(Gazelle milk, huh?)
Now all we need to hear is that Hitler was somehow involved and we’ll have the perfect documentary pitch for The History Channel.
(It could have made a good Stargate SG-1 script too, but unfortunately it’s a little late for that. See, the Goa’uld started experimenting with re-evolved saurians as hosts, but then the Ancients… oh, never mind.)
As described by Tim the Enchanter. …But with more yarn. (Courtesy of AntiCraft)
Beth’s boss Amanda Palmer lost her jacket in Hamburg while on tour. (And has lost and broken some other things too, and is sad about them generally, but really misses that jacket.)
Have you seen it? Or have you seen one just like it that she could get as a replacement?
Please help if you can!
(via Neil Gaiman’s journal)
A lot of traffic finds its way to Out of Ambit via Google. Some of the searches (as they display in the system / stats logs) are interesting. A selection from the last few days:
“Diane Duane” mormon
I’m not.
best crumpet recipe
That’s over here. (Or here.)
creator of wolverine
You’re looking for my old friend Len Wein.
afterlife money
(blink) What??
I really hate to have to post this, but due to last-minute developments secondary to a current work commitment, Peter and I will not be able to attend the Discworld Convention in Birmingham this weekend.
We got a sense around midweek that a time-sensitive project I’m working on — one which I’d been attempting to ensure would not need attention this week and weekend — was indeed going to require that very thing. Despite numerous attempts to defuse this problem, over the course of today it became plain that there was no way I would be able to get the necessary work done in time while also on the road / away from home. The phrase “circumstances beyond my control” exactly describes the situation… not that this makes me any happier.
Peter and I have always loved doing the writers’ workshop at DWCon, and it breaks us up that we won’t be able to do it this year. (Additionally, I was really looking forward to my first visit in more than twenty years to the hotel where Peter and I fell in love.) We both want to apologize to the people we were looking forward to working with.
As for the many friends we were seriously looking forward to seeing… guys, we’ll really miss hanging out with you. Have a great weekend, hug Terry for us, and we’ll see you all in a couple of years (or in some cases, next year at the North American Discworld Convention).
Here, try this on for size.
Random House Children’s Books has agreed to remove a four-letter swearword from a popular book by Dame Jacqueline Wilson after complaints from Anne Dixon, who insists she is standing up for values of common decency.
The 55-year-old said she was horrified when she came across the expletive in the best-selling book My Sister Jodie – a gift for her nine-year-old great-niece, Eve Coulson.
“I got to the page where reference was made to a ‘toffee-nosed twit’,” she said.
“On the next page the word changed….”
To another word different by a single vowel: a word normally used for a part of the female anatomy. (No indication is given in the article about how the context might have changed.) The lady, outraged, emailed the author for an explanation of “how to explain this” to her great-niece, and having heard nothing back, complained to Asda (where she’d bought the book).
Apparently this got back to Random House, provoking this response:
A spokesman for Random House Children’s Books said: “In the context of the character, we felt it was used in a way that accurately portrayed how children like Jodie would speak to each other.
“The book is aimed at children aged ten and over, and we felt it was acceptable for that age range.
“However, in light of this response we have decided to amend the word when we reprint the book.”
What particularly interests me here is the language. Just who exactly is “we”? Was the author included in this decision? (She’d better have been. And if she was, and has decided to keep mum about it, that’s her business.)
…Let me be clear about this. I’m not wild about the use of intimate-body-part-based slang in general, because it’s so often used pejoratively, in a my-gender-or-orientation-is-better-than-yours way. I don’t use it in my own work except when writing for adults, and then judiciously. But that’s my personal preference. What Dame Jacqueline feels is apropos for a given age is up to her. (And as a side issue, my guess is that most nine-year-olds in the UK know the word in question perfectly well, having heard it on the playground — and words a whole lot rougher — since they were in first form.) But when a single complaint from a member of the public can cause editorial changes like this… then somewhere, something is broken.
…Just a pre-caffeine thought.
This popped up earlier in the month, but I was busy and didn’t notice. (Possibly a good thing: that’s three weeks less spent fuming.)
