found_drama

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• Goodnight Forest Moon
  at DzignSpace (via B²) — absolutely OMG awesome Star Wars + Goodnight Moon mash-up
  (tagged: starwars kids literature )

• Name Your Band, Create Your Album Cover With Wikipedia & Flickr
  at Synthtopia (via JA) — I came up with:
  
  (tagged: todo flickr language surreal fun )
• The Joy of Clojure
  ‘grats to my man Mike
  (tagged: Clojure friend )
• Two Gentlemen of Lebowski
  via B² — EPIC
  (tagged: lebowski parody literature humor fun )
• The Loom
  at Discover Magazine (via B²) — science tattoos!
  (tagged: science art blog )
• Cool Things You can do with the WordPress “more” Tag
  at Digging into WordPress
  (tagged: wordpress tutorial )

• Irish atheists challenge blasphemy law
  at BBC News:
  

  "This new law is both silly and dangerous," he said. "It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas."

  (tagged: atheism Ireland news )
• 10 Easy Ways to Green Your Web Site
  at mashable.com — while some of these may be a bit extreme and have arguably very tenable effects on your site's carbon footprint (e.g., going "dark"), looking for eco-friendly web hosting is a good one. I recommend Dreamhost — and you can save yourself a little scratch on the hosting fees with this promo code: FOUNDDRAMA
  (tagged: environment green sustainability tech business hosting )
• Iraqis Angered as Blackwater Charges Are Dropped
  at NYTimes.com
  (tagged: Iraq war research news Blackwater )
• Lightspeed Magazine
  submission guidelines
  (tagged: writing scifi todo )
• David Foster Wallace Wiki : Infinite Jest
  OMG awesome.
  (tagged: InfiniteJest literature reading reference todo )

Rob’s favorite books »

One year, twenty-six books, 10,902 pages. Not including however many dozens of articles and short stories read in Wired, The New Yorker, and online…

• 20 Best Science Fiction Books Of The Decade
  at io9 (via B²)
  (tagged: literature scifi todo reading )
• 30 Must See Web Generator for Lazy Webmasters
  Not sure where the "Webmasters" bit comes in but it's still a decent round-up of some useful graphic/widget generators.
  (tagged: web generator graphics )
• Douglas Crockford — The State and Future of JavaScript
  via fogus
  (tagged: via:fogus javascript video )
• 3 Accused of Killing Chile Ex-Leader, Eduardo Frei Montalva
  at NYTimes.com — news stories like this are always a little weird to read (like after a certain time the killers become historical artifacts instead of suspects)
  (tagged: Chile history research )
• Redirect Mobile Users to a Mobile WordPress Theme
  at Digging into WordPress
  (tagged: mobile wordpress todo )

In many ways, I’ve started to come to believe that you can’t go wrong with a John Joseph Adams’ collection. Wastelands was incredible, The Living Dead was great, and Federations…? Also very very good.

The “dust jacket description” of this anthology pretty much sums it up… It collects a few different modern takes on the classic science fiction trope: What does it take; what does it mean for a civilization to be interstellar and/or pan-galactic?

My take of Federations, it gets a composite rating of 3.9130 (individual stories below)

Read the rest of this entry »

SCENE: Samuel R. Delany, sitting at his writing desk, surrounded by books (some on shelves, but most piled on the floor), circa 1973; a man walks into the room.

- Delany and the man stare at each other. They both stroke their beards.

Delany: “Who are you?”

The Man: “Don’t you know? They sent me.”

D: “Who? Who sent you?”

TM: “It doesn’t matter. I’m here to tell you that it’s OK. They told me to tell you that we’re not really competing. Not really.”

D: “And who are you…?”

TM: “I told you, didn’t I? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Nice place. With the books and all that.”

