- Mark Twain didn’t like proofreaders.
- 15 classic science fiction and fantasy novels that publishers rejected. The list may surprise you. [via]
- Living root bridges. Exactly what it says on the tin. [via]
- OK Cupid crunches some numbers on gay vs. straight sex. (SFW) [via]
- And finally, you’ve gotta love Ernest Borgnine At ninety-three:
I’m still learning how to act, for god’s sake.
weird
Wednesday various
- A vexation of zombies! Supernatural Collective Nouns. [via]
- Wow, H.G. Wells would hate American journalism today!
- Swanky new Vegas hotel’s ‘death ray’ proves inconvenient for some guests. Imagine that. [via]
- That Johnny Depp, what a mensch! (I still don’t want to see the next Pirates movie, though.) [via]
- And finally, via Reuters: “A man carries a shark through the streets of Mogadishu September 23, 2010.”
I love how there is absolutely no context given for this.
Weapon-salve Wednesday
The Forgotten English on my desk calendar for today is “weaponsalve,” meaning “a salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it.”
So I just need to find the boxes of books I carried two years ago in New Orleans, which I think was the injury that hurt my spine, and apply a healing salve.
I was actually fine for most of the day, staying a good quarter or half step away from the pain a lot of the time, but the discomfort really kicked up in earnest this evening. I fear I’m fit for little else but watching an episode of House and going to bed.
I’m not in real pain, and I actually had a pretty decent day, trying to track down reviewers for projects and digging through stock photo websites. Nothing exciting…and sure, this morning the train was ridiculously crowded, so much so that I couldn’t even put down my bag, much less find a seat, for most of the trip. I didn’t even have enough room to read my book — Ubik; and let me tell you, sometimes it’s all too easy to believe Philip K. Dick was a self-medicating schizophrenic. Still, the train tonight was much less crowded. And at lunch this afternoon, as I walked around midtown, I actually saw someone with spray-on hair in the wild. I never knew such things actually existed! This gentleman really wasn’t fooling anybody.
So that’s it. Turning in early to rest the back, hopefully relieve some of the pressure. I fear it’s going to be a whole lot more of the same between now and next Friday — assuming it doesn’t get worse — and it may not get better without some serious treatment options. It seems like every time I get used to living with this thing, working around the pain, the pain changes, and the coping methods I’ve been using don’t work as well anymore.
Oh well, I’m sure House will make it all better. That, or distract me by being really bad. I’ve really been on the edge of love-hate with this show since the end of last season. I watched the season premiere last night and didn’t hate it, actually found some things that really worked about it, but I don’t know. These are probably thoughts for another time.
Tuesday various
- The United States of Star Wars. I apprently live in/on Coruscant, or at least in its suburbs.
- The strange and sad life of science fiction author F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. [via]
- Corn syrup manufacturers want to change the name to corn sugar. This is actually a pretty canny (if cynical) move, trying to capitalize on the mistaken belief that lots of sugar is okay for you, in whatever quantity, as long as it’s not that nasty, unhealthy high fructose corn syrup. If nothing else, this would confuse the issue for consumers even more. [via]
- And yet where, might I ask, are the actual Dalek blueprints in question?
- And finally, it’s Zombie Week at Tor.com! Though it is possible to take this whole zombie thing too far…
Tuesday various
- Textbooks Up Their Game. The Wall Street Journal looks at the evolving world of the textbook market and the role that e-book volumes will play in it.
The iPad does seem better suited to the textbook market than most other e-readers, if only for its versatility. But I can’t see app-ready editions of textbooks having much widespread appeal (beyond the student who already owns an iPad) or impact, unless the price of Apple’s reader and/or the books comes down significantly. Students are unlikely to pay $69.99 (much less $84.99) for a book they can’t re-sell and that, once the iPad stops working or needs to be replaced, is gone too.
- Daleks voted the greatest sci-fi monsters of all time. It’s a weird list. The original poll was for “Monsters, Supernatural Beings & Fantasy Creatures,” which means picks like Aslan makes more sense — although a CGI lion with the voice of Liam Neeson is a little monstrous, too — but Pilot from Farscape?
- Real or not, I think I can live without J.D. Salinger’s toilet.
- Deconstructing the Twikie. Surprisingly, this hasn’t been done by Cockeyed.com. [via]
- And finally, I’ve really been enjoying Zach Handlen’s Star Trek: The Next Generation recaps:
It can be difficult to convincingly show love in fiction, because the experience of falling for someone is both highly personal and curiously universal; the details and shared moments are what give the feeling texture, but the rush and elation of it are things that we all share. So you’ve got to find some way to make the small moments appear distinct and honest so that the big moments feel earned.