A present to him from Gracie Allen…
[tags]George Burns, Gracie Allen, eBay, Hermes[/tags]
Okay, now I’m rolling my eyes really hard. Not yet completely freaked…until this happens twice.
Via the excellent kerithwyn:
Unfortunately, I need to report an “oops” regarding the lulu.com printing of Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South. I ordered it and received the shipment very quickly…only to find that while the cover was correct, the interior text was that of another book entirely, some sort of evangelical text: http://www.lulu.com/content/387049
And goodness, just look at the blurb on this:
Written from a completely Christian perspective, Steve Aiken has just released his fourth book: There Will Be No Rescue. As a former police officer, bodyguard, D.C. lobbyist, and radio talk show host, Steve tells the story of his fascinating life with a self-help approach that will certainly encourage the reader. From the pinnacle of success to absolute ruin and public scorn; from breaking his neck to coming back years later and winning a state racquetball championship; From running one of the most heated congressional campaigns in the country to losing almost everything in his life again, Steve holds nothing back in sharing the life lessons he has learned.
Um, well, neither do I. Is it too much to hope that Lulu will reverse the compliment and publish the contents of A Wind from the South inside that guy’s covers?
…Oh, well, okay, I guess it is. Never mind. But back to —
Life Lessons DD Has Learned and Holds Nothing Back in Sharing:
*Never tug on Syndrome’s cape.
*Never play cards with a woman called Doc.
*Never get into a land war in Chryse Planitia.
*And the best of the rest of them are here.
[tags]Diane Duane, A Wind from the South, Raetian Tales, fantasy, science fiction, Lulu.com, whoops[/tags]
They’re singing it in the streets of Paris…and nearly everywhere else in France, apparently.
A song parodying soccer star Zinedine Zidane’s head butt in the World Cup final has soared to the top of the music charts in France.
“Coup de Boule” (“Head-Butt”) pokes fun at Zidane for ramming his head into the chest of Italy defender Marco Materazzi during the match July 9. Zidane was thrown out of the game, and Italy won on penalty kicks.
Lyrics warn listeners to “Watch out: it’s the head butt dance,” while a chorus of “Zidane, he hit him” plays over a repetitive African tune. “We lost the World Cup but we still laughed a lot,” the lyrics say.
Two French producers from La Plage records composed the song in 30 minutes after watching Zidane’s pique on television. Nine days later, the record had sold 60,000 copies in France, according to a spokesman for Warner Music, which is working on an English-language version. Spanish and Italian versions of the song already exist.
And an amusing detail: the song got its start on the Net. The writers (who work writing advertising music) wrote it as “therapy” to get over the disappointment of France’s lost. they emailed it to fifty of their friends…and after that, it got loose on the Web. Now music publishers are lined up at these guys’ door to buy the rights…
Apparently the best version of the music video has been taken down because the footage of Zidane’s header was used without permission. But it can still be found here and there: look quick before it vanishes. A version without the action (not as interesting or funny…) is here.
Catchy tune, anyway. Those of you who have trouble with “earworms” might want to avoid it. BTW, a translation is here, at Etienne Marcel’s weblog. Another translation of the chorus has it as “Zidane hit ‘im, Zidane the hit man!”
(…and the writer boom-chikka-booms off to get her tea… Damn, that thing does get into your head. But then the composers are ad music writers…)
[tags]Coup de Boule, Zinedine Zidane, France, World Cup[/tags]
I see that the Young Wizards series’s Kit has made the 175 Cool Boys From Children’s Literature list. Neat!
Also, a nice mention of the series in/on Blogcritics.org from Tiffany Leigh…
[tags]Young Wizards, Christopher K. Rodriguez, Kit Rodriguez, Diane Duane[/tags]
Oh yes. Read the details at BookBurger and be horrified. I desperately wish I could believe that this is a hoax…but I very much doubt it is.
See, you can be in these people’s anthology of stories about gratitude to the Divine for things that have happened to you. All you have to do is pay them between $300 and $500 for the privilege! (Depending on when you sign up.)
