Hugo Categories We Probably Don't Need

Some time ago -- I keep meaning to save this here, but keep also forgetting again -- there was a Twitter hashtag #newHugocategories, which was generally an outgrowth of the Puppy eruption.

I had a bunch of suggestions of my own, and since I think I'm witty and smart, I still like them. So I wanted to preserve them somewhere more searchable than Twitter.

Anyway, here were my modest suggestions, in order:

Best Sea-Lioning of the Hugo Nomination Process #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Best Insectoid and/or Saurian Uber-Warrior Alien Race Undefeated in the Universe Until the Rise of MAN! #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Best "Humanity Is the Nastiest, Toughest Race Around" Explanation That Even Campbell Would Have Scoffed At. #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Best Author Neurosis Embedded in an Ostensibly Fictional Work #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Least Changed Contemporary Political Talking Points in a Book Set Millennia in the Future #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Least Exhibited Ability to Comprehend That Other People Do Both Exist and Think Differently from the Author #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Best Cover That You Would Never Ever Want Another Person To See You Reading #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Laziest Evocation of Sub-Planet Stories "Classic" SF by a Writer Not Even Born at the Time #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Least-Changed Retelling of Your Last Gaming Session #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Worst Science by Someone Who Should Know Better #newHugocategories

— Andrew Wheeler (@Hornswoggler) April 11, 2015

Complaining About Cover Art, Once Again

I still have a few moldy oldies buried here and there, the stray survivors of my attempts to bring everything I've ever written online onto Antick Musings, and, as I discover that I've missed them, I'll be remedying that problem.

Some ideas never get old -- such as saying "my favorite author's new book has a horrible cover! X'thor the Undaunted has three horns, arranged in a spiral shape, and Missy, Princess of Goats not only is much prettier than that, but she has green eyes! Why didn't the author set the artist right?" One such occasion came in April of 2002 on the Straight Dope Message Board, where I replied -- after several others saying similar things -- thusly:

Most authors have about as much control over the covers of their books as Juan Valdez does over the design of the coffee can.

RealityChuck [1] has already said most of what I could say, but let me just repeat that the point of a cover is not to accurately represent anything in the book. (Though it would certainly be nice if it did.) The point of a cover is to get people to a) pick the book up and then b) buy it. A cover that does this is a success; a cover that doesn't is a failure. Other considerations are secondary, but the next most important one is "will the reader think the book fits the cover." Angry Lead Skies has a guy in a fedora staring moodily at a whiskey glass while two fantasy types pose in the background; the book is a Chandleresque PI story set in a fantasy world -- so the cover does tell the reader what kind of book it is. Other points: Some artists and designers are better than others. The better ones tend to be more expensive and busy -- and they can't work on all the books that exist. So some books (especially mass-market midlist genre stuff, like the book in question), get covers done by people who aren't at the top of their field. (Though this obviously isn't a simple metric -- there are always great new artists starting out, and older artists coasting on their previous work.) Books that are cheaper and will make less money don't usually get the more expensive artists. Only a couple of genres -- SF/Fantasy and Romances (and not all of the latter, either) -- get the painted cover look to begin with. Most novels have stock photos or other "evocative" looking bits of art that tell the reader even less about the book. Glen Cook is a nice guy (and a good bookseller, too), but he's a very small fish in the publishing pond. He might get to recommend an artist occasionally, but that would be as far as his involvement in the cover goes. And I'd say that Garrett has a hat on the cover of most of the books because a fedora says "private detective." The only real alternative would be a trenchcoat (actually, both plus a cigarette would be the best), and I don't remember if he ever wears one of those. 


[1] Schenectady's own Chuck Rothman; as usual, the people making sense in an online discussion were all connected to science fiction.

In Which I Pose as a Physics Teacher

I have no idea why I thought I was qualified to offer this particular explanation about dark matter in a Straight Dope Message Board thread from 2000, and I'm not at all sure today if I got it right at all. And I'd triply not sure why I should bother to resurrect it now. But it's a long post, and I certainly seemed to know what I was talking about, so let's hope I was closer to right than wrong about the state of cosmological knowledge eleven years ago:

Since no one else has jumped in yet, let me start off.

First, the term generally used is "dark matter" (which you probably slightly misremembered), though sometimes you may hear references to "missing matter."

