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December 22nd, 2009
officialgaiman
| 06:34 pm - Why all the lettering is getting smaller...
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/why-all-lettering-is-getting-smaller.html posted by Neil
I'm flying out tonight to the UK. I'll hole up in the middle of nowhere with my children and ex-wife and my mother as well, and probably be off-the-internet the whole time. There will be no TV in the middle of nowhere, so I will miss Doctor Who and miss "Statuesque" on Sky1 (10 pm Christmas Day).
Trying to deal with the last things I have to do before I get out of here. (Also realised very late last night that the problems I've had reading comics for the next Year's Best American Comics that I'm guest editing has nothing to do with losing my love for comics and everything to do with the fact that somewhere in the last year I must have started needing reading glasses for small print and had not realised this. I found a pair of reading glasses and the world became one with good, easy-to-read comics in it once again... I suppose more things like this will happen as I age. How odd.)
I leave you with a handful of links...
Okay. Back to last-minute things...
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milkeyed_mender
[stephan_nance]
 | 10:57 am - Joanna Newsom Food
http://seattlest.com/2009/12/18/songs_as_food_from_pink_floyd_to_ed.php
"This year in Sound magazine turned City Arts, 'Dish-Off' challenged chefs at 28 restaurants to create dishes based on songs with food ingredients in the title."
Joanna's "Crab, Clam, Cockle, Cowrie" was interpreted as an Alaskan King crab with tart green apple sorbetto and crab butter powder.
When you think about it, a restaurant's whole menu could easily revolve around Joanna Newsom's lyrics. The results could be controversial if the dishes were based solely on titles... "Monkey & Bear" and "Only Skin" come to mind. But I'm all for sprouts and beans, and there are endless dessert possibilities for "Peach, Plum, Pear"...
Then there is this ridiculous thought I have far too often: "I dreamed you were skipping little scones across the surface of the water..."
Anyway. Happy holidays, menders!
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December 21st, 2009
milkeyed_mender
[man_at_arms]
 | 12:41 am - Rolling Stone's "Goodbye to All That"
I can't believe that a week has gone by without anyone commenting on Rolling Stone's assessment that Joanna and the entire 'Freak Folk' movement--not that she ever belonged in that genre--are passé, making their music unworthy to be stored on anyone's hard drive. However, RS did say that Freak Folk's peak was when Joanna released Ys. Read page 34 in RS's late December 09 to early January 10 edition...Happy Holidays :)
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December 20th, 2009
officialgaiman
| 11:02 pm - Nakedly Commercial Post Sweetened By A Dog Photo
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/nakedly-commercial-post-sweetened-by.html posted by Neil
Just a quick post to let those interested know that both Amazon and Barnes and Noble are doing extreme Christmassy discounts on ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS. It's available for 50% of the cover price...
The Amazon.com link is http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Frost-Giants-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0061671738
The Barnes and Noble link is at http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Odd-and-the-Frost-Giants/Neil-Gaiman/e/9780061671739
...
There are few picturebook-makers as cool as Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman, and their latest collaboration, Crazy Hair (Bloomsbury £11.99), for 3-6s, is wild. It’s about a father whose hair is so big it contains tigers, pirate ships and carousels. Distortions and magnifications make the images strange and dark, rivalling the text for energy and verve.
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December 19th, 2009
cardiff
[penvmbra]
 | 03:39 pm - Marduk
Hey guys!
Is anyone going to the Marduk concert on the 30th January at the Millenium Music Hall?
I am trying to find places which sell the tickets but the only one I find charges almost £5 for a dubious 'handling fees' on top of the ticket price and booking fee. Ticket line is not selling the tickets, although they were selling for Marduk concert in other cities.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
P. \m/
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December 18th, 2009
officialgaiman
| 06:57 pm - Xmas Roundup With Some Good Links and a photo of an author in it
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/xmas-roundup-with-some-good-links-and.html posted by Neil
How the hell did it get to be December the 18th? Ohhh. All the links I meant to post. Arghh.