Read the rest of this entry »

• Apple document details Target Display mode for 27" iMac
  at tuaw — makes me think that I shouldn't bother getting an external monitor for "the home office" and just upgrade to this guy next year and use this instead…
  (tagged: iMac Apple hardware wishlist )
• Advanced Plugin Development with Ext JS
  Great piece on developing plugins for the Ext JavaScript framework.
  (tagged: Ext javascript work tutorial todo )
• A JPEG Encoder for JavaScript
  at bytestrøm (via Ajaxian) — wow, looks quite awesome
  (tagged: graphics javascript webdev work todo )
• Inheritance Patterns in JavaScript
  via Ajaxian
  (tagged: javascript dev todo )
• Full Frontal ‘09: Robert Nyman on the Javascript Language
  an interesting collection of notes at Ajaxian
  (tagged: javascript dev work todo )
• Full Frontal ‘09: PPK on Mobile Quirks and Practices
  at Ajaxian
  (tagged: webdev mobile javascript css work todo )
• Full Frontal ‘09: Jake Archibald on Performance Optimisation
  at Ajaxian — the part I'm most interested in:
  

  The question is, how much faster? In many cases, such as this example, your energy is better spent on optimising big things.

  (tagged: javascript webdev work todo )
• Concur.next — More Clojure I/O
  (tagged: Closure )
• Tom Gauld print: "Characters for an Epic Tale"
  at Boing Boing — what's funny is that, in looking over this only briefly, I was pretty quick to match up each archetype with the characters from my '09 NaNoWriMo.
  (tagged: writing literature archetypes illustration awesome )
• William Gibson’s Neuromancer Staged With Porn Star
  at Slashdot — More interesting than the staging is the Gibson quote re: dystopianism as another form of relativism. Time for another re-read?
  (tagged: Gibson scifi literature postmodernism dystopianism todo )
• All the Anne Franks
  by Erik Hoel (at Strange Horizons Fiction) — the title alone is makes this seem worth it.
  (tagged: scifi fiction todo )

A number of reviews that got posted to Goodreads.com earlier this year but never made it to here:

1. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil;
2. Ficciones;
3. Stranger in a Strange Land;
4. In Persuasion Nation;
5. Plays Well With Others;
6. An Obedient Father; and
7. Theodore Rex

We regret this error.

…or, what really happened in the woods that winter:

In a cave in the woods
in his deep, dark lair
through the long, cold winter
sleeps a great brown bear.

Cuddled in a heap
with his eyes shut tight
he sleeps through the day
he sleeps through the night.

The cold winds howl
and the night sounds growl

but the bear snores on.

A filthy little mouse
pitter-pat, tip-toe
creep-crawls in the cave
from the fluff cold snow.

Mouse squeaks
“Too damp.”
“Too dank.”
“Too dark.”

So he lights wee twigs
with a small hot spark.

The coals pip-pop
and the wind doesn’t stop

but the bear snores on.

Two glowing eyes
sneak-peek in the den
mouse cries “Who’s there?”
and a wolf eviscerates him.

“Ho Mouse!” says wolf
“Long time, no eat!”
So he gobbles him down
as a tasty treat.

Mouse gasps deathly rasps
Wolf slurps bloody burps

but the bear snores on.

A badger scuttles by
sniff-snuffs at the air
“I smell yummy-yums,
perhaps we can share?”

“I’ve brought honey nuts,”
badger says with a grin.
“Let’s divvy them up,
cozy down, and drink gin.”

So they nibble and they munch
with a chew chomp crunch

but the bear snores on.

A gopher and a mole
tunnel up through the floor
then a wren and a raven
flutter in through the door.

Mole mutters
“What a night!”
“What a storm!”
Twitters wren.

And everyboy clutters
in the great bear’s den.

They chat about cripples
they tweet and the tipple

but the bear snores on.

In a cave in the woods
a slumbering bear
sleeps through the party
in his very own lair.

Wolf stokes the fire
over seasoned mouse stew
when a small pepper fleck
makes the bear

RAAAAAAAAAAA-CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

He blows and he sneezes
and the whole crowd freezes.

And the bear wakes up!

And the bear devours the other animals.

THE END

Apologies to Karma Wilson for this parody of her marvelous children’s story, Bear Snores On.