Original post removed. Excessive attitude was temporarily in control of keyboard.
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this blogging thing isn't good for me.
I have a tendency to act like there's no right opinion but mine in the universe under the best of circumstances and a forum where there's no one here but myself to point out that I'm behaving like an ass might not be the best place for me to express myself.
Regardless of how it appears, I do know I’m not always right. I know there are valid, dissenting opinions in the world. I even know that I'm gulp flat-out wrong a significant amount of the time.
Who am I to be running around, laying down the law about what people should read, write, or enjoy?
Posted by AnneZook at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)No, this doesn't have anything to do with the other essay. I just like the song.
Anyone writes and complains and I really will tell you about my novel.
What is slash? torch is talking about it. So is someone named, "bettyp" who must be an interesting person, based on torch's interest in what she (bettyp) had to say.
I should imagine that everyone asked would come up with different answers to the "what is it, why do we do it, why those two people and not the other two" questions. Coming up with a single definition that most people could agree on is impossible.
Especially when you consider the growing number of HetSex fiction fans who want to call m/f stories 'slash'.* And, not to get all rude or anything, there's also a group of [expletivedeleted] writing sex-based stories about real people who want to be able to call their stuff both "fanfiction" and "slash."
(* And yet, honesty compels me to admit that I'm more amused than anyone could know by the idea that the hetsex crowd wants to share the "slash" designation as a handy way to identify erotic stories as opposed to, say, gen or case file stories. The word "slash" was originally used to identify stories with homoerotic content so that the vast majority of fanfic readers who freaked out at the thought of homosexuality wouldn't get any cooties by accidentally getting close to "one of those" stories. Now they don't mind a bit. Sure, readers want the stories labeled, but slashers are just as bad, wanting to be warned if there's any icky hetsex in a story before they'll open it, so the labels work both ways. Part of me is laughing and muttering, "we've come a long way, baby.")
I guess it's nice to be trendy. Everyone wants to be like us slashers. (Get away from me, you perverts.)
I like torch's description.
"...the potential for/reality of homoerotically tinged interaction between two specific characters, A and B, as evidenced by the canonical dynamics between them in the show X."
I might quibble about the "potential" thing, but maybe not since a lot of slash is in the eye of the viewer. In any case, I like the erudite tone of the quote, so I'm adopting it and giving it a second home in my heart.
What she calls, the "general end of the continuum" she also names "slashiness" and explains it as prurience or wish-fulfillment or something.
To me, slashiness just a word I used to describe the interaction that inspires slash. "That episode was full of slashiness" means that a particular episode contained a lot of the kind of interaction that's open to a slash interpretation.
The "wouldn't those two be hot together?" stuff that she mentions, that kind of thing is pornography in my world. (Or erotica, if you're squeamish.)
Slash is homoerotic fiction based on interpretations, extrapolations, and outright subversions of canon interactions between two same-sex fictional characters.
That means there has to be a canon relationship. These two people should ideally have shared significant amounts of screen time. Or at least some screen time. In the same show.
One of them shouldn't be from a comic book while the other one is from a live-action television series.
Characters shouldn't fuck outside their own medium.
Boy Q and Boy T from two different shows written as a "dreamy couple" is nothing but fevered mental masturbation. Girl F and Girl J, one from a live-action movie and one from Japanese anime is the same thing. It's sexfic but not slash and just because it's homoerotic sexfic doesn't make it slash.
Not everything that's homoerotic is slash. Slash isn't some kind of all-inclusive genre that you can stick everything that doesn't fit somewhere else into, okay? It has an identity. Parameters. Even boundaries.
What happened to the days when pretty much everyone writing or reading slash understood that it was the interaction between the characters, the chemistry between them on-screen that has made a pairing slashable? When it was the people, not the bodies that made speculating about the relationship intriguing?
When did the shape of someone's eyebrows become more interesting to the reader than who the character actually was as a person?
In pornography for men, you get big boobs favored over any attempt at characterization, but women used to pretend to be above all of that. At this point, I'm not sure whether to cheer because we've achieved full equality in one area (We're as shallow as men! Finally!) or to go around slapping some sense into people.
