Kotaku, a video game new site, ran an article by Chris Person, discussing an episode by television journalist Katie Couric. The article examines how journalism can be used to steer your perceptions of an event through techniques and words. In this case it was used to create fear that video games will some how ruin children’s lives. Sadly not all journalism is going to be as blatant as this episode of Katie was.

The only real safeguard against this type of journalism is critical thinking. Is reading, watching, or listening, then thinking about if what you’ve taken in matches what you know, what you can reason out, and even if it does or doesn’t dig a little deeper into whatever its sources might be, before you internalize it as a “truth”. This requires effort. You’re not going to succeed every time. The other way is to try to find trusted sources of news and information, but make sure they earn your trust.

We life in the Information Age now and while that gives us all sorts of awesome things, it should require us to be a responsible consumer of all that information.

Gregarious

Used in a sentence:

• To say she was gregarious was not unlike claiming that cats were avid swimmers and she made her way quickly from the group before she hyperventilated.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

Perhaps not the most weirdest word to pass through the weird word library, this word definitely falls under the fun to say category. Four syllable way of saying someone is not shy or alternative way of saying extrovert.

Historicity

Used in a sentence:

• The historicity of the paper cup was without question, except by certain fundamentalist of the holy plastic utensil church.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

This is really a word. At least it is a word in Wiktionary and Wikipedia. It seriously looks like a made up word right? Even if it is, I think it deserves to be a word just because of how awesome it is. Like truthiness.

Ever wonder what happens when you wring out a wet  wash cloth in space? Neither did I but the answer was still fun to watch!

Pedantic

Used in a sentence:

• And then the rest of the group suddenly appreciated Charles’s pedantic nature, for without his obsessive rules knowledge, they never would have defeated the overlord’s pet twenty headed five tailed, three winged sloth-dragon that he made himself.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

Okay so I likened pedantic to being a rules-lawyer in a table top roleplaying game. The two aren’t wholly exclusive. Also pedantic isn’t that weird of a word, however pedant likely is. I’ve heard pedantic a lot, usually as a derogative term, however I’ve never heard anybody be called a pedant. No I didn’t just add pedant to the end of my weird word list. Stop looking over my shoulder!

Camp NaNoWriMo April 2013

Session Count: 3,406
Word Total: 16,732 (delta: -13,268)

So today is the last day and obviously if you’ve looked at my numbers I’m nowhere near my goal. Do not be sad. I resigned myself to not reaching my goal a week or so ago. It was a conscious decision, mostly. I got a little anti-motivated after a few scenes, and then I was busy on the weekends. I decided it wasn’t worth the stress. So this will be my official second failed NaNo related project, but I got fifty percent of the way there and made some great progress on Everlasting. So it was totally worth it. I’ll likely be doing a Novel in Ninety Days, which is a more low-key than NaNoWriMo, only requiring seven hundred and fifty words a day.

Everlasting Update

Word Count: 138,163

So I am running out of outline for one of my major storylines. The one involving the airship, which is the least planned of all the storylines as it is. None of the storylines have a full outline, so I think that is what I will concentrate on before I start novel in ninety. That’ll be my goal for May 15th. Whee. Otherwise Everlasting is going well. One scene in particular really wrote itself rather quickly. Another broke me for about two days and then suddenly worked. Not sure what I’m suppose to take away from that though.

Other Works

Everlasting Windows

On hiatus going on shelved until I get Everlasting done and start editing, at least a year for now. So I’ll go ahead and officially say it is shelved.

Free Write

Regular. I’m wrapping it up and putting it into hiatus once Disguise finishes up, which will likely be in a few weeks, in order to better focus on finishing up Everlasting.

Station

No work done. Still needs to be edited.

Matrix

No work done.

Gerald

No work done.

The author of Dresden Codak, inspired of the  Video Game Tropes vs Women series, decided to design a Legend of Zelda story idea with Zelda as the primary character, and it sounds awesome.

A fan made concept of a Zelda game where Zelda is actually the main character.

Source

Aaron, the creator of Dresden Codak, does a little bit more than just make a cover but also goes as far as to describe and draw the main characters (Zelda, Prince Link, and Ganndorf) and explain the mythology of Hyrule, and layout the items and magic that Zelda has access to.

A fan made imaging of Zelda as the main character of her own The Legend of Zelda game.

And more. Please check out his post to read up about it.

I mention that this would be a game I’d love to play. It isn’t just because it is Zelda in her own game. That’s actually beside the point. It is the gameplay described in the details of the game. Weapons, magic, enemies, and the plot all sound very compelling in a two-dimensional or three-dimensional third person video game. The plot could be re-written to be a completely original set of characters for all that it matters, if the gameplay is solid.

Paucity

Used in a sentence:

• Our food stores were so full of paucity, that it was just about the only in the stores we had a large amount of.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

Before you even say a word, yes it is grammatically acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition, if the preposition is required to understanding the meaning of the sentence. Yes I could re-write the sentence to say something like ‘in large amounts’ but that wouldn’t let me rant about it!

Ahem.

Paucity isn’t so weird a word. I think it is used in Dickens books, which means it’s heard by modern ears about once a life time or so. But I like it anyway because it reminds me of paws and city, which makes me think of a city of cats (or dogs if that is your fancy).

Acerbic

Used in a sentence:

• I like to think of myself as a realist but she liked to call me acerbic, not that I had a clue what acerbic meant but I knew it likely wasn’t good.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

Here is a word you think is related to exercise, or breathing, or something medical, right? Nope! It’s the best description for that jack-ass in school who always seemed to have the perfect cutting retort regardless of the situation, like they stayed up at night thinking up perfect scenarios in which to belittle, torture, and torment you!

…

Not that such a thing ever happened to me of course.

Camp NaNoWriMo April 2013

Session Count: 1,407
Word Total: 13,326 (delta: -2,674)

Today’s writing was a little halting. I added to a scene I wrote yesterday which got me about six hundred words rather quickly. Starting a new scene with a new set of characters, the rest of the words took a little bit longer but not as bad. I got to describe and introduce two new characters and I think I handled a slight info dump partially well by using it to help characterize the two new characters. Yay me!

Everlasting Update

Word Count: 134,757

We’re getting there. Our group of military types have what they need to take on entire hoards of zombies and get to their last bastion and my specialty character is informing the reader about a situation they are about to arrive in. My third group is engineering the seeds for how our survivors might actually survive and triumph during this mess. I’m nearly at the end!