Now, on to my wildly simplified explanation: Why is this matter "missing?" Well, we (meaning cosmologists and physicists, not me personally) have a pretty good idea of the age of the universe, from evidence like the cosmic background radiation and the observed motions of distant galaxies. From these and other data, scientists have been able to determine roughly how much mass the universe must have. (Because we can observe the effects of gravity, and know how gravity operates, we can deduce how much mass there is.)

For example, the Milky Way (our favorite galaxy) can be seen to contain a whole lotta stars (400 billion, roughly, IIRC). Judging from the evidence of our solar system, in which the sun is by far the greatest concentration of mass (everything else is trivial compared to the sun), we can make a rough estimate of the amount of matter in the galaxy. That calculated amount is lower than the amount of matter the Milky Way needs to have to revolve and stay together in the way that we've observed it to do by a factor of ten. In other words, the matter we know if there is only 10% of the matter needed to make the system operate in the way we know it is operating. Whether or not the missing mass is composed of the same elementary particles as the matter we're familiar with (quarks up through protons and their friends to atoms) is not quite clear.

So, where is that mass? There are several theories.

MACHOs are MAssive Compact Halo Objects -- dark, extremely massive objects in space. These would most likely be neutron stars and/or black holes. One problem with this theory is that if you chuck that much matter into what's effectively a single point, the gravitational effects would be very obvious -- it wouldn't really be "missing."

WIMPs are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles -- theorized elementary particles that have great mass but only interact with "regular" matter rarely and weakly. The problem with this theory is that particles that interact weakly have so far without exception been massless or nearly so; in fact, many scientists believe that it's physically impossible for a particle to be both massive and weakly interacting.

Then there are the more exotic theories (which I think are actually gaining in popularity at the moment), such as that the matter is a function of space itself. I don't pretend to understand this one, but it seems to say that "empty" space itself has a measurable mass.

If you're really interested in the subject, I recommend you pick up a recent book called Quintessence by Lawrence Krauss. It's not easy reading, but it's a serious look at the missing matter problem from one of the major theorists of the day.

Memories of an Ill-Spent Youth

I'm still down in Florida, engaging in Sales-Meeting-type behavior, which leaves even less time for blogging than usual. (Though I did just catch up on my editorial cartoons -- there was a bumper crop of Osama-is-dead stuff that I hadn't gotten through yet -- and set a bunch of posts to go up tomorrow at Editorial Explanations.) So, instead of new content, here's something old, about which I now have deeply mixed feeling, since my older son is now 13 and I don't think he knows where my equivalent "dirty bits" are. On the other hand, he has been on the Internet, which is probably much worse. I'll have to ask him about it in, oh, ten or fifteen years.

This is another snippet resurrected from the Straight Dope Message Board; a thread there in 2005 asked the question "What books did you read for the 'dirty bits' when you were young?" I wandered somewhat from the topic, but here's what I wrote then:

My parents had a copy of Guy Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife in a small bookcase out in the den. I discovered it at the age of eleven or so, and it was very informative reading for a young boy. Of course, I then expected life to be like a '60s California wife-swapping ring, but that was a small price to pay.

In the same room there was a larger bookcase, with glass doors. It had a lock, but was nearly always unlocked. On the shelves were the usual '70s and '80s bestsellers -- Arthur Hailey, James Clavell, etc. I didn't pay much attention to it. And then, one day, I realized the books on one shelf sat slightly farther forward than the others. So, when no one else was home, I looked behind those books and found Anais Nin's Delta of Venus. It practically scorched my hands, and I dug it out as often as I possibly could.

Those two might be a bit off the subject for this conversation, since they're nearly all "dirty bits," but they are the books I remember fondly from my youth. (And also learning where my father kept the Playboys, around the same time.)

Favorite Editions

I'm still mining the content I wrote for other places -- in my case, mostly Usenet and bulletin boards -- in the last decade or so, and dragging it over here so that Antick Musings will be the Grand Unified Depository of all thing Andrew Wheelerish. This little squib, which most people would consider a bit of string too small to save, was originally posted to rec.arts.sf.written 11/1/00, and was part of a longer discussion about the topic clearly stated in the title:


The big one for me was the late '70s Avon editions of Zelazny's books (especially the Amber series) with those mostly-black covers and the great small illustrations by Ron Walotsky. There was something that just said to me: this is what a Zelazny book looks like.

