Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Furthur on from the Hessian/Burlap question.... from what I can see
from various online sources:

In the US, they cross out Hessian and write burlap.

In the UK, one is a rough jute/hemp fabric, and the other is a cloth.

(one source says it's because of George 3rd's Hessian troops... it
became a dirty word.)

So burlap it is. Except in the UK edition, where it'll stay hessian.
  

    
Neil - send a suggestion in under a pseudonym.  being sneaky can be
fun.  :-)

Wintry or wintery - Both look equally okay to me, but now I have a
craving for some mint chewing gum.  And as for the other ones, I would
use judgement, blowjob and kabob.  

Jen.
  

    
Burlap's the rough stuff, yes.

Judgement, blowjob, kabob, wintry. Although I like kebab much better, but
that's only 'cos it's all exotic and reminds me of friends who are Not From
Here.

Glad to hear that the copyediting salvage and rescue mission proceeds apace.
  

    
Neil - <jumping up and down, utterly giddy and gleeful and stuff> <oh,
and with very cheesey, ear-to-ear grin> Thank you! You have made my
weekend! <more silly happy bounciness>

Um, judgement, kabob, wintery (I think I'm with Sarah on the 'extra
letters' thing), and I always hyphenated blow-job, so you're on your
own there, I guess.

squeaks, who is about to attempt a 'spookier than thou' ensemble for
the 'Gothik as Fuk' theme at the club tonight. Here's to not tripping
over my own 5 1/2" heels!
  

    

I'm gonna have to weigh in on the wintery side of things. Though I'll
remember wintry for scrabble.
  

    
judgement, blowjob, kabob, and wintery

Neil -- Was told down at the Hastings that they couldn't pre-order
American Gods until about a month before the release date.  Dunno if
that's just Hastings or maybe just Las Cruces, New Mexico.
  

    
I never heard of a hessian sack.

As for copyeditors, obviously if you've got Teresa Nielsen Hayden for one
you're in golden, but if you don't--a page of style notes certainly can't
hurt!  Just to save yourself time in the end.
  

    
Now I know what Douglas Adams meant when he said that the spaceship had
brown hessian wall weave.
  

    
Speaking of wintery, we are having a major case of it right now, says
she who just walked a couple blocks and ended up with a snowdrift hat.
  

    
Daniel -- I'm surprised that they can't pre-order the book for you;
it's in Harper Collins catalogue and has an ISBN, which should (as I
understand it) make it orderable.  Personally I'd much rather see the
preorders go to the bookstores than to, for example, Amazon. But if
Amazon will take pre-orders for books that won't come out for a few
months, and your bookstore won't, I suppose Amazon gets the business.
(At which it's currently sitting at 3,539. Which is rather better than
many of my books that have already been published...)
  

    
Just wrote a long, informative and funny journal entry for the
American Gods site, all about copy editing. And then blogger ate it.
Sigh.
  

    
Damn!
  

    
By the way, something of a comics-related episode of This American Life this
week.  It's about superheroes and how we think about them; opens with an
interview with Chris Ware (who used to wear superhero clothes under his
school uniform not having worked out that he would have to remove the
uniform in the locker room to change into gym clothes).  I missed the
beginning of that interview when I listened to the show last night, but it
will be playing again in San Francisco in twenty minutes or so, and I'll
listen again then.

Also: a man reports on the results he's had asking people if they'd rather
be invisible, or able to fly.  (One predictible note: pretty much nobody
said they'd fight crime.)  A woman talks about and to her rather Amazonian
friend who set herself a schedule for becoming a Batman-type uber-competent
hero when she was in grade school--and stuck to it.  The guy who runs a web
site about all the comics superheros introduced, failed, and forgotten tells
Ira what makes a failed superhero.

www.publicradio.com will help you find tons of streaming audio feeds of This
American Life and all the other shows on public radio anywhere; and in a
week or so it'll be archived on www.thislife.org as well.
  

    
        I'd take flight without thinking twice, and I prefer wintry as it
looks funny.
  

    
A woman in the piece says she believes almost everyone who says they'd take
flight is lying, because it sounds more noble, and actually would choose
invisibility.  Unless they have a grandiose self-image, she says.  Most
seemed to agree that invisibility is for sneaky little people and flight for
exhibitionists.  Way to make them both sound bad!
  

    
Dude, she's on crack. Flying would be infinitely more fun. You'd be your own
roller coaster!
  

    
I find it very hard to choose.
  

    
Hmm. I got to fly a plane the other day, for the first time. (The
pilot said, "Here, you fly it for a bit. If you pull the stick toward
you it makes the houses get smaller and if you push it in the houses
get bigger." And I discovered that while flying a plane was a huge and
scary thing, keeping the plane on course so the GPS system was doing
the right things was, being somehow a smaller task, much easier.) And I
thought "This would be so much more fun if I didn't have to worry
about the whole plane thing." And I started thinking about superheroes
never carrying charts or landing in the wrong cities and so on...

But flying doesn't seem to have any drawbacks. Especially if it's just
you, hurtling over landscape on your own...

While Being Invisible... when you get past the Invisible (somebody) In
the Girls Locker Room (a national Lampoon short story I'd swear was
written by John Hughes, although I may be misremembering) stage of
things... seems like nothing but drawbacks. Are you invisible and
inaudible? Will you disturb water, and ghost into clouds? And what
(apart from gratifying curiosity about what other people do and look
like when they're alone, and/or naked, which I suspect would pall
amazingly quickly)  can you DO when you're invisible? Invisible Boy and
Invisible Girl (the DC and marvel ones respectively) are second string
characters for a reason.

