damn well should have some antivenom on hand.
Monday various
- J. Michael Straczynski quits writing monthly comics, declares future is in original graphic novels. Warren Ellis discusses some of the figures, the actual dollar amounts that might be driving Straczynski’s decision. Financially, it may be a smart decision. But Ellis also adds, not unkindly, the following question:
What I’m wondering is what happens the first time Joe writes an OGN that isn’t a new iteration of the biggest heritage brand in comics [Superman] with the concomitant press coverage and bookstore push.
It’s an interesting move on Straczynski’s part, and it will bear watching — both in reader reception of his future projects, and whether or not other monthly comics writers join him. But I think it’s too soon to call this a harbinger of things to come, no matter how troubled the monthly comic book might be as a format.
- A Canadian Jersey Shore? Can I nominate Red Green to play the role of Snooki?
- Attention, writers: whatever you do, do not sign a contract with this man. No, not John Scalzi, but that “prevaricating hustler” and “master of bullshit” James Frey, who Scalzi talks about further here. Seriously, there are some pretty terrible publishing contracts out there, vanity presses dressed up like real publishers or outright scams from which no book emerges, but this is still pretty egregious — and exactly the sort of thing MFA programs should be teaching their students how to avoid, not facilitating by offering those students up as Frey’s misguided recruits. [via]
- A typographic anatomy lesson [via]
- And finally, a haunting tour of the abandoned — and soon to be demolished — Six Flags New Orleans [via]