Twenty Palaces

Randomness for 7/15

1) Every _____ Comic in three panels, by Marvel editor Nathan Crosby.
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2) Mainstream journalism throws more pop-science against the shoals of cultural prejudice.
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3) “Have you read all these books? When do you watch TV?” A husband works in his wife’s bookstore while she’s sick, and records the conversations he has with customers.
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4) How “non-lethal” weapons are too often used by police.
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5) The history of the term “slush pile.”
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6) The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design. Twelve of the Worst Book Titles Ever (NSFW) according to some dude at Huffpo.
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7) Bookscan: how accurate is it?

Randomness for 7/10

1) Ever wonder why the left protests G8 and G20 meetings? It’s because of this sort of thing.

2) Rick Riordan goes from adult midlist mystery writer to bestselling kids author. How sad is it that I didn’t even *know* the dude wrote mysteries for adults?

3) Furniture designed for small spaces. These designs are fantastic.

4) Lady Gaga in everyday situations.

5) And you thought authors got a small cut: How much do musicians really make?

6) This randomness collection is more political than most: Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in comic book form, which first appeared in 1945. BTW, did you know that Hayek thought we should have universal health care?

7) Quote of the day: “…it’s an easy, quick read, suitable for wallowing in decadence for a day on the beach and then entirely forgetting about afterward. Alternatively, one can forget about it ahead of time — and that’s what I recommend.” Andrew Wheeler, reviewing Bret Easton Ellis’s Imperial Bedrooms.

Randomness for 6/29

1) A half-hearted defense of the Star Wars prequels. I agree with his assessment of the attitudes of the Jedi in the prequels, but I’m not convinced that Lucas himself recognized that it was problematic.

2) British stores told they can no longer sell eggs by the dozen.

3) The NY Post reacts to U.S. World Cup elimination.

4) I’m not one to link to music videos, but here’s The Go-Go’s circa 1984 (love the lighting) cross-dressing onstage and looking good doing it. And Belinda Carlisle sings the hell out of this song.

5) AT-AT afternoon.

6) An American woman in a German supermarket discovers an American ethnic food section. What foods do you think they consider American?

7) More evidence on the brilliance of Facebook users. The fan page for this author’s book has 700,000 fans, and he is sure none of them care one bit about reading his book. But damn, if even three percent could be convinced to buy a copy…

Randomness for 6/23

1) Carnage on Hoth, the cake.

2) The rule, usually, is “Don’t read the comments,” yes? But look at this post about a delicious salad sandwich and then scroll down to the fourth comment by “Brownhornet”. WTF? I don’t understand that at all.

3) A trailer for all Academy Award Winning Movies. This is funny.

4) So is this: The angry police captain. Seen via the-isb.

5) White guys for rent.

6) Want to have a good-looking kid? Talk to the sperm (and egg, supposedly) donors at beautifulpeople.com. Money quote: “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

7) “Do you think the author wanted you to learn something?”
“No screaming.”

How not to be lonely.

No, this isn’t actually a plan for avoiding loneliness.

As I mentioned before, my wife and son are in upstate NY for the rest of the month, dealing with the death of my m-i-l. That means I’m home alone for that time.

Normally, I’m a complete ass when it comes to productively using private time, especially when I have a lot of it. For these two-plus weeks, I have to be better. Therefore! I have made these resolutions:

1. No fancy cooking. I can’t be spending hours and hours prepping foods that I eat in 15 minutes. Sandwiches, salads, pastas, etc. Simple stuff.

2. Exercise every day. I have time for it, therefore I have no excuses.

3. Clean kitchen at the end of every day. No going to bed with dirty plates in the sink or crumbs on the table.

4. Spend half an hour each day cleaning the apartment. The kitchen doesn’t count toward this goal. Vacuuming doesn’t take long. Neither does a quick sweep/wipe down of the bathroom. Making bed: 15 seconds, tops. If I set aside this time and try to rush through it, it should be a huge burden or time sink.

5. All writing goals will be increased by 500 words a day. That doubles the quota for day-job days, and increases the day-off day quotas to 2K. I’d like to try for 3K, but that’s a lot of story for me. This isn’t listed fifth because it’s the fifth most important, but because it’ll be an easy goal to meet.

6. Only drink beer on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Moderation is the key.

7. Watch grown-up movies. Because of the boy’s screwed-up sleep schedule, the only time I have to watch movies for adults is the morning, and morning is writing time. As a result, I pretty much haven’t seen any R-rated movies for a couple of years. At this point, I don’t even care if they’re all that good, I just want to watch some. I may even go to (gasp!) a theater.

Of course, none of this works without:

8. Sensible amounts of internet time! Like many people, my time online expands to fill the amount of time I have. I can’t keep doing that. Therefore, I resolve to follow fewer links, join fewer discussions and let my email program chime to let me know new messages have come in, rather than check over and over.