A major publisher is starting to insert this clause in its boilerplate contracts for young adult writers:
If you act or behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person suitable to work with or be associated with children, and consequently the market for or value of the work is seriously diminished, and we may (at our option) take any of the following actions: Delay publication / Renegotiate advance / Terminate the agreement.
(growl) I know what my agent will have to say about that clause if it ever pops up in my neighborhood. (Not that I plan to misbehave. Far from it. But this is something the publisher has zero right to be trying to manage at the contract level, and the ways this clause could be misused / misinterpreted to get a publisher off various kinds of hook — at an innocent author’s expense — are many.) Anyway, Siân Pattenden in The Guardian is properly scathing about it.
Folks, just a quick word: this week has become unusually disrupted due to other work that’s going on in-house, so I’m going to have to postpone the chapter posting until just after the 27th. Unfortunately the chapter’s just not ready to go up yet, the in-house crisis won’t allow any work on any other projects until the weekend — when we’re due to be at the Discworld convention in Birmingham — and even then opportunities for work will be understandably spotty until Wednesday.
(sigh) I’m so sorry about this. Life this month just has not been going to plan. More shortly, however.
— if Fox has its way? A federal judge has denied Warner Bros.’ motion to dismiss 20th Century Fox’s current lawsuit against it, claiming that Fox still owns rights in the Watchmen project dating back to the 1990’s. And the release of “Watchmen” is presently scheduled for March ‘09.
This one could get very messy. (Side thought: did somebody at Warner neglect to sacrifice a goat to the Movie Gods this year? Or did the statute of limitations run out on that particular goat, maybe a few weeks after “The Dark Knight” premiered? They haven’t been having a very good month, what with one thing and another… ETA: Variety’s discussion of this situation suggests they haven’t had a very good six months.) But Nikki Finke suggests:
…The court is still contemplating Fox’s motion for an injunction. This is indeed a stunning development which could imperil Warner Bros’ entire 2009 movie slate. Sources point out to me that Warner Bros had a similar problem with the Dukes Of Hazzard movie before Judge Feess and had to pay tens of millions of dollars to release the film.
(wry look) And here’s an idle thought: You have to wonder if the angry prayers of hundreds of thousands of cranked-off Harry Potter fans have suddenly been half-answered. What does Warner do if it can’t release Watchmen in March ‘09? Well, how about plugging “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” into the gap? March ‘09 wouldn’t be November ‘08, but it wouldn’t be July ‘09 either…
This German website, when you click one or another spot on the main image, shows you both the inside and the outside of a package of food — that is, the difference between the “artist’s impression” / “serving suggestion” of a package, and what the contents really look like when you open the package and/or prepare them.
Some really frightening contrasts here and there. This one, for example. Normally I really like Zurcher geschnetzletes. It’s a Swiss dish, native to Zurich: the second word in the name comes from a word meaning to cut something into strips or thin slices. It normally involves strips of veal in a cream sauce with mushrooms (morels if you’re lucky), and it’s served with spaetzli (or other noodles) or rösti. But after seeing this stuff — ewwwww. I think I’m off the ‘schnetzli for a while.
So who else remembers that great line from the film Crazy People? It featured Dudley Moore as an off-the-rails, burnt-or-burning-out ad exec who is chucked into a psychiatric hospital and then winds up (with the assistance of some of his fellow patients, one of them played by Darryl Hannah) doing something absolutely unthinkable: basing print and TV ad campaigns on the truth.
There are some hilarious fake ads in the film. “Buy Volvo! It’s boxy, but it’s good!”, one urges. Or: “Porsche! It’s a little too small for you to get laid inside. But you’ll get laid as soon as you get out!” And at the end of the film, there’s also this wildly un-PC fake Sony commercial that explains why Eastern electronics are so superior to Western ones.
…Brought to you by a company that specializes in OTC antidiarrheal preparations. This would seem at first glimpse like a really useful online resource.
However, alas, there’s a catch. It appears that if you are anywhere but in the continental US, you are (so to speak: forgive me if the idiom suggests itself…) s**t out of luck. I guess the rest of us are all just going to have to hold it in.