News You Can Bruise for 2010 March 12

The Israeli fanzine Bli Panika (Don't Panic) has published an awesome Hebrew translation of Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs by Ehud Maimon. Google Translate translates the title back into English as "Mention dinosaurs and glory", and Tark and Entippa's names are transliterated Tariq and Antipathy. Pretty fun!

Back when I first heard about this project, I mentioned to editor Rami Shal'heveth that the story's title is a riff on a phrase originally in Hebrew, but he probably already knew that. Actually, no: "Ben-Sira's book is one of those canonical texts that everybody knows of, but nobody reads."

In 2001 my sister Susanna sent me the birthday card you see before you. It said "Whee! You're 3 22!" I thought this was hilarious, and I kept the card.

Then Susanna had a daughter, and I had an idea. Recently Maggie turned three, and I gave my niece the birthday card Susanna had sent me eight years earlier. "Whee! You're 3 22 3!" The payoff was worth it. "I laughed for like 5 minutes," said Susanna.

Recently I was doing a video chat with Susanna and I mentioned:

L: So I'm jogging for an hour every day, and I realized I wasn't doing enough reading, so I decided I also needed to read for half an hour every day. And I also want to devote half an hour to games, though that's not as much of a problem. And I think I should also allocate at least half an hour for writing. But if I keep dividing up my free time like this then my whole life will be...

S: Organized?

Hmm.