The year draws to a close, and I have awards to hand
out like perfume samples at a knock-off Sephora store in downtown Wuxi. Like that fabled Chinese
city, I too am full of warmth and water (about 57% of me is water, I reckon),
but since I can't share my water, I'll share my warmth.
Prepare for my generosity -- my shining trophies of
boundless appreciation -- my Zoscars.
I don't really know what a Zoscar looks like.
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| A hypothesis. Illustration by François Desprez |
Anyway. Commence the good stuff.
Blog Post of the Year
How could I pick just one? It would be monumentally
unfair. Here, read a handful instead.
1. Hajra
Khatoon: Will the
real men please stand up
This had to be number one.
Hajra reflects on the death of a rape victim in Delhi,
the subsequent public outcry, and what this all means to her as a young woman
in the early 21st century. Hajra, you already are changing the world by
speaking out. Keep at it.
2. Valeka
Cruz: My
very own voice, loud and clear
Sample the goodness: " My inner censor rears its head under the mask of being my protector. It
likes to keep me in my comfort zone. This voice tells me that my readers don’t
need to know some of the things my “good” voice wants to tell them.
In the past, I have listened to that inner censor. I
believed it when it said my readers wouldn’t know the difference. That voice
was wrong."
3. Dara
Beevas: The
ten commandments of choosing the right book title
Dara, VP of Beaver's Pond Press, writes, "If you
have a sneaking suspicion that your title lacks pizazz, listen to yourself. On
the other hand, if you feel in your gut that your title is “the one” don’t
underestimate that either. Bottom Line: there’s no single magic title that if
NOT selected dooms your book to the bargain barrel."
4. The
JackB: Your
social media blog is my favorite cure for insomnia
Jack: +1000 for the Monty Python reference.
Jack says, " A blog should be updated as frequently as necessary to
satisfy the writer and their readers. That means the number will vary from blog
to blog. No one is holding a gun to anyone’s head. If they don’t find value
they can go elsewhere."
5. Brad
Griffith: No
matter how weird you are, there is a reader base for you
If you can draw from the well of strangeness, get as
big a bucket as you can. This I believe, and Brad believes it too.
My fellow griffin fancier writes, "[P]erhaps you
are a drywaller and your story is centered around the thrilling world of
drywalling. You may think that nobody else out there is the least bit
interested in what you have to say. In reality, the setting of a book is like
the wrapper of a cigar. (...)
For example, say you have a thriller set in the wild
world of Finnish drywalling, and I’m reading it. It’s a good story, so I’m
already wrapped up in it. I like the characters, I like the motivations and the
plot, and at the end of the book it turns out the bad guy is the head of a vast
underground mafia-type network of drywallers that has godlike powers in
Finland. You know what? I’m going to buy it. Do you know why? Because I don’t
know the first thing about Finnish drywallers. Who am I to say that they don’t
wield all sorts of power in Finland? I’ve never been to Finland. I’ve never
even hung drywall before. Checkmate:
Author. "
6. James Killick: Why
writing blogs are boring
No witticisms to extract; I saved this one for last
because, frankly, it's the best article on blogging I read all year. Pay
attention to the subtext.
James knows the world is full of pretenders, and he
goes after them without mercy.
Song of the Year
To be honest, I can't make up my mind here. So the Musical Zoscars go to
1. David
Lynch's Crazy Clown Time
Warning: Depicts ladies flashing their breasts and
young actors screaming at the top of their lungs for no apparent reason. If you
know David Lynch, then you can imagine what you're getting into.
Have you survived that viewing experience?
Congratulations; you are now a part of the crazy clown conspiracy. (In no way
related to the Insane Clown Posse.)
That Emi, she's got the voice of an intoxicated angel
who used to smoke a pack of honey cigarillos a day and then switched to cyanide bubble gum.
Game of the Year
Forget Far Cry 3
or Borderlands 2. To hell with Dishonored and The Witcher: Assassins of Kings.
