link salad!

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The Cover Freak. "Songs that don't sound like you remember."

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"I think people really, really resonate to the idea of darker emotions in something that is considered a really light medium." -- Matt Groening, on Charles Schultz, on Morning Edition.

Or, you know. "My fandom is somewhat incongrous."

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Author Jon Evans (better known to us as rezendi) is publishing his "children's novel for adults," Beasts of New York, online one chapter at a time. You can read it at the wesite--shockingly, http://www.beastsofnewyork.com/ --or on livejournal, beastsofnewyork.

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A discussion at Blue Rose Girls on how authors really feel about recieving editorial letters.

Me? I have a complex relationship with editorial letters.

Which is to say, I dread them until I get them (because I'm always sure that what I've written is terrible), and I then once I have them I simultaneously whine about them (because everybody hates more work) while being (a) grateful for all the times editors save my butt and (b) shaking my head and going "WTF book did you read?, and then there are the arguments discussions and compromises and the points where I decide that this is not a hill I want to die on (Liz wanted Christy to be called Christian throughout W&W, which I thought was way too formal for the character, but she won that round, although he'll always be Christy in my head), and then I do the work, and then inevitably about ten months later, comebody comes up to me at a convention and tells me that their favorite scene in the book is one that the editor made me put in. (Examples: Michelangelo's nightmare in Carnival, which I thought at the time was wayyyy too heavyhanded a trick to use (and yet readers love it), or the scene in Whiskey & Water in which the poet who is not named Thomas leaves Hell, which made me roll my eyes with its Hollywood triteness at the time I added it, and which people compliment me on all the time. So, respectively, Anne and Liz were definitely right about each of those, as much as it pains me to admit it. ;-) )

Christy should have stayed Christy, though.

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via theinferior4, Electric Sheep for your android's dreaming pleasure.

Sample movie.

Explanation:

"Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver run by thousands of people all over the world. It can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers 'sleep,' the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as 'sheep.' The result is a collective 'android dream,' an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

"Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience. You can also design your own sheep and submit them to the gene pool."

Website Link.

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bellatrys is reading Tarnsman of Gor so you don't have to:

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/330344.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/330594.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/330824.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/331406.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/331250.html

If that wasn't enough horror, she also reads Outlaw of Gor so you don't have to:

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/332111.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/332449.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/332878.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/333239.html

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/333358.html

And suggests a possible solution:

http://bellatrys.livejournal.com/333769.html

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