I actually imprinted so hard that, years later, when I was doing a one-volume edition of "The First Chronicles of Amber," I made my art director use Walotsky for the cover and replicate that same look as much as possible. Hey, it may not be the reason most people go into publishing, but...

Titles That Were Not Used for Star Wars III

Back in 2002, Star Wars movie-watchers were in a state of shell-shock. We'd seen two very lousy movies recently, and were contemplating ways that the third movie of that trilogy could manage to be even worse. And so a thread arose on the Straight Dope Message Board, in which various people made up funny titles for then then still-forthcoming third movie. These were mine:

Star Wars (R): Episode III A Plague of Darths

Star Wars (R): Episode III Darth Darth Baby

Star Wars (R): Episode III Ewok Mania!

Star Wars (R): Episode III Why Should We care About These Annoying, Stuck-Up Jedi Knights, Anyway?

Star Wars (R): Episode III Eat the Happy Meal, Buy The Toy

Star Wars (R): Episode III Lots of Things Blow Up

Star Wars (R): Episode III Hi, My Name Is George Lucas, and You'll See Any Damn Thing I Put Out, No Matter How Stupid, Won't You?

Star Wars (R): Episode III Jar Jar -- Jedi!

Star Wars (R): Episode III Democracy Is Over-rated; Let's Let Some Robed Zen Idiots Rule the Universe

and, my personal hope:

Star Wars (R): Episode III Mace Windu, Funky Jedi

Lord of the Rings Bumper Stickers!

I haven't managed to post yet today, so, instead, here's some frivolity unearthed from the Straight Dope Message Board; this was my contribution to a thread which was, slightly reworded, exactly the same as my title now:

I'm on my way to [logo] The Gap of Rohan [/logo]

Still not King

Close Air Support Provided by Gwahir

My Other Car is a Fell Beast

How to Write a Novel

It was another long, tiring day, and none of the posts I'm "supposed" to write are inspiring me. So, instead, it's time for another dig into the ever-depleting archives to talk about something I have no personal experience of. My only excuse for the following advice to a wanna-be novelist -- given on the Straight Dope Message Board back in March of 2001 -- is that I was ten years younger and ten years more eager then. I still think it makes sense, of course, or I wouldn't resurrect it, but if I were a young writer, I wouldn't listen to me:

I came across an interesting quote the other day, I believe it was from E.L. Doctorow (and I'll have to paraphrase it, since I don't remember the exact wording) --

Thinking about a book is not writing. Researching is not writing. Talking about the book you're going to write is not writing. Sitting down and putting the words on paper is writing.

That's the main advice I'd give anyone who wants to write. Don't think about it, or plan it, or talk about what you want to write. Just sit down and write. Try to do it every day -- if you can for the same time every day. Try to make yourself write a certain amount each day, even if it's only one page. Don't get up until you've written something, even if you tear it up the next day.

The second lesson is not to think about publication until the story is finished (unless you're already published, or have a contract). Right now, your job is to write. When that job is done, it might be time for the "sell this story" job. It might not; many writers' "first novels" are actually the third or fourth they've completed. Your first work won't be your best; it might not be publishable. But don't put the cart before the horse; don't start dreaming about your book on the bestseller list while you're stuck with plot problems on page twenty-seven. Just write the thing first; then worry about the rest.

Oh and "reading books on writing" is another popular way of avoiding writing. Those books can be useful, but only read them in addition to writing, not instead of writing. Don't let them take away any writing time.

Long-Dead Memes: What Was On the Cover of Time When You Were Born?

Yet another bit exhumed from the archives of the Straight Dope Message Board, which was the kind of place that bred memes in those days when blogs were rare and the word "meme" wasn't generally used for this kind of thing anyway. This particular thread was from 2005, and I think the topic is adequately explained in my title:

The Supertourist: Temple Fielding. The beginning of the linked article is no help in explaining who the hell this oddly-drawn man is.

Apparently he said "As a member of an escorted tour, you don't even have to know the Matterhorn isn't a tuba." (Thanks, Google!) That seems to be the most (or possibly the only) interesting thing about this schmo.

I smell a metaphor about my own life, and frankly, sir, I don't like it.

The Syllabus for My Non-Existent SF Course

This is another reclaimed post; I wrote it for a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board back in 2000 and forgot about it for a decade. I obviously haven't taught this or any other course, but, if someone wants to throw enough money at me, I could be persuaded. Also, looking at this a decade later, I doubt there would be time to discuss these works more than very superficially, and it's a very heavy reading load, too. (That 15-week semester might also be unsupportable, as well.) Perhaps it's best that I stayed in the private sector.

