[Fancy-word Wednesday] How to break it to your friends that their story sucks

It's probably has happened to everyone, more than once too, at that. Somebody close to you has written something, and it's not really that great. In fact, it's actually rather horrible. Not just from your subjective point of view, it's objectively a piece of excrement.

How do you break it to your friend? You have to be honest, because you should be honest to friends when it comes to things like this, and it's better if you break the news to them, rather than say a publisher who will laugh at their face. But at the same time, you have to be careful and not hurt their feelings because a) they're your friend, doofus, and b) it might dissuade them from writing any further, if even their friends hate their work.

Neil Gaiman recently answered such a question in his blog, and as with most things Gaiman does, I find myself agreeing completely. You can find his answer here (scroll down a bit), my favorite part would be the following:

"And if you do decide to tell them what's wrong with their book then you don't have to tell them everything that's wrong with it."

This is great, because while you are still telling the truth, naming every single thing you hated is probably not going to win you any more points with your friend. Not to mention you'll probably look like a douche.

TL;DR version:

I don't know about you, but instead of writing, I'm now going to see Dirk Nowitzki play basketball. And after that I'm also seeing the Greek national team. Le woot!

Odd and the Frost Giants

The title refers to Neil Gaiman's latest story, which in his own words will be a "novelette". Anything that Mr. Gaiman writes is essential reading, and yes my opinion is completely unbiased. Seriously. If you haven't read his works yet, what are you waiting for? Start with American Gods and the Sandman comics, and go on from there.

You can read more about this new story, including the introduction to Chapter 3, in his blog. I personally cannot wait. Now if only I could find a copy of Fragile Things here (I don't want to order it from Amazon at the moment for a variety of reasons) everything would be great. Oh, well.

I've been trying to write a long post about the concept suggesting that MMORPG's are all about immersion and escapism, and how that is a lie, but so far I'm not happy with the result. Fingers crossed, it should be ready within the week.

Last thing for today, another of my favorite Daily Show segments of the year so far, Language Burier: