01.23.07
All Up In The NPR Jeezy
Well, naturally I would manage to say that nothing interesting was happening yesterday. Quite frankly it was all before I had listened to this week’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. So I could be excused for missing the fact that Weird Al Yankovic was the guest for the “Not My Job” game. Sadly, Al played it straight for the majority of his time on the air, but it was still pretty good.
Of course, this is more than made up for by the fact that in the very next segment, there was a clip of House of Representative member David Wu, in all honesty and sincerity, using the phrase “…there are Klingons in the White House. But unlike the real Klingons of ‘Star Trek’ [...] Don’t let faux-Klingons send real Americans to war”. As an added bonus, a coup de nerd, the line was also delivered in a manner suspiciously similar to the Chewbacca Defense. I think this is the geekiest moment in politics since British Defence Secretary Denis Healey was called a Dalek.
Firefox’s spell-checker claims that I have misspelled “Klingons”, “Defence” (perfectly acceptable as the British spelling, which is why it’s Defence Secretary Healey vs. the Chewbacca Defense), and “Dalek”, yet does not bat an eyelash about “Chewbacca”… well, all right, it didn’t as part of the link, but once separated out Chewie is listed as orthographically incorrect. Curiously enough, “Klingon” is OK, but “Klingons” are not. Man, do I love me some spelling silliness.
Inconsequential Update: 72,000 words, I’ve triggered thinking on one of the subplots that had me stuck, and there are 24 scheduled scenes left. I realize I’m going to have to have a professional read over this mess and see if it’s possible to get it into a publishable state, but I honestly don’t think there’s much work that would really be needed. I’ve tried to stay consistent internally and tried to make the story interesting and amusing. And yes, there are plenty of inside gags for hardcore otaku. We’ll see how things progress.
Ismail Saeed said,
01.23.07 at 7:48 am
What level of professional do you mean?
John said,
01.23.07 at 8:14 am
By “professional” I mean “somebody not me”. No offense intended, of course, but it’ll also probably be somebody I don’t already know, due to the conventional wisdom I’ve heard saying that having a friend look over the draft, no matter how critically he does it, is no substitute for getting the opinion of the person most likely to publish it.
Ismail Saeed said,
01.23.07 at 6:07 pm
Ah, I think you may have misunderstood my question.
I was wondering how high up/who you were going to look for in the “published” tier, not necessarily really asking about myself.
Though since the idea is broached, I should
1) remind you that I *really* don’t end up caring “who” it is when I critically review something (having a thick skin is useful :P) and
2) that even if I’m not the “is this publishable” pass, it might be a good idea to make sure any possible other kinks are out before it’s submitted for that scrutiny.
I’m an insanely busy guy these days, so I’m not even necessarily in a position to volunteer reams of dedicated time (as I said, originally it was just a question, not about me), but if you do want any feedback from me you know how to find me :).
At the very least, remember most of all how it would read to a person who doesn’t go to anime conventions as you give it a look-over.
Cheers.