You Don't Want To Be In This Play

This morning at 6am, my son (Christopher J) and I rehearsed a play called "Christopher Pees On Everything." It was a lot more fun for him than me.

Rob!

This is hilarious. I'd never heard of Improv Everywhere until literary agent Kristin Nelson mentioned them, but this is just the sort of thing I love. It's sort of like Candid Camera, except much larger scale. Another favorite is the Slo-Mo Home Depot stunt -- the reactions of the employees are priceless.

Let go of my CD!

I recently discovered an online comic called xkcd, and I must say it is hilarious. A lot of the jokes are things that would only be funny to programmers, but I think anyone can appreciate this one. I enjoyed many others from that strip about turing tests, sysfaults, compiling, imaginary kilobyte denotations, and many other topics, but I doubt you'd be as interested in those if you're part of my normal readership (aka, other writers).

Oddest Book Titles

Reuters recently had an interesting short article on this year's finalists for the oddest book title. I can't decide whether I think "Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues" or "Cheese Problems Solved" is funnier. Of course, "I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen" is pretty good, too.

As the article points out, it's really nice to see that the publishing industry isn't homogenizing too much. There are still plenty of quirky oddities making it into print.

Holiday Roundup

I've been quiet lately, thanks to the holidays and then my return to work a couple of days ago. So this post is going to be a bit of catch-up for a lot of the things I've wanted to comment on in the last few weeks.

First off, thanks to a post by literary agent Jonathan Lyons, I read this very interesting piece by Dave Eggers. The part that is particularly interesting is his bit on selling out, which is a longish addendum to his response to the initial email. I've never had much concern over how avant garde anything was, but it was very interesting to read the rant of someone who once did, but no longer cares. I agree with Eggers' conclusion that tracking "sellouts" is just another form of fashion, and that might very well explain why I've never had any interest in it.

I saw an interesting post called Respecting Romance over at the BookEnds Literary Agency. This post was all about why some romance writers are embarrassed by their chosen genre, and why they shouldn't be. I don't read very much romance, and I definitely don't write it, but it recalled to mind the stigma that surrounds sci-fi and fantasy. I think most genres have some sort of stigma, actually, but here again -- it's all fashion. Write because you want to, and because your topic interests you. "Great art" can be formed in any genre -- any medium at all, in fact, as many artists have demonstrated.

Next I want to point out a post called Critters Vs. Betas (and the Dreaded Spouse Question) over at Dwight's Writing Manifesto -- and not just because he mentions me in the post. I recently posted some of my thinking on the topic, but Dwight has a new way of looking at it that I hadn't quite thought of before.

Literary agent Kristen Nelson recently made a post about the new Top Dealmaker feature at Publisher's Marketplace. I thought it was really useful information, and quite insightful (she usually is). It's good to have an agent's take on this sort of thing.

On an off-topic note, Stephen Parrish recently posted about Dinner For One, "a British one-act play [that] is a New Year's Eve tradition in Germany." Shortly after he mentioned this play (first time I'd ever heard of it), a German friend of my uncle brought it up. Go figure. Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry on the play notes that "although the sketch is most popular in non-English speaking countries, it is typically shown in the original English without dubbing or subtitles. Curiously, the film remains practically unknown to the English speaking world (except for Australia)." How very curious, indeed! Can you imagine a work of yours becoming a yearly tradition in some other country, but being utterly uncared-about in your native land?

I re-watched Terry Gilliam's cult classic Brazil the other day. It's a dystopian movie that made a big impression on me in high school, and which I've since counted as one of my top favorite movies even though I hadn't seen it for over eight years. My wife got it for me on DVD as a Christmas present, which was a really pleasant surprise. I was a little worried it might not seem as good now that I've grown up a lot more, but actually it was better than before. This movie is dense with symbolism, dark humor, and pointed social commentary. If you haven't seen this one, it's definitely worth a look -- the ending is probably my favorite movie ending of all time.

Have you ever heard of the (in)famous lexicographical term Mountweazel? I'm confident you'll find that trivia article both edifying and humorous.