Assumptions: one semester at a reasonably good school (i.e., you can expect the students to read one longish book a week), on the university level. I'm assuming a 15-week course, and that I'm just covering genre SF (i.e., post-Gernsback and mostly US).

Week 1: Introduction, etc. Start in on short fiction.

Week 2: Short fiction of the '40s and '50s. Depending on what's in print, I'd use Silverberg's The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1 or Healy & McComas's Adventures in Time and Space or maybe one or more of James Gunn's The Road to Science Fiction series.
Necessary texts:
"Fondly Farenheit" by Alfred Bester
"And He Built a Crooked House" and/or "All You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein
"A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum
"Microcosmic God" and/or "The Man Who Lost the Sea" by Theodore Sturgeon
"Scanners Live in Vain" by Cordwainer Smith
"The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin

Week 3: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Week 4: The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov

Week 5: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Week 6: Short Fiction No. 2: The '60s and '70s. Possibly using Dangerous Visions or Again, Dangerous Visions (both edited by Harlan Ellison) as a starting point.
Necessary texts:
"Aye, and Gomorrah" by Samuel R. Delany
one or more short J.G. Ballard pieces, perhaps "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race"
one or more early Roger Zelazny stories, most likely "A Rose for Ecclesiastes"
"Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven
"The Deathbird" by Harlan Ellison (though there are several other, equally good choices from this author)
"The Fifth Head or Cerberus" or "The Death of Doctor Island" by Gene Wolfe
"The Man Who Walked Home" by James Tiptree, Jr.
one or more John Varley stories, probably "The Persistence of Vision"

Week 7: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Week 8: Dune by Frank Herbert

Week 9: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Week 10: The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed by Ursula K. le Guin

Week 11: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and Ringworld by Larry Niven

Week 12: Gateway by Frederik Pohl (or possibly Man Plus, also by Pohl)

Week 13: Startide Rising by David Brin and/or Ender's War by Orson Scott Card

Week 14: Neuromancer by William Gibson and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Week 15: Short fiction No. 3: the '80s and '90s. There's no one book that could cover this; it would have to be a Kinko's-style packet.
Necessary texts:
"Sandkings" by George R.R. Martin
one or more stories by Lucius Shepard, probably "Fire Zone Emerald"
"Swarm" by Bruce Sterling
one or more stories by Greg Egan, including "Luminous" and/or "Oceanic"
something by Connie Willis, possibly "Fire Watch" or "The Last of the Winnebagos"
something by Greg Bear, probably "Blood Music"

And then the final exam. I can see varying the list from year-to-year (maybe swapping in Childhood's End or 2001 for the Clarke selection, adding an early Heinlein novel, varying the short story selection, etc), but this is what I'd use as a framework to present the post-war history of (mostly American) SF.

(If I had a whole year, I'd start with theory -- using Brian Aldiss's Trillion year Spree -- and take the first four weeks or so to do the 19th century, starting with Frankenstein and moving up through Poe and the various other proto-SF writers to Verne and Wells.)

Odd Cover Songs We'll Probably Never Get

Back in mid-2002, there was a thread about cover songs over on the Straight Dope Message Board, and I started thinking of things that would be wonderful but that never actually would happen. This was my list:

I'd like to see Nine Inch Nails cover "Horse With No Name" and instantly (with no lyrics changes) make it sound like a song about heroin...

Then I'd like to see Syd Barrett cover any random NIN song and turn "I want to fuck you like an animal" into a whimsical expression of delight. (Hell, I'd like to see Syd Barrett out in public at all...)

I'd like to see Tom Waits cover "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," just because it would be cool.

I'd like to force Billy Bragg to cover "Capitalism" (the Oingo Boingo song), but that would probably take an infantry division.

Britney Spears could do worse than to give an all-Liz Phair concert. Besides "Flower," it would be fun to hear "Fuck and Run" and "Chopsticks"...

How about Elton John doing "Kiss Off?"

U2 could do a killer "Beat On The Brat" if they really wanted to.

And I'd love to see what Yes, circa 1984, would do with "Bitchin' Camaro."

