July 2007

The Onion records a serious deficit in our children’s education.

Here’s vanity for you: today I’m writing from the perspective of a girl, although very intelligent, tends to see things in black and white and cannot write very well. I feel like one of the characters out of “Harrison Bergeron.”

Polyhedral, fractal, and other types of nerds with no clothes on! (Okay, okay, they’re computer generated. Let’s not start making cruelty-to-nerds accusations, after all; I am a strict nerdist myself.) (via Reality Carnival)

Ray and I went to the new movie yesterday. I’m not really in a mood to tell little stories about how our lives are going right now (my story brain is tied up in a book), which is a shame, because otherwise I would tell you about our walk to Chik-fil-A, or how Ray and

I sat down the other day and determined that I now know some things about writing. You know how I know I know these things? Because now I want to know something else. So here’s what I know: Pay attention. Don’t waste the reader’s time. The breath of the story is the conflict. Everything means

Ray found this.

Turning Away, by Dougie MacLean (with Kathy Mattea). Lee has this on one of his folk music samplers, so I know the song pretty well. There’s a secret code word for country music that doesn’t grate on the ears like a Microplane: bluegrass. There’s another secret code word: blues*. And a third one: folk. (But

Ray and I are going to go to Harry Potter tomorrow or die trying. And I may pick up some butterscotch syrup on the way home. Heck, why not? We might need some butterbeer.

Fight! (more Neatorama.)

Click here to play Mr. PotatoHead with people’s faces. (via Neatorama.)