Videos for a Drippy Summer Saturday

1) The wonderous tradition of “You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?”:

 

2) Oh this explains so much:

 

3) Jimmy Fallon does a killer Neil Young impersonation. And he’s putting it to good use on a cover of a song for the ages, with a little help from a friend:

 

 

I Am So Lucky Upon This Earth

http://alicepyne.blogspot.com/

SFFWorld Interview with Jon Sprunk

Over at SFFWorld, I interviewed Jon Sprunk, author of the secondary world fantasy novels Shadow’s Son and Shadow’s Lure. Check it out and check out the novels, which are filled with skullduggery and derring do:

http://www.sffworld.com/interview/294p0.html

 

Random Thoughts

A strong wind blew over a number of purple and yellow iris stalks  in my front yard just as the flowers had come into bloom. So I cut the bent stalks and put the flowers in a water-filled vase. The stalks had several buds with unopened flowers and I was curious whether the buds would open. They did and the interesting thing was that they did so at night. Every bud started opening once it was nighttime and the lights were basically out. The flower would last a few days, and then, also at night, the flowers would shrivel up. But they did so by the flower folding back and in all the petals into a ball of itself, which would then shrivel and grow darker. I also discovered that the shriveled iris flowers would make excellent dye, as they stained my fingers and other surfaces when I deadheaded the spent flowers. A bit got on our lazy susan that I missed and I can’t get it off the wood.

I’m sure people who know more about flower production and irises find this information as no surprise, but it was new to me.  It’s these little things out of which larger stories emerge.

 

 

 

Interesting Writings — They Pile Up!

Writing and Books:

IO9 looks at how fantasy fiction dispatches people:

http://io9.com/#!5794991/the-most-gruesome-fates-in-fantasy

Fantasy author Jim C. Hines sometimes graces us with comic cartoons, this one on the real truth of screaming over self-publishing:

http://www.jimchines.com/2011/04/eisner-vs-hocking

Interesting thoughts on the publication process:

http://abrokenlaptop.com/2011/05/01/personal-feedback-or-form-rejections-are-our-friends/

A reminder that the truth of human beings is complicated:

http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/05/26/is-the-real-truth-always-grim/

A. Lee Martinez speaks sagely about our problems with the Slightly Other in SFFH:

http://www.aleemartinez.com/monsters-women-strange-creatures/blog/30052011/

News from the e-book front:

http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/05/kobo-and-the-curious-incident-of-the-underdog-in-the-night-time/

 

Life or Something Like It:

The Onion provides commentary on the greatest show of all:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mans-life-riddled-with-continuity-errors,20492/

A look at one of the reasons we’re in such a mess:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/rich-people-still-dont-realize-theyre-rich/?smid

Another look at how our expectations of gender do not match reality:

http://lifestyle.sympatico.ca/Relationships/galleries/articles/men_myths.htm

A look at another reason we’re in this mess:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1 – low teacher salaries

A look at un-whitewashed history of some very brave people:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/07/v-fullstory/2206712/leonard-pitts-how-two-busloads.html

Random Thoughts

Sometimes things don’t go the way you planned. Like blogging. 🙂

I thought this the other day when I had need to shop in a big box retail department store. A few years ago, this store and others like it all installed several self-service checkouts — the ones with the complicated computer that spoke in a digital voice: “Please put your item in the bag.” I usually found these checkouts a pain to use and it was hard to get someone to help you when there was a problem with them, so I only used them if I had just a few items to buy and the regular checkout lines were long. And I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, because now those self-service checkouts are all gone except from the chain grocery stores. In this particular store, they’d been replaced with a new set of express lane checkouts, which is a good plan as this store has long checkout lines.

It’s a reminder that technology has to not only do, but do so in a way that works easily for people. Otherwise, if they have a choice, they’ll abandon it. And that what seems like a really good plan or upgrade may turn out to be not what you end up with.