Let No Impediments Mar the Marriage of Two True Hornswogglers

This blog gets way too focused on a few topics -- perhaps because I am a monomaniac -- but I do have occasional hopes to shift that. So, in the hopes of changing my tone now and then, and because I'm still too befuddled by a head cold to finish up any of the posts I've been working on this week, have another old scarp of Hornswogglery.

Back in 2000, there was a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board about how various folks there had given or received wedding proposals. And this was my story -- all dates accurate only through nine years ago:

We'd been dating for about five years (including college, so it's not quite as bad as that sounds), and the not-yet-Mrs. Hornswoggler had been dropping increasingly large hints and starting "where is this relationship going" conversations. I'm a real stickler for doing things "right" (which is whatever I irrationally think is the way things must be done), so I didn't want to officially become engaged without having the ring and everything. (She, on the other hand, would have been perfectly happy with a commitment from me.)

So, I manage to save up some money from my low-paying editorial job, make a down payment on a ring, and plan to give it to her on her birthday. But the ring is ready a week early, so I pick it up then. La Contessa and I were going to the New York Renaissance Faire that Saturday (some friends worked there), and I brought the ring with me.

Halfway through the day, we're sitting and resting on a hay bale in the shade, and I can't wait any longer. So I pull out the ring and give it to her. I was so nervous (so she tells me; I don't have any real memory myself) that what I said was "this is for you." She was deliriously happy, but did have to prod me into actually saying something in the form of a question.

We run back to show the friends the ring, and she starts sneezing violently. Turns out that she's allergic to hay (and had mostly forgotten, since she's in its vicinity about once every decade or so), and spent the rest of the day beaming and snuffling.

We got married about a year and a half later (I told her I didn't even want to plan a date until I had the ring paid off). It will be seven years in May, and we've got a 2-year-old son, so I think things worked out pretty well.

Thing 1's Sense of Humor at Age 5

A cold is befuddling my brain, so I'm not going to attempt anything new tonight. Instead, I dug this piece out of the archives of the Straight Dope Message Board, where I used to spend a lot of time in the early aughts. I wrote the following about the child I now call "Thing 1" back in July of 2003, in a thread about how none of our very young children could tell a joke to save their lives:

My five-year-old son likes to tell me a joke every night at bedtime. Now, he's been doing this for about six months now, so, without any new jokes coming into the rotation, so you'd think we'd both be bored with it, right?

Ah, but you didn't count on the power of joke mutation! The L'il Swoggler (LS for short) started off with the usual "Why did the chicken cross the road?" -- an old standby, always popular. But, whenever I give him an answer, his punchline changes. As with everybody else's kids, it doesn't make much sense, but it changes.

These days, it goes something like this:

LS: Daddy, why did the cow cross the road?
GBH: I don't know, why?
LS: To get to the cow-cow!
GBH: Well, goodnight sweetie. Sleep tight.
LS: Wait, Daddy! What about the second joke?
GBH: OK.
LS: Why did the cow cross the road?
GBH: Because it was tired?
LS: No, silly -- to get to the mauw-mauw!

He gets the timing of a punchline -- he sells it the right way, and all that -- but he doesn't seem to have realized that a punchline is supposed to do things like make sense or even contain recognizable words.

And he goes to kindergarten in a month and a half -- who knows what that will do to his sense of humor...
----------------
Listening to: Tom Waits - Lucinda / Ain't Goin' Down To The Well [Live]
via FoxyTunes

Sayings That Didn't Catch On

It's another weekend in which I've been doing other things instead of writing blog posts (cleaning Thing 1's room and playing too much Lux, to mention two of them), so I'll dig some things out of closets to post here. This is one of my various bits of string saved from elsewhere on the Internet, and I'll toss in a quote in a little while.

I wrote these back in 2003 for a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board called "Failed Maxims," and they still amused me when I found them again. So I'm rerunning them:

The little lamb knows not the ways of the lobster.

When the sun is high, God is nigh. When the sun is low, God's gotta go.

A tree in the hand is worth two birds in a hat, or three on Sundays.

Who know the secret of the song of the cuckoo? Well, there is this one guy, but he's not telling.

Austria bakes; Romania shakes.

Man cannot live on breadfruit alone, but pineapple is another story.

Do unto others.

The difference between "should" and "will" is farther than the square of the hypotenuse.

A knocked door never watches.

A set of twins is a joy to behold, but triplets turn evil without a scold.
----------------
Listening to: Beach House - Some Things Last A Long Time
via FoxyTunes

Things You Just Can't Say Anymore

On Sundays, I often drag out old material from the archives, since there are fewer people on the 'net, and I'm spending a lot of time working on my "Reviewing the Mail" post for Monday morning. This is one of those times.


