A quick short story excerpt

I haven’t worked on any fiction in a very long while, and it’s been eating away at me quite a bit. Tonight I cracked open a short story I had been cranking out last month. A small chunk of it delighted me greatly and I thought I’d share a short excerpt, just because:

     ”Can I have some milk?”
     ”Oh,” he said. “Of course.”
     He pulled the fridge open to reveal nothing of substance. A bottle of ketchup next to a bottle of beer, both half consumed. He knew little of raising kids, but knew enough to recognize that neither were an appropriate replacement for milk.
     She appeared over his shoulder and sighed heavily.
     ”I’ll just take water,” she said.

E3 and the Nintendo Online Paradox

I haven’t been around much lately, because we’ve been in the process of transitioning to a new place. Between that and a severe lack of internet at home due to the move, internet-ing has been relatively light these past couple of weeks. But I did take the opportunity yesterday to check out a bit of the coverage following Nintendo’s press conference.

Man, was that ever lame. I’m a Nintendo fanboy, through and through, but their showing was absolutely ridiculous. Some 3DS stuff we already knew was coming, and then showing off a whole bunch of Wii U mini-games and core titles that are already available on other systems. It was pretty pathetic.

(With the exception of Ubisoft’s ZombiU – that looked kinda interesting, I’ll have to admit, but not enough for me to buy the system day one)

But probably the most interesting thing was all the online stuff they talked about. New eShop, potential transfer of your existing Wii Shop and Virtual Console purchases, chat and organize games with friends, NO FRIEND CODES. The Miiverse, while pretty simple-looking, was proof Nintendo was finally entering the 21st century.

Wait a second. Hold on. This is Nintendo we’re talking about here. Let’s not jump to conclusions.

As a result, there will probably be a delay between the time a user creates a post and when it appears in the Miiverse feed. How long depends on how many posts are created and how many people Nintendo has to do the work.

“The attraction of a social network is the immediacy of the feedback,” Iwata said. On the other hand, it’s absolutely essential that parents need to feel comfortable with Miiverse as a safe place for their children, he added.

That raises the question: What is an acceptable time lag that satisfies both requirements? Is it 30 minutes? Or three hours?

Iwata said that the company will monitor feedback from its users when the service launches to answer that question. “But personally, I think 30 minutes should be acceptable,” he said.


Thirty minutes from the moment I press “send” until my friend gets the message, and it’s been thoroughly reviewed by hundreds of Nintendo staffers? Yep. There’s the Nintendo I recognize.

Welcome to the late 19th century, Nintendo. You’re going to be awfully lonely there.

Via Hero Complex (LA Times)

Apparently I’m a finalist in the Redshirts art contest

So, I haven’t updated my creative projects section in quite a while. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on creative projects. I’ve just been working on things that I can’t yet record. Some commission art pieces, some writing, oh, and an art contest for John Scalzi’s upcoming novel Redshirts, where – APPARENTLY – I am a finalist.

I don’t expect to get one of the top three places, which receive some monetary awesomeness, but being a finalist at least nets me an ARC of Redshirts, which will be fantastically fantastic, I have to admit.

Now, even though merely being nominated is, absolutely, a HUGE honor in this case, I do implore you, DEAR READER, to head over there and VOTE for my piece! Ignore how great the other four entries look, and just try to focus on my piece in particular. As of this writing, I’m currently sitting in fourth place, and while placing as one of the top three would be grand, it isn’t necessary. Instead I would simply like to avoid LAST, if at all possible, if only to protect my fragile ego.

So, if you would be so kind, please GO FORTH!

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

Nick Hanauer speaks an uncomfortable truth, and it’s something many of us in the middle class have screamed about over the years. But we’re drowned out by the voices of our very own politicians and the wealthy upper-class businessmen who fund their campaigns and line their pocketbooks. They continue to believe the rich should be taxed less, and the lower and middle classes should be taxed more. Eventually, when they’ve finally taken all of our money, and there’s only a handful of incredibly rich people and a vast majority of incredibly poor people left, no one will remain who can buy their products and services and help them maintain their comfortable lifestyles. Only then will they fully understand what they have done.

But by that time, it will be too late for everyone.

Via the National Journal

Apparently he has a book where there are two cities and they, like, overlap. That’s what I heard anyway, and if someone else had written it maybe that would matter.

I used to respect Jerry Holkins’ opinions when it came to book recommendations. I’ve added to my library substantially over the years according to his suggestions. I would never have started reading the “Kingkiller Chronicles” series if not for he and Mike gushing about “The Name of the Wind” on their site. But I was genuinely surprised by this revelation today.

“The City and the City” is easily my favorite novel of 2009, and still ranks in my top ten favorite novels of all time. Now, I’m not someone who regards China Mieville as a god, (I stopped halfway through “Kraken” because I got bored with the story) but I haven’t found a novel as beautifully constructed and told as “The City and the City”. I have never felt this supposed “smugness” that Jerry seems to feel when reading Mieville’s works, but I can’t help but think some portion of that is projected as opposed to interpreted.

I can understand someone saying they don’t like a work, or that a particular author isn’t appealing. Sure. Fine. I can absolutely accept that. The same goes for me regarding a great many novels and authors. But for Jerry to suggest that a certain novel is somehow irrelevant just because he refuses to wrap his mind around it takes a level of arrogance that I simply cannot fathom.

tl;dr – No one gets to crap on “The City and the City”. Not even Tycho.

(via Penny Arcade)

I just bought my very first Apple product. I feel dirty.

Now, just to clarify, I’m no Apple hater. I don’t have the trademark intensely-burning dislike towards the company that my fellow Windows and/or Android-centric acolytes seem to share. But I’m not a fan of their closed nature, and I promised myself long ago that anytime I was given the option, I would always work to choose the one that provides me greater control over my technology.

But I have to admit that the iPad is indeed beautiful and immensely functional. And my wife really wanted one. It dovetails nicely with everything she needs to be able to do for our family and her personal business. This is especially necessary, since every laptop she’s ever owned seems to sputter out and die within a year (it doesn’t help that I’m a stingy old bastard, and tend to gravitate towards cheap laptop deals). And when I discovered that I was able to score an iPad 2 using my ridiculous amount of business travel miles, the choice was simple.

So, Happy Mother’s Day to my wonderful wife, the fantastic matriarch of our busy little family! Now please excuse me while I go take a shower to wash off the hideous realization that I now have to install iTunes on all of our computers.

Terribly good advice from the terrible mind of Chuck Wendig

If you have a notion to be a writer and you’re not reading Chuck Wendig’s blog, TERRIBLE MINDS, you are completely missing out on some excellent free advice on storytelling, story construction, audience manipulation, and general writerly need-to-know’s.Case in point: today’s post on 25 things you should know about creating mystery. Genius stuff, friends. Hilarious, intelligent, and a bit tawdry at times, but honestly, what good caffeine and alcohol-fueled author isn’t?

The terribly good advice from the terrible mind of Chuck Wendig