For a start, I want to repost this little true thing I wrote, from last year's Independent: it's about being an eight year old Jewish kid who really wanted a Christmas tree...http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/neil-gaiman-hanukkah-with-bells-on-1203307.htmlI wanted to tell you that you can still get the signed prints of "Before You Read This" I did with Todd Klein -- it's a poem I wrote that Todd lettered -- at Todd's website (along with Todd's other unique signed prints -- collaborations with Alex Ross, Alan Moore and J.H. Williams). http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=6525. (If you're hesitating, order: they're really cheap, and the second printing will be gone soon.) Also, for signed things and rare stuff, you can Do Good while last minute shopping by heading over to the CBLDF shop website. Here's the page with stuff related to me on it.) I just got my author's copies of "A Hundred Words To Talk of Death", the poem I wrote that Jim Lee illustrated and Todd Klein lettered. (Someone wrote to me on Twitter pointing out that it is two syllables short, and unable to figure out why. I will leave that as a problem for you to solve.) It's beautiful -- the same size and quality as the print of "The Day The Saucers Came". It's glorious. (Thinks: I can take a photo to show people.)
I didn't used to think of Jim Lee as a glorious and subtle pencil artist, but he really is, and this is wonderful. (You can order them from here, and read about Kitty's adventures in shipping them out over at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/, with bonus pictures right now of my Very Late Guy Fawkes Part of last month.)  Here is a photo of an author who needs a shave holding a print of "One Hundred Words" poem.
Kitty herself is heading off on tour with Lady Gaga early next year, and Maddy is going to see them in Chicago (where, about eight years ago, I first met Kitty, on the road with Tori) ( Who will be interviewed tonight on ABC -- Tori that is, not Kitty or Maddy).
Amanda and I have been having something that isn't quite an argument about Lady Gaga for a few weeks. We have really rubbish arguments, because they normally resolve into the discovery that we weren't arguing at all, just saying the same thing from two different points of view. Amanda posted a ukulele video-song-blog she'd written late last night from her Boston flat when she was probably meant to be practising her New Year's Eve Tchaikovsky, and I discovered that our latest argument wasn't an argument and we were talking about the same things again. It's art. You make it.
I don't think I will ever write songs and post them on YouTube instead of blogging. I'm in awe of someone who can. It's a good song, too, not just a funny and wise end-of-an-argument, even if she has to stop and scroll down at the last verse. Also, she said "aluminium".
And finally, in keeping with the not-exactly-Christmassy-but-sort-of theme of this blog...
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cardiff
[manynames]
 | 10:11 am
Can anyone recommend a computer repair place in or around Cardiff? Preferably somewhere not too expensive. Thanks!
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fleeblewidget
 | 09:14 am - Taking it like a monkey
One of our applicants for next year's student placement (an Aberystwyth student who shall remain nameless) has decided not to accept our rejection, and sent Mick a strongly worded email to that effect at ten to midnight last night.
Those of you who attend Gregynog each year might want to point out to next year's batch that, no matter how hilarious it might seem at the time, drunk-emailing employers who turned you down will not, in fact, get them to reconsider.
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December 17th, 2009
officialgaiman
| 04:43 am - Late night mystery post...
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/late-night-mystery-post.html posted by Neil
Hullo everyone. I took a week off from Blogging, then didn't have a second during the whirlwind of the last few days.
As a result of which I have dozens of open tabs and dozens of letters to the FAQ line that I've marked as things I should answer. I'm not going to try and do them all now (Maddy told me that I'm taking her to school at 6:30 am, as she's got her first period of Driver's Ed). But there are a few things I should say before I sleep...
The first one is to congratulate Henry Selick and all the Coraline team (and Laika, and Focus) on the wonderful way they are being recognised by Awards. Yesterday, for example, we learned that Coraline is nominated for a Golden Globe award.
There's a great website at http://awards.filminfocus.com/#/coraline/awards which is a bit out of date right now. My favourite of the recent awards is that the Alliance of Women Journalists gave Coraline their Best Animated Character award, although the biggest honour is Coraline being on the American Film Institute's list of the ten most important films released in 2009.
I went to Atlanta. It was foggy and thunderstormy and I signed for 1,050 people. (Here's the Atlanta paper blog on the event. And Little Shop of Stories said Thank You so very nicely.)
I went to Winnipeg. It was cold outside and I signed for 869 people. Here's the Winnipeg Newspaper article. Just behind me, in the grey shirt, is the wonderful Elyse Marshall, publicist from HarperChildren's, who looked after me on the Graveyard Book Tour and who can now run a huge signing in her sleep, which is great, because it means I don't have to worry about any details or disasters. I just do my job and sign and meet everyone.
