Top Ten Awesome Pics
Here they are, the pictures that in my opinion are the most peculiar/troublesome/unique/spectacular from the year of Daily Awesomeness. A few also appear in the other top ten lists. I’ve marked with an asterisk those that are attached to well-written or interesting blog articles, and pointed out for your benefit when the awesomeness in question has several excellent pictures for your enjoyment.
10. Skyfire 2011
8. Macabre expression of love*
7. Sarcastic Christmas Letter (this photo is from the Great Wall)*
6. Wedding photos (plenty more beautiful/funny pictures)
4. World map of food (all of which are listed in the article)
3. Hot air balloon ride (more beautiful pictures in the article, naturally)
2. Bubbles! (lots of beautiful pictures if you click through)
1. Octopus in an unexpected place (so many awesome pictures it was hard to pick this one – if you like it, click through for the rest)
Special thanks to my mum for the use of her bird bath.
Next week: The top ten FREE awesomenesses, including a surprising number of my personal favourites (and featuring the youtube video I made that now has over 12,000 hits).
Steampunk dress-ups
Ammotu has created a brilliant online game in which you take a model and dress her up in any one of hundreds of combinations of clothing and accessories. It’s so very very much fun, and it’s here.
This is my own fantasy outfit from the game:
And this (because there was no way on Earth I could resist) is roughly what my main character, Emmeline, is wearing in my steampunk book:
And here’s an outfit worn by my half-Koori character, Matilda (who will not exist in published form unless I am given permission by the relevent people group in the correct part of Australia):
Thank you Ammotu for your brilliant game!
Bookpocalypse now (PG for swearing and violence)
This is a post by Chuck Wendig, who often writes about writing and/or the baby he’s got coming any moment now (via his wife). His blog is NOT child-friendly. The man writes the most graphic (and usually sexual) metaphors in the world.
He is a dirty, dirty man.
This article is only gory (with a mild – for him – potty mouth on the side), so I’d rate it PG. It’s about the collapse of Borders in the USA (Australia’s Borders is also in a dire state, but not as dire), possibly due to ebook sales, but more likely due to general incompetence and/or lack of readers.
Brace yourself, and enjoy. . .
I feel like a war correspondent reportedly reporting from the front lines, but the war has already come and gone, the battle lost. What’s left now is just looting as thieves pick pocketwatches from corpses and steal high-priced TVs from shattered store windows. What’s left are bodies picked clean by crows and dogs and worms, scavengers fighting tooth-and-nail over a rib-bone here, a loop of intestine there. What’s left is an accounting of the dead. War’s over. The good guys got fucked by the bad guys. Now it’s the end of days. Or the end of books. Or, at least, the end of Borders.
* * *
I’m reminded of a scene on the news where a beached whale — dead, not dead, I don’t even know — is blanketed by squalling, complaining gulls. That’s Borders. Local store got the axe. Most of the Borders in the state are done, it seems. And now it’s a carcass on the beach besieged by those who smell a cheap pop culture meal.
I’ve never seen a bookstore that busy. You could hip-bump a hive of bees on its side and not get this kind of action. Everywhere, jostling bodies jockeying for books. The sci-fi and fantasy section is a parliament of owls: bespectacled readers hungrily looking for a genre fix. Mystery, too: a gaggle of detectives on the hunt for books about detectives. The children’s book section has, and this is no joke, no joke at all, three books left. Three nuggets of puckered meat clinging to otherwise bleached bones. One book about a wombat who is allowed, mysteriously, to play with a human infant. Children’s books can be very stupid.
The literature and fiction section is empty, though. Shelves, still full. One in a while, a lone reader wanders into the alcoves — not because it is where he wants to be but rather because he got lost, because he is the flotsam (or is it jetsam? are there any dictionaries left for purchase?) that washed up here from the churning chum-capped tides here in the bookstore. When he realizes where he is, he will shake his head as if clearing his mind of illusion and infection and then totter off again, buoyed by another belching current. Or driven by cheap prices the way a zombie is driven by his hunger for brains.
Read the rest.
Here to comfort you after scenes of that post-bookpocalyptic world, is Ana:
An Adventure Part 3
And then I decided to invite myself over to my parents’ place for dinner, since we were bringing them so much gluten-free loot anyway. (By “us” I mean CJ and I and Ben.)
It turned out my parentals were hosting a birthday party that night for someone I’ve met once and Ben and CJ have never met.
