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(Actually, Gene Hunt probably would. Sam Tyler certainly wouldn't).

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry: the American version of Life on Mars

Sondage#1187588
Ouvert à : Tous, les résultats sont accessibles à : Tous

US Life on Mars shall be?

In something far better, there is a Martha/Donna community, be_my_luckystar.
The name refers to the fact that the ship name is Madonna. Which does pose the question, what would the Doctor/Donna ship name be? Donna? Doctor?

Finally, A ship impervious to squished up ship names.

Page 106 of Family Man now online!
(permalink)


And herein we commence Weirdness.

Bloog. It is 1 a.m. and I have been blearily noodling on Bill Mudron's Cintiq tablet since 8pm, after a work day that start at 6:30am! The things I do to update disconcerting familial scenes that will have major plot bearing, I tell you.

I was going to give Bill a link since he was kind enough to provide technical assistance as well as dinner fixings, but he misspells the word "Commissions" on his front page, and I'm boycotting him until he changes it. Take that Bill!

It's time for Challenge 40! I apologize for the late start - I have not been well, but I have finally pulled together the images for the challenge, and I'm going to leave it open until Saturday night, so you get one extra day to submit icons!

This week's challenges are some favorites, I think! The New Who challenge is that unstoppable pairing of Rose and the Doctor. They've been through so much together, from saving the world to watching it end. They made new friends and faced old enemies, showed us new worlds and made us look at familiar places in a different way. Together, they proved to us that the New Doctor Who could be just as exciting, fun, corny and riveting as the Classic series. Your Classic challenge this week is the Seventh Doctor serial, Remembrance of the Daleks. Ace and the Doctor find themselves in 1963 London, where they've been followed by both Imperial and Renegade Daleks who seek to gain the Hand of Omega. The Doctor must hide the powerful Gallifreyan artifact to prevent either of the two Dalek factions from using it against the Time Lords. Finally, your Various challenge is cropping! Sometimes the cleverest of crops can truly make the difference between a boring icon and a brilliant one. Show us your cropping skills!

This week's challenges:
New Who A: Rose & The Doctor (I choose the picture)
New Who B: Rose & The Doctor (You choose the picture)
Classic Who A: s25x01 - Remembrance of the Daleks (I choose the picture)
Classic Who B: s25x01 - Remembrance of the Daleks (You choose the picture)
Various: Cropping (You choose the picture)

( Challenge 40 details ...  )

Right now the count stands at:
00 - New Who A Entries
00 - New Who B Entries
00 - Classic Who A Entries
00 - Classic Who B Entries
00 - Various Entries

All due by: Saturday, May 17

http://www.austenblog.com/2008/05/14/janes-hood/

http://www.austenblog.com/?p=2821

Baja Janeite sent us a link to a travel article about a visit to Chawton.
The house was exactly the size I imagined; comfortable, but not small. There were the amber crosses that Charles Austen, Jane’s seafaring brother, had given to her and her sister, Cassandra — famous to us Janeites. On the door leading to [...]

a meme. Where you say kind/observant/etc things about people.


the what i like about you meme | my thread

http://www.austenblog.com/2008/05/14/janeite-confession/

http://www.austenblog.com/?p=2820

Congratulations to Tina B., who won a paperback copy of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. Tina gave us permission to share her own Confession…
I am in a Mom’s group at our church. We meet once a week and discuss issues of women, parenting and marriage. Often, some point will remind [...]

http://www.austenblog.com/2008/05/14/janes-hood/

http://www.austenblog.com/?p=2819

Baja Janeite sent us a link to a travel article about a visit to Chawton.
The house was exactly the size I imagined; comfortable, but not small. There were the amber crosses that Charles Austen, Jane’s seafaring brother, had given to her and her sister, Cassandra — famous to us Janeites. On the door leading to [...]

http://www.austenblog.com/2008/05/14/mrs-collins-fancy-work/

http://www.austenblog.com/?p=2818

We were amused by a cross-stitch sampler chart for “Mr. Collins’ Humble Abode,” featuring the rector of Hunsford and his cara sposa. Thanks to Cub Reporter (and avid cross-stitcher) Heather L. for the link.

http://www.austenblog.com/2008/05/14/getting-local-with-jane-librarians-still-rock-edition/

http://www.austenblog.com/?p=2808

Here’s the latest lineup of local Austen events; one might be in YOUR neighborhood!
May 20 (and monthly through October), Charlotte, NC: The Janeite Disciples Book Club begins monthly discussions of Jane Austen’s novels with Sense and Sensibility at the Concord main library. To register, stop by the library or see the e-mail address at the [...]

http://www.austenblog.com/2008/05/14/comical-jane/

http://www.austenblog.com/?p=2817

Alert Janeite Jessica sent us a link to the Questionable Content comic, which has a reference to The Darcy. Though we would think by the character’s t-shirt she would be a Wentworth girl.
Ungentlemanlike language warning, not in the comic itself but in the side matter.

