Humour – Page 11 – Tyson Adams

Random comments

I appreciate all of my friends/readers here, especially those who take the time to comment. My site statistics tell me that I average roughly 2 comments per post, which is a 4% conversation rate. My own posting on other’s blogs wouldn’t be that high, so I’m fine with that figure, I’m just happy people enjoy my posts.

The point of this post is to highlight my own experiences with some of the more interesting comments this blog receives. The site statistics tell me that I average roughly 640 spam comments per month. PER MONTH! Obviously some of those spam comments may be legitimate comments, if you have fallen prey of my spam filter please email me, but most are rubbish promoting some shoe-viagra-porn-dating-retail site or other. The ones that quote Bible and Quran verses are interesting, but this recent response to my review of Lee Child’s latest novel blew me away.

Lee Child
Dear Sir,
I just finished reading your latest novel, A Wanted Man. Congratulations. Yet another excellent work.
I thought you might find it interesting regarding why I like your stories. These are the reasons:
• I never find a word I do not know the meaning of, and is not part of ordinary speech.
• The story takes place in normal time sequence. No flashbacks.
• A single central character carries the action from the first to the last page.
• I find not one sentence, which is not designed to help tell the story. You never stray.
• I find no forced metaphors that I have to puzzle over to discover their meaning.
• I find no literary actions-verbs that may sound pretty or poetic but make no literal sense.
• None of the characters are wooden.
• All your stories are unique.
• I find no explicit sex included because you can’t think of what should happen next.
• The number of characters is limited.
Keep up the good work.
Jim Cunnungham

Now I am very much a fan of Lee Child’s writing, I have most of his novels on my shelves. I am also working on becoming a published author of crime thrillers, but I don’t think I could be mistaken with Lee Child. For one, I’m not as tall as Lee, he is quite a bit older and he’s English. So addressing this comment to Lee on my blog seems rather random.

After congratulating not-me on a great novel, Jim proceeds to list the things he likes about not-me’s writing. Jim likes not having to use a dictionary, or reading internet addresses or review author names. Jim also doesn’t like flashbacks and appreciates having a single character to follow, clearly much less complicated than having to think whilst reading. I agree with Jim that Lee doesn’t delve into the literary realms with his prose, keeping the story and writing tight. It makes for a much more interesting read; there is nothing worse than wasting your valuable reading time with random stuff that has nothing to do with what you actually want to read. Jim also appreciates the building materials used in creating characters, something I don’t normally consider, but I do like to read things that are unique and stand out. However, I wonder what Jim has against sex scenes, maybe he has been scarred by Fifty Shades of Hype and is just thankful that Reacher doesn’t whip out the ball gag and leather chaps. I’m also guessing that Jim is not a fan of the epic fantasy novels, what with their ensemble of characters, sweeping dynasties of timelines, and elegant prose to describe the entire new world the story takes place in.

All in all, I can’t figure out why this post was flagged as spam.

Fun Articles, Humor

Top 5 fun things about sleep deprivation

Everything looks comfortable.
Have day dreams about getting a good nights sleep.
Make a list of everything you need to buy when shopping, forget to take list with you.
You know that coffee shares are a good investment.
Of course I know what day it is, just let me check my watch again.

Yesterday I knew that I would forget some things when I went shopping, so I purposely made a list. It was a great list that did a great job keeping dust from settling on the table during my absence. There is also nothing quite so disturbing as not knowing what day of the week it is, especially when you have literally just checked. New parents of the world, I salute you.

Humor

Spelling consequences

Humor, Writing

You think you’re a good writer?

Humor, Writing

Monty Python – Novel writing

Enjoy some of their comic genius.

Humor, Writing

Writing tips: How to write gooderer

Humor

Every Crime Fiction Author’s Thoughts

Sometimes the best ideas for a scene come about at the oddest moments. By oddest moments, I mean when someone has really pissed you off. This post is to thank all of those people who make writers think of murder.

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

The Answer

I may or may not have mentioned that my name, Tyson Adams, was inspired by the man who excited me about writing. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a huge influence on my young brain, setting synapses off in an order that couldn’t even be quelled by Vogon poetry.

The first ‘novel’ styled story I wrote was an homage to Adams’ inappropriately labelled trilogy. The reason for this post is that I was cleaning out one of our cupboards in anticipation of our new family member, when I stumbled upon all of my old stories. The paper may have yellowed, my hand writing may have been small and cramped because I was obsessed with fitting as many words per line and page as possible, and the pencil may not have always been sharp, but the story was actually pretty good. I guess Eion Colfer and I have Douglas Adams to thank for that.