I'm just not sure I struggled for women's rights, stood up to men who thought pinching my butt was an okay way to say 'good morning', or worked to be taken seriously as an intelligent professional so that the next generation of women could fight about the size of the bulge in some actor's pants and decide he's a perfect match for Archie or Jughead, okay?
I'm not saying I didn't.
I'm just saying it really wasn't something I considered when I was trying to keep my six foot tall boss from exercising his manly right to look down my shirt, that's all.
But I digress. As usual.
To repeat, slash is homoerotic fiction based on interpretations, extrapolations, and outright subversions of canon interactions between two same-sex fictional characters.
Mulder and Scully bumping hips isn't slash. (It's a travesty, but it's not a slash travesty.) Captain Marvel and 007 doing the horizontal mambo isn't slash. Pendrell and Krycek isn't slash. (Yeah, they were on the same show, but they never shared two seconds of screen time. Where's the canon interaction you're supposed to be working from?) Ditto crossovers and AUs. Homoerotic fiction? Possibly. Slash? No.
There doesn't have to be explicit sex. The sexual attraction doesn't even have to be acknowledged, it just has to be there, a significant component of the story. M/M or F/F? Both slash.
How complicated is that?
I think it's pretty typical that while others are trying to make their slash-related definitions more inclusive, I'm all about exclusivity.
And I know I'm eliminating and possibly alienating huge chunks of fandom by refusing to accept AUs and crossovers and pairings where the characters never interacted on-screen, but I'm the Purity Police today and no one writing Frodo/Harry Potter stories is going to leave here unbruised.
Characters shouldn't fuck outside their own species.
Just…just ICK, okay? Knock it off, or I'm telling your mom.
Okay, so last night I was contemplating BadFic. That is, not crappy writing, but stories deliberately written as OTT parodies of some of the worst of fandom's excesses.
The Sentinel suggests itself as a prime candidate for an entire series of BadFic stories. It's certainly infested with enough appalling story concepts.
The Sentinel features brain damage stories, stories "narrated" by stuffed animals, epics of heterosexual buddy-bonding that include shared showers and copious amounts of tonsil-hockey, stories with bestiality, sex-change morphing, and I don't know what else.
I'm thinking about a story about a Li'l Lost Bunny Rabbit who hops into the guys' lives one night when he's clipped by a passing car.
Blair naturally tries to save the Bitty Bunny through organic herbs and meditation but Jim intervenes and takes the poor little thing to a convenient Bunny-pital down the street and the devoted, caring veterinarian comes out in the middle of a huge storm to do emergency surgery.
But! It is a Huge Storm and the streets are wet and slickery and suddenly! the car slides off of the road and hits a tree and the vet has top go to the People-pital instead of coming to save BittyBunny! Oh, no!
So, Jim, who's a different kind of vet (Hee! Hee!) but who naturally knows All About Bunny Anatomy from His Time Spent In The Jungles Of Peru, and Blair, whose Soothing, New-Age Aura comforts BittyBunny, break into the Bunny-pital their own selves and perform Amazing Surgical Miracles with the aid of Jim's Heightened Senses.
Something about watching Jim doing Bunny-Saving Surgery makes Blair realize he has Always Loved Jim and of course Jim has Always Adored Blair but he was Suffering In Silence because that's his role in life, Suffering In Silence. That, and being Tall With Many Muscles.
Jim and Blair take BittyBunny (all better now!) home to cuddle with them in front of the fire while they plan their Commitment Ceremony and the next week the SheBunny (Surprise plot twist! BittyBunny is a SheBunny!) spawns a pack of BittyBunnyBabies and they all settle down in domestic, bunny-infested bliss.
I can't believe no one has written that one yet.
If a sequel was needed, someone could write the thrilling and heroic tale of how Jim & Blair hunted down and punished the evil, bunny-smushing car driver.
And they could call the series, "Cuddlebunnies" because it would be cute on so many levels what with Jim and Blair doing lots of cuddling and there being lots of bunnies and one bunny in particular that cuddled with them the first time they Realized Their Love.
