On Mid-Week Errata

I’ve had Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train” stuck in my head today.


My day actually began with Jethro Tull. My Tull collection is not large — Aqualung, the Christmas album, a greatest hits album. While working this morning, I needed something different to keep me going, and “Locomotive Breath” from Aqualung seemed auspicious.

Which made me realize that a Rock Band: Jethro Tull would be fantastic — especially if it came with a flute controller.

Except the game could bomb like Activision’s Sousaphone Hero did.


Work has left me drained of late; it’s been a rough week at the office. Lots of deadlines, things going out the door, that sort of thing. Fortunately, the weekend is almost here… 🙂


Politics is a strange thing.

Take, for instance, the story of Alvin Greene of South Carolina.

An unemployed veteran. Lives at home with his parents. Currently facing a felony pornography charge.

He registered to run in the South Carolina Democratic primary for Senate. He paid the ten thousand dollars with a starter check. He didn’t campaign. No one knew who he was.

Greene won convincingly.

Now there’s talk that he may have been a plant. People want to investigate.

Seriously. Who voted for him? Why did they vote for him? Why did they overwhelmingly vote for a complete and utter unknown?

It’s a bizarre story.

The only way this makes sense to me? Reality television, in a Borat kind of way.

I don’t know what that says about South Carolina, though.


I’ve been thinking recently about Charlie Brown as an adult.

Lots of people have.

Here’s some links.

This reminds me. I should get Xbox Live. I want to play Snoopy Flying Ace!


Guillermo del Toro is no longer directing The Hobbit.

Yes, this is old news.

I’m still in shock.

I’m also not surprised. MGM’s inability to fund the production was going to have consequences. Losing key personnel is one of those consequences.

However, if this gets us Hellboy III, I’m okay with that. If this gets us closer to del Toro’s dream movie — a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser movie — I’m really okay with that.


I wrote a new Sherlock Holmes drabble this week — Reflections on a Case.

This one proved challenging; I actually wrote it short! Adding words to a drabble is hard.

A drabble is a short story of exactly one hundred words. A Sherlock Holmes drabble, especially one that strives for any sort of authenticity in characterization and voice, will be difficult as Watson (or the Literary Agent, depending on how deep into the Game you are) has a very specific voice. It’s not a concise voice.

I love the challenge of the drabble. I follow a few drabble communities on LiveJournal; I’m less interested in the stories themselves than the prompts, which are handy for writing exercises. It’s easy to jot down the week’s prompt in, say, a Merlin drabble community and then spend a little time on the morning commute jotting down a few sentences, shake off the mental cobwebs of sleep, and get the grey matter moving.

I don’t know that I’ve written a Merlin drabble, come to think of it.

I’ve told the story before how, one year, the only stories I submitted to Pocket’s Strange New Worlds contest were drabbles. They were cheap stories. I didn’t even bother with a SASE; there was little point.

The drabble is a fun little form. It’s not for everyone, but I like it. :h2g2:


My blog is being inundated with comment spam these days.

I’ve taken the step of making all comments moderated, because my current anti-spam solution isn’t stemming the tide at present.

So if you comment, just be aware that I have to approve your comment first. It’s nothing personal, promise.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

2 thoughts on “On Mid-Week Errata

  1. I liked the second link you posted, “How it turned out.” That was nice and bittersweet.

    I have a copy of “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead” that I got from the library. It’s been sitting on my desk for over a year now. I’ll read it someday; it’s not very long.

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