So who inspired you? Which author or authors made you pick up the pen? I’m not talking about the ones who have influenced your style or entertained you, that first author or book that made you dream of joining the ranks of authors trapped inside in front of a blank screen. Comments welcome below.

Humor

Book to movie revisited

I’ve written before on the lovely job that Hollywood does in translating books to the big screen. This cartoon pretty much sums up the process nicely.

Humor, Writing

Writing right

Originally seen at Bonnie Sparks’ blog post Writing Humour II.

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading, Writing

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

Internet Pirate, Yar!

I can remember back to when computers were nothing more than green text on a black background and made terrific boat anchors. Then suddenly they exploded, usually from a spilt drink or frustration in the 10 minutes it took for anything to load. Just as I was leaving high school the interwebz was suddenly all around us and promised to deliver us information, e-commerce, media and porn. This coincided with computers becoming faster, hard-drives becoming bigger and teenagers becoming hornier.

And that is when media piracy really took off.

Sure Napster popularised it a few years later and the music industry starting jumping up and down about it later again, but someone had forgotten to tell these people that the game had changed. I didn’t have to buy the entire Primus CD for the two songs I was actually going to listen to, now I could have a copy of those two songs on my computer, either downloaded from friends or copied off the CD.

I think we were all waiting for the music industry to catch up. At some point we were expecting all of our favourite songs to be available online for sale. But our computers were growing, so it wasn’t just music, we wanted our TV and movies as well. Why couldn’t we just grab a copy off the internet when we wanted? Where was the store that sold this stuff? And would they sell Debbie Does Dallas?

Well, sensing the growing change in consumer behaviour, the desire for an online store to sell entertainment, the music industry, movie industry and other media decided to band together and sue kids for millions of dollars each.

Brilliant! Rather than sell people stuff lets sue them! What a marketing and sales master stroke.

Instead of responding to consumer demands, the industries concerned decided they didn’t want to play. They thought that would be the end of that. Of course in a free market economy you have to expect the market to dictate terms, not anyone else. Piracy became embedded.

Now of course it isn’t the media industry’s fault that their products were being pirated, it was them damn pesky kids with their computas and iGizmos and and theys gots no respects for da rulz……… The e-generation were blamed for the down-turn in music sales and for massive losses to the music and movie industry. I like the assumption that every download must equal a lost sale, talk about a non-sequitur.

None of these arguments, discussion or history are really relevant though. I’m going to coin a new term SCREEN-GAZING which is the e-version of navel-gazing, because all of this piracy discussion is essentially nothing more than screen-gazing. Lets have a look at the real data that needs to be discussed.

The survey interviewed 1,700 music consumers age 13-60 and found that music is important to social networkers: 39% have embedded music in their personal profiles.
70% said they embed music to show off their taste; half said music is a good way to reflect personality.
Some other survey findings:

Some 53% of people actively surf social networking sites to find music.

30% said they went on to buy or download music that they had discovered on a social network site (for MySpace, the proportion is 36%).

On popular sites the numbers of people who use sites to find music increase – for MySpace and Bebo, 75% and 72%, respectively, and 66% for YouTube.

46% say they wish it were easier to purchase music they had discovered on social networking sites – for example via a “buy now” button on the site.

The number of those saying they illegally download music tracks has increased, from 40% in 2005 and 36% in 2006 to 43% in 2007.

Only 33% cited the risk of being prosecuted as a deterrent against illegal downloading, compared with 42% in 2006.

Nearly one in five respondents – 18% – claimed an intention to download more unauthorized tracks, up from 8% in 2006.

After a dramatic 40% increase in the number of legal downloaders between 2005 and 2006, only 16% growth occurred in the number of legal downloaders from 2006 to 2007.

22% of legal downloaders admitted that they had not paid for a track in the last six months.

84% agreed that digital downloads of older music should be cheaper; 48% said they would be prepared to pay more for newly released music.

So basically iTunes had been on the map for 4 years by the time this survey was performed, downloading had been around for a decade. Big congratulations to the industry for making those inroads into making music accessible. Almost half of the kids would like easier access to music to buy, and most thought it was too expensive.