And then, you know, kill me.
I don't know why today's entry is titled, "Fly Me To The Moon," okay? It just is.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)Okay, it's not a debate, it's a monologue but I'm the one who paid $12 for the privilege of posting my rude thoughts publicly without the intrusion of ads, so I'm personally okay with that.
Before we get into today's rudeness,and since this blog thingy seems to be becoming more of a public forum than I'd anticipated, let me point out that no one has ever written to me and dissed my (fiction) writing.
It may surprise you to know that I find that sort of insulting. Many writers I know, all better than me, receive long and thoughtful posts from readers discussing their stories and pointing out problems. Even abusing them and placing retroactive curses on their ancestors. Really lousy writers have publicly cried over the number of flames they've received.
In my disclaimers, I used to invite such remarks, and even beg for outright flames, but no heat ensued. Let me assure you that not every word from my keyboard is golden. I've written some crap and by gosh I stand by my right to be told so!
(I still cherish the one flame I did receive, and can quote it verbatim. "You are so sick it isn't even funny." I wrote dozens of stories, and that's all I got. She didn't even bother to tell me which story she'd read that was so sick.)
I can only conclude that nothing I ever wrote affected anyone deeply. Clearly I fall into the 75% "mediocre majority" of writers that no one cares enough to instruct on How It Oughta' Be Done.
It's not entirely out of the question that my pissy attitude toward fandom is entirely a result of this neglect. You should have sent me hate mail when you had the chance.
Cap'n Nasty read my blog! And, as usual, came up with a pithy and amusing summary that I wish I'd written.
I humbly submit Typoid Merry: because referring to a bad writer as a typIST is an insult to real typists, and because generally such fiends are unremorseful, even gleeful, about sucking, and because their work is capable of causing spontaneous deadness.
I think I'm going to adopt this new designation.
Except that, although I think the "merry" thing is fun, I do actually know of a person on-line whose name is "Merry" and she's a pretty darned good writer, so I'm going with the more traditional "Mary" thing. We can all just think, "merry" and laugh evilly to ourselves.
People who come upon it unawares at the point when I start saying 'Typoid Mary(TM)' and then just writing 'TM' are going to be confused, but I'm okay with that, too.
I'm okay with a fair number of rude things before the caffeine hits the required level in my blood in the morning.
The same Kind Friend who inflicted so may of those rotten writing examples on me suggests that I turn my attention to The Disclaimer for my next tirade. I'm tempted to point out that she's the proud possessor of a blog herself and there's nothing stopping her from posting any number of rude thoughts about anything that annoys her, but I'm aware that not everyone shares my complete and utter indifference to some kinds of public opinion.
I ask myself, "Whose bad opinion is she afraid of incurring? The "first fist of diarrhea" person? Surely not. It would be a proud thing to be disliked by the Typoid Marys (TM) of the world."
What about the rest of you? You have nothing to lose but an in-box full of crappy fiction if you speak out.
In any case, this particular entry isn't on the subject of disclaimers, although I haven't ruled out the possibility of throwing a hissy fit on that topic at some later time or day.
Actually, this has gotten so long that I should stop now, so the Planned Actual Topic will have to show up at a later time.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)I know, it's mean to make fun of bad writing, but I can't resist. And I don't really care.
- - "Hammond fought to reveal his smile."
(I can't begin to imagine who or what he was fighting with. The Tooth Fairy?)
-- "Nakedness might ensure, maybe not."
There's really nothing to add to that, is there?
Under the heading of story descriptions that do not tempt me to read the actual story, I found:
- - "Amish Jim and hippie drifter Blair save each other."
Amish? Jim? Right now I'm giving thanks that I don't read AUs.
- - "Heartache and poignant discovery brought on by a news announcement."
Way to telegraph the entire plot, kid.
And take a look at this one:
- - "this is a futuristic scifi action / adventure tale featuring significant
- - jim and blair h/c, carnage, profanity, somewhat kinky sex play and
- - kickass!blair. angst abounds. melodrama abounds. read or not accordingly."
