David Lubar's Blog, page 34

Poll bearer

When I saw in today's news that Charlie Crist lost a poll to a challenger, I immediately searched through Google for the obvious headline. Amazingly enough, nobody was tacky enough to proclaim: Crist has Fallen. (Though the phrase appeared in the middle of a sentence in one article, without any real sense of an intended play on words.)

"Hen in the Fox House," which immediately comes to mind with Fox hiring Plain, had over 7,000 hits.

Each is a fairly obvious headline, at least for anyone wh...

Heene meenie minor moan

I just caught a bit of the news, and heard that the balloon boy's dad, Richard Heene, still claims he thought his son was inside the balloon when he called the police. I need a reality check, here. From the pictures, the balloon doesn't have any place for a passenger. It looks like one solid unit. So if the kid was inside, he was in an environment of helium. (He was also qualified to be an understudy for David Blaine. He'd have to get inside, and then seal it well enough so it was air t...

No bad deed goes punished

Okay, this totally sucks. Back in 2007, when Rollie Welch of the Cleveland Public Library violated both professional ethics and contractual obligations by writing basically the same review for two publications (Kirkus Reviews and VOYA), I was assured by the editor, Cathy Dunn MacRae, that he would never write for VOYA again. Imagine my dismay when I looked on VOYA's web site and saw, coming in February: "Man Up! A New Column from Rollie Welch and Elsworth Rockefeller." (Please note -- I'm ...

Merely safer

Let's try this one more time.

George Bush and various agencies under his command ignore intelligence reports and don't share information.
Result, thousands die, and two buildings are destroyed.

Barack Obama and various agencies under his command ignore intelligence reports and don't share information.
Result, one man sets his genitals on fire.

Cold air

According to the Internet Movie Data Base, Up in the Air runs for 109 minutes in the US and only 108 minutes in Canada. I suspect this is due to a slight contraction caused by colder temperatures to the north. Though it's possible the discrepancy could be the result of stretching from the greater coriolis forces encountered as one moves toward the equator. A third possibility is a rounding error caused when converting to metric seconds.

Briefly Cybilized and nicely Beaned

A while back, someone who listed herself only as "Alyson" was nice enough to nominate My Rotten Life for one of the categories of the Cybil Awards. I didn't make the final nominee list, but that wasn't a surprise. There were 100 initial nominees (including some killer titles), and five finalists. But I wanted to thank the person who nominated me. It was a nice gesture. The link attached to her name went to the Arapahoe Library web site, so I assume she's a librarian. I figured I'd just ...

Boston MassALA

Yikes -- I almost let this slip. The ALA Midwinter Meeting is nearly here. If you have a book nominated for one of the lists, or you think you might be in the running for a big award, please check out this valuable service for writers.

Let me count the days

Some numbers from last year.

87 days spent speaking at schools. (I don't know how many schools in all, since some days were spent at more than one school.)

13 speaking appearances at conferences, libraries, and book stores.

64 airplanes boarded.

2 books written (somehow).

4 short stories written (fewer than usual).

2 books published (The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies, My Rotten Life).

1 anthology appearance (This Family Is Driving Me Crazy ).

1 anthology invitation (more on this later, but ...

This year, I resolve...

... to make my blog like a whole lot better and more interesting. Never a dull moment. Nope. It's going to be really filled with good stuff. Yeah. Lots of links, like this one. Oops. Sorry. I lost the bookmark. Well, anyhow, lots of links. And funny jokes. Knock, knock. Who's there? Me. Me who? Me who knocked. Get it? I mean, who else would be knocking? You can find lots more jokes at this amazing site right here. Wait. Can't find that link, either. Dang. I'll also be su...

Premature evacuation?

It looks like someone might buy Kirkus and keep them alive. Sigh. Isn't this how the Nosferatu legend began?