Another survey shows that downloads of media were decreasing. So clearly the impact of actually selling media to people that they want was a good thing for lowering pirating. Just the industry hasn’t reached enough of the market yet.

How do you dissuade people from illegal downloads? The traditional approach for punishing pirates would be imprisonment, pilloring, flogging, enslavement, branding, keel hauling, and/or hanging. Given how well that worked in ridding the world of pirates maybe we should consider other methods.

Someone was really bright and had a look at what parental guidance did to downloading.

Who would have thought that parenting had a role in being a law abiding citizen?

What does all of this mean? Well pretty much media – be that ebooks, movies, music, TV shows – need to be easily accessible and priced appropriately. There also needs to be some responsibility taken by everyone to make sure that people expect to pay for media. This can’t be draconian, it has to be encouraged, and part of that encouragement comes from the ease of access and prices that people can afford. And now I hold my breath. Wake me after I pass out waiting for a solution rather than another blame game.

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

Going For Broke

Everyone will have now read, seen or heard the news that Borders and Amazon have been heading up a fetid creek for far too long. In the land of Oz (the non-magical and not infested by Munchkins version) the media are now weighing in.
See this article

You see I’m to blame. I brazenly buy books from places other than big chain stores. I have a Kindle and enjoy reading e-books. I am, in short, the devil incarnate and will be sacrificed on a pyre of celebrity biographies, cookbooks and other non-selling book store stock.

A Recent Photo of Me.

Lets take a look at some of the points that were made.

I’ll play devils advocate here and talk about taxes first. There are only two sureties in life; taxes and whining about them. In the non-Munchkin land of Oz we have a 10% goods and services tax (GST) on everything except food. This means that imports don’t have this tax, because they aren’t Australian. I guess we evil overseas book buyers paying taxes to a foreign country should pay another tax for daring to participate in the global economy. That way I can be more involved in the global economy with taxes in multiple countries.

Recently we also had a change in the Aussie dollar, it reached parity with the US dollar. For those who haven’t studied economics, this means that if I have one Australian dollar I can trade it for one American dollar, I know because I saw an article on it – tricky stuff that economics. Now that means that if I wanted to, say, buy materials that are needed to print books they would have gotten cheaper. Equipment upgrades, cheaper. Printing ink, cheaper. So clearly a stronger Aussie dollar must mean that it is harder to compete…………

The threat from online sales is, of course, just terrible. How dare our country sign up to a fair trade agreement and actually have its citizens abide by it. Who’d have thought that when you have a business competing in an international market it would mean that you would have to compete with stores all over the globe?

Of course this means that me and my evil kind are killing retail jobs.

One point that Bob Carr (former politician – which means dodgy) makes is about how it is all the government’s fault that books cost so much. He states that they would be 33% cheaper if only his benevolent company Dymocks was able to buy their books from overseas instead of locally. 33%? I think it is basic maths time for this particular businessman.

As an example I will use the latest action-thriller by Andy McDermott. His book Empire of Gold (which I’m looking forward to getting my fiendish hands on) has just come out recently and is available from Dymocks in Australia, or for the evil book buyers, from Amazon.
Dymocks Australia online price: $24.79 (paperback)
Amazon: $9.99 (paperback) or $24.63 (hardcover)
So let us take 30% from the Dymocks price:
$24.79 – 30%(7.44) = $17.35

Well, I’m not a maths genius, but at a guess I’d say that being able to buy a hardcover at USA retail prices for the same price as the paperback retail in Australia is not exactly a 33% difference for a paperback. In fact, to buy it would be more like a 60% difference between the paperback prices. So I’d have to say that I’m not looking as evil as I first thought.

I wonder where that other 33% is going? It certainly isn’t into royalties for writers. I’d just like to be reminded what the wonderful companies that have just left a hole in the heavenly book retail world went bankrupt not paying (analogy: imagine that the authors are Marsellus Wallace, the publishers are Butch, the retailers are Zed and Maynard, and in this version Butch just does a runner). While we are on the subject, I’m unsure whether Dymocks is a discounting chain store driving every other book store out of business or The Coalition for Cheaper Books.

Clearly I’m so evil and my kind are the cause of all problems in the publishing world. It could never be the fault of antiquated business models forgetting that there are only two important parts in the publishing industry, namely the readers and the writers, everything else is clearly expendable. Excuse me while I pay a 70% royalty to a new author for a book that you can’t buy from a publisher or store.