Presumably there was a shortage on kitchen sinks that day. And capital letters.
This line from another story kind of surprised me:
- - "There was so much he didn't know, where he was, how he'd gotten
- - there, why no one came."
In a slash story, everyone usually comes repeatedly. Even improbably. It might be worth trying one where no one comes at all.
Under the heading of, "things that really aren't erotic, we find,
- - "He could already feel his lover's hot erection fighting the demin of his pants."
I find myself distracted by the picture of what a weenie must look like with a little boxing glove on the end. Hee. Hee. Yes, I'm twelve.
Still, men whose dicks try and duke it out with a zipper are usually sorry, so I feel badly for the guy's lover.
As the opening line to a story, I can't say that I think this really grabs me:
- - "Albert Eberts walked down the hall of the agency; he was sorting through - - some files, not looking where his was going."
If you have to have typos, the first and the last line of a story are the last places you want them.
On the other hand, the next few lines weren't much better and offer a bluntly staccato approach to narrative style that would be hard to read much of . Take a look:
- - Someone ran into Eberts and all his files fell to the floor.
- - Eberts grumbled under his breath as he and the other person
- - gathered the files. Then Eberts looked at the face of the person
- - that bumped into him and gasped.
- -
- - Bum bum bbbuuuuummmmm!!!!!
- -
- - It was none other than Arnaud de Fohn!
All emphasis belongs to the author. Be grateful I'm not inflicting any, "de Fohn! de Fohn!" jokes on you.
- - "Mulder responded by wrapping his fingers around the cloth-encased cock
- - and pulling sharply."
I don't know whether to make a sausage joke or to wince in sympathy for the pullee, here.
More random badness:
- - A wrong address would open the dam of their problem to the world.
- - He soon relented to my touch.
- - Krycek pressed into him again, making the change in contour all
- - the more apparent, as the fabric-blunted bulge of his erection
- - scraped against Spender's buttocks.
Insert note to the effect that the words, "scrape" and "erection" do not, in combination, conjure up any comfortable sensations. Please don't write and ask me what change in contour was so apparent because it wasn't.
Let's finish up with Harry Potter.
- - “You, Weasley, are not one to be speaking of learning
- - anything, as your expertise in that area is severely lacking,”
- - Severus snarled.
I think that's enough for today, don't you? We wouldn't want to spoil our appetites.
Posted by AnneZook at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)A kind friend who apparently Has Issues and enjoys watching my I.Q. drop has been sharing a few excerpts from stories with me. Also, I gathered a couple of ghastly entries of my own during my recent and incredibly brief foray unaccompanied into fandom's archives.
He knew every spot in Daniel's mouth - especially that spot by the left incisor that made him moan."
Actually, that one makes me kind of jealous. None of my teeth have their own erogenous zones.
"The voice of the hated potions master was up and above the three Gryffindors who broke from each other like under the attack of something wild."
When did The Hepster start writing Harry Potter fiction?
Harry had decided that he needed to prove to people that he didn’t care, that he could be risqué and down with the kids, not just another messiah.
Ummm…yeah.
Who writes like that? Who thinks like that?
And, saving the best of the worst for last:
"…when the first fist of diarrhea hit him...."
That's a second cousin to the Fist of Death, which I feel approaching even now.
I'd be crying, but my despair is too deep.
My current sig line says, "[I wonder] about people who insist on being known as writers, but refuse to actually learn how to write." (Thank you, Christy)
I may keep it forever.
What I think we need is to coin a new word for those people who insist upon churning out and sharing reams and reams of this kind of stuff. Calling them "writers" or "authors" is an insult to people who can actually write.
We should call them, 'scribblers.'
That's what they're doing. Scribbling something down and shoving it out for public consumption with careless unconcern for the tens of millions of brain cells that will just give up and die when those words hit them.
I’m not even going to apologize for being rude when I say that I sure hope these folks are diddling themselves as they write, because if they aren't personally getting a thrill out of their stories, I can't think of any reason for them to continue to go to the trouble of writing that stuff down.
