“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”
OSCAR WILDE

In the spirit of Schott’s Original Miscellany, here’s what I’m Literating from the past month…

Yale Art Students Website Background:

Oprahed (originally @ the Gig)

Oprah |Oh•pur•uh|

(verb Oprahs, Oprahing; past and past participle Oprahed) [intransitive]:

1. To break down sobbing on national media
2. To find yourself extremely popular by hordes of pseudo-spiritual semi-god-worshipping feminine fans of self-help and hyphens, especially due to book clubs hosted by said fans
3. [trans.] To cause to break down sobbing on national media
4. [trans.] To barrage with breaded, fried plants of the mallow family; to throw long ridged seed pods native to the Old World at another person (Oh wait, that’s okraed. My mistake).

A Wolf-Snake (originally on my Pinterest)


Rules of Go

  1. The board is empty at the onset of the game.
  2. Black makes the first move, after which he and White alternate.
  3. move consists of placing one stone of one’s own color on an empty intersection on the board.
  4. A player may pass his turn at any time.
  5. A stone or solidly connected group of stones of one color is captured and removed from the board when all the intersections directly adjacent to it are occupied by the enemy. (Capture of the enemy takes precedence over self-capture.)
  6. No stone may be played so as to recreate a former board position.
  7. Two consecutive passes end the game.
  8. A player’s territory consists of all the points he has either occupied or surrounded.
  9. The player with more territory wins

Top 10 Searches that got people to Lance Schaubert this month:

  1. Elizabethan wheel of fortune (i.e. Pat Sajack in a Wig)
  2. What is the meaning of p.s in p.s i love you? (post script, people, come on)
  3. Should the Harvard Classics be read in order? (Absolutely. There’s no other way. If you read them backwards, black bile shoots out your tear ducts and you die)
  4. Poem related to Mad Men and Wise Man’s Fear (Soon to come for kicks and giggles)
  5. Short story about Banana Processing (?)
  6. Why Socrates died (Camel cigarettes)
  7. Socrates’ face in the death of Socrates (It’s one thing to have your life flash by your eyes when you die. It’s something else entirely to have your face flash by).
  8. Patrick Rothfuss Name of the Wind sexist (Dang, people, lighten up. You don’t see Pat name-calling. Well, naming maybe, but that’s different – For an actual post on this, though, go here)
  9. Hemlock Seeds (What do you think I am? A dealer? The Black Market for sociopathic Christians?)
  10. Picture Old Man:
 

Bronson Trailer (originally @ Ask the Experts)

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKC-FKGMeCY”]

Conrad Proctor is Famous (originally at MSNBC)

“Down with Big Brother!”
– Orson Wells

Invention idea? Get Quirky.

Ben Kaufman was on the subway in New York City in 2005 when he had his light-bulb moment. He saw a girl–a stranger–sporting a pair of headphones he designed at mophie, the iPod accessories company he founded the day he graduated from high school.

“I saw something I invented out in the world, and it was the best feeling,” Kaufman says. “That’s when I realized I needed to help more people experience that.”

James Bond Movie List – The ones we’ve seen are in red, the ones I’ve seen in blue.

READ NEXT:  Nebula Award Winners

007s – SC = Sean Connery :: GL = George Lazenby :: RM = Roger Moore ::
TD = Pierce Brosnan :: DC = Daniel Craig

  • Dr. No…………………………………… SC ‘62
  • From Russia with Love………….. SC ‘63
  • Goldfinger…………………………….. SC ‘64
  • Thunderball…………………………… SC ‘65
  • You Only Live Twice……………….. SC ‘65
  • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service… GL ‘69
  • Diamonds are Forever…………….. SC ‘71
  • Live and Let Die……………………… RM ‘73
  • The Man with the Golden Gun….. RM ’74
  • The Spy Who Loved Me…………… RM ‘77
  • Moonraker…………………………….. RM ‘79
  • For Your Eyes Only…………………. RM ‘81
  • Octopussy……………………………… RM ‘83
  • A View To A Kill……………………… RM ‘85
  • The Living Daylights……………….. TD ‘87
  • Licence to Kill…………………………. TD ‘89
  • GoldenEye……………………………… PB ‘95
  • Tomorrow Never Dies……………… PB ‘97
  • The World is Not Enough…………. PB ‘99
  • Die Another Day……………………… PB ‘02
  • Casino Royal………………………….. DC ‘08
  • Quantum Solace……………………… DC ‘10

Look out, 007. Apparently, Houdini was also a Spy

Stephen King’s On Writing quotes:

This is … a kind of curriculum vitae—my attempt to show how one writer was formed. Not how one writer was made; I don’t believe writers can be made, either by circumstances or by self-will (although I did believe those things once). The equipment comes with the original package.

