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10:53:00 AM EDT
Hearing Plateau -- Orb
Blog/Journal Roundup 05/25/04
The second sunny day in a row? I hardly know what to do with myself, other than stay inside all day long and type. Yes, that's what I think I'll do.
* First, best wishes for Andrea of Unhinged, who is taking a break from her AOL Journal -- gasp! -- to write an outline for a novel. I approve of this decision: I'll miss her Journal for a couple of weeks, but speaking as a novelist, sometimes you have to make priorities in your writing schedule. In the last week of writing my last novel, I stopped updating my non-AOL online site because I simply didn't have time (I kept writing here because, you know, they pay me).
Not that she's asked me for advice, but I'll give her two pieces of advice anyway: First, from here on out, make sure she has at least a couple of hours a day at a specific time each day in which she works on nothing but her novel -- having a regular, predicatable schedule for that kind of writing is often a very good thing. Second, not to worry too about being super-brilliant. When I decided I wanted to try writing a novel, I made to conscious decision that the first "novel" I wrote I wasn't going to try to sell -- the whole point of it was to see if I could write something as long as a novel. So I put together a plot that was just good enough and then started playing around with characters and situations. By not having the pressure of trying to be brilliant, I learned a lot about writing something novel -length. I never did sell that novel, but I sold the next one I wrote, so the experience was well worth it.
* Lots of reaction out in the Blogosphere concerning President Bush's Iraq speech last night: Andrew Sullivan gives it a B+; Rob Bernard also liked it, as did Peter Schramm. PunchTheBag, on the other hand, was rather less than enthused, as was Oliver Willis, who described it as "lipstick on a pig." Matthew Yglesias thought it worked better on paper.
* Mdkjic is trying to stay one step ahead of her cute-and-clever daughter, aged nine.
* I keep swearing not to link to Diane Patterson again, and she keeps writing blog entries I have to link to. Today's is on the state of the sitcom, and why it is yet again being written off as dead. Personally I think it's for the very simple reason that most sitcoms these days aren't actually funny. To be fair, there's never been a TV era where most of the sitcoms were actually funny, but the difference is now people have several thousands of channels and/or piles of DVDs to watch instead. The tolerance for lame sitcoms is rapidly decreasing.
* HallandOatBran has discovered the final sign of the end of the word. I heard about this particular thing a few days ago and tucked it in for inclusion into Book of the Dumb 2, the book on stupidity I'm currently writing, so you can imagine I'm inclined to agree here.
* Something for you science geeks: Was Einstein wrong? And not just about whether that cardigan of his was a good fashion statement or not. Actually the issue as I can see it is not whether Einstein is "wrong" rather than if his conclusions are incomplete in respect with the universe -- not unlike how Newton's view of the universe was superceded by Einstein's. More and more, it's clear Einstein's theories didn't go the distance: The universe keeps getting weirder.
* Cklundesq has an alternative to rocking the vote.
* And now, something for you gamer geeks: A Half-Life 2 case mod. Man, I can't wait for Half-Life 2. When that game comes out, I'll be taking an unofficial holiday for about three days. Don't tell my AOL overlords that I'll be calling in sick. It'll be our little secret.
* Speaking of video games, Marcia Ellen has some thoughts on gay marriage and The Sims 2.
* Charlie Stross vents about neckties and presents some disturbing facts about what's on your doctor's tie.
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6/10/04 5:37 AM
Have a look at Pluto's influence in your own lives before gunning me down!