First off, if said hypothetical dungeon did exist it wouldn’t contain rooms variously dedicated to Warhammer, punishing infidels, housing mid-level web celebrities in padded cells, and a bestiary of semi-magical creatures. It would not, I repeat, not run for some 2.3 miles and be populated by orcs and goblins in it’s lower reaches. And I certainly wouldn’t be using this hypothetical dungeon to house resources and weapons for a planned armed take-over of the Western United States.

While I am greatly appreciative of Gilgrim’s gift from the ol’ Comic Con de San Diego, I am quite sad about missing it. Not only was Phase II thwarted by Gilgrim’s insistence on being “law abiding” but Neil Gaiman was also in attendance. For those not in the know, Neil Gaiman’s writing ranks somewhere between air and water in the “List of Things I Can’t Live Without.” Of course, I have met Neil Gaiman once, but that was at a signing for Anansi Boys, so that doesn’t really count.

Now, though, I find out that Gilgrim is going to PAX on his company’s dime!

That’s some kind of damn injustice if you ask me.

I mean, great for him sure, but what about Kilian, huh? When’s gonna be my time?

Couldn’t really think of a title here, so I figured I would ramble a bit until I felt like there was certainly the hint of something being said without, in fact, anything actually being said.

I feel I have achieved this goal.

Now then, the following image was co-opted from Poor Mojo’s Newswire (which itself, co-opted said image from Boing Boing, which itself co-opted said image from L-space…and the internets continue to spiral on…)

Having just finished reading (and, ahem, listening to the audio book) Making Money I look upon this diagram and think that it does a disservice to the discworld series.

You can certainly pick up any of the books, at any time, and start reading. Pratchett does such a good job of summarizing past events when it is necessary that you don’t need to have read everything that has come before. Case in point, in Making Money he references some events from Feet of Clay. Now Feet of Clay is a standard, Pratchett length novel, but in Making Money he talks about some of the events in Feet of Clay for a paragraph, but that’s all the reader really needs to understand the context in which the events in the current novel are happening.

But to break the novels up into several “mini-series” within the larger framework of the universe takes away from how Pratchett developed the world. He did not sit down and write five novels based on Ryncewind and then said “Now I’m going to write some books on the City Watch.” The entire universe evolved organically from Pratchett’s mind. The narratives came up out of the ether and Pratchett put them down as they came. There was no prescribed path through the world as he was creating it.

Maybe I take slight offense at trying to break the series down like this because I read it in order of publication and I believe that everything I do is best. I can certainly understand the desire to break the novels down into more easily “digestable” chunks, rather than thinking about 30+ novels as a series (and this list doesn’t take into account all of the anciallary works like the Mapp’s, the Yearbooks, Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook, the RPG, etc.).

On some level, this is just me being nit-picky. Whenever anyone comes into the book store and asks for a recommendation in Sci-Fi and Fantasy I always bring up Pratchett. The more people that read him, the better the world will be, I believe, so if such a breakdown helps someone approach the series I should certainly support that.

OK…well…maybe I had no real point then.

Why the fuck didn’t I know that Brian K Vaughn (yes THAT Brian K Vaughn, and that one too…) was brought on to the writing team for Lost at the end of last season?

Where the hell have I been?

What inane bullshit have I been doing instead of worshiping at the newest shrine consecrated in the holy and sacred religion of “Vaughnomism”?

As that bastion of entertainment news, the New York Times, has reported, today the WGA is supposed to announce whether or not its members will begin a strike on November 1.

Now I like writers, having aspirations in that field, and I generally like shows that have good writing. When you get right down to it, writing is the foundation on which any good film or TV series is built.

But after coming across this…for lack of a better word…abomination, I have to wonder if the strike wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Seriously, what was the thought process behind this show, Viva Laughlin.

“So I have a good idea for a show. Let’s take that crappy show set in Vegas, you know, what’s it called…the one so good that they moved it to Fridays…oh, right Las Vegas. So let’s take that, move it to an even crappier town, and then stock it full of contrived characters that sound like they came out a 6th rate Raymond Chandler knockoff.”

Ripley Holden?!

Nicky Fontana!?

Seriously, these are your character names. Why not just go with Cool Hero, and Evil Villain.

If this is what “professional” writers are coming up with, then clearly the ranks of TV writers need to be culled.

You know, I might not care so much if this were on, like FX or TBS, or some other cable station. If it were, then I’d assume this show did not take itself too seriously and it might actually work (take, Monk, for example which is AWESOME!). But, oh no, Viva Laughlin is on CBS, at 8 PM on Sundays! What the hell is a broadcast station giving an hour of primetime to this crap for!

And Laughlin!

Seriously!

I haven’t been there in about a decade, and hopefully I’ll never return. I don’t care how many fucking Starbucks and P.F. Chang’s it boasts. At it’s core, it’s still a place old ladies go to play nickel slots!

Shit, I can already tell that I’ve written stuff way better than this show and I haven’t even seen the show. Plus, I’m not a good writer. Everyone involved in Viva Laughlin should be officially blackballed, as of this moment, and never allowed to set foot in either California or New York ever again.

I’m not exactly sure what prompted the following story. It was a fairly normal workshop, by all accounts, but at one point last night, Powers launched into what, I believe, is possibly the best story I’ve ever heard. Or, at the very least, the best story about the writing world that I’ve ever heard. So I’m going to now “go into” the voice of Powers, in an attempt to recreate the story as accurately as possible….

But let it be known that this is not, or in no way should be construed as, an accurate reproduction of the ACTUAL words that Powers’ said. It’s a dramatic recreation, if you will, for effect…

“So I got my hands on a German version of one of my books. And I noticed that at one point in the book, the typefaced changed for a couple of pages, then when back to the normal typeface. I wasn’t sure if it was just a printer error or not. So some time later I had someone who actually read German take a look at the book.

So at the point in the book where the hero gets off the phone and says to another character, ‘She’s tied to a railroad track, we only have ten minutes, let’s go,’ and then the jump a car and take off.

But where the typeface changes, this version goes, ‘She’s tied to a railroad track, we only have ten minutes,’ and the other character says, ‘But do we have time for soup?’ ‘Well, what kind of soup?’ ‘Maggi Soup.’ ‘What kinds do we have?’ ‘All 12 delicious flavors.’ and it continued like that for a bit before returning to the story.

So I checked another one of my German books and the same thing was there. Then I called William Gibson, who had the same German publisher, and asked him if he had ever seen different typeface in any of his books released in Germany, and the exact same thing had happened in Neuromancer.

Now my point here isn’t that I object to the advertisement being inserted, but that if you want it in there, let me write it. Plus, it was always inserted at a moment of really high tension, and one character would say, ‘But do we have time for soup?’ Wouldn’t it make more sense to just put it in a place where it looks natural?”

And a few minutes with google shows that it must have been a fairly common practice for this particular publisher. I’d be interested to know if,

A. It was only done with sci-fi and fantasy writers?

and,

B. If anyone, anywhere, has a catalogue of all the books/editions that this was done in, cause that would be something worth collecting.