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Not Quite What I Was Planning

April 19, 2011 Books / Comic Books / Internet / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories / Videos
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I just found out about this inter­est­ing project called Six-​Word Mem­oirs, even though it’s been around for years. The premise is sim­ple — sum­ma­rize your life in exactly six words.

There’s a web­site where you can sub­mit mem­oirs and read (and rate) oth­ers’ sub­mis­sions. They also have sev­eral com­pendi­ums pub­lished (in fact, the title of this post is the title of the first of the books), a board game, teach­ing aids, and more.

The project was inspired by a story about Ernest Hem­ing­way. Sup­pos­edly, he was chal­lenged to write a story in six words, and he came up with this:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Amaz­ing how much can be con­veyed in those six short words! I guess Shake­speare was on to some­thing when he said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” (Six words again!) Like with any crowd-​sourced project, the sub­mis­sions are hit-​or-​miss, but the hits are quite good. I think the rea­son that these short sto­ries can be so poignant is the same prin­ci­ple Scott McCloud cites as one of the most pow­er­ful aspects of comics — iconic abstrac­tion. Basi­cally, the lack of detail makes it eas­ier for the audi­ence to iden­tify with the art.

If I were to take a crack at my own sub­mis­sion right now, I’d go with some­thing like this:

“Past mis­takes con­stantly thwart­ing poten­tial progress.”

What would yours be?

Team-Ups

March 26, 2011 Books / Comic Books / Friends / Movies / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories / Videos
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I’ve never been much of a Green Arrow fan. Always felt he was a bit too much of a Robin Hood rip-​off.

That said, Green Arrow does get some inter­est­ing team-​up sto­ries with other JLAers. In that spirit, I was pretty excited to orga­nize a group archery les­son with some friends.

After some last minute ros­ter changes, Drew M, Randy T, Thu H, Tim C, Tony T (Thu H’s boyfriend), and I met up at Paci­fica Archery today.

Tim C and I got there a bit late, but the staff was very nice. We signed a waiver and got out­fit­ted with an arm­band, glove, and a recurve bow. They gave us a quick safety course and begin­ner tech­nique les­son (we were all com­plete newbs other than Thu H), and then they let us loose on the range! They also adjusted our tar­gets and gave us point­ers on form and aim between fir­ing rounds.

The only thing even remotely close to archery train­ing I’ve had in the past was read­ing Wizard’s First Rule, and I have to say, not quite there. I’ll admit, there were a cou­ple of times where a shot “felt” right, but I think it’s just because archery is so much about con­sis­tency, and I had gone through a men­tal check­list before those shots. Maybe with a lot more prac­tice, I can “feel” and “pull” the targets.

Any­way, here’s some video of us shoot­ing about halfway through our session:

Tim C -

(Down­load)

Drew M -

(Down­load)

Thu H -
This one got cut off a lit­tle early, but there was excited jump­ing going on. If you know Thu H, you can imag­ine. :)

(Down­load)

Tony T -

(Down­load)

Randy T -

(Down­load)

and me -

(Down­load 1)(Down­load 2)

I think we all got pro­gres­sively bet­ter for the first 2⁄3 of the ses­sion, and then fatigue set in and we got a lit­tle sloppy towards the end. I ended up with two shots on the bor­der between yel­low and red sec­tions, and sev­eral that were solidly in the yel­low. (I’m pur­ple feath­ers and Drew M is red feath­ers.) Tony T got one solidly in the outer red ring, but Tim C was the ace of our group with two arrows inside the inner red sec­tion, just a hair above the dead cen­ter X.

We shot around for a lit­tle over an hour. (The staff was pretty loose on the time limit, we finally left the lanes just so the next group could go.) Wan­dered around the pro-​shop part for a bit to check stuff out. They have some very inter­est­ing prod­ucts. I think Tim C in par­tic­u­lar was very smit­ten, he took some equip­ment brochures.

Oh, and the store gave us each a free rental coupon to be redeemed any Tues­day through Fri­day between now and the end of June. Want to join us for Round Two?

Incom­ing search terms:

  • recurve bow
  • recurve bow and arrow
  • recurve­bow
  • a bow recurve and arrow
  • bow recurve
  • recurve
  • recurve begin­ners bow
  • recurve bow pack­age deals

Be Prepared

March 23, 2011 Comic Books / Downloads / Life, the Universe, and Everything / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Work
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My Japan­ese is pretty ter­ri­ble these days, but I believe that “Hideaki Akaiwa” means “bad­dest moth­er­fucker alive.”

This guy was hav­ing just another day at work when the earth­quake struck Japan, and the sub­se­quent tsunami left his coastal town of Ishi­no­maki cov­ered in a brand-​new ten-​foot-​deep lake. In a real-​life super­hero story, Hideaki chose to take mat­ters into his own hands instead of wait­ing for offi­cial emer­gency response teams to come to town.

He some­how got his hands on some scuba equip­ment, went back to his house, and swam through 200 yards of icy-​cold and debris-​filled waters to res­cue his wife from their flooded house. He then spent the next sev­eral days search­ing for his lost mother, finally reach­ing her after she had been stranded for four days. Even now, Hideaki is search­ing the area for more survivors!

Akaiwa-​sama, you, sir, are the great­est of heroes. I pray for half the courage and pres­ence of mind you dis­played if dis­as­ter were to strike my area. Along these lines, I have signed up for the next series of SF NERT courses. I hope that you all have emer­gency plans as well.

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