Of course, with the really bad train wreck writing, like the examples quotes above, there’s the amusement value of, Ohmygod, look what (s)he did here!”
With something mediocre, which includes 75% of all fanfic since most of it doesn't even aspire to be groundbreakingly awful, all you get is boredom.
Sex scenes are the worst. I've noticed an increasing tendency for sex scenes in stories to put me to sleep. At best.
At worst, I'm squirming with embarrassment as I realize I've become privy, not to an author's story idea, but to some scribbler's personal, bedtime fantasy. (I don't really care to know what stories you tell yourself to put yourself to sleep at night, okay? It's TMI and it's just gross.)
Is the gap between what constitutes a story and what constitutes a personal fantasy, erotic or otherwise, really that hard to comprehend? Are people really that unclear on the difference?
You should at least consider the possibility that the process of writing a story is not something you should undertake purely to illustrate to the world the sad lack of education you received in the public schools.
Dictionary.com tells us that a story is:
"A usually fictional prose or verse narrative intended to interest or amuse the hearer or reader; a tale."Notice that it says, "interest or amuse" and not "bore, embarrass, or confuse."
How about Merriam-Webster? (They have their unabridged dictionary on-line these days. Unfortunately it costs money and I'm not wasting my 14-day free trial on information I could get by walking across the room.)
2 c : ANECDOTE; especially : an amusing oneI'd like to draw 'c' to the attention of all of you good writers who aren't writing funny stories. Just as a sort of hint. I like funny stories.
3 a : a fictional narrative shorter than a novel; b : the intrigue or plot of a narrative or dramatic workNotice 'b' above, okay? "Intrigue or plot"
Of course, "plot" is defined as, "the plan or main story of a literary work" which takes us neatly back into a circle and who the hell writes these dictionaries, anyhow?
Forget them.
Lemme think for a minute…. How about, "The intrigue of a fictional narrative work intended to interest or amuse."
How's that?
Pretentious?
Okay, I'll think some more, but while my brain is working on the problem, I want to call your attention to the word, "intrigue." Consider that word.
It's interesting. It implies action. Events. Things That Happen.
Movement.
A story needs movement. Something, ideally the characters, has to change between the first page and the ending line. A narrative that sets up the potential for change without fulfilling it is nothing more than a scene, even if it's 200 pages long. A narrative that does neither is a fragment. Possibly even a writing exercise, but not a story.
Neither a scene nor a fragment are the same thing as a story. That's why "first time" stories are so popular in fandom. Whether or not the writer/author/scribbler understands this basic rule, it's almost impossible to write a first-time story without one or more of the characters changing in some way.
A story is…. Damn. I almost had it there.
To put it more simply, a story should be about something. Someone should learn something new or have an old belief reaffirmed. Someone should experience events and/or have an epiphany and change. Or elect not to change, which is a change in itself.
Note: A PWP, by definition, lacks this feature but it usually gets away with it in fandom because it's usually about sex and there are plenty of readers who will read anything with an explicit sex scene involving one or more of the characters that moistens their personal niblets.
Still, even a PWP has to offer some basic structure, illustrate some familiarity with grammar and writing skills, and explore some aspect of the character(')s(') personality or it will fail even as a PWP.
It would be sad to fail at something that required as little effort as a PWP but I've seen it done. Frequently.
A story is a coherent sequence of events (not necessarily linear) exploring some aspect of humanity.
Heh. I like that one. It's even more pretentious than the last one, but I don't care, okay?
Like I'm going to lower myself to the level of the kind of person who would inflict, "the first fist of diarrhea " on the world?
Not.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)Why did I just write a blog during the middle of the work day? Why am I now writing a second one?
I have real work that has to be done. I have 17 “very urgent” projects sitting on my desk. Why, suddenly, was writing about VPL on a stranger more urgent than working? Or writing about writing about...?
Because it’s Friday! Friday doesn’t mean much to the unemployed, but it’s certainly significant to those of us who have jobs, isn’t it?
Hee. Hee. It’s good to be employed.
