asking, and friends, and the internets
It’s funny how times change. It used to be the most normal thing in the world to email friends to ask a question. Now, it’s Facetwit and YouSpace, and thinking that emails over 200 words are really long. (I love those. The longer the better. I’ve just heard comments.)
But I just emailed a half-dozen married friends to ask them for their knowledge. Not their advice; I don’t want to ask them to tell me what to do. I want to know what they did, and learned, and wish they’d done differently.
It felt like a really big request.
When did that happen? That seismic shift in connecting to people, in throwing a question to the winds of the Twitternets rather than making a personal request? When was the last time you wrote to a friend just to write, or to ask them something important? Something you couldn’t Google? Am I making this feeling up?
Forget no one writing letters anymore. I’m not sure we’re writing emails, either.
I’m so annoyed about the goddamn bullshit Oz movie that I totally forgot what I was doing with the rest of my afternoon-into-evening.
I AM SO EXCITED. I get to run a book group! A young adult book group! YOU SHOULD COME TO IT!
I mean, you should come to it because I’m excited, but also because this book is SO GOOD.
We’re delighted to announce our newly formed YA Not? book group, which will be reading YA and is open to readers of all ages. Their first pick is (you guessed it!) Eleanor & Park* — discussion on April 20 at 1 p.m!
*It may not be the best Corpus Libris we’ve ever done, but we’re giving ourselves an A for effort.
2013 is a year where “big” science fiction properties are getting a lot of attention: There’s a new Star Trek movie. A much discussed and anticipated Star Wars movie is under development. And, most importantly, Doctor Who celebrates its 50th birthday. Yes, that’s right; I wrote “most importantly” because, when it comes down to it, Doctor Who is the best pop culture sci-fi around.
Sure, in terms of financial earnings or even just cultural awareness, Wars and Trek have the British time-travel series beat. Despite the show’s impressive growth with American audiences since its 2005 relaunch, most here would choose to fly in either the Millennium Falcon or the Enterprise over the TARDIS any day. But in terms of core concept, Doctor Who is filled with possibility in a way that few other science fictions can truly compare with.
”Why Doctor Who is Pop Culture Sci-Fi At Its Best | TIME.com (via doctorwho)
Graeme, who has heard me rant maybe too many times about my love/hate relationship with Who, is smart as fuck and I love that the Tumblrverse is showing him all the love.
STORY WAR : The Storytelling Party Game by Cantrip Games — Kickstarter (via rachelfershleiser)
I think twice in the last year I’ve explained how IRC was super-relevant to my sanity as a college student, and my early enthusiasm for meeting people from the internet. Remember when that was a weird thing to do?
this is how much i love CODE NAME VERITY
guyliner + smirk
jenn: confession: i’m not that into lee pace.
me: it’s ok, i can be into lee pace enough for 12 people. it’s all because of the movie the fall, and the eyeliner therein
jenn: i may not have seen that. i do love guyliner.
EXHIBIT A:
it’s the little things
This morning, on my half-block walk to work, I saw my favorite dog in all of Greenpoint. He’s this chubby, stiff-legged little Shiba Inu who always seems to be smiling as he trots along - I want to hug this dog every time I see him, and I always start grinning at his little face, his funny dog gait, his pricked-up ears.
This morning, his person mistook me for someone she knew, and because I’ve gotten really accustomed to talking to strangers, instead of feeling awkward I just laughed and told her I was smiling at her because I love her dog.
She lives on my block, and told me about her old-guy dog, and his name, and said to the dog, “Shabu, you have a girlfriend!”
Honestly, this day just can’t go wrong from here.
Jenn wasn’t wrong when she said this book was written for me to love it. I grew up in the Northwest in the late ’80s/early ’90s; I was a music-obsessed teenager with strong feelings about everything and no talent for being a girl the way it seemed like girls were supposed to be; I was always in love with certain mythologies, and with the markets and the hills and the coffee of the cities I didn’t get to live in. I’ve been humming “Crown of Thorns” since I read this, and remembering the things I wrote in high school, and why I didn’t doubt that I could write them.
(I will have a hard time talking about this one because I’m selfish, and I don’t want to hear from friends, or people whose opinions I trust, if it doesn’t get to them the way it does to me. I want to send it to my Northwest girls, the ones I grew up with, and the ones I grew up more with, when we were older, because they know. Probably you do too.)
Jenn said something else very right about this book and my relationship to it, but I can’t repeat that one because it would feel very, very, very presumptuous. (I am saying this so I don’t forget.) But the translation, when her comment goes in my ears and comes back out all rewoven by my messy thoughts, is that in a good way - no, seriously, I swear - this book kicked off a sort of crisis of creativity in my head, a frantic dance of fear and oft-quashed desire. There’s only now, after all.
“You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something that you never finished.” — Neil Gaiman
