04.30.07
Chess Master
The following video shows an impressive feat — an amateur takes on 9 master chess players and comes out with a winning record. How does he do it? Luckily, he explains (most of) his tricks at the end of the video…
(10 minutes long)
04.15.07
Vonnegut’s rules for short stories
From Boing Boing: Vonnegut’s rules for short stories…
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
04.09.07
Timing is Everything
On a lighter note, this is very amusing…
Alanis Morissette gives us a different take on the “My Humps” song. Oh how different things are when the timing is so contrasting…
04.02.07
Hurt
I came across this on Viral Video Chart and had to share it… I am a big fan of the original Hurt song by NIN (Nine Inch Nails) as well as the remix by Johnny Cash. Now I can add Kermit to the list of impressive covers.
As a warning, even though this is Kermit the Frog, the content is not suitable for children or family gatherings… or several other locales while we’re at it…
03.26.07
C0ff33
As Wally says, sadness is just another word for “not enough coffee”… Yet sometimes you can have too much. Here’s a favorite except of mine…
“As I sat with a jug of Jahavan coffe, each molecule of which is
programmed to pelt round the body kicking the shit out of any alcohol
molecules it finds. I considered where to go from here…By the time I finished the jug I was completely sober. More sober than I
wanted to be, in fact: I’d drunk to much coffee and was now too far in
the black, sobriety-wise. It made me notice things like … { insert
introspective thinking } … See what I mean? Foolish, unhelpful
thoughts. I took a look at the packet of Jahavan and saw I’d picked up
Extra Strength by mistake. ‘Warning’, it said in the blurb. ‘Anyone
except alcoholics may find themselves experiencing foolish and unhelpful
thoughts’.… I went into the kitchen and threw the coffee away. I don’t need that
kind of shit from a beverage.”-Only Forward, Michael Marshall Smith
