Twenty Palaces

Randomness for 8/18

1) Everything is better in France. Even muggings.

2) Trends in fantasy cover art for 2009.

3) Your monster instructional video for the day.

4) James Bond, Indian comic book style: “You hide identity for good. But there are Super Dupers who never reveal themselves at the worst.”

5) Seven scientific reasons the zombie apocalypse will not be an extinction event.

6) Rope gymnastics in India. Video. Honestly amazing.

7) Fifty-five incredible manipulated photos.

Randomness for 8/16

1) Wikipedia’s lamest edit wars.

2) Redesigned book covers.

3) A Star Wars Kid for the new age: HALO KID! Video.

4) Our Daughter Isn’t a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn’t Read
Atlas Shrugged. “When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, “Have a ball, peas [sic]?” And I’m sure you were very proud of him for using his manners. To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, “No! Looter!” right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.”

5) How to recognize a card skimmer at your ATM. via Mary Catelli

6) How good do you have to be to win the World Yo-Yo Championships? Watch and find out. Video.

7) The history of Aquaman, explained.

Randomness for 8/8

1) The alphabet, carved on the tips of pencils.

2) Kanye West Tweets combined with New Yorker cartoons. It’s not exactly Nietzsche Family Circus, but, um…

3) I don’t even know what to say about this news story. My initial shock at reading it has lessened as I realize this sort of thing isn’t unusual. It wouldn’t be newsworthy at all if not for the Facebook connection.

4) What a bestseller’s marketing push looks like. Someday, this will be me.

5) Amazing Lego Animation. Not for some technical razzle dazzle, but because it is so simply shot and effective. Video

6) It’s hard to believe this isn’t partly cgi in post, but this is a 3D projection onto a building, and it’s mindblowing. Video.

7) “But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave.” A New York high school valedictorian delivers a controversial speech against the public school system in which she excelled.

More science!

For those who missed the first one on Monday, these comics are 100% made by my son, to illustrate (with humor) his science lessons.

Now, I bring you… SCIENCE!

As part of my son’s homeschooling, I’m asking him to create fun, funny, instructional science comics. He wrote, shot, and put together the comic below all by his lonesome. I offered to help, but he didn’t need it!

What do you think?

Randomness for 7/31

1) First Pacey-Con squelched by private police force. SDCC just isn’t like it used to be, man.

2) Autoeroticism in America (in convenient graph form!)

3) Kermit Bale. Yes, poster, you do, in fact, have too much time on your hands.

4) What does Harvard have to teach YOU about vampires in film and literature? Take the online course and find out.

5) Captain Higgins, flatworm of power!

6) Photoshop Time portals. via Kurt Busiek

7) Job prospects for 2011 in the urban fantasy world. Pretty funny, and let’s just pretend she didn’t use the phrase “tramp stamp.”

Randomness for 7/28

1) Mom creates tableaus to illustrate what she imagines her sleeping baby is dreaming.

2) Via Sherwood Smith: Jane Austen’s Fight Club. (added later: Yeah, this has been going around for the past couple of days, but I’m not going to yank it just in case someone here still hasn’t had a chance to check it out.)

3) Introverts unite! (quietly).

4) Poppy Z. Brite, Tim Wildmon, and The Home Depot. I’m so tempted to send (anonymously) a copy of CoF to the AFA so they can boycott me, too. I could use the publicity.

5) Random House and Andrew Wylie clash over ebook publication.

6) How self-absorbed people behave: political columnist writes open letter to his ex on her wedding day and reacts badly when he’s criticized for it.

7) And we mourn the end of an era: No more blowing up Michael Jackson zombies with your cornapult.

The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we live.

One of the most distressing things about my country and my culture is the contradiction between the way we view power in our entertainments and the way we view it in our real lives. We cheer movie heroes who take on the wealthy and the powerful to stand up for what’s right, but what happens if someone in the real world tries that?

Well, they don’t get treated like a hero. Sycophants to power pour out of the woodwork to declare them liars, scammers, whatever. Scarily, many many poor and powerless people have a knee-jerk sympathy for the wealthy and powerful.

So, I wondered what comments people would leave on a news site like CNN.com if these movies had actually happened in the real world, and were covered by the media. So:

Randomness for 7/24

1) Can you spot the endangered species in this photo?

2) Want your kid to do well in college? Take them out of school! via Jen Busiek.

3) A book marketing idea I’m going to steal. For Child of Fire, I’m thinking flame-proof kiddie pajamas. For Game of Cages, I’m not sure. Doggie sweaters?

4) Slate discovers BBB is worthless. The rest of America says “DUH!”

5) Last time I linked to a funny post by Josh Freidman. This time I’m linking to a post that is just as true and wrenched tears out of me. Incredibly powerful writing. Jesus.

6) And, to move from the sublime to the ridiculous: How to pay for a Death Star.

7) Science fiction writer profiled in NY Times. I hope it gets him new readers.

Randomness for 7/21

1) The Creative Process, in graphic/maze form.

2) This is pretty exciting: BLU has a new stop motion video out!

3) I’m sure many of you know that there’s a new storyline in the Superman comics where he walks across America to reacquaint himself with regular people. Well, now The Mighty Thor is doing it too!

4) Baby eats his way out of a watermelon. This one isn’t very interesting, but it is awfully cute.

5) Parkour from 1930.

6) Serial book thief gets three and a half years.

7) When Josh Friedman posts to his blog, we read. It’s long, but it’s amazing. He combines development notes, TV trends, and true crime, coming out the other end with belly laughs.