You pick the author’s pic

Annie and I had a little photo shoot in our backyard today. I’m sure it’ll give the neighbors something to talk about. Anyhow, I need to supply my publisher with an author’s pic and I’m reaching out for a little help.

Vote and let me know which shot we should use for the book - or if you think I look like Quasimodo with my crooked smile in all of them, tell me that too.

Here are our four picks:

#1

#2

#3

#4

In defense of OneDerWear

I never thought I would live to see the day someone came to the defense of disposable underwear. Today is that day. (And here I expected there to be peace on Earth.)

Morgan in response to my post on OneDerWear
:

You must take shower at night otherwise how do you get enough time to dry your washed underwear. I may start with a 10-pack disposable briefs, but I’m not occupying the same amount of space as the trip goes on. That regained space may be good for taking home a souvenir or two.
Nobody is tossing the underwear in the woods. The disposable is made of 100% cotton. Cotton is a biodegradable and renewable material. How is that not environmentally friendly? It is at least no worse than the detergent you flushed down the drain that pollute the water.

Morgan, Morgan, Morgan. Do ya work for OneDerWear?

In your comment you don’t say anything about how comfortable OneDerWear is. If you are in the underwear business, you should know that comfort is key. No one gives a hoot about the environment compared to comfort. Even so, your argument for the environmental-friendliness of OneDerWear seems a bit of a stretch.

The production and shipping of a single pair of disposable underwear probably does not use any less energy or resources than the production and shipping of a single pair of non-disposable underwear. Yet non-disposable underwear may be worn for years and the energy/resources consumed per wear are far less.

You talk as if it would be impossible to have a clean, dry pair of underwear waiting for you post-shower. That’s why I travel with three pair – one pair being washed, one drying, and one clean.

What I’m saying, Morgan, is that your arguments are weak and your underwear are uncomfortable. And if I ever see someone wearing OneDerWear, there is a good chance that – in the name of Mother Earth and not being lazy – that someone is going to get an atomic wedgie.

Unspeakably Uncivilized

I think sometimes news in other countries makes us feel more civilized. Makes us think, “That couldn’t happen here.” But it does. Anything unspeakable everywhere else happens in some fashion right here.

Cambodia and other SE Asian nations are infamous for their child prostitution. Well…

FBI arrests hundreds in child sex crackdown

We are no more or less civilized than anywhere else in the world. It’s sad that we are reminded of this so often.

Ever really thought about the banana?

Dan Koeppel has. He wrote a book on the fruit titled Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.

Koeppel in the NY Times about bananas:

That bananas have long been the cheapest fruit at the grocery store is astonishing. They’re grown thousands of miles away, they must be transported in cooled containers and even then they survive no more than two weeks after they’re cut off the tree. Apples, in contrast, are typically grown within a few hundred miles of the store and keep for months in a basket out in the garage. Yet apples traditionally have cost at least twice as much per pound as bananas.

I’ll never look at ‘nanas the same.

Nike’s Marty McFly Hyperdunks take sneaker lovers Back to the Future

From myairshoes.com:

Nike will finally answer the cries of millions of sneaker fans- after years of waiting, speculating and begging - as it releases the Marty McFly Hyperdunks in limited quantities…Although not exactly the same as the ones worn by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, these McFly-inspired Hyperdunks may be the closest McFly fans will ever get to the mythological pair.

Really? Sneaker Fans have been crying for Marty McFly Hyperdunks? I’ll admit it, I’ve dreamed of purchasing a Delorean and I even took up skateboarding (until the first fall) after seeing the original Back to the Future, but this is taking Back to the Future fandom a little too far.

What, no power laces?

Lazy Muncie Rap

Forget about East Coast and West Coast rap. These fellas are bringing it straight to you from the Midwest Coast’s Rappin’ Capital of Muncie, Indiana, where I live.

The video is a response to SNL’s Lazy Sunday.

What’s your Wal-Mart ratio?

I live in Muncie, Indiana, a city of 70,000 and we have two Wal-Mart Supercenters. That makes our Wal-Mart ratio 35,000 to 1.

If you take into account Meijer and Target, our big-box-stores-of-cheap-stuff ratio stands at 17,500 to 1.

What are your ratios?

I got thinking about this yesterday after talking with my publicist at Wiley. She told me that there wasn’t a Wal-Mart in Brooklyn, NY. That’s a world I can’t imagine. Where do people in Brooklyn buy all of their cheap crap and toothpaste?

Bangladeshi woman goes from child laborer to respected and deeply feared force

The story in the Washington Post: On the Factory Floor, an Activist Is Born

George Carlin on stuff

George Carlin died. He left a lot more with us than just a bunch of stuff, including this line on stuff, “There stuff is shit and your shit is stuff.” from this bit on stuff…

(found this clip on WorldHum)

A kind of preview…

I pasted the Prologue and Chapter 1 of Where am I Wearing? into Wordle and here’s the cloud it produced.

See the larger version HERE.

Wordle in its own words:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

I learned about Wordle on John Scalzi’s Whatever.