I am trying to write a dragon of fire that incorporates aspects of root fires. However, I know very little about root fires (the forest phenomenon). And every time I try to search teh Intarweb, everything I come up with has to do with some kind of music phenomenon named after root fires, or the album "Root Fire" by some band ( Read more... )

I was all set to do an April Fools post yesterday (well, two days ago now that it's 4.40AM), but then my entire Friends page was all "Man I hate April Fools day!" Thus, out of sheerest love for you guys, I did not claim to be moving out of the country. (Plus, that was a lame one. Not nearly as good as my previous efforts ( Read more... )

A recent conversation I had with a friend left me feeling guilty. It went like this ( Read more... )

Gamers are funny. More specifically, the way they react to the "canon universe" of their favourite game is funny, and though I always took it for granted, it's starting to hit me way more now that I actually write game material for a popular (i.e. ferociously defended) game line. (Now, I know I said I wouldn't be reading review-type things, but I ( Read more... )

Occasionally I've toyed with the idea of doing a webcomic, as if I don't have enough projects to ignore. Ideas come and go: for a while Joy and I were gonna do a Guignol-esque story of a turn-of-the-century schoolmarm dragged into a conspiracy of dark forces; I'd like to retell fairy tales in styles reminiscent of their home countries. Recently I ( Read more... )

There's this principle called the Weak Anthropic Principle. It's basically a response to the question people sometimes phrase as, "Wow, isn't it odd that the universe consists of the amazingly unlikely concatenation of circumstances that allowed humanity to come into being?" The Weak Anthropic Principle replies, "I guess so, but it obviously ( Read more... )

"Tact"
by Paul Pascal

Patty-cake, patty-cake,
Marcus Antonius
What do you think of the
African Queen?

Gubernatorial
Duties require my
Presence in Egypt. Ya
Know what I mean?

The above is an example of the Double Dactyl verse form, which I discovered because someone ordered the book Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (Anthony Hecht ( Read more... )

This past Wednesday, early in the afternoon, I was at work at the lovely Bookstore Y when I saw a man in the doorway. The door was standing open, and he was just ... standing there; not even in the shop, but on the doorstep, gazing at the books piled in front of the counter. He literally stood there for something like 15 minutes before coming ( Read more... )

I had no idea Dougie MacLean was so uber-obscure until I tried looking for the lyrics to this song on teh Intarweb. My Super-specific Lyric-citing Search Query Approach (1 mote), so useful in turning up lyrics normally, turned up naught but Harry Potter fanfic ( Read more... )

Today, as I stood beneath the rusted girders of the Green Line elevated train waiting for my bus, Bella Morte's "Relics" echoing headphonily in my ears, a small white sneaker fell precipitously from the girders upon the road beneath ( Read more... )