And tomorrow, deep in the pixel trenches, we peasants will still toil on.
Page 49 of 181
Google is buddies with Clear Channel now and that makes me unhappy
Quick fanboy bit here, just for the benefit of Google.
There are three significant fonts in Brick, and I accidentally discovered all three of them in separate places. The block title on the posters is in Font Bureau’s Giza. The title that zooms away after the cold open is Todd Bushman’s Cipher. The front of the party invitation is MillaN’s Sand.
After a TV show about Edwardian cuisine, the household tonight spent twenty minutes in goggling horror at the idea of a duck press. Here is what a duck press is used for: squishing a duck so hard that all the blood comes out. That’s it! Apparently they were later bastardized into lobster presses (do lobsters have blood? I thought they were insects) and now duck presses cost thousands of dollars and are impossible to find.
But the ones you can find have little webbed feet.
Speaking of Story Hacks
Hey, I actually picked up last prize in the Lyttle Lyttons this year!
Story Hacks: Fifth in a Series
There’s one thing every writer agrees on: child abuse is great!
Not real child abuse, of course. Real child abuse is tragic, and people who don’t love all its victims unconditionally are hideous monsters and probably pederasts themselves. This makes it very easy to find abusers in real life. Haven’t you ever asked your friends whether they’d spank their kids? Trick question! Good writers have no friends.
The thing that makes child abuse great in fiction, though, is that it’s worth infinity points on the badness-goodness scale. Is your hero not sympathetic enough? Do your readers say she’s “selfish” or “disturbingly violent” or “clearly you with your name spelled differently?” Reveal a history of abuse to explain everything forever! Or maybe you have an antagonist who just isn’t sufficiently evil–“I don’t think Wicca is that bad,” your readers might say, or “you psychopath, stop reading this garbage and let me go.” But make your villain a pedophile and watch their eyes glimmer with hate!
Aren’t you glad we’ve discovered this technique together? It’s like our own special secret! Just remember not to let anyone else know about it.
Today’s Hack in a Nutshell: Black and white is one color too many!
I got spam today with the most intriguing subject line ever, so I googled it and bam, first result was Gordon Fay’s 24-hour RPG Blood Royal. The subject line, and its description: “A competitive game of fairy-tale intrigue and skulduggery in which players take the roles of a dying King’s children, each vying to be named successor at the end of the week.” How cool is that! Thanks, spam! Welcome to unintended consequences.
Ride the flavor horns. Dammit! I knew there was a better joke than the “hyperspace” thing in the last entry, I just couldn’t get the bat off my shoulder. Oh well. There’s always next year.
Thanks to all the people who have offered further sandwich suggestions in the comments. More! More! I should clarify that I am quite familiar with the unholy power of bacon, but will generally not eat sharp or nontoasted cheese.
Okay on consideration I am probably going back, after a while
I spent three years working at Trover and bringing my lunch in a plastic bag. These lunches invariably contained sandwiches on whole-wheat bread, and though I went through phases regarding the filling (tuna, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and pickle), I generally came back to slices of turkey, on romaine lettuce or “spring mix,” with mayonnaise.
Now, I started working from home every day nine months ago, leaving me a bit at a loss. The constraints on my lunch (must tolerate refrigeration, must fit into reusable containers, must be edible on a half-hour break) were suddenly removed, but I continued to act as if they were still in place. I put things on a plate and I sliced up the apple.
Then I moved to London and found analogs to the American lunch ingredients, and still kept eating the same lunch. Admittedly, some of this was a comfort-familiarity ritual, but I’m past that now and it’s about time lunch and I started mixing it up.
To wit: this week I bought some French bread, and salami, and a tomato. I have blown my own mind. I am tossed amidst the shattering waves like driftwood in the brainstorms this has unleashed! On the ocean, I guess! In the metaphor!
So salami and turkey taste good together, especially on crusty bread. Would you like me to share with you some of the other revolutionary sandwich innovations/relevations? Innelvations? Revolevinnotrons.
- Using pepperoni instead of salami
- Toasting the bread
- Cutting it in half, for greater ease of gripping
- Cutting it in half diagonally
- Maybe get that lettuce with shredded carrots
- Shit, I know this is crazy
- Just hang on
- We are going into flavor hyperspace
Of course these sandwiches are not as healthy as the more fibrous, less-sausaged original version. There is a price to pay for joy, my friends, and that price is paid in belt loops. I’m never going back. Those who say you can enjoy food and lose weight are chasing a fool’s dream, and anyone who acts like they aren’t is profiting by it.
I’m a twit now. I have an extremely small justification for this, as follows.
Part of the Anacrusis FAQ says “I’ll get to long-form when I’m ready for it,” and I’m ready for it, so I’m writing long-form–specifically, the South book. I hate it when people announce on their blogs that they are Writing A Novel, with slight exception for that one thing in November. But the fact is that my only successful projects are done a) with at least the appearance of rigorous scheduling and b) in the public eye, so I’m going to start microposting my daily page count. With luck this will keep me from going back and polishing the first chapter over and over. Seriously, guys, the first chapter is really good.
The twi–ugh, microblog is now a sidebar on the main NFD page, and it’s got its own feed, of course.
Follow-up to Sunday
I kind of contributed to the creation of a meme!