As a reward for having
finished my story for the first week of SSIAW on Friday, Mr Psmith and I went out to hear lovely traditional Irish music on Saturday -- fiddles, penny whistles, bodhrans, tambourines, tight harmonies and singable tunes and step dancers. There was rain but it passed leaving a double rainbow, so all was well and all was well and all manner of things were well. Today I did my readings for class -- more Gargantua and Pantagruel -- and answered correspondence (for which read, not morning rooms with engraved stationery, but rather blog trolling/commenting!).
A bunch of random things of interestingness have crossed my path in the last couple of days, so I thought I'd share them.
First and foremost (and in honor of which I have created the new userpic featured in this post), Sir Patrick Stewart is on Twitter, as
SirPatStew!!! This is almost (but not quite) enough to make me get a Twitter account. His first tweet? "Hi world." His second? "My brain hurts." Best so far? From Sep 4, "Scotch/Soda. Sunset.
pic.twitter.com/RjSaUhmq ." I want to be the person who took this picture.
Next up, a fascinating poem by James Hall entitled
Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too. Whether you're a superhero or just the girl next door, it's easy to get locked into one persona: "So maybe dat's youwr pwoblem too, who knows / Maybe dat's da whole pwoblem wif evwytin / Nobody can buhn der suits, dey all fwame wesistent." Who among us hasn't wanted to burn their suit and reinvent themselves from scratch? (You can also read
the author's thoughts on it.)
Third and fourth are both writing-related items. (3) Yale Law professor Stephen Carter wrote a great piece,
It Is to Be Hoped That Proper Grammar Can Endure which argues that precision in writing is necessary for precision in thought. He even brings in the venerable Adam Smith: "The rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar...Morality should be modeled on grammar...so that we may have “certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.”
(4) I stumbled across two excellent Mary Sue Litmus Tests
here and
here. The first one has separate sections for fan-fiction and original fiction, while the second is for original fiction only. They provide an interesting window into the various character features that have become commonly viewed as Sue-ish -- of course, each of these things individually are fine, it's just when one character features lots of them that things start to get dicey. A good reality check for my own writing!
Finally, from io9.com comes my nominee for Dad of the Year. When his daughter wouldn't eat her lunch at school, this guy started
drawing silly Avengers and other superhero cartoons and putting them in her lunchbox. My favorite is Batman :)
And that's it for Sunday!