Archive for humor

Happy August Day!

Happy August Day!  Don’t forget to dress like Caesar Augustus and sacrifice a bull to Mithras!  Wait, that is a thing on August Day, isn’t it?  If not, it should be.  And then it would evolve into sacrificing all bull, meaning you cannot tell a lie on August day.  Then that would drive a whole slew of greeting cards with lies in them you can hand out instead of speaking lies and to make a joke by it really being true (You look great!).  And then Christianity would co-opt it and declare August 1st the day that Peter denied Christ and therefore no lie shall be told on Peter’s Day.  And …anyway, happy August day!

 

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Occupy Writing: Art Book Covers

Art Book Cover with Story

I’m starting Occupy Writing.
First Item: Novels have art on the cover. Why don’t art books have flash fiction on the cover?! UNFAIR!

I’m talking a nice, white cover with black print, featuring an original short story intended to sum up the entirety of the artwork within, yet oddly is always titled something like “Sexy Tattooed Woman with a Weapon Battles Dragon” or similar?

 

Let’s make this happen folks!

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National Fictioneers League

I see many of my writer friends posting about their anticipation of something called the NFL.  I can only assume this is a National Fictioneers League?

Well good!  It’s about time authors got the network attention they deserve. Although I think it’s a shame the way students get a free ride just because they’re good at writing and thinking and stuff. Anyway, put me down for ten on China Mieville.  Dude’s brain is buff and ripped.  Though Jay Lake is one hell of a fighter.

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Prometheus Produce

/Begin Transmission/ So, I followed clues left in several newspaper ads and found my way to Prometheus Produce, hoping to discover the origin of the amazing deal.  Signs at the entrance advised that I use standard bagging precautions, but being a pseudo-scientist I knew that to truly understand something, you have to look at it really really close and, if at all possible, touch it.  What could go wrong? /End Transmission/

Prometheus Produce

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Dragons in Space!

Today, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station.  A huge step towards commercial passenger flights into space and galactic Empire!  And of course, the company hired specialists to help them achieve their goal.

Dragon Shout!  This is the Shout for Clear Skies.

Daenerys Conquers the Moon with her Dragon

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“Surviving the eBookalypse” Live on Escape Pod

Escape PodMy story “Surviving the eBookalypse”, a satire about the future for books and their authors, is now live on Escape Pod: http://escapepod.org/2012/01/19/ep328-surviving-the-ebookalypse/

I wrote this story during Clarion West, partly as a response to a doom and gloom speech I heard on the future of the publishing industry. But folks like Mary Robinette Kowal and Cory Doctorow reaffirm my belief that we who create or consume the fiction, we have power to affect the course of things.  eBooks are really not so different from paperbacks if we push for the right to truly own what we purchase.  Books as objects can return to being lovingly crafted pieces of art, to be collected and displayed proudly in order to impress your date/guests.  Er, I mean, to show your love of the written word.  And in the end, all of us time-conscious readers will still want someone to filter out the good from the ocean of crap for us and will pay a little extra for that service.  Sparkly vampires aside.  So I believe the future of the written word remains bright.  And if I’m wrong, I will happily accept patronage offers.

 

Interesting note: the recorded pod cast is actually from an earlier version of the story, and the online text is from the updated version, which I see as a happy accident because A) I went back and forth over the beginning and am still not sure which I like better (though the printed version is tighter), and B) it is a record I think of how my writing (or at least editing) improved over the time between versions.  Although the very beginning of the story is the main difference, there are also a number of small differences that demonstrate opportunities to eliminate unneeded words and poor sentence structures.  The story synchs up pretty quickly (once Andre enters the library) so if you listen and follow along with the text, you’ll spot the differences.

Thank you to Roberto Suarez for his podcast reading.

Cheers, and I hope you enjoy it.

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Thrift Store Observations

Man, that’s a totally pimpin ride!  I never knew Barbie was so cool.

Pimpin Ride

Oh, wait, of course! It is from Jem and the Holograms, not Barbie.

Jem is to Barbie as Lady Gaga is to Hannah Montana.  I”m pretty sure that’s on SAT tests, and if not, it should be.

 

Hey, a whole set of Babylon 5 action figures!

Babylon 5 figures

Oh, wait, it’s all lame secondary characters.  You’d have to be real geek to buy one of … wait, I could totally have my Terminator action figure put Vir in a headlock, giving him noogies on his fan head, and — no, no, moving on.

 

This is the first time a sports trophy ever set off my gaydar**:

Super Fabulous Hit!

Super Fabulous Hit!

 

On the opposite end of the sports spectrum, we have Hunter Dan, American Sportsman!  Presented without comment.

Hunter Dan

 

So, Thrift Stores — where every facet of American culture sits side by side on the shelves, available for an equally low price.  It’s downright inspirational, it is.

 

** Note: While Gaydar has been proven to exist from a psychological perspective based on facial queues, etc. it is not reliable.  For example, I’m sure your own gaydar might have gone off when I started talking about Jem vs Barbie, but that would be a false positive.  Honest.  I know because I once explored my sexuality through a brief and horribly doomed proxy tryst between my Evil Knievel and Six Million Dollar Man action figures.

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Less Interesting Books

Per the “lessinterestingbooks” meme, here’s my contribution:

The Dresden Tax Files.

The Slightly Peckish Games.

Anansi Boys Band.

Cattlefield Earth.

Ender’s Game of Candyland.

‎20,000 Leeks Under the Sea. Or 0.20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Memory, Sorrow, Myspace: Poem of Farewell.

Jonathon Strange & Mister Norrell’s Long Distance Calling Plan.

Journey to the Surface of the Earth.

The Name of the Wind is Blaine.

Holocene Park.

Contact Paper.

The Forever Peaceful Co-existence.

Rendezvous with Top Ramen.

Ringworm.

The Bourne Dream He Had Last Night But Can’t Really Remember But Will Tell You Anyway.

I, Roomba.

 

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The Most Epicly Awesomest Story! Ever!!

My epic flash fiction tale about Framdar “The Slayer” Deathkiller, which I read as an example of writing so bad it is funny for the Norwescon panel “Bad Writing, No Cookie”, is now up at Every Day Fiction:

http://www.everydayfiction.com/the-most-epicly-awesomest-story-ever-by-randy-henderson/

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Thor – Better than a Hammer to the Head

Doctor Horrible vs Thor
First, let me just say I wish I had the time and skill to video mash-up Doctor Horrible talking about The Hammer with scenes from Thor. But I made you this picture instead.

Thor was simple action movie fun.
I had hoped for more substance, with Kenneth Branagh directing and the gravitas and richness of the Norse mythology (never mind what Marvel did with it), but since I wasn’t counting on it I wasn’t terribly disappointed.

The one thing I did not like about the movie however was the “love” story. The real emotional drama was between Thor, Loki, and Odin (and could have been more so with Sif), and with Thor’s emotional growth and transformation. The tacked-on love story was unnecessary, and not believable. I hate when characters in a movie supposedly fall completely and truly in love with each other after a couple of brief conversations that are about as deep and meaningful as interactions with an ATM machine.

I am not against the concept of love at first sight, and certainly Branagh has worked with such concepts before given how often it happens in Shakespeare, but short of an excuse to make Thor’s decision near the end of the film have some kind of supposed emotional weight, it was not really required for the plot to work, and weakened the story as far as I was concerned. And it made the ending just sort of fizzle out on a lame note. Not saying it couldn’t have worked, and made the ending more powerful, but I get the feeling they cut out some of the development of that relationship to make room for more sweeping special effects.

Which, by the way, were way cool. I’ve been to Asgard, and they did a remarkably decent job of rendering it.

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