Apologies for the long drought between blogs. Has the world produced less news of interest, or have I been delayed by my crippling donut addiction? Let’s pretend it’s the former. But for now, I offer some shiny information baubles that have caught my eye. The Green Fairy Lives I’ve always had a fascination with absinthe, the only alcoholic drink (that I know of) to come with its own supernatural mythology. And what a deliciously creepy mythology it is! The drink itself is supposed to be infused with "la fée verte,” or the green fairy, a tormentor of the mind and soul—one happily … [Read more...]
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Robots and Cats
It's the roundup—all the happenings that sparked enough of my interest this week to inspire a blog post. I wage a constant battle NOT to notice things so that I can get more novel-writing done, so this list represents a tragic defeat by the forces of fascination. The war against distraction is real, my friends. Walking Stoically Through a European Rave I saw the new Mission Impossible. I think this installment is called…Falling from High Places Really Fast While Fighting? It was fantastic, a great time, highly recommended if you are a fan of fun. I like fun. The film hooked me … [Read more...]
An Urgent Report on Terribly Important Things
As the days and weeks go by, certain news stories, trivia bombs, and random developments in the Weird catch my attention. When these items reach a critical mass in my brain (i.e., I’m about to forget a bunch of them), I rush here to share. My mind can hold about as much information as a single fortune cookie strip at any one time (excluding the lottery numbers), and not a byte more. So… Important Cold War Dental History Update It turns out the secret agent cyanide tooth is a myth. I always suspected this—you’d kill yourself biting into an almond--but it still hurt when Mental Floss … [Read more...]
The Best Ideas I Ever Had
After years of unedited additions, I recently decided to clean up my chaotic “story ideas” document. Most writers have one. Mine had gotten a bit unruly, and I thought scraping some mold off the bread would do it—and my brain—some good. The document has three general tiers. The top tier is a list of well-developed ideas, each with several paragraphs of notes. The second tier details less-developed but fairly complete story ideas usually boiled down to a few sentences. The final tier is a list of random scenes, images, or ideas often scribbled or typed in incomplete phrases. They … [Read more...]
Non-Toxic Dining for a World Without Donuts
A second Revolution Donuts location has opened here in Atlanta. I now live right between the two of them, no more than a three-minute drive to each. I like donuts. Revolution Donuts makes new and magical contributions to the donut genre. It’s a problem. I do have some self-control, but it’s in situations like this—faced with an embarrassment of plenty—that my imagination runs toward the hypothetical opposite. I’ve written about which insects you can eat when civilization stops producing donuts. This time, I decided to go full-toddler diet and learn what non-food items I could eat … [Read more...]
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