We crashed it.
(Fay had another party to go to, because that’s how she rolls. She’s decided she wants to fit bras for a living, and has been giving detailed practice consultations for inebriated girls she’s never met before.)
Since this is Canberra, it turned out that the birthday guest of honour had once been in the same room as CJ and Ben (at my wedding) – and used to work with Ben’s father.
We ate and drank and stuffed our faces with applie pie and gluten-free chocolate cake. I brought “Pirate’s Cove” and played a game with my parents, in which the winner changed twice in the final turn (due to a mighty battle roll of 666, and a tempting wench who stole half my treasure). It was fantastic.
And that, my friends, is how you do THAT. Assuming you’re not into bra consultations for inebriated girls you’ve never met before (which, whatever you may think, I’m not).
An Adventure Part 2
The fete we went to had a bungee trampoline, TWO jumping castles (none of which we were allowed on – phooey!), lucky dip, a huge shed of abandoned books, a reptile enclosure, and a petting zoo.
It was awesomes.
So soft!
Ducks!
There were also black sheep, chickens, and a goat. In short, everything a two-year old could ask for (with the possible exception of a moo-cow).
Also, freshly-made fairly floss.
And here’s Fay, proving that sometimes it’s totally fine to eat something bigger than your own head:
You may think, dear reader, that went home on a sugar high – utterly satisfied. You’d be wrong. We had one more adventure, which I’ll share. . . tomorrow.
An Adventure – Part 1
Last Saturday was looking good. CJ and I were going to see “Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader” at the ANU Film Club (which shows free movies once you pay a certain amount). But due to issues with the distributor, it was moved to Sunday 10 April.
That left Saturday a pristine empty space in my diary, with only a day and a half to go.
It was too blank. I needed something. I emailed my writing group and declared a writing afternoon, begging for speedy replies.
One person replied almost at once – saying they couldn’t come.
That left CJ and I (boooooorrrrrriiiiinnnnnggg!) and Ben – who was tactfully SMSing me asking who else was coming. I assured him it was going to be GREAT and we would have AN ADVENTURE. I also assured him there would be no balloon people.
Why did I need to make such a promise? I’ll tell you.
The year was. . . oh, several years ago. I’d just left a job I hated with a fiery passion, but I didn’t want to leave with hard feelings so I invited the staff to a get-together at my place.
Problem One: I cordially disliked them, and they cordially disliked me.
Problem Two: The only one I liked at all was the boss, and she had a dinner to go to elsewhere. She felt awful.
Problem Three: In a moment of socially awkward panic on the phone to my ex-boss, I blurted out that I’d “accidentally” invited “a bunch” of other friends over, that there were too many, and that I had to uninvite the work people so they didn’t get “overwhelmed”. I suppose I thought it was a neat way to cancel the party (better than admitting it was an insane idea in the first place), and I passed it on to the other workers (I think one of them was actually planning to come – so nice save, me).
Problem Four: My boss lived very near me. She would drive past on her way home.
My solution: Rather than simply closing the curtains and hiding in a hole, I begged, bribed and cajoled every warm body I could find to gather in my living room (which faces the main road) and LOOK LIKE YOU’RE HAVING FUN. I acquired CJ, Ben, and my parents.
It wasn’t enough, so I did what every normal ex-employee would do to preserve her dignity: I made fake people out of old clothes and balloons, and arranged them in the window for my ex-boss to see as she drove past. I then made my friends and parents pretend to talk to them for three hours.
And I’m sure that if and when my boss drove past she thought, “Wow, what a happening party that is. And to think we all used to believe she was some kind of crazed loon with no social skills!”
And so you see why Ben and CJ both needed a certain amount of reassurance on the “balloon people” front.
Realising that the writing thing wasn’t going to happen, I hastily invited several other people, one of whom said, “Maybe – it depends how hungover I am tomorrow.”
Success!
?
I assured her and Ben that we were going to have AN ADVENTURE!!
CJ talked to me in that slow, careful way he has, asking if I had “any idea at all what I would do”. I assured him that I did.
And so it was that CJ, myself, Ben and Fay gathered at my house.
Having learnt from my year of awesomeness that there is always something free happening in a capital city on a Saturday, google and I had a quick chat. We came up with two school fetes within walking distance, and a Gluten Free Fair that was sure to have loads of free food. Things were – cautiously – looking up.
