Glenn Hauman: A View From Above

10 things you should never say to a tall woman.

Usually I say, "It's so refreshing to meet a woman who's a nice normal height."

Over at the day job on ComicMix, Dennis O'Neil dispenses the best writing advice you might get today:

Stan’s first sentence – “Write about things you know” – may be familiar to those of you who’ve taken formal creative writing courses. I heard it, years ago, and I always thought it didn’t apply to what I did for a living. I mean, I have to confess that I’ve never, ever waited on a foggy rooftop for a grotesquely deformed madman to approach me with murderous intent. Not even once. But if I’ve never written that particular scene, I’ve written plenty like it.

Yet, the write-what-you-know shibboleth is applicable, in a limited way and maybe at one remove, to the production of the fantasy melodrama us superheroists traffick in. The trick might be to write your own fantasies. If you dream of godlike powers, maybe Superman is your fellah. If you dream of mastering technology, check out Iron Man. If the Atom is your favorite…well, you might have self-esteem issues.

Go forth and find what you know and what you want to write about. Or put another way: tell the story you want to know.

Sheesh. Back from Italy, off to Chicago for Wizard World last week. Back from that, over to friends for the 4th. This weekend, off to Shore Leave as a guest and to leave a pint of blood behind. Then two weeks after that, off to San Diego Comic Con. Then two weeks after that, off to Connecticut for a wedding. And doing lots of stuff now so I can get myself up to Westchester tomorrow.

Yipes.

When I get a few minutes, I'll post all these open window links, in the meantime, talk among yourselves.

I set a poor example. John C. Wright thought that just being a world-famous international science fiction author meant that he could win at the ponies:

Dear Sir, having been in arrears for your offtrack betting debts to Harry’s Happy House of Horse Play, the Family has determined to bypass normal legal action and garnishments, and send a gentleman from our collection department, “Gonad-Crusher” Guido Ugnolini to pay a call on you. Mr. Ugnolini has experience in both American and Sicilian correction facilities, multiple murder raps, and a tattoo. We are confident that you will be forthcoming after receiving his attentions.

Dude. There's room for only three world-famous international science fiction authors who are also heavy-duty horseplayers: Mike Resnick, Josepha Sherman, and me. If you're going to gamble, stick to submitting your next novel to Margaret Clark at S&S.

Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family accuses Obama of `distorting' the Bible.

I think there's a part in the Bible about taking a log out of your own eye before you remove the speck from another's eye... but I bet Dobson would say I'm distorting the Bible too.

I know, I know, I go away to Italy and then don't write anything for a month. No trip reports, no photos, no nothing. You know how it is-- when you get back (in our case after missing the flight back because of a 3 hour traffic jam, and even an average speed after of 150 kph isn't enough to catch up) you spend all your time fixing the things that exploded while you were away, and then you can't find the right thing to come back on, because if you blog about this then you really should have said something about that, and more things pile on and on and on and on...

But I couldn't let George Carlin's death go unremarked.

I first was exposed to George Carlin by watching an HBO special of his when I was really young, probably around six or seven. I snapped up as many of his albums from the local library as I could, which, let's face it, is probably not the sort of thing someone under the age of ten should be taking out of the library. I first saw him live in 1983 or so (an advantage of being big for my age, no one looked askance at me) and the last time I saw him live was at the Stardust in Vegas about two years ago. (It's not there anymore either.)

Carlin worked long enough that you could see his thinking evolve, and he always thought about his work and what he said to people, what he inspired and what he left behind. He got angrier over the years, and hell, didn't you? He kept seeing things break down and people getting deceieved by others, and deluding themselves constantly, and it pissed him off. Even his acting, which he only did occasionally, showed constant evidence of thought. He once commented on how he got the role of a fifty year old gay man in The Prince Of Tides, by going into the audition just thinking of one word, over and over, inspiring his delivery of lines: lonely.

Mark Evanier had the best comment: there are seven words that come to mind and are appropriate on him dying. Carlin had a few thoughts on dying himself recently, and you should see them now. (No, of course it's not safe for work. Jesus wept, don't you know anything about this man?)

