February 2012
3 posts
We should be more cognizant of the reason we use the word “pay” to talk about what we do with our attention. Our attention is precious, and limited. We should dole it out only to the things that really matter. We should more freely part with our money.
“There falls a shadow, T.S. Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation....”
– Walter Isaacson, in his biography Steve Jobs
“When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost...”
– Neil Gaiman (via “25 Insights On Becoming A Better Writer”)
(I’ve posted this before. This occurred to me again today, though, so I am sharing it again.)
December 2011
1 post
“Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and...”
– 1984, George Orwell
October 2011
1 post
The Next Chapter
Since I left Fantasy Flight Games to go freelance in 2008 I’d been telling people I didn’t think I’d ever have a boss again — that there wasn’t a full-time job I’d ever be interested in having. It turns out that I was wrong, I just didn’t know what kind of offer it would take.
Out of the blue this summer, a former boss called me and began the process of...
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
3 posts
“They marched into the mayor’s office and Sparky said, “Mister Mayor,...”
– The Very Silly Mayor, by Tom Tomorrow
“I have a secret passion for mercy,” I said. “But justice is what...”
– Lew Archer, in Ross Macdonald’s The Goodbye Look
June 2011
1 post
My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant →
mrgan:
Pulitzer-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas decided to stop hiding and wrote a detailed, personal, and heartbreaking account of his life in the US as an undocumented immigrant. If you saw Jose’s story in a movie, you’d think it was way too perfect to be true.
May 2011
2 posts
Perception of the Actor
Imagine a game where you click a tree and it generates a resource. The game designer thinks the player generated the resource. The engineer thinks the tree did. Neither is aware of how different the other’s perception is from his own.
“The greatest, most essential creation of fandom is fandom itself….”
– Michael Chabon
April 2011
4 posts
Six-Word Novels, #59
Um… sir? This “Manhattan” contains ice.
I Miss Living in Los Angeles
That is all.
“To me, The Daily is a near perfect realization of exactly the idea that occurs...”
– Khoi Vinh (via marco)
“We grow up thinking that the ability to become complacent is the equivalence of...”
– Bottle Text, Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale
March 2011
1 post
February 2011
5 posts
The Title Sequence
Twenty years ago, John Squad enlisted in the United States Army.
Eight years ago, Sergeant Squad’s unit was sent on a top-secret mission that went worse than bad, further than south, more crooked than sideways. The extraction force never came and Squad’s men were gunned down to the last, on the run through a Central American jungle. All except Squad.
When Squad came to, the voices of his men...
“It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation,...”
– Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
hiybbprqag
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. the feeling that everything has already been done, that the experiment of human culture long ago filled its petri dish and now just feeds on itself, endlessly crossbreeding old clichés into a radioactive ooze of sadness.
tpdsaa:
Submitted by http://brnkmnn.tumblr.com/
January 2011
2 posts
“Every time an indie publisher sells a book, a Suited Human loses a year off...”
– John Rogers
December 2010
8 posts
“The technological revolution is more intertwined every day with our economy and...”
– Steve Jobs to Playboy in 1985. (via marco: “We’re still waiting for this to happen.”)
Tuesday, December 23, 1862
nicolldiary:
Still in camp having nothing to do.
“[T]wo people believing is the start of a congregation. You build a congregation...”
– Kevin Smith, “SMonologue #2”
“The simple performance of the great deed, onstage or off, is called...”
– David Mamet, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor
Hi, everyone. Tomorrow is Wednesday. But we’ll deal with that when it comes.
I discovered this afternoon that there are books and DVDs on my Amazon wishlist that I put there in the summer of 2003.
This doesn’t say anything profound about the nature of wishing, listing, books, films, friends, or gifting. At least, it doesn’t say anything profound about those things to me.
I had two thoughts. The first was momentary amazement that I had been stashing wishes on...
November 2010
5 posts
Last week I had a dream where I was climbing up a waterside—the sliding part—while carrying my laptop, trying to keep it from getting wet and repeating, “My Precious, my precious…”
You all have that dream too, right?
