Friday, May 06, 2005
Amazon.com just keeps getting stranger. Now they've added all these bizarre little trivialities about the books they sell — "text stats," something they're calling a concordance though it really isn't. And this whole SIP thing ("statistically improbable phrases"). What is the point of all this stuff? Are people really more likely to buy Murder of Angels once they know that "red witches" and " bridge keeper" are among its (supposedly) SIPs? I think this is just another case of the universe taunting me with shamelessly abject dumbassery (SADs). The "concordance" thingy might be more interesting if their bot had been bright enough not to include the text from the page headers (Caitlín, Kiernan, Murder, Angels), skewing the whole shebang. But look! I now know that the word "stop" appears on 110 of 335 of the novel's pages. Wow. That's frelling incredible. And I didn't even do it on purpose. And it gets better. I can see how MoA rates on three different "readibility" scales, the Fog Index (8.8), the Flesch Index (73.5), and the Flesch-Kincaid Index (7.0). I can see that I use very few "complex" words (only 6%), that the ratio of syllables to words is a mere 1.4, and that the average sentence length is 16 words. And to be sure you're getting your money's worth, you can now see that MoA gives you 10,322 words/dollar and 10,625 words/ounce.
All this just goes to prove the obvious: there's really no bottom to stupid.
Of course, I can also compare Murder of Angels to my other books. Mix and match for not-quite endless fun! Let's see. Well, for example, the complexity of words between Threshold and MoA is identical (6%), as is the number of syllables per word (1.4). How the frell do you suppose I pulled that off? However, the sentences in Threshold are a smidgen longer than in MoA, at 23.1 vs. 16. I can also compare either of these books with any other book on Amazon. For instance, Stephen King's Firestarter uses only 12.6 words per sentence. Armed with this knowledge, you may now make more informed book purchases.
Yeah, well, anyway...
We went out to get photos of "Solace for the Souless" at Freedom Park yesterday. Unfortunately, someone had already taken it down. At least we don't have to look at those masses of neon orange plastic anymore. Spooky did get some pictures though:
The PVC pipes and wooden poles that once supported "Hammocks for the Homeless." Is nothing sacred? I mean, really. What's the world coming to...
Your tax dollars at work.
I'm not sure if these signs, affixed to the wooden poles, refer to some aspect of the original n'art, or if they're meant to inform us that soon the hammocks will be back, protected from graffiti fiends and sleepy homeless with barriers.
More n'art. Atlanta gets this dren all the time. Rubbery, deflated cars are nothing. Last year we were invaded by psychedlic fiberglass cows.
Yep. Yesterday's bitchy mood has not yet left me. It clings to my brain like melted polyester, as every moment seems to bring new provocation. I mean, just look what the creationists are up to in Kansas. Sure, it is only Kansas, but still. I'm annoyed by militant ignorance, even when it's militant igorance in the sticks.
Cows need Darwin, too. Well, except the fiberglass cows. They don't need Darwin. They don't even need the Baby Jesus.
Bitchy or not, I've decided to extend the COLOUR MONSTER DOODLES (!!!!) auction to Monday at midnight. So, it's not too late. Also, Spooky's adding copies of the Camelot Book min-chapbook, "Alabaster." We only have nine of these, and I'm only willing to part with five.
1:49 PM
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