8 bit bedtime stories

I needed to distract 3.95-year-old Lily the other day. So I started telling her a story about a frog who needs to cross a river, but it's too far for him to jump all at once, so he has to make his way across on various rocks, floating logs, swift-moving crocodiles...

Tanya immediately recognized the hallowed plot to Frogger (free online version of the arcade classic).

I think this could be expanded. Donkey Kong, at any rate, has a lot of potential.

This points up a mystery, though: why would a frog die from falling into the water?

Grants for writing, from speculative literature folks

You can get a grant to write speculative fiction...sci fi, fantasy, etc...a travel grant or an older writer grant. Neat stuff.

The JFK administration, as a wacky comic book

What if someone reimagined the JFK administration, in wacky comic book form, with shrink rays and cloning? What if they put that on the web for free reading? Todd Ramsell is just that crazy.

XKCD figures out the Voynich Manuscript

....and you'll immediately understand why I liked the punchline so much. XKCD applies Occam's Razor to a cryptic old text that has stumped scientists, producing a distinctly modern answer.

Stupid superpowers and Daisy Owl

I've been making a list of stupid superpowers. I've come up with more than a hundred of them. Some of them are pretty good. My favorite so far is called "Motherportation." It ends any superhuman battle immediately, because it allows you to teleport your opponent's mother right into the fray.

Then your opponent has to drive her home.

But I thought of this because of Thursday's episode of Daisy Owl, where Steve the Bear's new girlfriend displays a pretty specific superpower of her own. Let's call it langvoyance: she can tell what language you took in high school.

I've had no time to sculpt in a month

I really intended to do some more sculpting and post photos of it this past month, and I did nothing with it at all. I'm going to blame this on my very full schedule and the fact that I'm consistently prioritizing writing over all other activities....which I can't say that I'm bothered about.

Here's what I'm talking about. This morning I thought I might get a little time alone to write, but shortly after I got started with breakfast, Lily came and found me. She alway acts like she's pulled off a great coup of sneakwork by showing up unannounced at the breakfast table.

Then the rest of the family got up...the kids had sleepover guests last night...and the house really came alive. I fled to work.

I got caught up in work and didn't get home as soon as I liked (reaping a foul mood from my better half) and after dinner, I had to spend some time wrestling with Lily and Chloe on the front lawn, then more wrestling was required to put them to bed, and they didn't want to stay in bed. Chloe had forgotten a stuffed animal outside, which required a full-on search with flashlights.

After I got them all down, I didn't much feel like writing -- I felt tired and lousy. I sat down anyway and reviewed some notes on the Dragon Scouts story idea I'm working on, and I already feel much better. I need this piece to be less than 5000 words, and I finally have a plan that I think can make that happen.

I went into all this in hopes of impressing you with my many distractions but I think all I've done is show that kids are fun. That's okay. They are fun.

Romantic comedy cab ride, via Improv Everywhere

I really love this idea from Improv Everywhere: they staged a little romantic event in a cab. The idea was to have several people take the same cab...in this case, 3 people. The first and last riders are two folks trying to meet for a date, who have missed each other; the middle person is just a spacer to prevent the cabby from figuring out the fakery. The goal is to give the cabby the experience of bringing the daters together and making the romance happen. It's pretty sweet.

Romantic comedy cab ride

It's an interesting idea...by having several people serially ride the cab, they are able to control what the cabby experiences. Each person is picked up and dropped off at a planned location. This makes the cab rides into a controlled plot, but the cabby doesn't perceive that; to the cabby it seems like serendipity.

Boston Review has web submission system

The Boston Review has a handy web-based submission system with a nice interface. You can create an account and submit your first piece on the same form. And once it's submitted, you can log in any time to check its status. This is a lot easier than messing with mail.

After I sent something in yesterday, I got a confirmation e-mail and a note with my login info.

The submission status page immediately showed my piece as 'recieved.' I wonder if they have a queue workflow on the other end, where editors could grab a piece and take ownership of it while they review it, something like that. Seems likely, and awfully handy, if you're running a magazine.

I found the Boston Review through the duotrope web site, a database of writing markets. I was looking for mainstream fiction paying venues.

The torture debate, as a batman comic

I think The Torture Debate (As a Batman Comic) speaks for itself.