Caitlan has the opportunity to prove my Oxford predictions right, and Sumana is entering the prestigious Fog Creek Software Management Training Program. I put a lot of effort into finding and cultivating friendships with extraordinary people, and then I’m still surprised when they do such extraordinary things! Not that I found Caitlan, I suppose; I just watched her find herself.
Category: Digital Neighbors
Via Kevan comes a 1978 speech by Philip K. Dick about science fiction, solipsism, Gnosticism and Disneyland that everybody else has probably read before. Regardless, it offered me the best answer to the question “why write?” I’ve ever encountered:
“What if our universe started out as not quite real, a sort of illusion, as the Hindu religion teaches, and God, out of love and kindness for us, is slowly transmuting it, slowly and secretly, into something real?”
Man, all I post lately is little link blurbs, but I have to plug this: Holly’s amazing crossword-based constrained-writing project and PhD thesis is finally going online! Two stories in and I am already jealous of her ideas, in both format and content.
Jake Berendes sums it up
“flawlessness is not the goal. a compulsive habit of creation matched with an editorial mindset is a far more viable goal.”
Ian has been and gone, leaving giggles and makeouts in his wake. Thank you very, very much to Deb Core, Sumana Harihareswara, Joan Wood, Sharon Calhoun, Lisa Brown, Scott Stauble, Kyle Neumann, Angel Brooks, Ken Moore, Monica Willett, Sean Hoban, and especially Maria, whose idea this was in the first place. You guys are the champions of friendship!
I associate exclusively with overachievers
- As my mother reports, my sister will be interviewed for an appointment to continue studying at Oxford. My predictions are on target so far! Yay Caitlan!
- I have been thinking lately of what a little expletive I was from, oh, about ages nine through nineteen; my hyper, piping self-absorption stands in sharp contrast to Sumana’s high school martyr complex, but I still identify strongly with the behavior she describes. I wish my motivation had been as progressive as hers, and I wish I regularly could come up with the kind of beautiful phrasing she uses at the end of the column. (But read the whole thing first, dammit.)
Sumana asked the other night whether there was any depth to which I wouldn’t sink for a story idea. I have discovered that there is. I just can’t try to pawn this off as fiction.
C O R Y
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PALO ALTO, CA — Researchers at Stanford University have announced that the hole in Earth’s ozone layer is rapidly being filled by another stratum of the atmosphere.
“We’ve done spectroscopic analysis,” said Doctor Cory Wonkette-Searls on Thursday, “and Dooce Gaiman at Washington State has obtained confirming results. The replacement gas is coming from the blogosphere.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in Antarctica right now,” he added. “Wheeoo.”
The ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet radiation, and has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbon pollution. The blogosphere, composed of superheated air and self-absorbed methane, is separated from life on Earth by several orders of magnitude.
My favorite webcomic is over, if not necessarily done. I am sad anyway.
Just when I think Hitherby Dragons has spun off into total incomprehensibility, back it comes with stuff like this. Awesome.