St. Patrick’s Day Blatherations
Posted on March 17, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 6 Comments
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, first off. St. Patrick’s came up on us rather by surprise, mostly because we’ve all been varying degrees of sick over here, and therefore not really paying attention to frivolities. I guess you can say I gave up St. Patrick’s Day for Lent. Not that I observe lent, except occasionally to note that my Catholic friends seem testier than usual (because of giving up caffiene or chocolate or whatever for Lent). But hey, they’re going to Heaven and I’m not, so what do I know.
Now, onto other things:
* Nick Sagan talks about playing doubles ping-pong with his dad on cruise ships, and the two of them totally crushing all comers. What a great story — one of the great popular science figures of the 20th century, kicking ass at table tennis.
* I’ve been alerted to the existence of Eventful, a very Web 2.0 site in which folks can find out about upcoming events in their area, and also create requests for events in their area that would feature their favorite creative folks. For example, if you lived in San Diego and wanted to see Wil Wheaton (and who wouldn’t), you’d create a "demand" and then other like-minded folks would sign on; the idea being that with enough demanding their presence, they might see it as worth their time to visit (I mention Wil because he is apparently very popular on the site). Creative folks can also apparently sign on to help foster demand as well. I can see a site like this being useful for author types in that it could be useful in planning book tours (or, alternately, handing the data over to publicists in order to convince publishers to pay for said book tour). In any event, if you’re an author, it’s worth checking out (presuming, of course, people want to see you, or that you wish to see people).
* This was surprising: In addition to being offered by the Science Fiction Book Club, Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades are being offered by the Military Book Club as well. And it has nice things to say about TGB as well: "When we offer a novel, it’s usually a story based on some sort of reality, whether it’s the terrorist threat or new weapon technology. The Ghost Brigades isn’t even close. This is military fiction in its wildest form. Fantastic stuff." Very cool, and I hope it does well for them; it makes me happy to see the books jumping the fence and being presented to more than the usual audiences.
And, uh, that’s all I have for you today.
Strangely, about half the people I know that are observing lent aren’t Catholic (or any other sort of religious).
But I don’t think it’s lent that’s making them grumpy. The ones that are grumpy during lent seem to be grumpy all of the time. :)
I considered observing Lent, and then the Girl Scout cookies came in. I believe I’m correct in assuming that no further explaination is required.
mmmmm…Thin Mints… ^-^
Deadline or late-night boredom? I noticed the entire blog’s look – colors and photos – changed between the time I read this post and posted my reply above, and it’s almost midnight here.
Just dropping in more seasonally appropriate pictures/design.
John, may your books jump many, many more fences than sharks!
I observed Lent once, just to see what it was like. I gave up meat. I must not have an addictive personality because it wasn’t super hard. I imagine if I gave up chocolate or carbs it would be marginally harder, but not too much.
In any case, my real reason for posting was to say: Congratulations for getting picked up for the Military Book Club! For someone who has blogged a lot about cross-over scifi, it seems you’ve managed to walk the walk in addition to the talk. I would consider that a compliment of the highest order (mainly ’cause I enjoy military history). Again, congrats!