Monthly Archive: March 2009

In Russia, Avery Cates is Even More Badass

Author: March 6, 2009

Friends, I give you:

The Electric Church in Russian. This was pointed out to me courtesy of the extremely talented translator who worked on the project. Aside from the fact that this is apparently some alternate universe version of the book where Avery Cates is some sort of spacefaring mercenary with tattoos all over his face, this is, of course, insanely cool. Of course, as I don’t read Russian, this could also be an entirely different book. Who knows?

Thanks to Katy for the head’s up! I think all of you should have this in your collections for completeness’ sake.

BAM!

Watching The Watchmen

Author: March 4, 2009

Friends, I’m used to being Not Cool. I’ve actually pretty much based my social persona on being Not Cool and Proud of It, though of course I cry tiny tears of drama sometimes when the fact is pointed out to me. Which it is about once a week by some of my hurtful friends. You know who you are. Actually, you don’t, because none of my friends actually read my blog, the bastards.

So the fact that I am apparently the only nerd on Earth who has never read Watchmen doesn’t alarm me, much. It’s a little strange, though, how everyone seems to assume that I have, you know? Like this was some sort of seismic event in culture, a shared moment of wonder. For folks who did read the Graphic novel, I’m sure it was. It’s just the assumption that Nerd = Read Watchmen that somehow irritates me.

I’m not sure why. I realized long ago that just because my old friends and I can and do have entire conversations using Simpsons references and quotes doesn’t mean this is universal, and that people I like and enjoy can, in fact, not enjoy or be very meh about things I love. My brother, for example, is a fun guy to talk to about things, but we score very low on shared cultural experiences because he just doesn’t like the same things I do, and vice versa. So why, then, does it seem like every blog post or magazine article i read assumes that if I’m reading that blog post, I must have read and loved Watchmen? I feel like I have to assimilate or be scorned.

Of course, by all accounts Watchmen is worth my attention, so I should put down my Scotch, get over my instinctive resistance to any suggestion made by anyone, any time, and just read the thing. Ah, but should I wait to see the movie? On the one hand any movie worth watching does not require you to read the source material to be appreciated. On the other hand, how will I know about the in-jokes and meta references if I don’t? How will I pass amongst the True Nerds if I can’t speak the secrets? Well, the usual: I will carry smoke bombs, and whenever someone asks me something I can’t answer, I dash it to the floor, laugh like a hyena, and make a run for it. 46% of the time, it works every time.

Man, we need Nerd Boy Cliff’s Notes for Failed Nerds like me.

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements

Everybody’s Talkin’ ‘Bout Me

Author: March 3, 2009

For some reason there is a lot of me out there on the Intarwebs today. Allow me to point me out to you, okay?

  • Someone has somehow managed to shoehorn me into the origins of blogging itself. Why has no one else though to do this? Not that I actually claim any credit just because I’ve been self-publishing a zine since 1995, but why hasn’t anyone tried to float me as the inspiration of, well, just about anything cool? This is right up there with my lack of a Wikipedia page. You’re all failing me. What we need to do is 1) start my Wikipedia page; 2) say something ridiculous, like “Jeff Somers invented the Internet” or “Jeff Somers woke up one morning and wrote out the C Programming language on a yellow pad.”; 3) Let a newspaper quote the Wikipedia article with the fakery; 4) When Wikipedia’s Sorcerers try to delete the fakery, we show them an outside source – the very newspaper that quoted from us!; 5) Profit!
  • Dawn over at Officially Twisted seems to like The Digital Plague a little bit. She obviously has great taste.

Okay, okay – 2 mentions, perhaps, is not ‘a lot’. But they’re lengthy, thoughtful mentions, so there.

BAM!

Ain’t Technology Grand

Author: March 2, 2009

My publisher may be switching to an electronic review of copy-edited manuscripts, and goddamn, am I excited. Currently we do things the old-fashioned way: They mail me a pile of steaming paper with handwritten edits and I stet away with my blue pencil until my wrist aches (bastards dare to edit my glorious prose). Now there’s a possibility that in the future I will get a nice tidy file in my email, and it’s about time. And not only because I can search-and-replace my name in place of the main character.

I love books, the printed, bound wonders that they are. I hate piles of paper, however. I have filing cabinets filled with my old manuscripts, tomes written back in the days before I caved in to word processing, and now I wish I’d caved a long time ago, as those brittle pieces of paper are either going to burn up in a blaze someday or simply bury me in paper, leaving me to tap out desperate sandwich orders on my Twitter account. Someday I intend to spend about 5 years scanning everything down to nifty PDF files, probably just in time for PDF to stop being a universal format and leaving them as useful as my old Commodore 64 Kwik Writer files (which I still have, for reasons I can’t articulate, on ancient 5.25″ floppies).

Forget eBooks and Kindles – this is what technology is going to change. The way we produce and work, not necessarily how we experience completed work. I remain unconvinced that anyone’s going to want to ditch printed books entirely – at least not in significant numbers – but I personally will ditch printed page proofs in a second. Faster, even. Eventually, I want my proofs and copyediting beamed directly into my brain. And then I want that Stephen King Typewriter of the Gods.

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