radio

That’s the news from Lake Wobegon

No sign of ghost burglars in the middle of last night, which is good, though I did have to run in order to make the train. The only times the LIRR seems to be running on time is when I’m running late. And, of course, we then crept along at a crawl between mine and the next station. Oh well, such is the stuff of Thursday mornings.

This evening, after work, I joined my parents for dinner out (Japanese hibachi) and a live simulcast of A Prairie Home Companion at our local multiplex. We only just got back. As it happens, I’m going to another live radio show tomorrow night…though I won’t be staying in the city too late, since I do have that MRI scheduled first thing Saturday morning.

In fact, I think I’m going to go to bed now.

Sunday comes round again

So today…

I read some Kaleidotrope submissions, while lounging in the backyard with my iPad. The weather was just too nice to stay indoors all day, and that slush pile isn’t getting any smaller. I’m usually pretty good about responding to submissions within a couple of months, three at the outset, but I do still have some stories sitting in my in-box from February and March that need to be answered. That need to be read.

I watched this week’s Doctor Who Confidential. Because sometimes you just want to peek under the hood and see how these things work.

I got a propane tank refilled — or, rather, swapped out an empty tank for a new one — at the local Home Depot.

I went for a short walk. Along the way, I listened to this week’s episode of Studio 360, which was really terrific — Martha Plimpton’s Springsteen cover and Josh Ritter especially — but which made me sorry all over again that I hadn’t managed to get tickets to the live taping in Manhattan last week. I’ve been to the Jerome L. Greene Space before, for a live taping of the Sound of Young America — a taping that’s now available on DVD, as it happens — and it’s a really nice intimate venue. The show sounded great on my headphones, but I suspect it was even better in person.

I plodded away at the New York Times Sunday crossword, this week back on paper, since the slightly weird formatting of the themed answers made it impossible for them to offer the puzzle online (and through their iPad app). I’m not sure I like that theme, though I’ll admit it’s a clever structural trick. In the end, I think I find it simply more aggravating than anything.

I mowed the back lawn.

And that’s about it. Time, I think, for bed.

Tuesday various

  • Will singing “My Way” in the Philippines get you killed?

    Still, the odds of getting killed during karaoke may be higher in the Philippines, if only because of the ubiquity of the pastime. Social get-togethers invariably involve karaoke. Stand-alone karaoke machines can be found in the unlikeliest settings, including outdoors in rural areas where men can sometimes be seen singing early in the morning. And Filipinos, who pride themselves on their singing, may have a lower tolerance for bad singers. [via]

  • Salon.com on Kevin Smith: The face of flying while fat:

    And then I read Southwest’s apology to Smith, which includes such gems as “If a Customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a Customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement.” And I think, first, “If we allowed a cramped, restricted seating arrangement? Because ‘The Greyhound of the Skies’ is positively roomy when there are no fat people on board?” And second, I think, “Translation: Fat paying customers’ fully expected discomfort only becomes a problem for us if it also makes the paying customers we care about uncomfortable.” [via]

  • Speaking of apologies, does Tiger Woods owe you one? Probably not. [via]
  • A neat, albeit a little disturbing, H.R. Giger cake [via]
  • And finally, the truth behind elephant brain power:

    “We are a bit limited by how little we know about elephants, but the odd glimmers we get seem to be rather remarkable.”

    Incidentally, today is your last day to listen to Inside the Elephant Mind on the BBC player. [via]

Pegging away

According to the trusty desk calendar, today’s bit of Forgotten English is “peg away,” meaning “to continue determinedly on one’s course.” That seems like an apt enough metaphor for today, which was mostly just your typical Mondayish Monday.

I didn’t sleep so well last night, so I got a later train this morning. And then I spent most of the day working on a counseling book I really need to get into production by the end of the month. Which, now that I look again at the calendar and exactly how much is left of said month, I don’t think I’m actually going to manage. The author still owes me a good five or six revised chapters, and I still have to read through them and make sure there’s no problem with the changes. It’s nothing I can force, and the author’s been really good about getting the work done, but it’s at times like this that I wish there were a few more weeks left in February.

I spent my lunch hour listening to this week’s Radiolab podcast — which I actually heard as the second half of this week’s This American Life — and I have to say, it left me a little shaken up. The whole TAL episode was great stuff, but Lucy’s story was particularly powerful and sad. It’s worth a listen, but don’t expect light and frothy fun.

In other news, my father had a procedure to hopefully fix the blurred vision he’s been having lately. I’d actually managed to forget that today was the day, so it was a little disconcerting to come home this evening and find him lying on the couch, in the dark, with a patch over one eye. He seems okay, though I don’t think the procedure was much fun, and there’s still the worry that it won’t have the desired effect. I’m not sure if he’s planning on going to work tomorrow, but at least the eye patch only has to stay on for a day.

And now, I think, it’s time for bed.

Monday various

  • I think the most interesting thing about this new Dante’s Inferno video game — which itself sounds pretty silly, a mashup that misses the point of both sides — is this quote:

    “We look at companies like Walt Disney, where they’ve got intellectual properties that feel like their own, but are based on literature from a time gone by,” said John Riccitiello, Electronic Arts’s chief executive. “A great intellectual property can live a second or third time in new media, because it gives you a head start.”

    Because it underlines that Disney made it big by adapting well known tales it didn’t originate (from the very beginning, actually) but nowadays runs for its lawyers anytime someone tries to do the same to it. This is nothing new, but shouldn’t Mickey Mouse be, you know, out of copyright by now?

  • The headline reads, After Taliban hit supplies, Army chef serves up 42 days of Spam. [via]
  • You can keep your fart noise generators, this is the only iPhone app I’d really love to have. If they make it available for the iPad, I may just have to break down and buy one.
  • “A third of all children aged five to 16 are convinced that the body of one of their teachers has been taken over by an extra-terrestrial being.” Tell me, can you prove that they haven’t? (Then again: “The survey was commissioned by 20th Century Fox to coincide with the release of Aliens In the Attic on DVD.” So, you know, grain of salt and everything.) [via]
  • And finally, I’m basically just copying this from Making Light, but I agree that Cat Valente makes maybe one of the best arguments for why we still need publishers in the world of e-publishing:

    Funny thing is, if this future came to pass and the market were nothing but self-published autonomous authors either writing without editorial or paying out of pocket for it, if we were flooded with good product mixed with bad like gold in a stream, it would be about five seconds before someone came along and said: hey, what if I started a company where we took on all the risk, hired an editorial staff and a marketing staff to make the product better and get it noticed, and paid the author some money up front and a percentage of the profits in exchange for taking on the risk and the initial cost? So writers could, you know, just write?

    And writers would line up at their door.

    I’m obviously biased, since I work as an editor (for a smaller textbook and professional publisher). But sometimes, there’s a middleman for a reason.