(How bad can it get? Well, there was the time Terry Pratchett and I were signing in, er, I think it was Leeds, when the people who worked at the shop saw all the people who had turned up for the signing and got scared enough that they locked themselves in the staff room at the back, leaving Terry and me to climb onto tables and shout at people until they formed some kind of a line. The staff didn't come out again until the people had all gone.)
Strangest moment in Winnipeg was getting back to the hotel room at 1:30 am to notice that, beside my bed, a framed photo of my children had mysteriously appeared. I assumed that this was a cool thing the hotel had done. Elyse, on the other hand, was convinced it was the action of a crazed stalker, and insisted I deadbolt and security chain my hotel room, and was enormously relieved, a few hours later, when she knocked on my door and I removed the chain and was obviously still alive.
Before we left the hotel I took the photo out of the frame and left a thank-you note in its place.
Flew back to Minneapolis. I stopped off at DreamHaven on the way back from the airport this afternoon, and signed more stock for Greg (http://neilgaiman.net/). Theoretically enough to see him through Xmas.
Several people wrote asking me to express my outrage at HarperCollins joining several other publishers in delaying the release of books on the Kindle or e-book format to some months after the hardback comes out, as detailed at http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/11/harpercollins-now-also-thumbing-nose-at-e-book-industry-with-dig/ but after I read the article I couldn't manage any outrage at all, no more than I could manage for people who demand that paperback books come out at the same time as hardbacks. It seemed a legitimate way to publish, anyway.
And, for those of you who want to learn exactly how an author should not respond to an Amazon One-Star review, we present an author named Candace Sams, who begins by pretending she's not the author, just someone defending a good book, then, when outed as the author, claims she's part of a noble group standing up against an evil one-star reviewer, and then informs everyone on the Amazon Comments thread that she's reported them all to the FBI. The Amazon Thread is here. Teresa Nielsen Hayden comments on it at Making Light, here. (Via Cleolinda's twitter.)
And yes, it's a horrible car crash, and I post it here not because it's funny in an Oh God Make It Stop kind of way, but because, if any of you are ever tempted to respond to bad reviews or internet trolls etc, it's a salutary reminder of why some things are better written in anger and deleted in the morning. (Also, if you're an American Games company, don't sue a British blogger in the Australian courts for a bad review.)
Oops. I have started blogging. I will stop now, and sleep for a little while.
...
Before I go: Sky has a website for the Ten Minute Tales series, which includes Statuesque, my film starring Bill Nighy (which goes out in the UK on Christmas Day) : http://sky1.sky.com/10-minute-tales. I wish I could have been at the screening in London on Sunday, more so when I saw my old friend Paterson Joseph stars in one of the films.
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December 16th, 2009
fleeblewidget
| 01:45 pm - A joke
Sin, cos and ex went to a party. Sin and cos mingled with the other guests while ex just stood in a corner by himself. At the end of the night, sin and cos asked him why, and he said: "I tried integrating, but nothing happened".
I heard this at the kick-off meeting for the next release of our major product. That's what working with mathematicians will do for you. There was also cake. As meetings go, it was pretty good.
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December 15th, 2009
fleeblewidget
| 11:02 am - Inter-office jealousies
Last year, NAG opened an office in Manchester (our second UK base). However, owing to the glacial rate of change around here employees based in Manchester still recieve any emails which are sent to the whole office here in Oxford. Since these messages are typically arranging social events or informing people of cake/chocolates etc, a certain amount of resentment seems to crop up among our northern colleagues. The Manchester office is much smaller, with only 6 people, so they rarely get celebratory treats.
Today, there have been announcements of chocolate (twice) and biscuits, on top of several such messages over the last couple of weeks. It was all too much for one Manchester employee, Craig, who finally cracked and sent out this email to all staff:
"We have Champagne, truffles, caviar and veggie pork pie. Apologies to
those in Oxford.
Craig"
I like to imagine he isn't being sarcastic. It pleases me to think of the 6 of them sitting round a huge feast in silence, awed and frightened by the sheer quantity of food in front of them.
I guess the moral here is that if you live in Manchester you get less cake.
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December 12th, 2009
December 11th, 2009
strokeyadam
 | 09:33 am - Strokey's Annual Update
December the 12th 2008 was the last time I posted anything on this blog. I've decided to celebrate that anniversary a day early and post an update today.
