is a blog by Brendan
“It sounds like your girlfriend reads a lot of ‘women’s publications.’ I have worked for women’s publications. We make up those sex tips so that people who read sex tips are terrible at sex, and those of us who read William Gibson novels are astounding at it.”
I know I already freaked out about her two weeks ago, but I need to emphasize that Julieanne Smolinski is completely invited to my birthday party.
A while back Stephen was telling me about those Patrick Rothfuss books for which all nerds have hard dicks. “What’s the best part?” I asked.
“This guy Kvothe gets up on stage and plays his lute, and it’s really moving,” said Stephen. “But not gay, because he has magic powers that make every woman want to bone him.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, “what are YOU reading about?”
“Gun-toting bug-eating Muslim lesbians in space,” I said.
Okay, that isn’t strictly accurate. The primary protagonist is agnostic and the secondary one is a dude. But there are lots of guns, lots of bugs, lots of brutality (eg women throwing punches), lots of Koran-analogs, and lots of great characters who aren’t white even on the cover. It is not gentle in introducing its weird setting, and is very mean to everyone you like, and there is torture in it! So avoid it if that’s going to bother you. But while everyone’s sputtering over how many darlings die in George R. R. Martin, I’m going to be over here trying to wave you toward God’s War, easily my favorite book this year.
In no particular order. Some of the following use their streams purely to deliver high-wattage comedy beams straight to your swimsuit area, others are just general life tweeters who happen to be funnier than I will ever be in my wildest dreams even with other people helping and also the audience is on nitrous because they make poor life decisions.
Kelly Deal was in the Breeders but will only admit it if you ask her about it enough times.
Kat is the only one of these people I could meet if I wanted to, specifically by driving a mile up MLK to her club and paying her twenty dollars. I would never do that. Where by “that” I mean “make it past the Mongolian BBQ place with a hot twenty in my pocket.”
Elisabeth really likes Jesse Thorn but look, we all have glaring flaws that will send us straight to Hell someday.
I guess Annie Wu does art that makes Warren Ellis and James Urbaniak clutch their faces and weep with adulation or whatever? Anyway I like it when she makes sitting in her room and drawing sound like an Upton Sinclair book.
Shelby Fero is not her real name, I hope, because she’s fucking seventeen years old for Christ’s sake I’m just gonna go learn how to drink alcohol now.
Okay, this is a true story. There are, by some estimates, 200 million people on Twitter. One day I was talking to my friend Joe and he was like “so have you found anyone cool on Twitter recently?” and I was like “well, I found the funniest person on Twitter, yes.” And he was like “really? The funniest.” And I was like “yup.” And then there was a pause.
And then he said “Boobs Radley?”
And I said “Boobs Radley.”
Anyway Joe and I are getting married now (it’s okay, he’s Canadian).
I have been such a big fan of Kris Straub’s for a long time that, when I fondly reminisced about a joke of his from 2001 today, Stephen told me I was the creepiest person he knew. Anyway, I sort of assume you all know that as soon as Straub produces anything new, I want you to get it. But that is not how the Internet actually works! I have to keep reminding you fuckers!
First, he restarted F Chords! Like, five-days-a-week restarted it! While preparing to get married! I think he wants to kill himself with work, but I like it better in its new incarnation already.
Second, I read through my copy of Starslip 4 last night, and wow, it works way better on the page than on the screen. I’d forgotten how big a leap he took art-wise when he rebooted the strip, and almost perversely, the vector sharpness really looks excellent in ink. Being able to read through big chunks of the story sequentially makes it easier to get involved, too. Buy it!
Leigh Stein is very, very good at what she does:
ADDENDUM TO THE PREVIOUS DISPATCH
I just remembered every single thing I’ve ever done
and now I’m embarrassed. I want my afterlifeguaranteed, so I have ordered a tomb built at Giza
for my remains. They are as follows: all my clothes,
my harmonica, my body, letters to my enemies.The dictionary says you can refer to everyone
who will be alive in the future as prosperity so
Dear Prosperity, I used to live in the future,too, but I fear the past is a brushfire
and I am a prairie. Now that I have what I asked for
I see I should have been more specific.
How hot is that? Brushfire hot. It appears in the new book of hers I just got, The Future Comes to Those Who Wait, and you should get it too; it’s worth it for the poem on page 18 alone.
(Hillary Eason, can you read this in Mongolia? I hope you can, and are.)
This is linked on his guest post but it needs additional emphasis! After years of my pestering him about it, Bill O’Neil has FUCKING FINALLY gotten around to setting up a dedicated story blog. Bill/William/whoever was making me want to shred everything I ever wrote and set it on fire in a toilet while he was still in high school, so I’m (mostly) glad to finally be able to slot him into Google Reader. If you don’t do the same then you’ll just have to accept that you and I have different tastes!
Hey, I’ve talked about her pseudonymously before, but Hillary Eason is an old friend (whom I haven’t actually seen in person since 2002) and one of my favorite writers and thinkers. Now that she’s operating under her own name, you should go see why she’s a perennial pick for my Internet All-Star team.
Hey, you guys know Andrew Cole is back in the saddle and knocking it out of the park over at The Fabian Society, right? I bet you thought I mixed that metaphor, but you’re wrong! The park is for polo.
If you’re enjoying the Ashlock stories, you will definitely want to follow along with Wolverton, a fantastic series in the same world and format that Ben Carson is posting on a matching schedule. He also keeps coming up with cooler and more exciting twists, which is great, not at all like he’s making me look bad and had better WATCH HIS ASS OR ANYTHING CARSON
Jake Richmond has a great new webcomic called Modest Medusa! Based on true life events! Except the part about the medusa.
Josh Timonen, quantum coworker, made an iOS app called FaceJack! It is essentially the executable form of this:
And it’s an instant hit at parties. I recommend it.