Ruse You Can Bruise for November 2003

Sun Nov 02 2003 13:21:

Kevin dropped Leonard off at the airport this morning. As Garrison Keillor says, be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Tue Nov 04 2003 11:21 If You Like the Dead Spammer Series:

Today's spam subject lines include Re: VPA, mans severed head and please endeavour to use it for the children of god. More at Spam As Folk Art.

Tue Nov 04 2003 18:32 Misfiled in the Great Minds Dept.:

Adam recently gave me a copy of the remastered/expanded ELO 2, ELO's second (unusual, heavily prog rock) album, and there's an unreleased song called "Everyone's Born to Die." So of course I thought of Leonard's "Born to be Dead," and will be informing Jeff Lynne of this outrageous theft.

Wed Nov 05 2003 07:57 Later, Matthew Szulik and Neal Stephenson get in a slap-fight:

Red Hat CEO apparently thinks 90-year-olds will have fewer problems with Windows than with Linux

Wed Nov 05 2003 15:55 Inside the Crummy Studio: First in a Series:

The signal-to-noise ration of sarcasm in print is unworkably awful. The genius of the lie justification footnote is that it solves a this major interwebbian problem in a single stroke: the last given footnote in any footnote chain reliably contains the truth. In this, it's superior to both "</sarcasm>" tags, which are smarmy and nonspecific, and unmarked but obvious sarcasm, which (especially in hypertext) serves only to accelerate the tar pit descent.

I'd make some kind of exaggeration about the usefulness of the LJF and then clarify it here, but that would be unacceptably meta.

Wed Nov 05 2003 18:10 Madison, Such A Flamer:

I used the shorthand "re: tyranny" in an email to Leonard, which made me think of the Reply To All messages on the federalistpapers.sourceforge.net lists.

Re: Tyranny Re: Fwd: Blood of tyrants Fwd: tree of liberty (not safe for work!)

Fri Nov 07 2003 10:42 Cranky are the Damned:

I'm kind of disappointed with my NaNoWriMo efforts. It's been six days and I've only cranked out 3,000 words. At that rate I won't make it to 50,000. Additionally, I'm kind of lost in terms of where I want the story to go.

My idea was to write about a 1930s horror writer, in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, that whole little circle of obscure "Weird Tales" short story authors. I've written a few exchanges between my author, L.P. Turland, and his editor, and three short stories by him, but it's not going to be enough to sustain the story. At least not without more planning.

And then I think, don't I do enough already? So I resolve to work on accomplishing something else by November 30th, and to post what I have for this story so far.

Sat Nov 08 2003 20:11 World's Finest Soundbites:

"Space is hard," says NASA chief

Mon Nov 10 2003 11:30 Leonard's Clark Blog:

leonardr.forclark.com, of the Clark Community Network, looks to be the Clark campaign's equivalent of Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment of Salon Blogs: the semi-official metablog. Leonard also comments around the Network. "I personally would like Bill Richardson since then it would be 'Clark/Richardson 2004' and I could pretend I was the running mate."

Wed Nov 12 2003 11:29 trilobite dreams, aunt connie, and mr. sulu goes to arkansas:

Last night I dreamt about trilobites -- In real life I got my rocks from leonard, but haven't had time to poke at them and see what might lay inside, although I can see tantalizing pieces of trilobites sticking out of the sides. In my dream, I started by running the rocks under water, washing away the stone, leaving the harder trilobites washed clean of sediment. Except instead of being hard fossils, the trilobites were soft and kind of smushy, like a bug that died in a bucket of water. I flipped one over on it's back and could see under the carapace into the blackened interior. That's all... there's no punchline. But it was fascinating, at least to me.

In other news, I have a friend from Rhode Island who whilst talking to her mother on the phone was informed that Aunt Connie had died. My friend sat, stunned, not out of grief, but because she didn't know of any aunt she had named Connie. Her mom felt the silence and asked what was wrong. Michele responded that she didn't know she had a relative by that name.

Her mom said, "No honey, Aunt Connie -- from the Honeymooners!" [rimshot!]

Lastly, Mr. Sulu has returned to Arkansas for the first time since his childhood. This is probably old news to real trekkies, but I never knew that about him.

Thu Nov 13 2003 06:41:

Antisynthesis, one of the new journals of Leonard's old blog twin Inside Joke, has declared December RPG System Design Month (RoSyDeMo?). Personally, I'd love to see what Leonard would do with this, but I have this inexplicable gut instinct that says he might be a little too busy.

Under these rules you're allowed to start early, and I'd be glad to have competitors or collaborators--either one makes it easier to finish any given large project. And when it's done, we could have our very own Game Roundup! So hello, community: who wants in on this with me?

Fri Nov 14 2003 09:57 Fight the temptation of malapropism:

SCO Group Subpoenas The Linus

Sat Nov 15 2003 22:16:

Moving at the speed of lightning, or rather something that has been struck by lightning and has actually lost most of its ability to move rather than becoming ultra-fast as did the Flash: another page of Jake Berendes!

Mon Nov 17 2003 13:43 From Conversation With Leonard:

"If only that could work, it would work."

Tue Nov 18 2003 06:07 The patron saint of movie clichés speaks:

"I looked into insuring my voice. The premiums were ridiculous. I'd almost have to drink lye, just to make the investment worthwhile."

Wed Nov 19 2003 11:09:

From conversation with Leonard: It is difficult to get other people to go to lunch with him. It's not the agreeing to join him for companionship; it's literally the going. He makes the invitation, the other person says, "sure, just one more thing," and tries to find the necessary person for the dependency of that one thing. The other person is temporarily gone, so the invitee starts doing something else... just herding the invitee(s) into the elevator is, Leonard says, "like trying to eat all the ghosts in Pac-Man."

(1) Wed Nov 19 2003 14:23 Also, I'm A Sucker For Acoustic Guitar:

A Salon Premium subscriber wrote that he was "chary" of renewing.

[sumana] He used 'chary'!  Be still my heart!
[leonard] no! he will steal you away from me!
[leonard] i knew it would have paid to increase my word power!

Thu Nov 20 2003 20:40:

Are there any paperback reprintings that announce, in a little orange pseudosticker, how their contents are "Soon To Be A Minor Motion Picture?"

Fri Nov 21 2003 00:20 I need to hear other humans say it:

From the Fark.com comments thread on Michael Jackson's recent arrest: "Now Jacko, I'm going to have to ask you to put your hands behind your backo." Google shows that many other "legit" newspapers/magazines have run similar headlines with the word "backo" (the one that spawned the older SNL sketch was some rag like the New York Post). I just didn't know it was used widely.

I think I'd drink poison if I had to write a story with the word "backo" in huge type. But I'd be in bad shape at the prospect of writing a Michael Jackson expose already.

Mon Nov 24 2003 21:01 Lightning Strikes Identical Twin Snowflakes... Twice!:

I don't know about you, but if this were me, I would start asking myself the hard questions.

Wed Nov 26 2003 11:55 He Shall Return (and then go back):

Today Leonard comes back to SF for Thanksgiving.

Ruse You Can Bruise for 2003 November