Amber Sparks
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A Story About Things that You Will Love
June 14, 2010
Art by the amazing Matthew Lyons, whose site you should most certainly visit.
“Against Specificity.” By Douglas Watson. Who is apparently a genius. In Fifty-Two Stories. Read a bit:
On your way to the Thing Exchange, Thing B tucked under your arm, you run into someone—an unemployed magistrate, say, or a circus clown who comes up to you and says, I have scurvy. Give me an orange!
You say, Orange!
The clown lurches away.
You revolve through the front door of the Thing Exchange and into the lobby. Ah, the lobby. How grand, its pillars or frescoes or whatever! How high, its well-crafted ceiling! How long abandoned, the style in which it was built!
But you have not come here for the architecture. Holding Thing B tight against your side, as though it might leap from your grasp, you hurry across the lobby to the elevator. A sign reads, Things A-Q, Floor 2. You operate the elevator in the usual manner.
When the doors open and you step out onto Floor 2, a flutter somewhere near the center of you reminds you how very badly you want Thing A.
I want it considerably more than I ever wanted Thing B! you think.
Read this whole wonderful story here.
OH. MY. GOD. My top-number-one-of-all-time-ever dream car just went ON SALE.
June 3, 2010
Dear god. If you buy me this car, I promise to start rethinking the whole agnostic thing. Love, Amber.
(PS, thank you NotCot.)
Small Stormtroopers, Big World
June 3, 2010
If you love Star Wars* (and unless you were born after the 80s–which is mind-boggling to me, but that’s another issue altogether–you obviously do) you really need to check out this blog. Take my word for it.
*The original trilogy. Original ORIGINAL trilogy.
I Have So Many Things to Tell You
June 1, 2010
So much good stuff going on, I have to share some of it with you:
At always-good Dark Sky, Mel Bosworth has been reading other people’s words, and rather capably, too. Today he reads my little story, “The Wives Are Turning Into Animals.” I love his creepy-but-restrained reading. I would post the video here but then you wouldn’t go over there, would you? And you really, really should.
One of your favorite writers and mine, Roxane Gay, is Necessary Fiction’s writer in residence for June! All month long, she will be featuring some of her favorite writers and some of her own pieces and demonstrating why fiction is, indeed, necessary.
THIS is at the American Museum of Natural History. I have no choice but to go, given my one-century-too-late fascination with polar exploration.
Jen at JMWW has a terrific interview today with Dawn Raffel. (How come I don’t look that cool in any of my pictures?)
Did you love Lost? Throw things at your teevee during the last episode? You MUST read this fabulous essay, doubtless the most literary thing ever written about Lost, by Jennifer Spiegel. It’s more than great.
And remember, peeps–it’s Tuesday. TUESDAY. Get it straight.
Badass Rainbows
May 26, 2010
No, seriously. A whole site devoted to them, in fact. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)
What if The Empire Strikes Back was made 50 years ago?
May 21, 2010 — 2 Comments
This is just so cool. (via Wil Wheaton.)
Have you been to Google today?
May 21, 2010
Pac-Man's skeleton was built by Le Gentil Garçon and paleontologist François Escuilié.
Have you played lots of Pacman yet to celebrate the little yellow guy’s 30th yet? Well, then. Get to it.
Matt Bell (and Lily Hoang, and Michael Kimball, and YOU) Write a Story Live at Everyday Genius
May 17, 2010
This is where the site deserves its name. Yes, this is genius. This is so cool. Check out this link for Matt’s explanation of WHY and HOW, and click here to read the story and get the schedule as it unfolds.
This is where the internets and writing collide in the best of ways.
Things to Do on a Friday Afternoon
May 14, 2010 — 2 Comments
Because we know you’re not REALLY working, right? You can thank me later:
Read the new issue of PANK, including this very sly story by Kyle Minor.
Get outraged over Arizona’s latest racist move.
Send xTx, writer and blogger and mistress of awesome, a poem or story or thingamajig about ZOMBIES! Because this is the summer of ZOMBIES and she will be featuring these things on her site.
Shout “I declare you to be AN OUTLAW!” every time you answer the phone. God, that movie looks like a dried piece of crap, doesn’t it? Poor Cate Blanchett. It’s not her fault. She is beautiful and talented. And it’s her birthday, so please be nice to her. And why does everyone have to SHOUT so much in movies nowadays? Russell Crowe is probably standing right next to that guy. Although if Russell Crowe were standing next to me, I would shout at him, too. I would shout, MAKE A GOOD MOVIE! But he probably wouldn’t.
These are not your childhood dinosaurs, my friends.
April 29, 2010
As a kid, I went through a brief period of being way into dinosaurs. I mean, what kid didn’t go through that period, right? My personal favorite dinosaur was the Ichthyosaurus, though I suspect not so much for its aquatic habitat as for the fact that I could pronounce the name and was hugely proud of that fact. (I had no particular genius as a child except that I spoke very clearly and could pronounce the words that nobody else could. I kicked ass at reading aloud. I was even cast in a play solely for my ability to pronounce the word “streptococcus.” (It was a play about teeth.) I was lucky, incidentally, that life is not really a Greek tragedy or my immense hubris about my ability to say things correctly surely would have rendered me mute or something by now.)
Anyhoo. Dinosaurs. You’ve no doubt heard that they had feathers, and were warm-blooded, and all this stuff–and I mean, holy crap they’re not your grandpa’s dinosaurs now, kids. Check out this article and see for yourself, or totally ignore this entire post if you find it ranting and self-interested. Which is obviously is.
