Me, When I see the Font Used on Some Book Covers...

Also, whenever I was forced to write documentation as part of my office job and the corporate guidance on fonts was to use Arial. Or Calibri. For hundreds of pages. Oh, and each paragraph needed to be numbered. And the same people that demanded numbering levels five deep, would also complain that they couldn’t understand what they were reading because they didn’t like the numbering. Or the font.

Obscure Issues Faced by Authors: Onomatopoeia

 

My Brain is Andy Dwyer

This post is going to go over the head of anyone who hasn’t watched every season of the TV show Parks and Recreation at least three times, but here goes. Apparently there are lots of people out there with Chris Traeger brains. Ever optimistic. Able to motivate themselves. Supremely fit. Always able to stick to their diets.

I am not that person. I am the person with the Andy Dwyer brain. The brain that wonders how just-in-time supply chains work in supermarkets when the toilet paper is running low. Who got distracted by learning astrology as research for a character in the next novel, and is now thinking of becoming an astrologer. Who starts a diet at 6.00 AM and breaks it at 7:05AM. Also, I can’t run. My brain is distracted by everything, but occasionally decides to do grown-up things. Which is terrible for a writer. 😂

Writer Versus Beta Reader

 

Vincent Clortho Public School for Wizards

One of my favorite Key and Peele sketches. Looking through their catalog of sketch comedy, you can definitely see Jordan Peele’s love of horror, SF and Fantasy creeping into the material.

The Development of Space Technology is Related to Bad Recipes

Here’s my theory of why the space race happened, why our interest in outer space declined, and how we can get to Mars based on nothing but a dream I had last night.

Interest in all things space related and the space race during the 1960s wasn’t due to competition between the Soviet Union and the USA. It was actually due to the horrendous recipes and food available in the 1960s. Awful recipes ignited the creative and scientific spark in humans to get off the planet in a desperate attempt to escape the horror. Faced with the prospect of going home for dinner or developing new space technology, scientists in both parts of the world opted for the space stuff.

NASA: Going into space is really dangerous. And you could die.

ASTRONAUT: It’s Liver Sausage Pineapple tonight.

NASA: I see your point.

As the recipes disappeared from the collective consciousness, the drive to leave planet Earth also declined. Our only hope of setting up a colony on Mars is to bring back gelatin, mayonnaise, and processed meat shaped to look like fruit and vegetables.

Ban good looking, great tasting food and humanity will reach for the stars in a bid to avoid food related assaults on people’s eyeballs and taste buds!

Things YouTube Has Taught Me: Call Centers for Rich People Also Suck

I bumped into this amusing YouTube video earlier in the week. I have no idea why YouTube recommended it to me. Maybe it was because I accidentally viewed a video about umbrellas the week before. For whatever reason the algorithm decided to highlight it for me, and there it was, waiting to be clicked. Out of curiosity I did and it is pure comedy gold.

It turns out issues with call centers are the same for everyone, even if that everyone bought a $500,000 Rolls Royce Dawn.

The scenario starts with the owner talking about the Rolls Royce umbrella. Rolls Royce puts an umbrella in the door frame of the car so that you can pull it out and not get wet (well, more to the point, your chauffeur can). The owner does not know how the umbrella works.

So, the owner decides to call Rolls Royce (because he thinks the instructions won’t be in the manual). Only BMW answers the call. Because they own Rolls Royce. And there in follows the typical exchange where the call center is utterly unhelpful, although in a pleasant way, while passing the call from person to person, and offering precisely zero information.

Skip through to 3:10 to see the start of the umbrella dilemma and then to 12:26 to hear a high-end call center for a very expensive car in action. Then keep watching for the attempt at reading the owner’s manual, which doesn’t quite spell out how to open the umbrella but hints at the correct technique by describing how to close the umbrella.

The upshot of this video is: despite paying huge sums of money for a car, the owner’s manual is still terrible, and the call center can’t help.

Somehow this makes me feel better about my average lifestyle.

Nothing to do with Writing but Funny

 This has zero to do with writing. But it might cheer you up. Also contains some advice for aliens–I mean people–who are chasing their dreams.

This has nothing to do with writing but it’s about the inventor of the waterbed so that makes it awesome

 It’s the man who invented the waterbed! I thought he was made up, like Santa Claus. Turns out he’s real!

A Writer and Three Script Editors Walk Into a Bar

 Writing a novel is hard work. It can also be lonely and frustrating work.

Then again, an author has total control over his, or her, characters and plot. Unlike this guy...

Jerry Seinfeld: How to Write a Joke

 

The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered

 Many years ago, Clive James wrote a poem expressing his joy at realizing a fellow author’s book wasn’t selling. (Schadenfreude, anyone?) If you haven’t read it, you should, for it’s quite rightly one of his most liked, and well known poems.

The Book of my enemy has been remaindered

And I am pleased.

In vast quantities it has been remaindered.

Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized

And sits in piles in a police warehouse,

My enemy’s much-praised efforts sits in piles

In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.

Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles

One passes down reflecting on life’s vanities,

Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews

Lavished to no avail upone one’s enemy’s book –

For behold, here is that book

Among these ranks and banks of duds,

These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns

Of complete stiffs.

Admit it – You Have Totally Wanted to Punch Your More Successful Friend in the Face. Especially that one Selling More Books