45 Comments on “Checking Now If I Have Anything At All Interesting or Useful to Say”

1. Not interesting to anyone but me and my family and friends: today is my birthday!

2. It turns out that if you sleep for too long, you wake up tired.
   Still, gotta love lazy Sundays.

3. And Happy Birthday Holly.

4. Thanks, Tom!

5. Happy Birthday HollyAnn.

   I have a question. Have you ever worked with an illustrator to render some of the civilizations that appear in your novels? I just finished The Ghost Brigades and found myself craving to see your vision of the Raey, Obin and Consu.

6. According to telegraph.co.uk, they’ve invented the bionic butt. (http://tinyurl.com/y867aft) I say that’s worthy of some champagne, no? Pity I’m stuck at the office, wherein bubbly is somewhat frowned upon.

   — Steve

7. There is apparently a Looney Tunes marathon on Cartoon Network. My 14 year old is thrilled, which kinda makes me happy and nostalgic.

8. Happy birthday HollyAnn!

   Unrelated wisdom for the day: when you have a 15-page script that is actually 15 pages and 3 lines long, the only way to get it to spec is to cut your absolute favourite line. Nothing else will work. It’s like a paradox or something. Cut a paragraph? Nada. Cut that genius bit of dialogue that’s only 7 words? Bingo!

   Nice problems to have, but still. Grumble.

9. In the UK and latter online, will be a all new Dr. Who episode…. The only thing on television now days, that is as good as ST:U everything else is way bellow, and yes that does include Dollhouse, Fringe, Lost…

10. NaNoWriMo is hard. I won three years ago…but can’t seem to do it again.

11. “Life is like a bad analogy…”

    That’s all I’ve got.

12. Neoliberal politics of mainstream society cooperates with the assimilation politics within the queer community to further marginalize non-mainstream gay rights issues.

    Or in other words research is destroying my brain and I sound like an academic which no one understands. I can’t decide if that a good or a bad thing.

    *sigh Hope everyone else’s Sunday is going better than mine and Happy Birthday HollyAnn!

13. The latest National Geographic arrived in my mailbox yesterday. The cool thing about that is the contrast between two stories in this issue. One is about the search for earth like planets and the other about a hunter gatherer society in Africa. For a long time I have thought it was pretty mind blowing that while some are working on space exploration others are still living in a pre agricultural civilization.

14. Happy Birthday, HollyAnn.

    Setting up a row of chompers behind a row of tall nuts is a fairly effective strategy in Plants vs. Zombies.

    Also, the mini-game “The Last Stand” can be a coin farm if you set it up right.

15. My kids wanted a Facebook account. I told ’em no. But I did create them their own Ning group with me as an admin. They can invite their friends to join. But I have veto power. A lot more control that way. Has anyone done anything similar?

16. The only thing worse than raking leaves is raking soggy, muddy, wet leaves.

17. Today is the last day of Roller Derby Nationals. Last chance to see! Girls skating in their underwear doing brutal things to one another.

18. I’d just like to say “keep going”; I’m on the other side of the dateline and Monday is fine and warm.

19. If you have anything to accomplish, turn off the internet. I heard that somewhere.

20. It’s cold, crappy weather here, raining too. Had to ‘girl up’ and go out to buy cat food.

    And later I have to go deal with the trash at JT’s house, plus recycling.

21. Today is my son’s 18th birthday. I’m feeling simultaneously proud and very very old. And tired, because he and his buddies were up all night turning our living room into Game Geek Central. Times have certainly changed…

22. Goggle the horizon.

23. Happy Birthdays, HollyAnn and JD’s son!

    As for wisdom, “Solidified functional anataxis precludes the theromorphic eschaton.”

24. Here’s a topic that chaps my butt. It seems that Disney decided that making it’s DVDs accessible to the hearing impaired counts as a special feature and they have removed closed captioning and subtitles from their new releases to rental companies.

    http://consumerist.com/5405145/disney-removes-closed-captioning-from-up-rental-release

25. “Never jump into a pile of leaves holding a wet sucker.” – Linus van Pelt

26. Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb. He just made the best one.

27. I just finished moving out of my apartment of seven and a half years. It’s weird.

    Also, the post office charges you a dollar to file a change of address form online. That’s weird too.

28. Many thanks for the birthday wishes!

29. If I was Steven Moffat — incoming head writer/executive producer on Doctor Who, I’d be making obscene calls to Russell T. Davies. ‘Waters of Mars’ was that that good, and if the two part finale of David Tennant’s run is as good, expectations are going to be painfully high.

30. JD, consider yourself lucky. My daughter turned 40 this year. She’s only 3 months younger than the great Scalzi.

    Still think an 18-year-old makes you feel old? Have patience.

31. Thought of the day: A November Sunday with weather too foul to fly is a very boring Sunday to be working at a flying school.

    Especially after you run out of backlogged paperwork. Thankfully, there is the interweb.

32. Umm … well, I’ve just realised I’ve been training in martial arts for 20 years this year.

    I, personally, find this interesting.

33. Happy Birthday HollyAnn.

    Since I have nothing else interesting or useful to say, I will now leave.

34. Hey John,

    You did a great job in your role of the psychiatrist in “The Prisoner” on AMC. I didn’t know you had a twin!

    -John

35. If you’re poor enough you can change your own water pump, even if you have all the mechanical ability of a brain damaged quadriplegic with Parkinson’s!

36. Never assume that anyone who agrees with you on Barack Obama agrees with you on anything else.

37. Don’t go into a Turkish bath without something to drink, the resulting dehydration could be…interesting (Aka, woa, why is the floor moving like that!!)

    And happy birthday HollyAnn

38. “There are two kinds of Libertarians; those who don’t realize that Heinlein wrote fiction, and those who don’t realize that Ayn Rand wrote fiction.” – Me.

39. Blog sites don’t update themselves… and it is so hard to be motivated enough to do it…

40. It’s a little late for Sunday here (7:45pm on Monday)

    But I just want to say that Mark Twain was a remarkably good writer. And it’s a shame that I’m a day from 32, and I realized it TODAY.

    Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer never really engaged me. Possibly this is because they were assigned, and there’s really no way to ruin a good book quite as effective as demanding somebody read it for school. But it’s also possible they just weren’t as good as Twain’s short stories. (It’s also possible that I was too young/immature/humorless to understand and appreciate Twain’s writing back then.)

    Yay libraries! You can’t really convince me to spend money trying again on famous authors whose books I didn’t like, but I’ll check one out from the library.

41. Here’s something kinda interesting. I just got my new SCALZI book: The Last Colony. Gosh, some really nice color plates in this edition. Really nice artwork.

    I’m over this leaf raking! Finish falling already!

42. My students are always far more interesting when I have bought them a few beers and asked them what they *really* want to do.

    That is all.

43. Now I feel a mild urge to register doesjohnscalzihaveanythingatallinterestingorusefultosay.com

44. This Sunday, I learned (the hard way) that you can get sunburned while inside a sealed garage. It’s called TIG welding. Even with the small amount I did, I wound up with a couple of nice red blotches of skin.

    Did some research. Sure, enough: sunburn.

    Awesome!

45. Never light a fuse with a sparkler — you can’t tell when it’s lit.