The Interweb journals ostensibly written by the characters of Achewood are funny, but I think it’s odd that half the humor in them relies on the fact that they don’t read each other’s blogs.
Category: Writing
Apologies for the lack of Anacrusis this past week; they were all written ahead of time, but I banked on having Interweb in California, then didn’t. Have it.
Anyway, last week’s are all posted at their intended times, and I’m back to the regular schedule now.
Holy crap! Anacrusis got Metafiltered! It wasn’t like some server-breaking flood of hits, but it was certainly a big spike. I guess we’ll see how many come back on Monday (or hit the RSS feed).
As soon as a kind gentleman named Andy pointed it out in an email, I was like “Yikes! I’m not ready for this!” Except actually I am, as far as plenty of bandwidth and a solid buffer so I don’t start missing days. I just didn’t expect it. I don’t feel like I’m good at it yet.
Go, car. Go.
I wrote an ultrashort as per Leonard’s idea, and the next day I saw this story linked on Dave Barry’s blog.
The cars are waking up. I’d just walk everywhere, if I were you.
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I didn’t actually mean to try this
Predictably, LiveJournal’s comment spellchecker recognizes neither “blog” nor “LiveJournal.”
Fairly important thingy
I’ve talked before about my “secret writing project,” which hasn’t been all that secret, since it was easy to find if you explored NewsBruiser’s navigation at all, and anyway I told a bunch of people about it. I’ve never actually described it here, though, and that’s what this is.
Anacrusis. One hundred and one words, five days a week, for almost a year. I posted my two hundredth entry there last Friday, and today–its big debut–is the two hundred and first. I’ve missed a week here and there, and one month during The Great Web Host Debacle of last fall, but overall I’ve been pretty regular and I’m getting better. I hope those continue to be true.
If you’re interested, you can hit that random link a few times to get an idea of what it’s like. I hope you enjoy them. That’s where most of my creative energy has gone while I’ve been not drawing my comic; I’m nervous about this, but it’s been almost a year, and I think I’m about ready for an audience.
After a bit of a scuffle with NewsBruiser 2.4.1, I’ve upgraded this thing and made it work again, and I’m very happy with it. I try to suppress my fervor for certain computer concepts or programs, because I get really annoyed by other evangelists of similar concepts or programs, but sometimes I just have to gush about NewsBruiser.
I’ve ended up using a lot of different web journaling utilities, and NewsBruiser is completely the best, hands down, period. It’s fast and massively customizable. It’s free, not just to download, but to develop and hack. It has every type of syndication feed in existence, and lets you apply custom licensing to everything you write. It can provide links to specific years, months, days, entries, and words within an entry. It can import from anything, including flat HTML–even broken flat HTML. It has an intelligent comment-spam filter, and–in my opinion, most significantly–a powerful, integrated search engine that doesn’t rely on Google crawlers.
Name one other piece of blogging software that does all of that. Come on, I dare you.
I went to look out the window in the empty office next to my cube, and in the parking lot below I could make out two women. They were talking to each other, and walking, in unison, backwards. They did this for at least fifty feet.
They continued walking and went behind and under a tree, and out of my field of view. When they re-emerged, they were walking forward again, still talking.
I’d write a story about that, if I could think of any justification for it at all.
After two years, Sean is about to come back to the US from his time teaching music as a Jesuit volunteer in a Nicaraguan village. I’ve been reading his journal continuously for about three years now; he’s a funny and intimate writer, and I’ve tried to incorporate some of his observational style into my own voice.
I’ve known one (other) Jesuit volunteer teacher in real life, and I feel like I know Sean, in a way. Neither has exactly been entirely gung-ho about the program, but if my own personal sample is any indication, it attracts some pretty incredible people. I wonder if I could do what they did, and if I would. Or will.
It’s not online, unfortunately, but trust me when I say that the front page of USA Today has the sub-head
U.S. Olympic hopefuls face drug accusations
Battle looms to compete
which, I… I don’t know, might just be the best ambiguous headline ever.
Geraldine kicked her ride into gear and rumbled out of the gate, into the Istodrome and its ambient thunder. The others were already circling the floor: Dallas Gator and his two-treadle rig, Jingo Smith on her lean ShuttleMatic, and Sam Scarwood’s weird upside-down contraption. Geraldine shook her head. Unless he got with the times and added a double back-beam, he wasn’t going anywhere.
The announcer’s boom brought her back to the arena. “Your final contestant… the Tartan Trampler… Geraldiiiiine O’Maaallleeey!“
Geraldine grinned, checked her trigger action, and shot off a salutatory flare from her Battle Loom’s smokestack. The crowd went wild.