It's been a mixed year for many of my friends with some getting married (good luck to them), others announcing engagements (congratulations to them) and some relationships ending (hope they're all OK).
For me , the most significant thing has probably been that Emma and I have set a date to get married. We're going through with it on Easter Monday at the registry office in Aberystwyth, then going to San Francisco for a week and coming back and having a party in Daventry (which really is a real place, really).
Otherwise it's been quite an uneventful 12 months. I joined a gym (in the hope of losing some weight before I get married) and I've been enough times now that my knees don't hurt after 10 minutes on the exercise bike anymore.
Emma's pet rabbit doesn't seem very well so we're taking it to the vet's tomorrow. Hopefully they'll be able to do something to it to make it stop smelling so bad.
Bands that I've seen are Little Man Tate twice (who were really good) and Little Boots (who was excellent) and comedians were Jimmy Carr (good), Russell Howard (very good), Dave Spikey (quite good) and Rob Brydon (who was fantastic).
We went to Blackpool in February and won a stuffed toy (Remy, the rat from 'Ratatouille') on the Donkey Derby. He now comes pretty much everywhere with us and and has his photograph taken for the Facebook group Remy on Tour. We get some very strange looks off people when they see us taking the photos.
We went to Southwold in Suffolk in August because I booked a boat trip to the Scroby Sands offshore windfarm for Emma's birthday. The boat trip was excellent but Southwold is a really strange little place that has no shops open in the evening. There was nowhere to buy a pasty or a chocolate bar after about 6pm. Surely the locals need something to eat after they've had a pint or two. Weird.
That's about it.
It'll probably be another year before I post anything again
(I've just tried to Spellcheck this and the spellchecker on Livejournal doesn't like the word 'blog.' One of the alternatives it suggested for 'Facebook was 'Cyborg')
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December 10th, 2009
milkeyed_mender
[kathrynew30]
 | 04:03 pm - Norah Jones is a fan of JNew.
Well Norah Jones and Robin Pecknold from Fleet Fox are fans. They did the Gummy Awards for Stereogum and for the category Best Album of the Decade, Norah said the Milk-Eyed Mender and Robin said Ys. :D I just thought this was super interesting.
And for the rest of their answers and the other celebrities choices, here is the link. stereogum.com/gummys/2009/celebrity-ballots-2009.html
Norah's and Robin's answers are towards the middle. Enjoy.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) cheerful
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brit_knits
[mrs_karen_bear]
 | 08:58 pm - Noro Blossom
Help me interwebs!
I am now the proud owner of two skeins of Noro Blossom in lovely purply bluey colours and I am trying to find something gorgeous to knit for me out of it that isn't a scarf. I have been browsing Ravelry for quite a while and am totally confused!
What would you knit with two skeins of Noro Blossom?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/square/b/curious.gif) curious
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milkeyed_mender
[glassblowfaerie]
 | 01:20 am - Hello Hello!
I'm a classical harpist, but I'm also completely enamoured of Joanna's music. I joined this community because I wanted to know if there is anyone out there who knows a little bit more of the now-defunct transcription project, and/or where to find other copies of newsom's sheet music? Thank you thank you!!
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December 9th, 2009
fleeblewidget
| 11:55 am - Things
I've had a really awesome couple of weekends. The weekend before last, JTA and I celebrated our minus-first wedding anniversary (our last ever minusiversary*!) by taking off to a little hotel in rural wales and spending some quality time in a hot tub on a balcony looking over a lake. This last weekend, Dan and I embarked on an epic adventure taking in an Alice Cooper concert in Nottingham (totally ace!, a wedding where we knew almost no-one and I made the bride cry (not really my fault, but I'm still worried about the possibility of bad wedding karma), late night ice-cream in Preston, and a late arrival back in Aberystwyth after the Mach road was closed. All in all, I'm doing well for good times with good people at the moment.
There will not be purple shiny christmas-tree shaped candles at fake christmas. I'm sorry. They're in Oxford, and I'm in Aber (I couldn't get back on Monday, and there were flood warnings for most of my route home, so I asked and got permission to telecommute this week). I've also had to change the menu, since half the recipes I was going to use are also in Oxfordshire, but all will be well.
* The third one we've celebrated.
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