We walked (Fay and I in somewhat uncomfortable shoes – we don’t own comfortable shoes, because we view walking with such suspicion and disdain) to the first school. Other than some children investigating the garbage hopper (yes, really) no-one was there. The fete had long since closed.
I recalled that I had a half-used pack of balloons at home, but didn’t say so out loud. Fay and I were both grumpy and uncomfortable from the short work.
So we walked back to my place, packed into the car, and went to the Gluten Free Fair (none of us are gluten intolerant, but Fay and I both have gluten-intolerant Mums). Fay and I became overexcited in the carpark (sheer adrenalin, I suppose) and started yelling anti-gluten slogans to one another through a hedge.
The fair was at the Southern Cross Club in Woden, and we saw people walking out with brimming bags and boxes, looking glossy and well-fed.
We walked in, and the smell of fresh warm bread filled the air. There was a chocolate stand with FREE CHOCOLATE right in front of us. The cloud of doom hanging over us fled for the nearest exit, and we never saw it again.
We spent the next hour eating free samples and deciding which of the twenty gluten-free breads was the best (mainly by eating the nicest over and over again). Fay’s parents (who I also like) were there, and we chatted with them. I got super excited about my extremely extensive best-bread extravaganza and called my Mum, rashly promising to bring her samples of the best bread. When I mentioned my Mum to one lady, she gave me an entire loaf in its sealed package. We’d arrived at precisely the right time – everyone was making packing-up movements, and selling their wares at we-couldn’t-be-bothered-carrying-this-away prices.
For $20, we ended up with a full box of bread and noodles and pancake mixture and chocolate.
It was fantastic! I ate until I felt sick! But then we had to go. . . because there was one more school fete, and we knew it closed in a little over an hour.
So we packed into our horseless carriage and rode away for Part 2 of our genuinely (to everyone’s surprise) thrilling adventure.
Which I’ll write about tomorrow.
Lifesaving and Codebreaking
Of all the words in all the languages on Earth, “useful” is not one that is generally applied to me.
Today details one of those rare days when it was.
My neighbour and his wife stood in his front yard, staring around vacantly as I pulled up. Their car was parked half across my driveway. I carefully avoided both eye contact and car contact, and managed to park my car.
Pleased with my success in not glaring at them, I headed for my front door. Mr Neighbour ran up to me. “Please can you help jump-start our car?”
“Oh!” I said. “Uh. . . okay.”
I backed out and around, drew up next to them, and propped up my bonnet lid. He had his own jumper cables, so I simply waited. As he clipped the last jaws into place, there were sparks. He ignored them, and clipped on the cable.
See, here’s one of the grand things about poverty. When you’re so poor you need to save up for two months to buy a new battery, you get super good at jump-starting cars. Perhaps you even, in special circumstances, become useful.
My car began to smoke from the battery (which, sidebar, I bought a month ago – yay for CJ’s steady income). At first it was just a hint of heat in the air. Then it was a tiny curl of grey. Then it was chunks and gouts of “this is not right, by golly” and “uh-oh” spiced with “run away! run away!”.
I realised This Was Not Right By Golly and dived into the fray, unhooking the jaws deftly. Fortunately, I didn’t blow up. Nor did the cars.
Mr Neighbour and I looked at one another, and social awkwardness and fire-fear vied for prominence. “It’s red to red and black to black, isn’t it?” he said.
I was immediately suspicious that I’d finally found someone who knew less than me about cars. Given the logic principle that “once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” I glanced around surreptitiously for any of the following:
1. UFOs hovering to take advantage of their human-disguised leader’s cunning ruse.
2. Brain-altering fungus spores making my neighbour stupid.
3. Punk’d cameras.
Since I found none of those, I was forced to conclude that, for this one unnatural moment, I was the most knowledgable car person around. I looked at his battery. Sure enough, he’d attached the cables between positives and negatives.
One of my friends had two uncles that did that. Apparently when they started the car a blazing arc of lightning slammed across the cables, melting both engines.
I reattached the cables to the correct batteries, Mr Neighbour successfully started his car, and I advised him and his wife on How To Jump Start Your Car Without Killing Folks.
He drove off; I parked and went inside. I thought my usefulness for the year was done, but I was wrong.
At work that day a student showed me the essay we’d worked on together. She’d done well. There was only one problem – the teacher’s comment was spectacularly illegible after the first two words.