I wrote the following, which abruptly ended a thread about the average intelligence of various racial groups, on the Straight Dope Message Board back in 2000, replying to someone else's cite of a serious scientific paper from 1866:

Man, I really miss the days when you could title a serious scientific paper "Observations on an Ethnic Classification of Idiots" and get away with it.

Just being able to use the word "idiots" in a clinical sense would be wonderful:

"Your diagnosis, doctor?"
"Mr. Smith, I won't lie to you...your son is an idiot. He scored a 95% on the moron scale, has an well-developed feeb factor, and is probably the purest textbook case of nincompoopery that I've ever seen."

First Lines of Novels I Never Expect to Write

For whatever reason, I haven't managed to make a real post over these past few days -- possibly due to shock from having to go back to work -- so I'm pulling something out of the archives, just to prove that I'm still alive. So have this bit of frivolity, which came from a first lines thread on the Straight Dope Message Board back in 2000:

Understand, first of all, that I take no responsibility for what happened in Taos.

(or)

That bastard always had it in for me, since the day we met in Basic.

(or)

Lester was a perfectly ordinary man in all respects, save one: he had abnormally large elbows.

(or)

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bands that have connected their neighbors with life, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. I hold these truths to be self-evident: that Arthur Gallo deserved to die and is now burning in hell.

(or)

There's no good way to tell a man he's already dead.

Movie Sequels You Are Unlikely to See

It's a major holiday today, which means the Internet is quiet. And the basement, where I'm typing this right now, is too cold. So I'm going to go somewhere warmer and leave blogging for tomorrow. But, just so I have a post dated today, I'll pull something frivolous out of the archives. 


The Straight Dope Message Board, where I hung out a lot at the beginning of this decade, had more than its fair share of silliness. And one of the particular bits of silliness was a thread about unlikely sequels to movies -- or, to be more specific, unlikely titles for movie sequels. These were my contributions:

The Eighth Sign
The Sum of All Fears Divided by The Sum of the Hypotenuse
Black Monday
Red Dragon With A Yellow Racing Stripe
Leaping Tiger, Revealed Dragon
Nicholas Dimeby
The Other Hours
Married for a Little While
Darn, You Caught Me
Some More About Schmidt
Two Weeks Notice 2: Resume Hell
Star Binding Arbitrations
Monsters, LLC: Going International
Raiders of the Ark That Got Lost Again
Landing Some Miles Away When the Wind Dies Down
A Thing That's Common To Both Guys and Girls
Re-Adaptation (a novelization)

and, finally:

The Lord of the Rings: Isn't There Some Way We Can Get a Fourth Movie Out of This?
(Formerly known as The Amazing Adventures of Beren and Luthien)

Exceptionally Unlikely Titles for Children's Books

Instead of writing a new post for today, I spent the last hour cleaning up and adding content to my "Reviewing the Mail" post from Monday; I guess I am obsessive. So, have some old content repurposed, so that there's an Antick Musings post dated today.

This is another post I'm exhuming from the Straight Dope Message Board, where I used to spend a lot of time in the early aughts. Again, the topic wasn't my idea, but there was a thread on this subject in 2002, and these were my contributions:

• Eric Carle's The Very Tourette's Angleworm
• Mercer Mayer's Little Critter and the Too-Friendly Babysitter
• The Berenstein Bears Learn About Date Rape
• One Little Whore: A 9th Avenue Counting Book
• Pus Is Yellow: A 9th Avenue Book of Colors
• My Little Golden Book of War Atrocities
• Marc Brown's Arthur's Mother's New "Special Friend"
• Divorce Means That Your Parents Hate You
• The DK Complete Suicide Handbook
• I Spy Naked Boobies
• Blue's Clues: Blue Goes Into Heat
• Dora The Explorer: Over Sendero Luminoso Mountain
• Bob the Builder: Gay Subtext? What Gay Subtext?
• Jesus Died So You Could Eat White Bread: A Baptist Book of Guilt
• You Know, Your Grandmother Would Have Killed To Have Had That Gefiite Fish When She Died in Auschwitz: A Jewish Book of Guilt
• The Virgin Sees What You Do With Your Private Parts And Cries: A Catholic Book of Guilt
• Harry Potter and the Succubus

The Hornswoggler Family's Middle-Earth Names

I'm back from my business trip, but I'm feeling grumpy, depressed, and uninterested in blogging -- partly because of the recent travel & vacation, partly because of how much work is piling up at the office (this is the busy season), and partly because of one particular e-mail I just saw today. I do hope to bounce back in the next couple of days, but, right now, if I could be bothered to write, there would be nothing but an epic level of doom-mongering.

