And a great deal of other strange stuff.
Boy, did G. K. Chesterton ever lose this round.
Dutch research suggests that eating or drinking cocoa appears to lower blood pressure and even reduce the death risks for older men.
…The researchers found that over a 15-year period, men who ate cocoa — including chocolate — regularly had significantly lower blood pressure compared with those who didn’t.
The sweet treat might even help ward off death. The researchers reported that 314 men died over the course of the study, with 152 of those deaths blamed on heart disease. Men who consumed the highest amount of cocoa were half as likely to die from cardiovascular disease, compared to men who ate little or no cocoa, the team found. In addition, men who ate the most cocoa were less likely to die from any causes.
…[the researcher] stressed that cocoa’s heart-healthy benefits only come from bittersweet dark chocolate and in concentrated cocoa beverages, which contain an effective dose of antioxidants, along with magnesium, arginine and fiber.
“This is not the case for milk chocolate, which contains potentially harmful saturated fats, or candy bars that dilute cocoa with a long list of other ingredients,” he said.
Peter will be disappointed that Mars bars definitely fall into this category.
…Anyway, forget Chesterton’s cranky poem: possibly this news will stir someone into writing another celebration of cocoa like the one that Stanley Sharpless came up with half a century ago and more. He saw an article on cocoa’s effects as a mild aphrodisiac, and produced the following:
Half past nine — high time for supper;
‘Cocoa, love?’ ‘Of course, my dear.’
Helen thinks it quite delicious,
John prefers it now to beer.
Knocking back the sepia potion,
Hubby winks, says, ‘Who’s for bed?’
‘Shan’t be long,’ says Helen softly,
Cheeks a faintly flushing red.
For they’ve stumbled on the secret
Of a love that never wanes,
Rapt beneath the tumbled bedclothes,
Cocoa coursing through their veins.
My gosh, has this whole business been getting a lot of attention. Well, I should be grateful.
First of all, a heads-up for those of you who’ve been following the Big Meow saga so far: Now that I’ve decided to go ahead, a weblog isn’t going to be an appropriate home for the project, as there are a lot of other things that need to be attached to the endeavor. So the-big-meow.com is now online — in a very bare form, at the moment, since almost nothing has as yet been added: not even the 404 page is working correctly right now, so be warned. When the website is properly established, in a week or so, the Big Meow weblog at felinewizards3.blogspot.com will revert to its proper use — talking about how the project’s going.
The website will house the chapters themselves as they go up. It’ll also be the center for subscriptions and donations (which are already considerable: we have another challenge grant to roll out this week) and the ground rules for how the project will work, including the projected schedule. I expect to take a week-to-ten days or so to get this basic framework in place: then once it’s done, I can heave a sigh of relief, leave the technogeekery behind, and get on with the auctogeekery, which is much my favorite kind.
Meanwhile, let me thank everybody again for the incredible response and support I’ve been getting. This is going to be a very interesting experiment, and at the end of it I hope to leave behind, not just a book, but a continuation or expansion of Lawrence Watt-Evans’s do-it-yourself publishing paradigm, with a few useful bells and whistles hung on it, and some more of the bugs worked out — something other writers can adopt and use in their turn, making changes and additions to suit what they’re doing.
Onward.
(wanders off, muttering: now where the heck did I leave that banner with the strange device: Excelsior?)
And so much more. My favorite part:
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .
. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”
Heh heh.
(Yeah, I slip and do it sometimes. But not very often at all, as this particular lesson was burned into my brain after reading the version of it that James Blish points-and-laughs at in one of his books of SF criticism written as “William Atheling”: “‘Good morning,’ he pole-vaulted.”)
…and today, it’s not with The Big Meow, but with something else entirely… so don’t expect to hear much from me today (except distant shrieks of “What do you mean we didn’t bring the horseradish??”).
…and in less than thirty-six hours from the time it was proposed.
Wow!!
Let me briefly make plain what this means. The various Big Meow challenge grant donors (with all of whom I’ll be in touch before the weekend is out) and the noble Ted Ts’o, who committed himself to match their donations up to the $1000 mark, have made a significant dent in the overall cost of writing The Big Meow — so that fewer subscribers will be needed to finance each chapter, and those who do subscribe won’t have to pay as much. The exact numbers are still somewhat up in the air, but these early donors have made a big difference…and I thank them all profoundly.
Those of you who feel like continuing this process, feel free: but for the moment, let’s all stop and take a breath: the initial challenge has been met in spades and at speed. We have, however, already been offered another challenge, which we’ll announce on Monday.
Meanwhile — congratulations, you guys! What a feat!
Now that he’s stepped out of the shadows on his own, I want to direct the attention of those who’re interested toward Ted Ts’o, who put up the $1000 challenge grant to kickstart the Big Meow online publication project.
Thanks, Ted!
So (for those of you who mailed to ask) here’s the checklist for that appearance on Irish national TV, as per my predictions:
(1) (Studio car lateness?) Extreme: never got here at all: broke down somewhere near Naas. Local taxi company had to be recruited at last moment. (2) (Driver lost?) Didn’t really have a fair chance: see 1. (3) (Haircut?) Turned out OK. (4) (Stuff to wear?) Did OK too. (5) (Thing I really should have expected to go wrong but didn’t find out about until Peter called me afterwards?) This.
So much for my fifteen minutes of fame. 🙂
Oh well. We all had a good time.
Something has come up which is going to require another day or so to handle before I post about which way this project’s going to go. It’s not a bad something: rather the opposite. (No, no publishers are involved.) But it adds an ingredient to the mix, as it were, that I hadn’t been expecting, and I have to discuss it with a couple of people.
Check in again tomorrow.
Dear, dear.
The fear of the spread of bird flu has resulted in French rugby fans being urged not to perform one of their most famous traditions when they arrive in Britain next month.For decades, French rugby fans have known for smuggling a cockerel, their emblem, into stadiums and releasing it onto the pitch at the final whistle.
With the confirmation of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in a dead duck in France, the British Veterinary Association is asking that that not happen this tour.
Although it would not necessarily be illegal to import a bird, the association says the public might think the authorities are not taking the threat of bird flu seriously if rugby fans were allowed to bring cockerels into the country.
Maybe they could bring a stuffed-animal cockerel? Or a dressed-up human mascot?
Or a big pot of coq au vin…
One theme I’ve been hearing lately in emails about the book (which have been in just about every other way complimentary) is, “I hate e-books. Please do a dead-tree version!”
Well, okay. I’m in the process of reformatting a file so that we can have a CafePress edition. (I was going to wait to do a Lulu.com version with an ISBN…and then suddenly this morning, thought, “Why? Who cares whether the thing’s got an ISBN or not? We’re not ready to market to Amazon yet.”
So wait a few days, say till the middle of the week, and there’ll be a paper version available for order direct from CafePress. I’ll post here when it’s ready.
Also, though it won’t be ready for some time, the very talented Ursula Vernon has graciously agreed to do a cover for the print version. We’re in the very early stages of discussing design. I can’t wait to see what she’ll do: I know it’ll be terrific.
Just so that people know: I’m aware that this is the Presidents’ Day “long weekend” in the US. So I won’t be posting about the final result of my deliberations until Tuesday morning. (I kind of hate to use the word “decision”: it does, after all, have its root in the Latin word that implies you’re about to kill something…) The extra time is just as well: it gives me a little more time to evaluate the incoming emails and make up my mind.)
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