I’ve seen some thrilling handwriting efforts in my time, but this one was so deep into “someone likes to drink while they mark, and I sure can tell” territory – the writing is actually SLURRED – that I took the liberty of tracing it for the internet’s benefit. Here it is:
For the next hour, pausing only occasionally to snarl, “Get back to work” at the student (hurrah for $40 an hour) I studied the mysterious message (and, by extension, the drink-addled mind behind it).
The first two words were “Well done” which gave me a baseline on which to decode everything else. The first word after that looks very much like “Zu” but was probably something else entirely. The middle word on the second line looks like “none” and the first three words of the final line look like “etc let is”. The final word on the second line looked like a field of poppies dancing in a breeze (another substance, interestingly, that may have been tangentially involved in the note-making process).
By careful observation, I learned that tall or long letters were considered distinctive by dint of being tall or long, and all other features were presumed irrelevent. Similarly, letters that were neither tall nor long might be represented only by the most subtle wiggle of the pen as it wandered to greener pastures. The most reliable letters in each word were the early ones, as the writer tended to lose enthusiasm for a word partway through, and simply not bother forming letters any more.
I searched through the essay and assignment sheet looking for key words that might have been used (people who mark lose originality fast). That garnered some useful data.
Dots and dashes tended to migrate, often by several letters. That was crucial, because it meant that something that was clearly a “t” actually wasn’t. For example, the first word on the final line looks like “etc” but is actually “the”.
I also carefully traced, with an unclicked pen, the shape of the “Well done”. When it comes to profiling, I’m with the method school – I needed to get into her head and hand. And I did. The blurring of letters was a significant clue. It was also clear that some blurring caused other letters – irrelevent letters – to appear. It was a trap for the unwary, and it nearly got me.
By far the greatest challenge was the mysteriously poppy-like final word on the second line. I spent a long time trying to think of words with an early “th” followed by two ls (or ts) later on.
The join between the two tall letters and the previous letter was too long. It didn’t match the hurried pesonality of the teacher. That meant only one thing: something was there. Something invisible to the naked eye, but clear to a linguistic psychologist such as myself – another tall letter. The early “th” wasn’t two tall letters in a row – it was three. With that final crucial clue, I mentally scoured the English language. It seemed an impossible task. But. . . I did it.
Here’s the full note:
Well done – you have provided some well-formulated analyses and made relevent references to the texts as evidence.
Agatha Christie, eat your heart out.
Top Ten Awesomenesses
I’ve now sorted ALL 365 awesomenesses into three top tens – the top ten that cost money, the top ten that are free, and the top ten pictures from the year.
Here’s the first list, leading up to my personal favourite.
10. Home Made Lemonade – with SCIENCE!
Cost: Perhaps $10 for lemons, sugar, and the secret ingredient.
Deliciousness: Yes.
Feeling: A mix of home-cooking pride, childhood nostalgia, and mad science.
Danger: Er. . . not getting scurvy?
Cost: $20-$50
Deliciousness: Yes.
Feeling: All the luxury of a restaurant – but you can do it in your pajamas. Win.
Danger: Minimal.
Cost: Perhaps a dollar or two more than the meal would already cost.
Deliciousness: Medium.
Feeling: You get the benefit of messing with the head of whoever you live with, plus the surreal joy of a meal that Just Looks Wrong.
Danger: Minimal. Increased slightly if you don’t tell your housemates what you’re doing in advance.
7. Cake and Chopsticks (the more participants the merrier)
Cost: Maybe $20.
Deliciousness: Sure.
Feeling: Chaos – as you gleefully play with your food AND make a huge mess. Also, chopstick battles.
Danger: Splinters.
Cost: $20-$50
Deliciousness: Absolutely.
Feeling: The best parts of being an adult combined. You can buy AS MUCH AS YOU WANT and then you can eat AS MUCH AS YOU WANT. And then you can feel AS SICK AS YOU WANT and YOUR MOTHER WILL NEVER KNOW.
Danger: Nausea, diabetes, heart disease. Mother showing up unexpectedly and looking askanse at you.
5. Go to the Beach and Eat Fish and Chips There.
Cost: $20 + travel (and possibly accommodation)
Deliciousness: Mmm. . . salty laaaarrrrrdddd. . .
Feeling: All the sunshine and freedom and beauty of the best holiday you’ve ever been on – because here in the antipodes, “holiday” is a synonym for “go to the beach”.