But, luckily, I still have some old bits and bobs stored away for times just like this.

I'm not sure which name-generator this came from, but it happened in July of 2003, so that site is probably long gone by now. I posted this on a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board, at a time when many of us there were checking to see what our names would be as hobbits and elves:

First I tried my real name --

As a hobbit: Mungo Sandybanks ("Yessir, Mr. Frodo, sir, I'll get those floors washed right now sir...")

As an elf: Valandil Nenharma ("Oh, Valinor is just too crowded this season, darling! Why don't we visit your charming cousins in Lorien instead?")

Then I used "G.B.H. Hornswoggler" (which was also my screen name there):

hobbit -- Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton ("Whilst I was ankling my way to the Drones Club of Byswater, who should I spot but young Pongo Proudfoot! And he was in a bit of a jam, as usual, so I surged about to buck him up...")

elf -- Haldamir Miriel ("Yes, I fought in the Dwarf wars -- damn proud of it! Someone's got to keep those rock-eaters in their place, and it won't be the younger generation! Why, when I was in the Guards, my commander once said to me...")

my wife is either Daisy Sandybanks or Idril Nenharma, and the boys are Bulbo/Elrond and Pimpernel/Olwe.

Bulbo and Pimpernel?! What kind of a family am I running, here? And since when is "Bulbo" the hobbit translation of "Elrond," hm?

It's Got a Great Beat, But I Don't Think You Can Strip To It

Right at this moment, I'm still at Disney World, and the last thing on my mind is blogging. Luckily, I have emergency posts stored up in the attic for just such situations as this.

The Internet, as always, feeds on spare time and produces odd thoughts. This was true even back in 2004, when a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board was started about the most inappropriate songs to strip to. I got to it more than a hundred posts later, with many of the best ideas taken, so I went in a more conceptual direction:

Since practically every song that has been mentioned as completely unsuitable seems to have been used by some stripper, I thought I'd create some unsuitable and bizarre scenarios. I wouldn't be surprised if any of these have happened, but I haven't witnessed any of them (though some would be fun...and others would be appalling).

Nick Cave's The Mercy Seat, either as a lap dance or (for bonus points) on stage, with the dancer using a chair as a prop.

Fishbone's Lyin' Ass Bitch, probably dedicated to some other dancer in the establishment. (Leading to a cat-fight, I expect.)

Hell, as long as we're doing Fishbone, I'd love to see someone try to shake it to It's a Wonderful Life (Gonna Have a Good Time). The lyrics are pretty inappropriate, and it has a tempo like a frog on a hotplate.

Aimee Mann has probably never done a song that's danceable, but I'd vote Wise Up as her least stripper-friendly tune. Even for a slow floor number, it's way too quiet and slow. Maybe it could work for Mindy, the Clinically Depressed Ecdysiast.

And how about a two-girl act, coming out in a pantomime horse costume, to America's Horse With No Name?

Bob Dylan's as bad for stripping to as Neil Young, but how about Subterranean Homesick Blues, as performed by a woman in bell-bottoms, dashiki and granny glasses? (not for long, of course)

I'm surprised no one has mentioned The Boomtown Rats' I Don't Like Mondays yet -- it's very depressing, probably undanceable, and is about a young woman deciding to kill a whole lot of people...

I could see a stripper using some of Bruce Springsteen's songs -- I'm Goin' Down is pretty obvious -- but how about doing Johnny 99 in a fake prison outfit?

Pink Floyd's early long space-rock songs could be good for some of the more theatrical strippers (the kind with lots of dry ice, occasional live animals, and more props than you can shimmy a hip at). But I still think One of These Days would be a mood-killer.

In the category of You Could Dance To It, But You Wouldn't Want To, I give you In The Coliseum by Tom Waits. The opening lines are "The women all control the men/With razors and with wrists..."

And, finally, They Might Be Giants have been mentioned, but I would love to see a good act built around their live version of Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun Is A Mass of Incandescent Gas).