Showing posts with label Geek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geek. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
New Geeky Wildlife Comic
I have a new geeky bio comic. This one doesn't need much explanation. Enjoy!
P.S - Feel free to share/tweet/whatever!
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
New Song: Hot Geek Girlfriend
My wife and I took a trip over the Thanksgiving holiday and I told myself before we left that I was going to do TONS of writing.
Well...that didn't really work out. I did a little, mainly just jotting down ideas on random pieces of paper. My one solid writing accomplishment for the trip was a new song. If you've checked it out before today, you may have noticed that the "My Songs" page of this blog only had one song on it. It should have been called "My Song". BUT NO MORE! Now there are 2. They are truly plural.
I want to give a huge shout out to John Anealio who's awesomely geeky songwriting inspired me (I especially love this one). Be sure to check him out.
And as long as I'm doing shout outs, be sure to check out Ms. Sicoe's inspiring post about unrealistic expectations and insecurity. Inspiring!
Ok, now for the song:
Well...that didn't really work out. I did a little, mainly just jotting down ideas on random pieces of paper. My one solid writing accomplishment for the trip was a new song. If you've checked it out before today, you may have noticed that the "My Songs" page of this blog only had one song on it. It should have been called "My Song". BUT NO MORE! Now there are 2. They are truly plural.
I want to give a huge shout out to John Anealio who's awesomely geeky songwriting inspired me (I especially love this one). Be sure to check him out.
And as long as I'm doing shout outs, be sure to check out Ms. Sicoe's inspiring post about unrealistic expectations and insecurity. Inspiring!
Ok, now for the song:
Hot Geek Girlfriend
We met at a con
I was dressed as Aragorn
She said she’s always be my Arwen
Cosplays as 7 of 9
Her skin tight jumpsuit looks so fine
I will never be alone again
Oh no she’s ain’t no booth babe
Here just to hock some new game
She’s a nerd like me
Just much better looking
She’s my hot geek girlfriend
She speaks fluent Klingon
And quotes Monty Python
George R.R. Martin poster on her wall
She knows that Hon shot first
And the new Star Wars are the worst
Was no doubt it’d be for her I’d fall
Oh no she’s ain’t a noob
WOW Pally level 82
She’s a nerd like me
Just much better looking
She’s my hot geek girlfriend
Someday we’ll tie the knot
Dressed like Uhura and Mr. Spock
Have little Ewok kids
We’ll never hit the skids
She’s a nerd like me
Just much better looking
She’s my hot geek girlfriend
She’s my hot geek girlfriend
___________________
What do you think?
Friday, October 19, 2012
What Are Writers Scared Of?
We're knee deep in the Halloween season and there are spooky and scary writing contests all over the internet. I'm not big on a lot of these contests (it's difficult enough finding time to work on my current writing projects) but I couldn't resist Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction Challenge over at TerribleMinds. The rules were simple: write a horror story in 3 sentences using 100 words or less.
Man that's a lot harder than it sounds.
After a few gajillion revisions I came up with:
I can feel tears run back across my temples and cool air caressing my naked skin, but I cannot wipe the tears away, cannot cover up.
“The paralytic should be in full effect by now,” he says over the whine of the buzz-saw.
I cannot scream.
I feel pretty good about it. It may not be particularly original but I think it's pretty scary. When posting it to TerribleMinds, I started perusing the other entries and found myself fascinated by what different folks came up with. Being the super nerdy scientist type that I am, I busted out my Excel spreadsheet and took a tally to see what writers (at least those that like flash fiction challenges) find scary.
NOTE: AS A SCIENCE GEEK I FEEL THE NEED TO...sorry, I'll stop yelling...the need to point out that these "statistics" are super unscientific and relied a great deal on my interpretation of the stories. That being said, please enjoy my nerdyness.
This first graph represents the percentage of stories that had protagonist, antagonist, or neutral view points/main characters. I defined protagonist as "scary stuff happening to them" and protagonist as "the one doing the scary stuff". "Neutral" were those main characters that were simply witnessing something scary and really didn't have anything to do with the story. I was surprised that more writers didn't have the bad guy as the MC (although I didn't either). I just thought more of us would take the opportunity to use that viewpoint.
