Parodies Loosed

I found a link to a spoof of Twilight at Editorial Ass. It is hilarious.

I forget how I came across this spoof of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with its mega-spoilers but it too is great (and teeming with text speak LOL).

I have found a site for Shakespeare parodies, such as Scots on the Rocks (a parody of Macbeth). And…this very lame Da Vinci Code parody (don’t say I didn’t warn you) with Jessica Alba, Jimmy Fallon, and Andy Dick.

Does anyone have any other spoofs/parodies of books, movies, literature, on the web? My Harry Splutter episodes do not count.

That novel you want to write

Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, lists Scott Sigler’s plan for writing that novel you have in you.

Here’s his five-step plan.

Step 1: Write every day
Step 2: Write a bad book first
Step 3: Finish the bad book, then put it away for six months
Step 4: Start writing your “good” book
Step 5: After six months, read that “bad” book, learn where you’re weak, and address those weak areas.

Go here for her full transcript or listen to it on iTunes.

Why listen to Scott Sigler? Well, first, what do you have to lose? And, besides, he’s signed a five-book deal with Crown Publishing.

Holiday Message from Roy Blount Jr.: Buy Books From Your Local Bookstore, Now

Roy Blount Jr’s post on the Authors Guild site:

December 11, 2008. I’ve been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren’t known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don’t lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. A government bailout isn’t in the cards.

We don’t want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let’s mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that’s just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they’re easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children’s books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they’ll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: “Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see…we’re the Authors Guild.”

Enjoy the holidays.

Roy Blount Jr.
President Authors Guild

Addendum: Forward and Post!

December 11, 2008. The Guild’s staff informs me that many of you are writing to ask whether you can forward and post my holiday message encouraging orgiastic book-buying. Yes! Forward! Yes! Post! Sound the clarion call to every corner of the Internet: Hang in there, bookstores! We’re coming! And we’re coming to buy! To buy what? To buy books! Gimme a B! B! Gimme an O! O! Gimme another O! Another O! Gimme a K! K! Gimme an S! F! No, not an F, an S. We’re spelling BOOKS!

Support your local bookstore. Today.

I May Not Know Physics but I know What I Like

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS), Science Dance Contest (Taking science to the dance, and back again) a/k/a Dance Your PhD, “…the human body is an excellent medium for communicating science–perhaps not as data-rich as a peer-reviewed article, but far more exciting.”

Markita Landry’s PhD thesis is titled “Single Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes.”

My Ph.D. work involves the use of a relatively new technology called optical trapping. Using focused laser beams, (1064 nm = infrared beam = red dress) can trap dielectric particles (we use grey/black microspheres = black shirt). The laser holds the beads in place, but it is ultimately the motion of the beads that allow us to take our measurements, and that must be followed extremely precisely (in our case, our resolution is 3.4 angstroms, which is a very small length scale). This precision with regards to following the motion of the beads was my motivation for expressing the theory of optical trapping through tango, which is a dance that is heavily dependent on the ability of the follower to follow the steps that are led. These steps are non-deterministic and are made up by the leader on a real-time basis, so the follower never knows what to expect, and must always be acutely aware of their partners motions to follow correctly…

For more on Dance Your PhD read the article in the AAAS Science magazine, Can Scientists Dance? by John Bohannon.

[T]he diversity of the dancers was nothing compared with the diversity of their output. The graduate student category is a case in point. The first dance, Gruetzbauch’s 30-second galactic tango, focused on one phenomenon: the capture of a galaxy by a larger one.

Maybe foresters should try this to explain forestry? I’m a lumberjack…
It’d never work, would it?

A Contest for Writers

To all my writing friends with WIPs (Works in Progress to my non-writing friends) I’m passing this along,Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent is holding his 2nd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge (SUFPCx2).

Nathan’s “Rules”(he reserves the the right to be capricious, arbitrary, and whatever, he is, after all, a literary agent):

1. Please post the first paragraph of any work-in-progress in the comments section of THIS POST. The deadline for entry is THURSDAY 4pm Pacific time, at which point entries will be closed. Finalists will be announced on Friday, at which time you will exercise your democratic rights to choose a grand prize super awesome winner.

2. You may enter once, once you may enter, and enter once you may.

3. Spreading word about the contest is strongly encouraged.

4. I will be sole judge this time. Bwa ha ha.

5. A word on word count: I am not imposing a word count on the paragraphs. However, a paragraph that is too long may lose points in the judge’s eyes. Use your own discretion.

THE PRIZES:

The grand prize super awesome winner of the SUFPCx2 will win their choice of a partial critique, query critique or 15 minute phone conversation in which we can discuss topics ranging from reality TV shows to, you know, publishing. Your choice. Runners up will receive query critiques and/or other agreed-upon prizes.

I’ve already entered my WIP’s first paragraph. How about you? Are you game?

AlphaSmart Keyboard and Battery LIfe

I got a question about my AlphaSmart 2000 the other day from a writer who owned “the older AlphaSmart Pro…”  He didn’t like the action of the keys (he had to “really pound on them and half the time you have to hit them twice”) or that “every time you touch the shift key it automatically locks.”

The keys on the 2000 have a light touch (My wife says the 2000’s keyboard feels much like any other desktop keyboard) and there is a Caps Lock Key (which I manage to hit almost every time I mean to use the shift key) rather than some odd double-tap on the shift key.

My problems with the 2000 were transferring files and the lack of copy/cut/paste features. Even though the 2000 has two ports for  computer interfacing (Mac and PC), I had trouble getting anything that I’d written to download to a computer. Out of the seven (Mac and PC) computers we had, I found one–my wife’s computer–that worked with it. Now, she uses it for taking notes at meetings.  On the plus side, you can buy the 2000 for a tens of dollars on eBay.

I prefer the Dana. Which I wrote about here.

While the Dana and the Neo are more expensive and harder to find (at least on eBay), for my money, they are the better bet. AlphaSmart claims 700 hours for the Neo with three AA batteries and 24 hours for my Dana, (though it lasts days since I don’t use it 24 hours straight with the backlight on). If the Dana’s rechargeable battery gives out, three AAs will also power it. I also like AlphaWord; it’s is a decent word-processor and the interface is simple. Word files can be transferred to and fro at Rich Text Files (.rtf).

Citigroup? What About the Huddled Masses?

The discussion I hear (when bailout funding to states is mentioned) centers around infrastructure–bridges, highways, etc. What about education? California’s train wreck of a budget will crush a lot of college dreams.

Robert Reich says it much better than I can. Money quote:

Education is largely funded by state and local governments whose revenues are plummeting. As consumers cut back, state sales and income taxes are shrinking; three quarters of the states are already facing budget crises. On average, state revenues account for half of public school budgets, and most of the funding of public colleges and universities. On top of this, home values are dropping, which means local property taxes are also taking a hit. Local property taxes account for 40 percent of local school budgets.

The result: Schools are being closed, teachers laid off, after-school programs cut, so-called “noncritical” subjects like history eliminated, and tuitions hiked at state colleges.

It’s absurd. We’re bailing out every major bank to get financial capital flowing again. But we’re squeezing the main sources of our nation’s human capital. Yet America’s future competitiveness and the standard of living of our people depend largely our peoples’ skills, and our capacities to communicate and solve problems and innovate – not on our ability to borrow money.

I hope President-Elect Obama hears this.