Danger: Sharks, jellyfish, coral. Lard.
4. Diet Coke and Mentos Rocket.
Cost: $10
Deliciousness: No! No, you moron, stop trying to drink that!
Feeling: ROCKET! Aieeeee!
Danger: Bruising, blindness, death. Disappointment (the rocket thing was a fluke – the wild spraying, however, is entirely reliable).
3. Adopt a Pet
Cost: $50-$300 (goldfish versus the colourful ones) – lots more for fluffy animals.
Deliciousnes: How could you say such a thing? What kind of a monster are you?
Feeling: This is the other good side to being an adult – the feeling that you have somehow evolved to be able to take care of others as well as yourself. Also, pets are entertaining and good-looking. I hear some are also affectionate.
Danger: Death (the pet, not you – but it’s devastating).
Cost: About $250 per person.
Deliciousness: Do not eat the balloon.
Feeling: Exactly like flying should feel. Also, gorgeous views. Sheer serenity. I definitely recommend ballooning in your own town rather than elsewhere.
Danger: Crashing into the sea or elsewhere – but that possibility is extremely low.
1. Horseriding.
Cost: $50 per person.
Deliciousness: Not permitted unless you are caught up in medieval battle, then have to make an epic journey of some kind. And you’re all out of serfs.
Feeling: Like very uncomfortable flying, but also a wonderful sense of attempting communication with a highly intelligent creature – and of course learning the skills of two hundred years ago.
Danger: Falling.
And here’s a repeat of the top awesomenesses music video – because I can. (Some of these are represented here, and some elsewhere.)
Steampunk Archetypes
Today’s steampunk post is from here. Enjoy!
Today, I want to talk a little about Steampunk Archetypes.
Archetypes are stereotypes or epitomes of personalities, a generic or ideal personification if you will. They often serve as a basis for characters. Folklore has archetypes, art has archetypes, even Jung has archetypes.
Steampunk has archetypes as well. One trick to using archetypes in our story without making them seem too stereotypical or stale is to turn archetypes on their ear or even combine them (though not all characters will be based on these archetypes, and that’s okay. Original characters are just as fun).
Just a few archetypes sometimes found in Steampunk stories:
Air-Pirate – one of the quintessential Steampunk characters. Airpirates are bad, bold, and armed to the teeth.
Adventurer/Explorer—their reason for being is to boldly go where no one has gone before and to experience new things and discover new places.
Aviator—whether roguish or military, whether they’re flying a bi-plane, a zeppelin, or a space ship, they they’re tough, brave, and a can even be a bit gallant, especially in contrast to Air-Pirates.
Dandy/Femme Fatale—they use their wiles and charms to get what they want, sometimes at the expense of others.
Mad Scientist/Inventor—another quintessential Steampunk character, they embody the steam in steampunk, discovering new things, solving problems, and occasionally blowing things up
Add your own steampunk archetypes in the comments!
In other news, if you live in Melbourne, you’re in luck. Circus Oz has gone steampunk. Go here for info on a discount, or here for general Circus Oz stuff.
How not to write a query letter
If you’re a writer long enough, the carefree laugh of creative joy turns to a bitter sarcastic coughing hack.
Here, for your bitter (but equally way more valid) joy, is an entire website devoted to sarcastic replies to idiotic queries. It’s called Slushpile Hell. (For those not in the know, the slushpile is the pile of manuscripts waiting to be read by an editor or publisher.)
Here’s two cut and pasted examples:
My writing coach told me that my novel is not yet ready to send to agents and needs more work. Could you read the attached sample chapters and tell me if you think she’s right?
I’d love to, but I’m terribly busy right now hitting myself in the head with a hammer.
Dear Slushpile Hell Scum, you think you’re so funny. I wish I knew who you were so I could come mock you and everyone in your little circle of ugliness. I’ve written a fiction novel—a GREAT novel. Do you think I’ll ever submit my manuscript to a CLOWN like you, or ANY of your fellow clown literary agents for that matter? Think again. You’re missing out on MILLIONS of dollars here.
Dear Charlie Sheen, thanks for your email. Best of luck in all your future endeavors.
You want the link again now, don’t you? Okay.
Time for your cat picture of the week.
I was airing out all our cushions and covers and chairs and so on, and put our very rickety cat tower on the barrier of the second-storey balcony. Five seconds later. . .
Felicity Banks 