On some other day [my mother] told me about the [death] she saw—a sailor who jumped off the roof of the Graymore Hotel in Portland, Maine, and landed in the street.
“He splattered,” my mother said in her most matter-of-fact tone. She paused then added, “The stuff that came out of him was green. I have never forgotten it.”
That makes two of us, Mom.

Four stories. A quarter apiece. That was the first buck I made in this business.

TV came relatively late the the King household, and I’m glad. I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit. This might not be important. On the other hand, if you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than to strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far.
Just an idea.

Ten years or so later, after I’d sold a couple of novels, I discovered “The Night of the Tiger” in a box of old manuscripts and thought it was still a perfectly respectable tale, albeit one obviously written by a guy who had only begun to learn his chops. I rewrote it and on a whim resubmitted it to F&SF. This time they bought it. One thing I’ve notived is that when you’ve had a little success, magazines are a lot less apt to use that phrase, “Not for us.”

I have spent a good many years since—too many, I think—being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all. I’m not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. If you’re vey lucky (this is my idea, not John Gould’s, but I believe he would have subscribed to the notion, more will want to do the former than the latter.

Yet what ties [my wife and I] most strongly together are the words, the language, and the work of our lives.

Rainbow Shirts:

READ NEXT:  Charles Beaumont, CS Lewis, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, James Blish, and Frederik Pohl ALL Published in the same issue of MFSF

My Water Footprint:

#askagent –

If I want to put a quote before the start of my book, should I wait to include it until it’s sold to a publisher or should I submit it, quote and all, when my agent requests a full?

Dark Knight Humor:

“There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man.
It is by studying little things that we attain the great art
of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.”
SAMUEL JOHNSON


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Quick note from Lance about this post: when you choose to comment (or share this post with your friends) you help other readers just like you.

How?

Well, see, your comments & sharing whisper a few things to those who come after you:

The first is that this site is a safe place to speak up & stay curious. That it's civil. That discussion is encouraged. That there's no such thing as a stupid question (being a student of Socrates, I really and truly believe this). That talking to one another and growing together is more important than anything we could possibly publish. That the point is growing in virtue and growing together and growing wise. That discovery is invention, deference is originality, that we all can rise together. The only folks I'm going to take comments down from are obvious jerks who argue in bad faith, don't stay curious, or actively make personal attacks. And, frankly, I'd rather we talk here than on some social media farm — I will never show ads and the only thing I'm selling anywhere on the site or my mailing list is just the stuff I make.

You're also helping folks realize that anything you & they build together is far more important than anything you come to me to read. I take the things I write about seriously, but I don't take myself seriously: I play the fool, I hate cults of personality, and I also don't really like being the center of attention (believe it or not). I would much rather folks connect because of an introduction I've made or because they commented with one another back and forth and then build something beautiful together. My favorite contributions have been lifelong business and love partnerships from two people who have forgotten I introduced them. Some of my closest friends NOW I literally met on another blog's comment section fifteen years ago. I would love for that to happen here — let two of you meet and let me fade into the background.

Last, you help me revise. I'm wrong. Often. I'm not embarrassed to admit it or worried about being cancelled or publicly shamed. I make a fool out of myself (that's sort of the point). So as I get feedback, I can say, "I was wrong about that" and set a model for curious, consistent learning, and growing in wisdom. I'm blind to what I don't know and as grows the island of my knowledge so grows the shoreline of my ignorance. It's the recovery of innocence on the far end of experience: a child is in a permanent state of wonder. So are the wise: they aren't afraid of saying, "I don't know. That's new: please teach me." That's my goal, comments help. And I read all reviews: my skin's tough, but that's not license to be needlessly cruel. We teach one another our habits and there's a way to civilly demolish an idea without demolishing another person: just because I personally can take the world's meanest 1-star review doesn't mean we should teach one another how to be crueler on the internet.

For three magical reasons — your brave curiosity, your community, & my ignorance:

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