I swear, if I could find anyone to go with me, I’d go to the Romance Writers of America Convention that’s being held downtown this weekend.
My treat. I’d buy the memberships and we could wander around and try to learn things. Or mock people under our breath. I’m cool with either approach. I need to attend a convention that offers panels on such important subjects as “1001 Metaphors for Body Parts.” I totally do. I am so in the mood for that kind of thing right now.
Why don’t the friends I could browbeat into doing something like this live closer to civilization as epitomized by Denver, Colorado, that’s what I want to know.
I have a very forceful personality. I could browbeat my friends if they lived close enough. Or bribe them or something.
Or we could go shopping. I’m always up for shopping.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)Stairs. I’m thinking of my butt, okay? I’ve never in my life spent this much time thinking about that portion of my anatomy. I wonder how long I have to keep this up before my ass looks like Melanie Griffith’s?
This morning I faced my first round of mockery from a stranger.
A woman waiting to ride the elevator down from the third floor (the nerve!) took one look at me and started laughing. “That’s good,” she said. “Smoke a cigarette and then walk up the stairs.”
“Hey, at least I’m making the effort,” I responded with something less than Wildean wit, hoping that she’d get the point, walk down the stairs herself, and not incidentally leave the next available elevator to me.
She took the next elevator down and wished me luck as the doors closed. Lazy cow. She should think of her butt. It needed thinking about, I assure you.
Yes, I’m a cootie-infested, nicotine-addicted, civilization-ruining, social pariah. I’m a smoker.
Stand back, everyone! Breathing air within ten feet of me has been proven to contaminate ground-water and speed up global warming.
Get off my back, okay? I don’t approve of smoking and I think that when the Federal Government really agrees with me and stops subsidizing tobacco growers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every year and the price of a pack of cigarettes goes to $10, we’ll see a significant drop in the numbers of new smokers each year. And I’ll be first in line to cheer.
In the meantime, I don’t abuse animals, I believe in revenge-motivated executions of people who abuse children, I conserve water, I think twice before using disposable paper products or toxic-waste cleaning products, I drive a compact, gas-efficient car and I’ve done the one thing that proves, more than anything else, that I care about the future of our planet.
I’ve elected not to reproduce.
From that first soiled, disposable diaper to the last plastic trash bag filled with used Depends, there’s nothing on this planet that’s as detrimental to the ecosystem as a human being and when I leave this vale of tears, I’ll be leaving behind no direct descendants to carry on my wasteful, rain-forest destroying consumerism.
So what if a few cigarette butts make it into landfills as I make my way toward the inevitable white light? (Or, in my case, probably something a bit warmer.)
I’m not actually in a bad mood today.
It’s just that my butt and I don’t appreciate having our efforts toward self-improvement being mocked by a woman wearing tight, white shorts and pink underwear, okay?
I did not want to know that that woman preferred the “hip-hugger” style over the trendier “thong” or the more conservative “brief” and yet the image lingers in my brain.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)Not that the two of those have anything in common, but I'm unaware of a rule that says that you can only babble aimlessly about one topic at a time and if such a rule exists, you'd be doing me a favor by not mentioning it to me and further eroding the quality of my life, already deeply pitted with the despair of fighting the Urban Experience.
Working downtown. Huh.
I'm learning why people loathe commuting. This is my first real experience with fighting any significant traffic on the way to and from work. Going in isn't bad, but the trip home is starting to be a real problem.
It's not the traffic volume. I can deal with that. It's the Geezer Factor. The most convenient road I can take home seems to be Geezer Central at rush hour. I'm constantly stuck behind some gray-headed old git who jams their brakes desperately every time someone within a block of them signals a lane change.
I almost rear-ended one idiot tonight. Every time I tried to slow down to let him get a bit ahead of me (so I could watch what he was going to do next), he'd grind to a halt and wave some jaywalker across the road.
I'm just convinced that encouraging people to try and cross a street on foot where the traffic is habitually going 50 MPH is not doing the pedestrian a favor.
Maybe that's his plan or something, I don't know. Maybe one day, some unsuspecting pedestrian is going to step out in front of that nice old man and wind up as a road kill pancake.
