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Miscellanea
Mar. 29th, 2009 12:04 amFirst, links: Trouble with Twitters.As I have never actually used Twitter I don't know if this is true or not, but I think it's hilarious.
Also: They fight crime!, home of ridiculous three sentence story pitches. "He's an old-fashioned arachnophobic dog-catcher looking for 'the Big One.' She's a hard-bitten gypsy archaeologist from beyond the grave They fight crime!" "He's a suicidal ninja astronaut who dotes on his loving old ma. She's a tortured nymphomaniac museum curator with only herself to blame. They fight crime!" Etc.
I am almost - almost - tempted to try to write one of these, just to see if I could fit all those characteristics in there somehow.
***
Speaking of things that tempt me to write stories I shouldn't write: I'm reading Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler for my History of the Book class (both book and class have the potential to be insanely awesome), in which each chapter is essentially the beginning chapter from a new book.
This is fascinating and meta and probably postmodernist like a postmodernist thing. This is also going to drive me insane, because so far they've all been the beginning chapters from interesting books, which unfortunately do not actually exist.
Did anyone read Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a child? It's quite similar - it's a book of lovingly detailed and faintly creepy pencil drawings, accompanied by a mysterious title and a sentence supposedly drawn from a story. One of these pictures involved a flying chair (evidently one of a set of fourteen), and it stuck with me for years until I finally write a story this year involving flying chairs, although only six of them.
Did anyone else read Chris Van Allsburg, period? I loved his books when I was a kid. I still love them. His most famous book I think is the The Polar Express.
***
Lastly - speaking of stories within stories - this week I saw the movie The Fall, which stars Lee Pace - the Piemaker on Pushing Daisies - and, if that isn't enough to make you watch it (although I can't see why it wouldn't be), is totally awesome.
( Review-y thing )
Also: They fight crime!, home of ridiculous three sentence story pitches. "He's an old-fashioned arachnophobic dog-catcher looking for 'the Big One.' She's a hard-bitten gypsy archaeologist from beyond the grave They fight crime!" "He's a suicidal ninja astronaut who dotes on his loving old ma. She's a tortured nymphomaniac museum curator with only herself to blame. They fight crime!" Etc.
I am almost - almost - tempted to try to write one of these, just to see if I could fit all those characteristics in there somehow.
***
Speaking of things that tempt me to write stories I shouldn't write: I'm reading Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler for my History of the Book class (both book and class have the potential to be insanely awesome), in which each chapter is essentially the beginning chapter from a new book.
This is fascinating and meta and probably postmodernist like a postmodernist thing. This is also going to drive me insane, because so far they've all been the beginning chapters from interesting books, which unfortunately do not actually exist.
Did anyone read Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a child? It's quite similar - it's a book of lovingly detailed and faintly creepy pencil drawings, accompanied by a mysterious title and a sentence supposedly drawn from a story. One of these pictures involved a flying chair (evidently one of a set of fourteen), and it stuck with me for years until I finally write a story this year involving flying chairs, although only six of them.
Did anyone else read Chris Van Allsburg, period? I loved his books when I was a kid. I still love them. His most famous book I think is the The Polar Express.
***
Lastly - speaking of stories within stories - this week I saw the movie The Fall, which stars Lee Pace - the Piemaker on Pushing Daisies - and, if that isn't enough to make you watch it (although I can't see why it wouldn't be), is totally awesome.
( Review-y thing )