....

Finished the first go through of AMERICAN GODS and started in on a
second.
  

    
Judgement.  Blowjob.  Kabob.  Wintery.  (Looking back at everyone's
responses, seems that Daniel and I agree on all points.  yay for us!!!)

Flying!  No quetion about it.  Unless, that is, that other people
could fly too.  I worry enough about crashing into other people on the
ground, let alone in air.  (Especially if someone is flying AND
invisible.  I don't even want to think about it.)

Michelle--very much enjoying the song.  You have Angelina's stamp of
approval.  (Not that it means much, but you do.) :)

I just got off an extremely long shift at work (13 hours) and smell
like Skyline Chili to no end.  Does anyone out there like Cincinnati
style chili?  It seems you either love it or hate it.  I currently hate
it from being around it almost every day for the past two years. 

Off to take a shower!
  
  

    
Yay, me and Angelina!

Neil -- Not sure if it was a mix of the book person not really knowing
how to handle an order for something that comes out in 4 months or if
Hastings just works that way.  Anyhow, prolly just go with Amazon
anyway.  Although I'm not sure if I'm gonna be around these parts by
June so I might have to hold off a bit.

As for the flying/invisible thing. . . I'd prolly pick invisibility. 
Partly because of a sneaky streak in me and partly because I'm not a
big fan of hurling myself through the air.  Never been skydiving and
prolly never will.  And it seems that flying could cause some problems
too.  What do you wear?  Temperature (depending on the specifics of the
air parcel) can drop off pretty rapidly with elevation.  And it seems
that a close eye would have to be kept on weather conditions.  Just how
much of a magnet for lightning would one be?  Mostly though I just
don't like falling.  Heights are fine, but falling, no thanks.  I never
understood the fascination with bungee jumping.  Throwing myself at
the planet never had much appeal to me.
  

    
Flying, definitely. Then I wouldn't have to ride in planes where I'm
completely out of control of the situation and I wouldn't have the
whole problem of take of and landing and having bits of metal flying
through the air and... hmmm, not nice to force my own paranoia onto
other people, so I'll stop now. Suffice it to say, flying over
invisibility any day. Heck, it might even get me over the whole vertigo
thing, since the problem is in losing my balance and falling down
great distances. If I were able to fly, it might not phase me so much,
seeing how the inevitable 'splat' at the end of the fall would not
longer be so inevitable.

Daniel - Even if they can't do the pre-order until a month or so
before, most book stores will at least take your name and info down
whenever you want to place the order, then call for approval/credit
card numbers/whatever when they *can* place the order. Just seems weird
to me.

Angelina - Yay! A fan! (note to self: need to write more angry songs
about the evil ex-boyfriend) :) Promise I'll let everyone know when
(and at the rate it's coming along, "if") the EP eventually comes out.

Neat side note because it made me happy - just got a note from one of
the members of the Rosin Coven (band who performed at the Gorey Ball).
None of them took pictures from the event, so they're going to use
mine! Neat! AND they're coming back to town in a couple of months for a
"Where the Wild Things Are" party at the club. Wonder if we all have
to dress up as monsters... or Max...

squeaks, who just realized she's supposed to be somewhere else (damn,
they're gonna kill me... or at least kick me really hard).
  

    

I'm gonna go with flying. I remember back in high school, really wishing I
could fly or teleport so I could avoid the walks all over campus. Assuming I
could fly somewhat faster than I can walk, I'd be all over it.
Invisibility doesn't strike me as all that useful unless one is also
insubstancial. If you still have to open the door, it just isn't as useful.
  

    
For me, invisibility...if it were a controllable thing, of course. 
It's always been one of my nonsense fantasies.  I used to consider Tori
Amos's 'Happy Phantom' to be a minor anthem of mine for that reason. 
It'd be the closest you could come to observation without interference,
something I find fascinating.  When the magician invites you
backstage, are they really showing you how the tricks are done...is the
woman who just got sawed in half really having tea in the green room,
or do they say that because you're listening?  To be equally on both
sides of the curtains, walls and fences.
  

    
I wouldn't think much about invisibility, which mostly is good for sneaking
around or stealing stuff--except that it occurs to me how many times I wish
I could throw my voice, so that I could speak out an objection in a crowd
without drawing attention to myself.  It definitely would have helped the
one time I spoke up when I saw the guy hitting and berating a woman on the
street some years ago.  It would have been ever so much better if he hadn't
been able to turn and identify who'd objected out loud to that.

On the other hand: never have dreams about being invisible.  Do have dreams
about flying.

Also I thought the guy really stacked the deck for flying, because he said
you could go 1000 mph.
  

    
I agree-- what if you could fly, but only go really slow-- like 3 mph?
 Not much point to it then-- you'd only look silly.  I say that if you
can't zoom, then flying is less than practical.  What if you could
only fly as fast as a cat walks?  Or as fast as a Chevy Impala?

Invisibility... right now, the only thing that appeals about it is
sneaking into theatres.  

Ugh... winter break is over and I'm back at the front of the
classroom.  Must console myself with haiku.

                JUDGEMENT
        Wintery morning
        A hessian gets a blowjob;
        He wants a kebob.