I'd better find a different road.
Continuing my quest for Good Health, I'm still walking over to Starbucks every morning around 8:30 or so and carefully ordering a NON-fat Venti Latte. (Like I care about the milk, as long as shots of espresso are in there.) Still, every fatty little calorie saved is another spoonful of ice cream in the evening, right?
Anyhow, in case I haven't mentioned it yet, someone mentioned to me that the latest nutrition study has proclaimed that the new Miracle Food is milk. Apparently there are a lot of complex and wonderful things happening in that foamy white liquid and people who include a virtuous amount of milk in their diets lose more weight than the people who avoid milk as though the fat content will bring on the apocalypse or something.
Actually I think it was milk and cheeses, but I'm losing interest in the topic now.
I'm also climbing stairs. Every day I face those stairs about ten times, mumble, "think of your butt" and climb three floors before I give up and let myself take the elevator the rest of the way up.
It's my goal to be eventually walking all six flights (think of your butt!) but some kind person told me the best way is to start with a couple of floors (I chose three because I'm a chronic overachiever. No. Really. Okay, because I feel stupid climbing one floor.) and walking those for three weeks, then adding another floor and walking those for three weeks, etc. It's a good plan but I'm already picturing how stupid I'm going to feel for the three weeks that I'm climbing to the fifth floor and taking the elevator up the last floor.
Although based on the number of people I've encountered riding the elevator up or down one floor, I suspect no one but me will notice or care.
My butt had better appreciate this.
The Karpenters! I saw the Kilted Karpenters again. I never see fewer than three of them at a time. I wonder if that's because they don't like to eat lunch alone, or because they're afraid to wander around in public that way alone?
They shouldn't be afraid. They look pretty darned good, actually.
Nice butts. I mean, as much as you can tell that sort of thing when the area in question is covered with red plaid.
When I'm president, there's going to be a law banning white spandex pants. That's all I'm saying on that subject.
Cap'n Nasty? Are you listening? I checked out Fark.com. Mostly it was pretty darned funny, but I'm not sure how much reliance I can place on a "news-gathering site" that actually quotes The Onion.
Still, I'm sure to love any site that links to a news story where the description reads:
"Three men try to rob bank, get no money. Escape in stolen Corvette, car blows up."
I'm going to remember that one the next time I think I'm having a bad day. For anyone concerned, the would-be robbers weren't in the car when it exploded. And they didn't get any money from the bank because they lost their nerve before they got to the cashier's window.
Guys. Seriously. I'd be thinking career change right about now.
I'm should be worried about this one:
Killer/rapist to be thrown of cliff in a sack. Unlikely to be a repeat offender
But the description is too darned funny.
It's time for the crappy writing portion of our evening but it's late and I'm tired.
Maybe next time.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)I was having lunch with a group of folks very recently (like, today), and the topic of on-line journals came up. It was interesting since it was the first time I've talked to any anti-online journal types since I started keeping one myself. It reminded me of something I wanted to say.
I've heard all kinds of arguments both for and against Live Journals, or Blogs, in the past six months. (Before then, I'm not sure I knew they existed.)
I should point out that I'm against them myself. (I can hear you screaming already. "What kind of half-wit posts an anti-blog rant into her blog?" "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."—Albert Einstein. Okay?)
I mean, I'm against them as a medium of communication generally in fandom.
There is, I think a very valid concern that journals are going to strike a serious blow at that already shaky foundation of online fandom—the list.
First came the fandom list, then the separation of slash and het/gen fans within the fandom, then the reduction of list parameters to certain pairings or scenarios, then the splintering off of people who didn't like some kinds of discussion and who started their own lists to exclude those discussions.
Somewhere in there we also got discussion-only lists, story-only lists, critique lists, and "feedback only if you have something nice to say lists. And lists run by authors solely for the discussion of their own writing.
So—how does the online journal fit into all of that?
Well, there's a concern that instead of posting opinions to lists and having public debate about the pros and cons of ideas, people will just post their ideas to their journals and there will be no discussion beyond what might take place in the "comments" function or in e-mails.
