strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Jun 24 05: riddle time!
Q. What do you call a bad actor with an all-wool toupée?
A. William Shatnes.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha! I am so proud of this joke, and there are, like, three people who are going to get it. I don’t care.
EDITED: D’oh. Okay, I got it backwards. Back when I first learned about shatnes, I assumed it was analogous to kosher, i.e. that it meant that you were square with the don’t-mix-your-fibers law. But no! It’s actually analogous to treyf. The shatnes, it is bad. So I really should have written this as:
Q. What do you call a bad actor with a wool-and-linen toupée?
A. William Shatnes.
There. I’m sure that many of you who didn’t get it the first time will appreciate the hilarity now. Pardon my goyische ignorance.
Jun 21 05: gerbilicious
I just read the entire run of Shaenon Garrity’s Narbonic in one sitting. You can, too. Under normal circumstances nonsubscribers can only see the most recent strip, but because it has been nominated for some (well deserved) awardage, its talented creator has opened up the complete archives for the duration of the voting period.
Narbonic is a daily webcomic about Dave, the IT guy/henchman/test subject of one Doctor Helen Narbon, a mad scientist of the Evil variety. Rounding out the regular cast are Mell, the psychopathic, weapons-crazy intern; and Artie, a superintelligent gerbil. (Really.) It has long had a good buzz around it, among those who pay attention to this sort of thing. I’d seen passing references to it, but I’d never really gotten around to investigating. Part of this was because my heart already belongs to Girl Genius, another mad-scientist comic, to which it bears only the most tangential resemblance. (GG is still the bomb, make no mistake. Can’t recommend it highly enough.) Part of this was the idea that to keep up with the long and involved story arcs you either needed to subscribe or remember to check in every day. I’m both cheap and easily distracted, so you can see the problem there. However, having been bitten by the Narbonic bug at this point, I’m sorely tempted to shell out the pittance required to assure future access.
It’s really exciting to be able to stumble on something like this and take it in megadoses. In a single sitting, you get to watch the development of the creator as an artist and a writer. You get to see a story go from ‘promising raw material’ stage to ‘flourishing, sprawling garden of storylines.’ That kind of thing is inspiring in the extreme.
On the other hand, be aware that there’s something like five years of daily strips in the archives. I’m very very tired now, with that jittery haze of narrative overdose laid over the top of it. So maybe you would want to do it in a few smaller chunks instead. It’s up to you. You have until July 3. For my part, I’m going to bed.
Jun 8 05: tip for the day
Today brought the confirmation of a long-held theory of mine: When you get a cell phone, put an entry in its address book with your home number, and file it under “Home.”
That way, when you’re on your way to an appointment at an ungodly hour of the morning and your phone slithers unnoticed from your pocket and you accidentally leave it on the seat of the cab and it takes you four hours to wonder ‘hey, where’s my phone?’, and you have to go home at lunch to (a) look for the phone among the detritus of your desk where you think you must have left it—because your dad’s in town and will be calling you at that number later—and (b) you have to get your laundry to the laundromat because you don’t have another clean pair of shorts to your name, the cab company may suddenly call you at home while you’re there, and a kind-hearted cabbie may meet you in front of your place of work shortly thereafter with your phone in his hand, thereby affirming your faith in humanity.
Jun 7 05: reminder to self
Stop walking in little circles around the inside of your head trying to justify the Useful McGuffin. Is it biotech? Smart Play-Doh? Alien yoghurt? It doesn’t matter. Remember what you were told: they don’t necessarily care how it works; they mostly care what the experience of it is like when it does whatever it does. Stop stalling. Write.
Jun 3 05: fun factoid
Hey, Gaiman and/or Pratchett fans: remember the Liber Paginarum Fulvarum? It finally occurred to me that I could ask a classicist to tell me what the title means. (I myself had always read it as the “book full of pages.” I knew it was probably totally wrong, but it amused me.)
Anyway, it’s The Book of Yellow Pages.
The Yellow Pages!
Har!