Fred Hicks tweeted a link to Seth Godin’s blog entry for today, “No Knight, No Shining Armor.” From his post:
Does your project depend on a miracle, a bolt of lightning, on being chosen by some arbiter of who will succeed? I think your work is too important for you to depend on a lottery ticket.
Well there’s a kick in the balls, I tell you what. But the hard fact is...
I was just fucking beat this morning.
After the kids were off with the grandparents for the day and I had accomplished the single errand I needed to do, I arrived at the coffee shop where I work most mornings, ordered a coffee, and couldn’t do a damn thing more than sit down in one of the armchairs and contemplate my own weariness.
It took me about twenty minutes to muster the energy to...
“Our elected representatives have been acutely sensitive to the needs of Wall...”
– Robert Reich, “Only $4.2 Billion to Buy This Election?”
October 2010
5 posts
The problem with all these ebooks, in their contradictory formats, with their warring apps and walled-garden hardware, is that I never know what’s on my reading list. I used to have a bookshelf—one bookshelf—where I kept books I owned and intended to read.
Am I really going to be reduced to keeping a text file on my phone where I have to go to figure out what I intend to read next, and...
Gotta kill that little voice that makes you feel bad about yourself because you’ve just seen something awesome that someone else did. Gotta kill it. Because you’re just seeing an impossible snapshot. It’s impossible to tell what that awesome thing really means in the big picture, and what it was really like for that guy to do it. And also, because feeling bad about yourself is...
I return from the Pacific Northwest—from Seattle, specifically, and from the Green Ronin Summit, more specifically—to bring word to the rest of you humans that the Greens Ronin are a classy and profoundly human lot of people, the classiest and profoundliest humany bunch of folk you could care to work with.
In addition to caring about the product in just the right amount, this is a group of humans...
“The world can move, or not, by changing some words.”
– Toby Ziegler, The West Wing (written by Aaron Sorkin)
September 2010
4 posts
This morning at breakfast I proposed the following imponderable to the boys:
“Why do you suppose peanut butter jelly has a baseball bat?”
Four-year-old replied, emphatically and without hesitation, “To hit home runs!”
Some things, it seems clear, can only be readily understood by the young.
The Grownups' Hour →
“Summon the children just before you mix the martini. Announce to them that it is now grownup’s hour—and they are to pursue their play elsewhere. The martini hour is for those who are going to drink martinis.”
Alright, I’m going to stand right here.
All of you who volunteered to hold crickets bats and two-by-fours, you stand over here. Alright, good.
Ok, I’m going to say, “I’d love to write that thing for free, or for well below my regular rate, because it sounds pretty swell.” Then, you’re all going to hit me with your cricket bats and two-by-fours.
We’re...
“Take a look outside. … What do you see? What I see is an economy that continues...”
– Chuck Wendig, “Why You Should Freelance”
July 2010
2 posts
Orbital
Too hot.
Too cold.
Just right.
[via viafrank]
If it’s not important to you, don’t consume it |... →
minimalmac:
It is so easy to buy, acquire, and own things that aren’t important to us simply out of habit or because other people have these things. If you don’t want the responsibilities of home ownership, rent. If you aren’t looking forward to an episode of Wipeout, turn off the television. Stop consuming for the sake of consuming, and buy and spend time on only those things that you need and...
June 2010
1 post
Knight Rider Syndrome
n. disillusionment upon rewatching a beloved pop-culture touchstone of your youth and having to confront its hand-puppet characterization, magnetic-poetry dialogue, jury-rigged plots and undisguised pandering to its audience, all of which—by the power of Grayskull—makes you wonder what else in your mental fridge is past its expiration date.
(suggested by Rob Lammle, St. Louis, MO)
...
May 2010
2 posts
THE BONES special-edition hardcover is now... →
wordstudio:
Written by Keith Baker, Jason L Blair, Greg Costikyan, Ray Fawkes, Matt Forbeck, Pat Harrigan, Jess Hartley, Fred Hicks, Will Hindmarch, Kenneth Hite, John Kovalic, James Lowder, Russ Pitts, Jesse Scoble, Mike Selinker, Jared Sorensen, Paul Tevis, Jeff Tidball, Monica Valentinelli, Chuck Wendig, and Wil Wheaton