Over the holiday break I read Stephen King's much-touted On Writing, and found it to be quite good. Most of you have probably read it already, but if not, it's definitely worth a read.

Another book that I'm finding even more helpful at present is Chris Roerden's Don't Murder Your Mystery. This is a very nuts-and-bolts book on writing, specifically aimed at Mystery writers. Don't let that fool you -- this gem is extremely applicable to all genres. The author has been a professional editor for over forty years, and she (yes, she's a female "Chris") really knows her stuff. For me, this book came at just the right time. I hope it finds you the same way.

And, I think that was about it!

Cosmic Rays on the Tennis Court

Perhaps someone can explain the logic of this NY Times article on Cosmic Rays to me. Maybe I'm just revealing my ignorance of physics, but it seems like there's a pretty gross typo in here (aside from the obvious one that I marked). From the article:

Each of the cosmic rays studied had energy in excess of 57 billion billion electron volts, about the energy of a nicely hit tennis ball. By comparison, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, near Geneva, will accelerate protons to a mere 7 trillion electron bolts [sic] when it turns on next summer.

“Such energies are so extreme that they could arise in only the most violent places in the universe,” the authors of the report wrote.

Okay, so a "nicely hit tennis ball" has 57 billion billion electron volts of energy in it, but the world's largest particle accelerator only produces 7 trillion electron volts? Apparently the energy found in cosmic rays can only originate from black holes or the tennis court -- "the most violent places in the universe."

Misheard Lyrics

As authors, at least we don't have to contend with people not being able to understand us. Well, except at readings. Well, also except when people just misinterpret our prose. Hmm. Okay, but at least as an author you probably won't ever have someone make a Youtube video like these out of your work:



This one actually was something my sister first showed me a couple of years ago, but I didn't have a blog back then. Maybe you've seen it, but I still find it hilarious:



Great haystacks my destiny...

Robot Insurance

Useful for when that upcoming robotic insurrection finally happens. Any day now!

(As an aside, I've never seen Sam Waterston do humor before -- that makes it even funnier, for me. A couple of times, he almost smiles while delivering his lines.)

Write this... or that... or maybe...

I recently saw the link to this video over on Pub Rants, the blog of literary agent Kristen Nelson. I thought it was just too funny not to share.

Pachelbel Rant

My sister showed me this yesterday, and I must say, it is hilarious.

Made-Up Word of the Day: Elegonated

Today's word is one which I unintentionally invented. For those of you whose vocabulary is largely built through reading (as mine is), you might be familiar with the problem of mis-pronouncing a word that you've read for years, but never actually heard aloud. This doesn't happen often for me, but it can have some interesting results when it does occur. In the case of elongated, I actually mis-read the word when I first read it, and so always pronounced it "elegonated" instead.

I actually think that my mis-pronounced/spelled version is better and should be a new word. Whereas elongated refers to something which is simply lengthened, elegonated refers to something which is lengthened in a graceful or elegant style.

What made-up words have you accidentally coined?

Blogger thinks I'm German

Guten Tag.

I have no idea why, but my blog archive links have suddenly changed to German. Februar, März, April, Mai. Maybe it's trying to teach me to be more multilingual--but the post headers are still in English, so I'm thinking maybe this is a bug. Hopefully it will go away soon, but at least it's not much trouble at the moment. Oh well.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Humorous conversations to overhear

As my wife and I are leaving Borders, a man in his forties comes up to the register that we had just left. The elderly cashier looks at the first book that the man hands her, and remarks, "Ooh, this is a good book. Hard, though."

The man responds: "Because of all the words?"

It turns out that it was some sort of puzzle book or brain teaser set or something, but this exchange was definitely good for a double take and a laugh.

Meez...

Well, I blame Chandra for this, who of course blames Vicki Pettersson. I'm not sure who Vicki blames, but I'm sure it's someone. Ah well, I've burned an hour or so making myself as a meez:



Would you like to waste some time, too? You're in luck.