Hmm. Maybe I should add: Write shorter blog posts.

edited to add: Oops! I forgot one: 9. Eat fruit and vegetables every day.

Randomness for 5/28

1) Cut paper art.

2) Dawn’s Wedding Chapel.

3) Subtitles for the Asian DVD release of THE TWO TOWERS

4) Everyone loves looking at creepy dolls, right?

5) Seasonal Cake Wrecks.

6) Why the bad guys in River City Ransom say “BARF!”

7) All of today’s links came from Sherwood Smith’s Birthday thread. There are many, many more wonderful things there, including a bunch of videos that I can’t check out and can’t link to. Wish Sherwood a happy birthday (and treat yourself to one of her books, if you haven’t before), check out the other wonderful links, and maybe you can offer something yourself.

Randomness for 5/24

1) “I am merely giving you your problem” Emma Thompson’s character in STRANGER THAN FICTION would have called this webcomic “fantastically depressing.”

2) An interview with indie comics writer Shawn Granger.

3) Awesome Lovecraftian furniture.

4) Shit my kids ruined. aka “The strongest visual birth control on the market today.”

5) “I’m 16. I got a book deal when I was 15. There are authors that were published at 13 and 14 and I always find myself thinking, God, must I fail at everything I do? They were published younger than me!” I posted that excerpt because it made me LOL, but it’s unfair out of context. The writer’s point is pretty much the opposite of what that excerpt implies.

I can only defend that quote one way: LOL.

6) Sixteen items Wal Mart sells only in China. via Jay Lake. Mmmm. Unpackaged meats. Vegetarians, you might not want to click that link.

7) @BPGlobalPR: a fake British Petroleum account. Topical, funny and very dark. “The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares”

What’s the proper way to dress a pizza?

Sauce first, then cheese, then toppings on the very top? Sauce, toppings, cheese? Put on the sauce last, so the cheese doesn’t brown so much? Or does it vary according to the cheeses, sauce and toppings you choose?

First full day

The first full day of Pizza Week (aka, my wife is out of town) was troubled. The fruit pizza (with sweetened cream cheese) did not go over well. At all. The more traditional pepperoni pizza I made for dinner (with the good pepp) also did not go over well. My son got me to make him a mini-pizza at the end of the day and I put all his usual boring toppings on them.

As for the rest of the day, I’m a single parent so I’m not getting online all that much. I did have a productive conversation with my agent yesterday, and I plan to talk a little about that when it’s not so late. Bedtime has passed, so I must pass out.

More on food and obesity

I’ve never eaten at a Claim Jumpers restaurant, and thanks to this article I never will. That’s two days’ worth of calories they’re serving there. The baby back ribs are 8 times the calorie load of a KFC Double Down!

And that doesn’t include the sides.

As I mentioned in a previous post, posting calorie counts is a sensible thing to do, although the evidence that it has any effect is pretty iffy so far. Posting calorie counts like these ought to be law. The article makes it clear that doggie bags are expected, but do people know that they need to split the Whiskey-Apple Glazed Chicken into three separate meals (at least)?

Thing is, picking a restaurant or ordering from the menu is a tiny decision (except at fucking Claim Jumpers). By itself, no big deal. As a habit, it is a big deal.

But a lifetime is built out of all those tiny choices. Careers are built that way, and many people don’t look at these choices in a systematic way.

This ties in with the teaching article I posted about a while back: For a long time, people were convinced that very good teachers had this ineffable, unmeasurable thing called “talent”. They were “good teachers” and they seemed to spring from Zeus’s head fully formed. It’s only recently that researchers are making a strong push to truly analyze the behaviors of talented teachers to see what techniques they use. Once the behaviors are well understood, they can be taught to everyone.

Which ties into writing, too. I’ve posted before about how I think of writing “talent,” and I think it’s very much a teachable thing (at least to a certain degree).

All of these amount to making numerous tiny decisions: Which side to order? How to ask the students to pay attention? How to describe this characters? Each task comes with differing degrees of complexity, but there are smart choices to be made and unfortunate ones, and the unfortunate ones drag you down.

That’s why I spent a great deal of time studying other writers. I needed to get past my ideas what what worked/didn’t work and see through to the successful strategies.

With food, though, that’s extra hard. So many of the strategies I see are about changes people can’t make (such as moving to a walking-friendly neighborhood), can’t afford (join a gym, buy more veg), feel like punishment (did I mention the gym? And the veg?) and fly in the face of their own physical demands.

A lot of it seems to be anecdotal, too. Jared ate veggie sandwiches at Subway! Bill gave up all white food! I’d like to see a detailed, large-scale analysis of how people who succeeded in losing weight did it, without the moralizing.