The best thing to come out this year was Universe Sandbox 2, a gravity simulator
where you can create imaginary extrasolar
systems and see what happens. You can have a thousand teapots orbit the sun, or
spend a whole day trying to put in place a stable trinary star system. You learn tons
about planetary mass, orbital periods, Lagrange points, what-have-you. It's the
most brilliant software toy I've ever come across.
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In this simulation, four moons cozy up to the Earth. We'd all be so intensely, crushingly, irrevocably dead
if anything like this were to happen.
|
Meme of the Year
Website of the Year
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EXPLORE
|
Movie of the Year
The best movie to come out in 2012 was Barbarella (1968).
Lynch, Malick, Haneke, Oliveira, you're all wasting your time. Roger Vadim's
got you beat; there's no improving on Barbarella.
A young, disrobed Jane Fonda uttering the line
"Armed, like a naked savage!" and holding Art Nouveau energy weapons
to her breast, that gives me pause. Science fiction,
you say? Why, there's no science here, and hardly any fiction.
Runner-up:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Nicholas Cage the
thinking woman's Barbarello these days? Eh, I'm probably wrong.
Webcomic Strip of the Year
Book of the Year
You know what, I have no idea. I don't usually buy new
releases; the last time I waited on a book was 2008, when The Dragons of Babel
came out.
But I can tell you a little about the 3 books I
enjoyed most in 2012.
1. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David
Sedaris.
It's part memoir, part WTF. "Because she has
maintained her beautiful skin and enviable figure, Amy remains my father's
greatest treasure. She is by far the most attractive member of the family, yet
she spends most of her time and money disguising herself beneath prosthetic
humps and appliquéd skin diseases. She's got more neck braces and false teeth
than she knows what to do with, and her drawers and closets overflow with human
hair."
2. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea,
by Charles Seife.
First line:
"Zero hit the USS Yorktown like a torpedo."
Best opening line in the history of non-fiction books.
3. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged
Life, by Theodor Adorno.
Adorno's reputation precedes him. Susan Sontag said "A
volume of Adorno is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature."
Theodor Adorno writes, "The only relation of
consciousness to happiness is gratitude: in which lies its incomparable
dignity." Also: "The desire for the presence of the most ancient is a
hope that animal creation might survive the wrong that man has done it[.]"
Adorno was a thinker of the first water, and E. F. N.
Jephcott does him justice with an outstanding
translation. Buy this book.
My Favorite Blogging Experience this Year
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| Painting by Robert Hardgrave |
The Thank Yous
Anne-Marie Clark
for the constant support and conversation.
David Amerland
for, well, just about everything he posts on Google Plus.
Sakis Koukouvis
for the science news.
Justin Zimmer
for the great science videos he digs up.
Alexandre
Fernandes for turning me on to music I might have missed.
Jill Tooley
and Mandy
Kilinskis of Quality
Logo Products -- readers and friends like you are the reason a guy keeps on
writing.
Daniel
and Terre
for interviewing me; Hajra for blog-stalking
me. (Is blog-stalking a word?)
Stan Faryna
for the endless link love and provocation. Stan, you're crazy and sometimes I
like to pretend I understand you. It's fun for both of us.
Ruth Long,
future Elmore Leonard and Chief Treasurer/Expedition Leader of the First Mancunian
Petrosomatoglyph Fanciers Club.
Bill
Dorman for being Bill Dorman. Self-explanatory, that ought to be.
Adam Charles, founder of iwritereadrate.com, for
featuring my Samurai Guide to
Editing like a Rock Star.
Angela
Ackerman for running one of the best writing blogs on Earth. Like me,
Angela nurtures an ill-advised passion for the B-movie to end all B-movies, Army
of Darkness. We just can't help it -- Ash is too awesome.
A.E. Tyree, Susan Utley, Jacqueline, Jules Vilmur and Jan Marshall for
remembering me in their weekly shout-outs.
The rest of you, you know who you are.
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