Category Archives: Links

Learning

Found this at Subversive Harmony. I like the way this girl has decided to look at the world.

*You’re not really as awkward as you think. Or if you are, other people are just as awkward, so it doesn’t really matter.

* It’s a pretty safe bet that you do/think/like things that other people don’t do/think/like. This makes you interesting, possibly a little eccentric, but not a two-headed alien.

* It’s not constructive to clam up in a corner. You’re not rude if you talk. You’re not even rude if you talk to someone first.

* Stubbornness is a gift. You were stubborn enough to walk to three grocery stores looking for your canned sweet potatoes, and you found them. Be too stubborn to think going to events is useless.

* Do things you enjoy because you enjoy them, and enjoy the things you do on their own terms. Anything else is icing.

* Remember how much better you did with finding a job and an apartment when you set aside the desperation, listened to your instincts, took your time, explored a number of options, and didn’t take the first offer you came across? You think maybe that might apply to other situations?

* You know how you said you didn’t need to try things to know if you’d like them, and then you let yourself be talked into trying them and had fun despite yourself, even if it still wasn’t quite your bag? Remember that. You know how you didn’t like all those different foods when you were a kid but for some reason tried them again recently and changed your mind? Remember that, too.

* On the other hand, if it’s not fun, and honestly not fun, there are other events/groups/activities out there. Life’s too short to waste time.

* Rumination is both your friend and your enemy. Probably more your enemy at this point.

* Que sera, sera.

Why didn’t someone tell me these things a decade ago?

I particularly like “anything else is icing”. Why do we insist on having such high standards for ourselves? What do we get out of it except a constant feeling of inadequacy? My husband occasionally reams me out for possessing higher standards against which I judge myself than those standards by which I judge other people.

The other important one is “life’s too short to waste time”. That means staying in that soul-crushing job, not-destructive-but-certainly-not-constructive relationship, that cruddy apartment may be gaining you a few cents here or there, but being miserable (or even neutral) hardly balances the gain. Be happy. It’s better for you in the long run, and probably the short run too. Really.

Enthusiastic Endorsement, Complete With Muppet Nods

Some of my regular readers might not click randomly on links, so I want to draw your attention to t!, a man I’ve known for thirteen years. Long ago, we bonded over Shakespeare, Star Wars, pasta, and the Muppets.

[…] The real magic was on The Muppet Show.

It wasn’t aimed at kids. At least one third of it was musical numbers. It was vaudeville, on the medium that killed vaudeville. For those who could still appreciate vaudeville. Adults. But their children knew the Muppets, so we watched Kermit in his night job, when he wasn’t reporting for Muppet News.

And we got show tunes. Stand up comedy. And awful, awful puns. Plus just about every other entertainment staple you can think of: Stuntmen, jugglers, science fiction, hospital drama, sportscasting, westerns, educational science films (?!), Grand Guignol, a piano man, a full orchestra, a modern rock band, even heckling for crying out loud, and all of it aimed over our heads like a boomerang fish.

So what happened? We raised our heads.

He’s perfected the art of debating, pushing his limits and yours to force growth, and he also happens to be one of the most intelligent people I know. And, like the Muppets, his writing refuses to make it easier; you have to raise your head. What are you waiting for? Go read Baker’s 12.

Been There

How to Screen Dates With Books by Jessa Crispin.

Featuring the following all-too-recognisable warning:

Also, reading comic books in public is a good way to attract boys. However, you may also have to put up with sexist geek boys saying things like, “You’re a girl! And you’re reading a comic!” Luckily their heads will probably explode after a minute or so, leaving the area clear for a real catch.

If only that were true. Alas.

Have I mentioned recently that I worked four years in this city’s only F/SF book and comic shop?

Rowling & Potter Stuff

In honour of today being the last day before Order of the Phoenix Day (come on, you know that most of the world thinks of it that way instead of as the Summer Solstice!), here are a couple of intelligent Harry Potter links that I’ve been keeping my eye on:

The Leaky Cauldron

The Hogwarts Wire

From The Hogwarts Wire today:

Rowling: Occult accusations are ‘utter garbage’
JK Rowling hates accusations that Harry Potter turns kids onto occult. “I think that’s utter garbage,” Rowling tells Katie Couric in an upcoming TV interview. “I absolutely do not believe in the occult, practice the occult. I’ve never … I’ve met literally thousands of children now. Not one of them has said you’ve really turned me on to the occult. Now, I’m convinced that if that’s what my books were doing, I would by now have met one child who would have come up to me, covered in pentagrams and said, ‘Can we go and sacrifice a goat later together?'”

So there. Honestly.

Classics scholars will get a kick out of this one, posted on April 17, 2003:

Here comes Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis
Bloomsbury recently announced they will be publishing a Latin edition of The Philosopher’s Stone. Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis comes out in hardcover this June along with a Welsh version. Harry Potter has been published in 40 languages already and Gaelic and Ancient Greek versions of the first edition should come out in 2004.

Both sites are great; they report a lot of the same articles, but with different spins. Despite the fact that both the above quotes come from the Wire, I actually prefer the Leaky Cauldron.

And is it just me, or does Harry look an awful lot like Tim Hunter on the US cover of Order of the Phoenix?

Stalking Authors

When I’m feeling singularly uninspired, I meander about and look at what other writers think and feel about writing.

Jane Yolen is an author I’ve been reading since I was about eleven. On her For Writers page, she says that [t]he Muse is an ornery creature and rarely comes when called. She wears feathers in her hair and birkenstocks on her feet and is often out in the woods when you are home at your keyboard. Which is all too true.

She quotes Gene Fowler: Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. Of course, she goes on to point out that writing isn’t agony, and the majority of the time I’d agree with her; I’m not one of those people who thinks that an artist has to suffer in order to create, or to be able to create, good art. Every once in a while, though, yes, it really does feel that hard. Yolen also quotes Roland Barthes: The author performs a function; the writer an activity. It suggests that an author has a job, but a writer is the job. (I don’t remember ever reading anything so inspiring when I read Barthes a few years ago, but I might have missed something.)

However, the nicest thing on the page was this:

A writer has many successes:

Each new word captured.
Each completed sentence.
Each rounded paragraph leading into the next.
Each idea that sustains and then develops.
Each character who, like a wayward adolescent, leaves home and finds a life.
Each new metaphor that, like the exact error it is, some how works.
Each new book that ends–and so begins.

Selling the piece is only an exclamation point, a spot of punctuation.

Which is remarkably inspiring.