So today I went to the Art Institute of Chicago (FINALLY FINALLY unfortunately it is being renovated and so everything is very confusing so I will just have to go back.  Darn) with some friends of mine, one of whom is a Classics (Latin and Greek) major, much like our dear friend philia_fan.  She and I have been to museums together before, and our usual pattern is to find the important stuff (e.g. American Gothic) and then run to the Ancient section and swoon over the mummies and the Greek pottery together (I name off all the Egyptian gods, she explains the difference between Geometric and Oriental Grecian pottery).

So today we were indulging ourselves in the delights of the ancient world, and admiring the Roman glass (of which they had a LOT, which is really cool, because glass tends to, uh, break after 2000 years), when suddenly I saw something that made me stop and squee in the middle of the museum.  (It was a museum-squee, but it was still definitely a squee.)  I then had to explain to Classics major (for I have failed her and not lent her my books yet) that I had just reread The Queen of Attolia and how Eugenides likes to steal earrings but how his grandfather stole...



And so, because I was SO excited, I took a picture of it for y'all to see.


Also, just for kicks, we were looking at a Roman copy of a Greek statue (which I learned had probably been made of metal and then melted down because that was how the Romans rolled, yo), and Classics major commented that the statue was wearing peplos, and so I thought of Moira and took a picture to share of that as well. 





Anyway, that was my exciting venture into Thief/real life collisions today.  :-D

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/05/what-you-cant-help-doing.html

Sorry about the font-mess of yesterday's post. I did it using Safari on a PC, and the result was hellish. Obviously these are not two things that work well together when playing with Blogger. And each attempt to clean it up on my part made it worse. (Thanks to the Web Goblin for fixing it.)

I did a second draft of the Waterstones "What's Your Story?" story (only a few words I wanted to change, but it meant handwriting the whole thing out again), and FedExed it off today.

My thanks to the Eagle Award voters -- I was thrilled that Absolute Sandman volume 2 won an Eagle Award for Best Reprint. (Last year it was Absolute Sandman volume 1. Next year the vote will probably be split between Absolute Sandman volumes 3 and 4, and something else entirely will win.)

(I was looking to see if there were covers for Absolute Sandmans 3 and 4 up yet at Amazon, and noticed that volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all on sale for $62.37 [and that they are going to weigh a grand total of 29 lb altogether] and the last two have 5% preorders discounts up as well. Which I mention mostly for those people who write to me and grumble about the Absolutes being $100 books.)

Not sure if the cover for Absolute 4 is a mock-up or the real thing. I suspect it's not the final, mostly because I'm pretty sure that face is from Sandman #1, and for Absolute 4 we'll be taking a cover portrait from somewhere in the last 20 issues.

...

Regarding the Julie Schwartz Memorial Talk at MIT on the 23rd of May: To reiterate from the other day -- over at http://cms.mit.edu/juliusschwartz/tickets.html we learn that Tickets to the event are $8.00 and will be available at the door, pending availability. There won't be any available on the door, because they have almost all sold out. The website has a list of places selling the tickets -- yesterday there were about 60 tickets still out there. So this is a sort of a last call -- you can try phoning the places at the website to see if they still have tickets...


...

An ebay auction with a story... I've been rereading some old Batman comics recently, although I don't think I'd want these. But the story that comes with them is wonderful...

I'm worried and upset about the earthquake in China. From Nancy Kress's blog I learned that at least some of the friends we made in Chengdu last summer are okay -- and so are the pandas.

...

Rice pudding re-prompt! Once you get home to proper milk, of course. "Your general guidelines for a batch of rice pudding please, Mr. Gaiman!"Thank you!! ^_^b

I'm working on it, honest. Decided to figure out the proportions I'd used by a) finding a very similar recipe on the web and starting from there and then b) fiddling with it.

Two night's ago's rice pudding (the web recipe) was much too salty and wrong. I fiddled with the proportions and last night's was a lot better but now too sweet. Tonight's rice pudding would have been perfect I have no doubt but I forgot to buy more milk, so I didn't actually make one.

