50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
I’m trying to figure out some stuff about traffic sources, and I feel like my stats package isn’t entirely accurate. If you don’t mind, would you please choose the option below that most accurately reflects how you found out about this post?
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As my thank you for your time, here are my dogs, being good dogs, Brent.
Harbour packs a lot of game into a very small box, and we had a whole lot of fun when we played it this season.
This episode also includes what I think is my very favorite quote ever uttered in the history of the show, courtesy of Nika Harper: “I am a nihilistic wolf shepherd with an anchor and nothing to lose”.
“We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existence, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.” -H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
During last night’s Storytime With Wil, I unexpectedly noticed something pasted into the back cover of the thirty-five year old book. It was a little slip of paper, one of those ditto runoffs that they used in schools in the 80s, and it told us this book belonged to a kid named Dean, who was in Traverse City Junior High School. It was a child’s drawing of Snoopy, laying on his back, like he does on top of his dog house, only he was on the back of a book which was propped up like an open tent. Along the cover of the book long, skinny letters spelled out R. I. F.
R.I.F is Reading Is Fundamental. R.I.F. is a literacy program that makes a real, meaningful, positive difference in kids’ lives. My school didn’t have R.I.F. (it was a private, religious school, so we didn’t have a lot of the cool public school programs my friends had) but we had our own version of it. We read books, we’d accumulate points, and when we had a certain number of points, we could cash them in for a book of our own. I can’t say for certain, but I’d like to imagine that Dean, in 1981, cashed in some R.I.F points to get this particular copy of The Mystery of Chimney Rock.
I got unexpectedly emotional when I saw this little rectangle of paper, pasted into the back of this book, and I struggled to put my finger on exactly why, until someone in the chat said that it was like a time machine. It’s like someone was reaching through time, and touching my hands. It was this tactile, tangible moment, where I and the 480 or so people who were watching got to make a semi-personal connection with this kid, Dean, who owned and read this book in 1981. I wonder: did he make the same choices we made? How many of the 36 endings did he experience? Did he read it aloud? Did he have friends or siblings who he read with or to? Was he like me? Was he shy and awkward, finding escape and comfort and companionship inside the covers of this book and others like it?
I’ll never know, and I don’t want to know. I just love the mystery, and I love the connection. I love the continuity that exists between someone putting this book into Dean’s hands, thirty-six years ago, and it finding its way into my hands, last night.
So I had this idea to encourage the viewers to donate a book to R.I.F., either by purchasing one from their wishlist, or maybe by donating a book from their personal collection to a library, or a school. I just thought it would be cool to take the joy that I (and presumably some of the viewers) indirectly got from this R.I.F. program, and spread it around a little bit. Because the world is overflowing with sadness and despair right now, and we could maybe chip away at it, just a little bit.
I’d love it if you’d do something to promote literacy in your community, or make it possible to give books to some kids who don’t have the privilege and good fortune we have. We have no idea how we can touch and affect and change a life through a simple act of anonymous kindness, but maybe in thirty-six years, someone will pick up a book that one of us helped put into the hands of a child, and experience the same joy we all experienced last night.
Just a bunch of nerds on a boat.
I’ve been a fan of Nerf Herder since before the first record came out, because my friend had a pre-release. It was right around the time that Weezer stopped being Weezer, and Nerf Herder was all OH HELLO PEOPLE WHO LIKE CATCHY NERD ROCK WANT TO HANG OUT?
When I found out that the band was going to be on this year’s JoCo Cruise, I peed a little. But just a little, because I have moderately decent self control from time to time.
I got to spend some time with every member of the band while we were on the boat, and they are the nicest people, you guys. I also got to stand in the front row when they headlined JoCochella in Lareto, Mexico. I also also got to perform Sloop John B. with them on stage on the last night of the JoCo Cruise.
So, yeah, it was a pretty big deal for me, and one of those times I stopped to look around and say thank you to the universe for putting me into this timeline (as you can imagine, I spend a lot of time wondering when me from the future will get around to repairing this timeline).
Last year, a couple of weeks before Halloween, I had this idea to write a short, supernatural horror story. At the time, I was deep in the first draft of the short story that became a novella that really wants to be a novel (which has since been titled “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything”), so switching tracks to work on something different was intended to be a quick detour that would give me something to release for Halloween.
Once I got into it, though, Project Ravenswood took on its own life and it went from being a short story that I expected to finish around 3500 words after a week or so, to something I worked on for several months and just finished yesterday, at a little under 14,000 words. I retitled it “Dead Trees Give No Shelter”, and now I have to decide what I’m going to do with it. Part of me wants to hold onto it and put it out as part of the short collection it was originally intended to be part of, another part of me wants to release it right away as an ebook, still another part of me wants to pitch it to a couple of editors I respect, and still another part of me wants to record and release it as an audiobook original.
So I’m not sure what happens next with this story, because I’ve never worked this long on something that’s this (relatively) short, and I’m in unfamiliar territory right now. I do know that I get to do two things:
Oh, and I get to release a new work of creative fiction for the first time in years. That’s pretty cool, and feels really good. However I get this story from me to you, I think you’ll enjoy it … or, at least, I hope you do.
