Busytown: All in the game
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Because authors don't just conjure characters out of thin air, do they? Or order them from catalogues of clichés?
well now, there's a gap in the market...
perhaps my oft touted Idea Orphanage
could solve this problem, or a dedicated
bespokesperson people4parts service ...Strangers in a Drain
"Le's swap characters"
"Criss, cross"" -
This is completely irrelevant, but has anyone else noticed that the PA ratio of responses to views is usually about 1:30? What does it mean when it gets wider? Wider public interest, or a few tragics compulsively checking back?
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What does it mean when it gets wider? Wider public interest, or a few tragics compulsively checking back?
It can mean that more people are involved in the conversation. If 30 of them are checking whenever a new comments is posted, you can get to that ratio without a very high number of lurkers.
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(In saying that, I'd definitely count myself a "tragic", but hey, no offense taken.)
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None offered, he said tragically.
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the best defense is to preemptively grant your based-on-life character an enormous willy, on the grounds that they'll be too flattered to sue. Hard to think what the feminine equivalent would be; I don't think we're that flatterable.
Loved by all?
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ratio of responses to views is usually about 1:30
Corresponds roughly with expected proportions of lurkers to talkers in any online community, though I recall Giovanni reckons it's less here if page reloads are accounted for.
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"I don't believe it was a hoax. I base it on the fact that it appeared in a Harvard Law School text 70 years after the fact,"
that's got to be the most credulous line i've read since the "hope and change" millennialist religious movement of 2008.
nice work Matt Nippert.
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GASP! Poison Pen Reviews Were Mine, confesses historian Orlando Figes
According to a spokesman from Birkbeck College neither Figes nor his employer had anything further to say. "He's on sick leave and we're offering our support," he said.
Oh dear.
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Loved by all?
Curse you! Er, I mean, no, you'd never get away with that. Not a weak spot at all. No sir.
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I don't think we're that flatterable.
Curse you! Er, I mean, no, you'd never get away with that. Not a weak spot at all. No sir.
Is this the right time to mention BoobQuake?
No, probably not. Carry on.
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Heh. Every day is BoobQuake at my house.* But sure, in the interests of science, I'll crank it up a bit. And because it's spring.
I only wish I'd had enough notice to pin down a sponsorship deal with Bravissimo.
*Also, every day is Scientific Method day, what with a physicist at the other end of the table. My money is on the no-correlation hypothesis being correct. (We don't exactly have a control experiment running, but there have been exactly zero earthquakes in New England since I've been living here. Not even when my sister visits.)
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Books, dammit, books! Next we'll be thread-drifting in the direction of, I don't know, boots or something, and that can only be...
...mmm, good.
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Mmm, boots. I like boots. Suede ones in particular. Now, on books, Jasper fforde's Shades of grey. Any thoughts? Next Next in 2012 apparently.
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GASP! Poison Pen Reviews Were Mine, confesses historian Orlando Figes
So nice of him to implicate the wife first... bless. And they say gallantry is dead.
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I think I agree with Bill Manhire. This fuss reminds me of Chief Broom, in the preface to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"; "It's all true, even if it never happened."
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Nice line, Gregor.
Meanwhile, over in the embarrassingly entertaining Daily Mail, Rachel Polonsky gives a blow-by-blow account of figuring out what Orlando Figes was up to: How I Rumbled Lying Professor. Undone by a wish-list; there's something sadly poetic about that.
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I'm always jumping back but ... referring to Stead's story and Nigel Cox's article about Stead ... I read them both last night and thought that Cox was really harsh. I admire Stead. Enjoyed his recent 'My Name is Judas'. He was a good lecturer and his New Poetic textbook was a jewel.
But the winning short story was tragic. Heck, the country sounded like NZ. The style was boring and the revenge theme quite sick. Very surprised it won the competition.
How does one psychoanalyse creative people?
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The thing I found most revealing and nasty about the Stead story was that it held very closely to the actual course of Nigel's illness (the radiation, the chemotherapy, the spread to the liver, the public disclosure). The rapid compliance and disloyalty of the widow was an appalling piece of fantasy, and truly yucky. It is completely disingenuous of Stead to insist that only unsophisticated readers would make the connection to real people. It seemed to me like a really lazy piece of writing.
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Which is why I reckon that Keri H is entitled to sit on her laurels, like Harper Lee. The book is on bookshelves everywhere I go. I can't tell you how many people, on hearing where I'm from, have said "I read the most amazing novel..." (usually in tandem with the more common "I've always wanted to go there").
One is rather reminded of the time when Heller lost his patience at being asked why he had never written another book as good as Catch 22 and responded: "Nobody else has either". Or words to that effect.
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