Dear Neil,

The press down here in Brazil have enthusiastically announced you'll be here for the Paraty International Book Fair, first week in July. But since you're also scheduled to lecture at Clarion, I'd like to ask if this is true. Or maybe you have a doppelganger. Or maybe the organizers here had a dream. Or maybe you're taking a weekend of from Clarion down here in Rio (if so, it'll be winter here, and rainy, not the best time to come...) Best regards,Eric

That sounds right, yes. (I teach Clarion the 3rd week in July.)

Hello hello hello,

To quote one of your other fans, “I have a question for you about writing”. I find that my own writing will echo the style of which ever author I am currently reading. Any idea how I might get around constantly mimicking others?

You write more.

I don't think there's anything wrong with copying other people's styles -- it's a skill you'll need, after all. Many actors begin as mimics. You don't worry about it, and keep writing, and after a while you'll have written enough that you can't help sounding like yourself, whether you want to or not.

Style is what you get wrong, that makes what you do sound like you. Style is what you can't help doing. Style is what you're left with.

(I just googled "style is what you can't help doing" because it sounded half-familiar, and I wondered who said it originally, and discovered that it may actually have been me, as I found myself looking at an extract from a speech I gave to an audience of comics artists and writers in 1997 at ProCon in Oakland:

We are creators. When we begin, separately or together, there’s a blank piece of paper. When we are done, we are giving people dreams and magic and journeys into minds and lives that they have never lived. And we must not forget that.

I don’t want to sound like an inspirational speaker here. "Be you." "Be the best you that you can be." But this is really important. It’s something that we mostly lose track of when we starts, because when we start in comics we’re kids, and we have no idea who we are or what our voices are, as artists or as writers.

Young artists want to be Rob Leifeld, or Bernie Wrightson, or Frank Miller, just as young writers want to be Alan Moore, or Chris Claremont or, well, Frank Miller. You’ve seen their portfolios. You’ve read the scripts.

We all swipe when we start. We trace, we copy, we emulate. But the most important thing is to get to the place where you’re telling your own stories, painting your own pictures, doing the stuff that one-one else could have done, but you. Dave McKean, when he was much younger, as a recent art-school graduate, took his portfolio to New York, and showed it to the head of an advertising agency. The guy looked at one of Dave’s paintings—"That’s a really good Bob Peake," he said. "But why would you I want to hire you? If I have something I want done like that, I phone Bob Peake."

You may be able to draw kind of like Rob Leifeld, but the day may come, may have already come, when no-one wants a bargain basement Rob Leifeld clone any more. Learn to draw like you. And as a writer, or as a storyteller, try to tell the stories that only you can tell. Try to tell the stories that you cannot help but tell, the stories you would be telling yourself if you had no audience to listen. The ones that reveal a little too much about you to the world. It’s the point I think of writing as walking naked down the street: it has nothing to do with style, or with genre, it has to do with honesty. Honesty to yourself and to whatever you’re doing.

Don’t worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can’t help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you’ll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don’t worry about whether you’re "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

If you believe in it, do it. If there’s a comic or a project you’ve always wanted to do, go out there and give it a try. If you fail, you’ll have given it a shot. If you succeed, then you succeeded with what you wanted to do.

And it's still true. (That speech is, along with another speech about tulips and comics, and an essay on how to do successful signings, available in Gods And Tulips, illustrated by Chester Brown, price $3 from the CBLDF commercial website.)(And for those of you after instant webby gratification, the whole Procon speech is up at the Magian Line archives at http://www.woxberg.net/gaiman/magian/3-2.html. But the CBLDF Neil Gaiman store one has a pretty Mike Kaluta cover of me being dead on it. And it's cheap...)

For those who aren't happy with what they found out about the final from the Sozin Comet book.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=CSaRrPNwLTc

I personally am excited about the final but this is for the people who aren't. *shrugs* Spread the word?

There are no spoilers in the video but tread the comments to the video and here carefully if you do look.

http://www.austenblog.com/2008/05/13/sometimes-they-get-it/

http://www.austenblog.com/?p=2816

We were amused by this tidbit from a review of the reality television show “The Paper,” about the trials and tribulations of a high school newspaper staff:
there are moments when “The Paper” can be as uncomfortable as a particularly squirmy episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” or “The Office,” or even certain Jane Austen adaptations on [...]