And free brainwashing is (included | required)! Get this:
**ALL STORY SUBMITTING AUTHORS are strongly encouraged to participate in our three month thankfulness course to help ensure that your story is coming from a place of thankfulness and presence enough to qualify for our series.**
…Once you have reached a state of unconditional love & gratitude for WHATEVER it is that you believe is getting in your way, we will then work with you on sharing your personal story with our readers.
The purpose of this course is to assist you in bringing whatever issue you are dealing with to a place of thankfulness, presence and love and to then be able to write your story from this perspective. If you are unable to do so even after completing the course, we reserve the right to turn down your submission.
Uh huh. …And there’s more!
Up to 1% of the net profit from the book sales of the book your story is published in for the lifetime of the book, PLUS, a percentage of the net profit of the entire book series.
The option to include at the end of your story a biography about yourself and any service you offer, for example, other books you have published, your website, contact info, etc.
Thousands of dollars worth of marketing and publicity. This series will be translated into different languages and marketed to millions of people around the world.
You have the opportunity to earn money for the lifetime of the book!
Leaving aside that the business model sounds totally whacked… Never mind. Just back away slowly. Then run. Run, do not walk.
(headclutch)
[tags]self publishing, vanity publishing[/tags]
As if Peter’s horsefly bite reaction wasn’t enough to deal with right now, the power outages yesterday took out the data provider of Groupee, the firm that hosts YoungWizards.net and the Young Wizards discussion forums. Both site and forums have been down since around 5:30 PM EDT yesterday.
Most of Groupee’s hosted sites are back up now, but our site and forums are hosted on a server which was hit so hard that the hardware failed. Groupee is presently replacing the hardware, and then both site and forums will be replaced from backups.
I’ll post something here as soon as things are running again. (BTW, YoungWizards.com and the Errantry Concordance are unaffected, though naturally the main page at YW.com isn’t displaying the feeds of messages from the discussion forums.)
[tags]outage, power outage, Groupee, Young Wizards discussion forums, Young Wizards[/tags]
Over at Kittenbreak.com, things are looking cute…
But some things are rather broken.
May a kindly Providence guard us from the day when we need an adoption lawyer to take home a kitten….
Meanwhile, we keep our use of AdSense to a minimum until we’re sure it can be controlled. 
[tags]Google AdSense, Google, whoops[/tags]
It’s not that I haven’t been annoyed enough by events in the Middle East these past couple weeks. But now it turns out that, as if it all wasn’t bad enough to begin with, someone I really like (regardless of never having met him) is stuck in the middle of it.
“we are currently shooting an episode of NR in Lebanon–and it should be video gold. Those kookie-krazy kids from Hezbollah were popping off their weapons today(shooting in the air, I gather)–and Israel has been bombing and mobilizing a division in the South with reported land and sea strikes… (See today’s news–and quotes from Israeli PM). While the party continues in Beirut–there’s a lot of concern that the Israelis will follow up with strikes on infrastructure (like the power grid). And we were due to head to the Bekka Valley tomorrow. BTW..this town is Party Central!”
Keep your head down, Tony…
[tags]Bourdain, Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations, Lebanon[/tags]
…whose stuff I’ve always loved, especially the line about the new definition of “apostrophe”: “Look out, an S is coming!”. But these is so much good sense here that I’ve copied the whole thing. (And there’s a link back to the source.)
Fourteen Things That It Took Me More Than 50 Years To Learn—by Dave Barry
- Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
- If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”
- There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”
- People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
- You should not confuse your career with your life.
- Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
- Never lick a steak knife.
- The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
- You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
- You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
- There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
- The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.
- A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
- Your friends love you anyway.
Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
…Perfection. 
[tags]Dave Barry, humor[/tags]
Seriously.
(It puts me in the Elohim. Interesting: I didn’t know they were a Choir. Oh well — I guess angelic mileage varies.)
nk(t+1) — nk(t) = w(k-1)(t)*n(k-1)(t) — wk(t)*nk(t) + sigma(k,1)*u(t)
Or in other words: Sniping is the best way to win on eBay.
[tags]eBay, sniping[/tags]
A cute bit of video. Play with the flying CDs! Bounce around on the keyboard! Chew on the mouse cord! Wheee!
[tags]kitten, cat, Apple, Mac[/tags]