This graph shows the number of stories that fell within a common premise. Not all of the stories are represented here. These are mostly the ones that fell into a category that I could figure out (same for the rest of the graphs). Being eaten was a big one. Of the 19 in that category, 5 involved cannibalism, 2 of those involving infant cannibalism (parents eating babies to be specific). The "Dying or Dead" category involved stories who's MC was dying or already dead without a clear explanation of why. The "Slasher-like" category is a little broad but includes stories that had a knife/chainsaw/etc. wielding killer. The "Child Accident" category included stories where the child of the MC is hurt or killed, usually due to the neglect of the MC/parent. I found these especially disturbing but not particularly...scary (if that makes sense).
Of the stories that had an identifiable "Bad Guy", the antagonist was overwhelmingly human. I guess us writers are far more scared of people than the supernatural. Of the humans, there were 12 true slashers, 4 evil kids, 3 doctors, and one clown. The rest were just "regular" people. "Monsters" were clearly non-human beasts without any defining characteristics. Of the animals, there were 2 cat, insect, and rodent stories and 1 story each for snakes and dogs. I was surprised that there was not a single alien story.
This one is of themes that turned out to be common in the stories. Most of theme are pretty standard in the horror genre although I did find the number of "Creepy House" stories a little disappointing. Haven't we done that one to death?!?!?
This last graph might just represent me being a jerk. I'm not sure. Basically, these are the people that didn't follow the directions. The "Cheaters" are those stories that tried to cram way more than 3 sentences in by having crazy amounts of semi-colons, commas, and dashes. Cheaters. "Wrong Genre" were those that really didn't have anything to do with horror. These include funny stories that didn't have any scary elements. There were a number of scary stories that were also funny but that's something completely different (and awesome). The "Chuck Love" category included stories who's sole purpose was to brown-nose Mr. Wendig. Have some pride people. The final category included references so obscure that I had to google them in order to have any idea what their story was about. Yikes.
There you have it.
Man that's a lot harder than it sounds.
After a few gajillion revisions I came up with:
I can feel tears run back across my temples and cool air caressing my naked skin, but I cannot wipe the tears away, cannot cover up.
“The paralytic should be in full effect by now,” he says over the whine of the buzz-saw.
I cannot scream.
I feel pretty good about it. It may not be particularly original but I think it's pretty scary. When posting it to TerribleMinds, I started perusing the other entries and found myself fascinated by what different folks came up with. Being the super nerdy scientist type that I am, I busted out my Excel spreadsheet and took a tally to see what writers (at least those that like flash fiction challenges) find scary.
NOTE: AS A SCIENCE GEEK I FEEL THE NEED TO...sorry, I'll stop yelling...the need to point out that these "statistics" are super unscientific and relied a great deal on my interpretation of the stories. That being said, please enjoy my nerdyness.
 | |
This graph shows the number of stories that fell within a common premise. Not all of the stories are represented here. These are mostly the ones that fell into a category that I could figure out (same for the rest of the graphs). Being eaten was a big one. Of the 19 in that category, 5 involved cannibalism, 2 of those involving infant cannibalism (parents eating babies to be specific). The "Dying or Dead" category involved stories who's MC was dying or already dead without a clear explanation of why. The "Slasher-like" category is a little broad but includes stories that had a knife/chainsaw/etc. wielding killer. The "Child Accident" category included stories where the child of the MC is hurt or killed, usually due to the neglect of the MC/parent. I found these especially disturbing but not particularly...scary (if that makes sense).
Of the stories that had an identifiable "Bad Guy", the antagonist was overwhelmingly human. I guess us writers are far more scared of people than the supernatural. Of the humans, there were 12 true slashers, 4 evil kids, 3 doctors, and one clown. The rest were just "regular" people. "Monsters" were clearly non-human beasts without any defining characteristics. Of the animals, there were 2 cat, insect, and rodent stories and 1 story each for snakes and dogs. I was surprised that there was not a single alien story.
 |
This last graph might just represent me being a jerk. I'm not sure. Basically, these are the people that didn't follow the directions. The "Cheaters" are those stories that tried to cram way more than 3 sentences in by having crazy amounts of semi-colons, commas, and dashes. Cheaters. "Wrong Genre" were those that really didn't have anything to do with horror. These include funny stories that didn't have any scary elements. There were a number of scary stories that were also funny but that's something completely different (and awesome). The "Chuck Love" category included stories who's sole purpose was to brown-nose Mr. Wendig. Have some pride people. The final category included references so obscure that I had to google them in order to have any idea what their story was about. Yikes.
There you have it.
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