Yes, I've heard there are some technical issues with the site, I'm going to see what can be done about it. But since I'm current wandering through Italy with limited connectivity and battery life, not to mention a desire to actually enjoy something resembling a vacation, it may not be for a while.

When will I be back? Well, you better have a Democratic candidate for president when I get there...

Great fun, satisfying in all the right places, a pure popcorn film, no complexity whatsoever, nothing completely jaw dropping but a hell of a ride, made up for a very annoying 24 hours prior to the start of the movie... but it was missing one thing at the end.

See here about 55 seconds in, and be warned that watching this clip gives away the finish of two films:

So there I was at I-Con 27 as a guest (for a change). And while it turned out that I showed up, all the guys from Dumbrella didn't. Could I go sit in on a few panels in their place? Sure, I said.

"Great! There's a panel at 5 on Saturday, called 'Why People Suck'. Can you be on that?" No problem, says I.

I get there a bit early, and there's a crowd outside the lecture room waiting to get in. Crowd? Okay, the panel's running long. I go into the room, and it's already packed with 250+ people. And it turns out that none of the original panelists were there. In fact, there was only one other panelist there, and he was a bit unclear as to why he was even asked to be there.

Yipes. Nothing like doing a panel in front of a large crowd who think that people suck, and the folks who were going to be there couldn't make it.

Nevertheless, it was actually a dang good panel, and people were coming up to me for the rest of the con saying how much they enjoyed it, with lots of folks bringing me books to autograph. I was pretty dang proud of the panel, because not only was it entertaining, it was educational... we actually figured out why people suck.

Entitlement.

You will celebrate it.

Play The Rather Difficult Font Game and tell me how you did in comments. No peeking at sample sheets. I did 30 out of 34, and haven't retake it yet.

...although it does take some very long intermissions.

So, what do you think of the new look? Special thanks to Gary Bacon, who took my Photoshop mockups and rusty CSS skills and turned it into a very pretty little theme; and to Craig Wood, who shepherded the migration from Movable Type to CrowdFusion.

(Yes, this is the first blog migration from Movable Type to CrowdFusion. More will be coming.)

Administrivia: http://www.glennhauman.com is now the main link; the malibulist.com account will redirect here for the foreseeabel future, but you might be happier to just point here. The RSS feed has also changed, the link's at the top of the page. I don't know who set up the unofficial LJ feed to my blog, but whoever it is, please update it. And let me know who you are, dang it!

If there are any problems you're having, drop a note in the comments here. If your problem is that you can't post in comments, send a note to glenn at malibulist.com.

As for me, now that we're finally over here, I'll be updating a bit more frequently. (Yeah, he's said that before.) (No, I have to, I've got too many open windows.)

Eight Belles, the first filly to run in the Kentucky Derby since 1999, finished second-- and then broke her ankles just a few strides later, and had to be euthanized.

The last filly to run in the Derby? Three Ring.

My sympathies to owner Rick Porter, his family, and everybody else on Eight Belles' team.

All sorts of stuff before I do a major backup and upgrade... and I wonder I why keep these windows open, just so I can get around to blogging them.

WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Early Science Fiction Fanzines: A Cover Gallery: So you can see all the scary drawings of... oh, I can't even describe it.

 

It's not you, it's your books.

The World's Best Insulting Lines: or at least the most generic ones...

How to Disagree:

The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read. In particular, it will help them to see through intellectually dishonest arguments. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. In fact that is probably the defining quality of a demagogue. By giving names to the different forms of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons.

Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional. Someone arguing against the tone of something he disagrees with may believe he's really saying something. Zooming out and seeing his current position on the disagreement hierarchy may inspire him to try moving up to counterargument or refutation.

But the greatest benefit of disagreeing well is not just that it will make conversations better, but that it will make the people who have them happier. If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more meanness down in DH1 than up in DH6. You don't have to be mean when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don't want to. If you have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way.

If moving up the disagreement hierarchy makes people less mean, that will make most of them happier. Most people don't really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can't help it.

(Via Making Light.)

 

 

Guy goes to a doctor's office. Doctor says, "I have bad news for you. You have advanced pancreatic cancer and early stage Alzheimer's."

Guy says, "Damn. Well, at least I don't have cancer."