Cowboy Bebop (2021) Let’s get this out of the way, first: this was bad, to no one’s surprise, but I gave it the ol’ three-episode college try. The original 1998 series was storytelling perfection and accepted as such by a wide margin of viewers and critics, so any kind of reboot is not only unnecessary, … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 28
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising MHA has great animation values in the first place, but this movie added to it with some richer scenery and fight dynamics. You know something’s going to happen when a group of superheroes in training are away from their mentors on a remote island, with a “what could go wrong?” … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 10
This stuff can be hard to write this kind of subtlety. There’s few who can pull it off well. Bradbury was one of them, as is Jill Domschot. Scott Adams went overboard in a fine way, in this regard; you could tell he was trying to drive the jokes home with an elephant gun. Forster … E.M. Forster’s Humor
I finally got around to reading Jill Domschot’s The Jaybird’s Nest and other stories (disclaimer: Jill is an Internet acquaintance of mine and has been my editor in the past). The seems ordinary but the stories are not: they are mostly absurdist sci-fi and fantasy, and there’s plenty of humor, mostly subtle or satirical, in … Book Review: The Jaybird’s Nest and other stories
From Neil Gaiman’s American Gods: A sad cockroach lay on its back in the middle of the tiled floor. Shadow took a towel and cleaned off the inside of the tub with it, then ran the water. Besides being in the same paragraph, there’s nothing syntactically linking the cockroach to the “it” in the second … Bug Cleaning
So, something new. My friend Seth W and I recorded our semi-structured conversation the other day, and we decided to publish it. Seth talks about Offscreen Magazine I possibly misuse an economics term I forgot the name of the Metal Made Flesh graphic novel Kickstarter Seth talks about the Star Wars book Death Star I … I Didn’t Record a Podcast But I Might As Well Have
“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones.” -Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 Hello all! Despite the lack of emails the last month or so, things haven’t been quiet regarding Pale Blue Scratch. A week ago I submitted my draft … An Excerpt – Pale Blue Scratch Email Newsletter #9
It’s excerpts like this that made me a Bradbury fan: The lights came on. I blinked. For I saw the entire unholy thing. There it was, laid out for me under the drizzling rain. The lights came on. The men quickened, turned, gathered, and we with them. A mechanical rabbit popped out of a little … Electric Rabbit Chasing
2011 was a mostly-arbitrary division of time just like any other, but things happened within that duration in my life that are worth noting. My son got borned in August and I got canned from Noisecreep in the Great AOL/HuffPurge. On the literary side I released Bored in the Breakroom as a free e-book (rave … Annual “Click All My Amazon Affiliate Links” Post, 2011 Version
I posted before about the kinda-sorta-in-a-way superiority of physical books as opposed to e-books. It felt like a conflict of interest as I’ve released an e-book of my own, but since a physical book(let) of a short story has been actualized (more on that later) I won’t feel the cognitive dissonance as harshly. The emergence … Another Case for Physical Books
Cathy at Windows and Paper Walls interviewed me. It’s my first interview ever as a sort-of writer so it’s exciting for me. It will be posted Thursday but I rest assured I will annoy you all with another post about it. I just started reading Bradbury’s short story collection. The way he made you care … A Roundup of Random Things
On an episode of 60 Minutes a while back I heard of a writer who preferred to create on a typewriter instead of a computer because it forced him to reconsider things more effectively. Ray Bradbury drafted Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter in the basement of a college building. He inserted dimes at the … This Is Not What You Wanted
Invisible Creature started a series of posts on packaging design, then and now. Their first target is a box of Trix. It’s the case that packaging has gotten a lot more cluttered the past few decades. Empty space in design is seen as wasted real estate for marketing or information. Our eyes aren’t able to … Your Writing Is Terrible: Put Your Pen Down