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We have reached an age where the trajectories of the advancement of technology including mobile applications, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality may rapidly spike at any given moment, potentiating an increased incidence of unforeseen consequences in the form of distraction-related morbidity. In the not-too-distant past, logging onto the internet meant sitting in front of a computer.

The post Dosing distraction in the world of augmented-reality appeared first on OUPblog.

I may not have understood the allure of capturing Pokémon (...) but I hope I am not so trenchant as to run around in the hope of spotting something even rarer; UK membership of the EU as it existed prior to 23 June 2016. That truly is becoming an alternate reality.

The post Alternate realities: Brexit and Pokémon appeared first on OUPblog.

With cons and fan events growing in popularity, and shooting an almost everyday occurrence here in the US, one wonders if there will ever be an "incident" at a con. Well here's one that MAY have been thwarted. It seems two invited participants in the Pokémon World Championships were arrested after making some online threats and showing up armed to the teeth:

I know we’ve been slacking a bit with 31 Days due to the horrors of New York Comic-Con, but it’s full sped ahead to the pumpkins now. And here is the best thing you will hear today, tomorrow or possibly in a lifetime: Japanese Horror master Junji Ito Is doing a Pokemon collaboration.

Yeah that’s right. The creator of Uzumaki, Museum of Terror, the Long Hair in the Attic and much more, is doing POKEMON.

The news was announced in Japan as a “Collaboration,” you know, like Tokidoki doing Marvel, except terrifying and unspeakable. It’s called “Kowapoke,” which means “Scarypoke” and a single phone wallpaper image has been released thus far. That’s Banette, cute little Banette, admittedly not the nicest Pokemon, now all Kowapoke’d up. T-shirts are being given away in Japan now because life is unknowable and terrifying.

Ito is one of the greatest, most unsettling cartoonists alive. We’ve spotlighted him several times before. This is only the creepy icing on the scary cake!

If you’d like to read some Ito, or just get into his weird world, we strongly recommend Uzumaki, published in one volume late last year, the story of a town obsessed with spirals and the terror they bring. Connie C has a good round-up of his work here.

Source, via Tiny Cartridge

How is it possible that I’ve already missed the first twenty-one days of Capture Creatures? According to the project’s site:

Capture Creatures is a year-long project where Becky Dreistadt will create 151 different hand-painted creatures, the same number as the original Pokemon. Each creature will be accompanied by a short encyclopedia entry by myself, Frank Gibson.

They’re also planning a touring gallery show when the project is complete!

I love Becky Dreistadt’s paintings - reminiscent of all the classic golden books - and Frank’s writing is such a great fit for the look. If you don’t know their comic, Tiny Kitten Teeth, go ahead and get acquainted.

I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think Pokemon is basically like Hunger Games meets Wild Animal Kingdom.

I felt bad for the contestants in Hunger Games and I feel bad for these little Pokemon too.

These rare creatures with highly limited vocabularies (they can only say one word--their name--with varying inflections) are minding their own business, living in the seemingly endless woods. Then a human comes along with a softball-sized trap and lobs it at them. They're caught in this "Pokeball" and then they are the prison of that "Trainer".

They are taught how to fight other Pokemon. And when they get really good at it, they go to tournaments where Trainers proudly pit their caught Pokemon against each other. 

Come on. It's sick, admit it. Just listen to the theme song (below). The lyrics include "Gotta catch them all" and "to win them is my cause". How exactly does this benefit the Pokemon?

Then you get your episodes with these poor Pokemon that have been broken by their trainers and have developed complete Stockholm syndrome--and then their trainers abandon them. We are expected to cheer as another trainer convinces that sad little Pokemon that HEY, forget living in the wild. Come fight on MY team!

Someone needs to get these Pokemon on the endangered species list, stat!

Of course I'm all talk. As I write, my kid is playing a Pokemon DS game and what did we read while he took a bath last night? A Pokemon chapter book. 

I think I'd better go make a sizeable donation to the Free Pokemon Fund. 

The New York Times Book Review recently listed "Out Stealing Horses" by Tor Petterson, a book I read this past year, as one of the 10 Best Books of 2007. The book encompasses a coming-of-age story of a Norwegian boy, Trond, beginning with a summer in 1948 when he lived with his father in a rustic cabin near the border between Norway and Sweden. The title derives from the boy and a local friend stealing rides on a farmer's horses at night. Other accounts of Trond's subsequent summer experiences at the cabin are given as reflections when Trond returns to the cabin to live out his final days as an old man. We learn that Trond's father was part of the Norwegian Resistance against the occupying Nazi forces, and of an occasion when Trond accompanies him on one of his trips into Sweden. As Trond becomes an older teen, he helps his father float logs, cut from their cabin property, down the river to a sawmill in Sweden. The quiet, ending days of Trond in the wintery cabin have an almost poetic simplicity.

I suppose I would have wondered whether to pitch this novel, if it were mine, wishful thinking, as a YA or general literary fiction novel. Would it have been any easier to market as one or the other? Would it have been as successful if marketed as a YA novel? Would the declining arc of Trond's life, no matter how beautifully written, engage a young reader?

Reading a writers' craft book authored by a literary author, as compared to a 'nuts-and-bolts' author, can be a gratifying experience. Particularly where the author guides the reader through examples taken from classical literature—whether short stories or novels—or from contemporary literature that may yet await a judgment of time. Francine Prose's book "Reading Like a Writer" is interesting enough to read straight through in daily sessions, though it might be better to take it slow and intersperse such craft reading with a good fiction book. Give the subconscious a little more time to dwell on the writing strategies visited. A good interview of Prose by Andrea Dupree appears in the Writer's Chronicle, Sept. 2007, and touches on many of the topics included in her crafts book.

One of the topics Prose discusses that was of interest to me in my YA fiction writing deals with the voice and Point-of-View of a young person. At times, some authors use a wiser, more mature narrative voice than a first-person YA protagonist might be thought to use. Prose says "I've been writing a novel from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old girl, and I was tormented by the question of adult consciousness versus child consciousness, adult language versus child language—you know, that stupid statement: I don't think a fourteen year old would say that." Nonetheless, Prose goes on to discuss a story by Leonard Michaels where a seemingly adult consciousness works for a kid at times. "And when I read the Lenny Michaels story, I found things in the story that clearly come from the pre-adolescent kid, and things that clearly come from the adult looking back... It's first person, but sometimes it's a first-person twelve-year-old, and sometimes it's the first person forty-year-old, and it really works…" It's somehow freeing to read that, but of course if one is an unknown writer it could be a risky business.

Along that line, Dupree says to Prose, "In 'Reading Like a Writer,' you encourage people to disregard the typical rules that are trotted out in writing classes. At the same time, do you feel that writers who are transgressive in their writing have as good a shot of breaking in as others who are more conventionally polished?" Prose allows that it may set a higher hurdle to overcome in selling the book, but, "I don't think there's any choice. If somebody is talented, they're not going to be able to write for what they think the market wants." Sounds right, or ought to be right.

Another kernel that Prose tosses out, "�the better the writer is, the greater the degree of self-doubt. I've had students who really think they're Tolstoy, and they're not the best students I've ever had. Whereas my friends, whose work I respect enormously, whose work I feel lucky to read, are tormented by self-doubt."

There's a certain thrill in reading a good crafts book. One usually concludes that, armed with such insights, the next book is going to be written better than the last. Give Prose's book a try.