Rain and links

[lyorn]

It's raining. Which is unexpected and nice. This week I bought two shirts and a pair of shoes and applied for a Social Security Card. As I hate shopping, and bureaucracy makes my hackles rise, I regard this as significant accomplishments.

Not much to tell, so, some links.

Charlie Stross tells a Halloween Horror story

Neil Gaiman about Halloween and Ghost Stories

The automated Sue Test. Enter only the first name of your character. The test is quite tolerant, and not boring.

And finally,

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Of course, what I really have is a German accent - probably a painfully strong one. The test measures your exceptions about how words should sound, not your ability to create the sounds.

Comments

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

How do you people find these things?

I'm a regular lurker at a lot of writing blogs as well as blogs by people I fangirl. Usually, keeping a close eye on some of the link hubs (= places where interesting things have a high chance of turning up) is enough to get your daily dose of "strange and interesting". (Two "hubs" I keep an eye on are Making Light (http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/) and Fandom Wank (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank) - the latter partly to know which fandom topics to avoid this week.)

As I'm not sure about what to ask you, is there anything specific that I might not find in an encyclopedia or article?

I could write an ecyclopedia article about what you won't find in an ecyclopedia article, and still miss out the detail that interests you or that you got wrong. (Like the person who listened to me talk for an hour about my travels in the US, and then asked, "but wasn't it hard, doing all this driving on unpaved roads -- they do not have paved roads in America, do they?") So it's far more efficient to everyone involved if you wait until you have a specific question, or maybe a specific paragraph you want fact-checked.