In a lot of ways that's what's happening and fandom has no one to blame but itself.
First we got the moronic bunnyheads who insisted that no one was allowed to say anything critical of anyone else or their writing and we didn't shout them down.
Considering that ninety-five percent of all fanfiction posted is crap, that pretty much killed story discussion.
Then there were the imbeciles who insisted that any disagreement with their opinions or interpretations constituted a attack on them personally.
After a flurry of infuriated messages, the arrival of this crowd in a fandom was pretty much greeted with "stupid isn't curable" and other fans either left the list or stopped sharing their critical opinions.
What does this leave us with? Lists where people post their opinions, very carefully, and pretty much stay away from commenting on what others have to say.
The only differences between that kind of list and an on-line journal is that:
(1) people "own" their journals and consequently feel free to be more honest in them, and
(2) if some one person really annoys you, you don't have to go to their blog if you don't want to.
So, yeah, I think many people are now putting into journals ideas that they would have sent to a list previously. But I think that a lot of those fans interested in lively, intelligent discussion with a healthy percentage of disagreement mixed in shouldn't be complaining too loudly.
What did you do when the bunnyheads invaded your fandom?
When your fandom was overrun by the HHJJ fans who insisted that all authors were entitled to glowing praise and that too much emphasis on grammar and characterization stifled creativity, did you chase them around the room with a baseball bat?
How hard did you fight for your First Amendment right to discuss, critique, and flat-out criticize an actor, a show, or a story? Really hard?
Of course not. You were "nice" and the list promptly lowered its standards to accommodate these fluffy, feel-good, indiscriminate, and talentless twits.
Me, I didn't fight very hard either. I admit it. It got to the point where when I saw the "ficcie" and "ficlet" authors coming in one door, I headed out the other as fast as I could exit.
In retrospect, I feel a bit guilty about that.
I used to question people's posts until I understood why they were saying what they were saying or until we were in agreement—and, yes, it happens sometimes that people change their minds.
Gradually I came to realize that most people resent being questioned. Instead of being pleased to receive an invitation to talk at length about their point, they are annoyed, or even angered, at being, as they feel, required to "defend" their opinions.
That still confuses me. If you can't explain or defend your opinions then how are you really sure what it is that you think or believe? If you don't want to talk about what you believe, why are you posting to a discussion list?
Anyhow. A couple of years ago, I realized that what I saw as interesting discussion that I could learn from wasn't seen that way by others. I was mostly just pissing people off.
I don't subscribe to public fandom lists any more.
I've completely lost the point of what I was talking about when I started, but I'm fairly certain I was going to say that I personally am keeping an online journal for three reasons.
#1 – At the time I started it, I'd been unemployed for four months and I was bored out of my mind.
#2 – A healthy percentage of the things I think about often enough to want to write them down aren't fandom-related.
#3 – I have no intention of going back, searching out, and re-subscribing to X-Files, Sentinel, due South, or any other fandom lists on the off chance that I'll have a thought about one of the shows some day.
So, I'm saying I'm not guilty of furthering the splintering of fandom. Nothing I'm putting here would have shown up on any list anyhow.
Everyone else can defend themselves. It's dinnertime and the lasagna is on the table.
Posted by AnneZook at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)I had a whole blog thing written on how important it is that people use, but not abuse, beta readers but then it occurred to me that I'm the only one out of all of us who habitually skips this all-important step in the writing process.
As so often happens, I was ranting at the idiots and then I realized that I was the only idiot in the room.
But that's okay. I'm not jealous of y'all because you're smarter than me. I have better reasons and you know what they are.
And that's pretty much all I have to say on that subject. I'm not sweating through a transcription of six pages of ranting about people who don't use beta readers only to face mockery and finger-pointing as you point out that I, alone, have neglected to procure myself the services of a such an invaluable aid to writing.
If you feel like mocking me, you're going to have to find your own reasons today.
In a side note, I see from the first page of the blogger site that blogging is getting some interesting press.
In The Wall Street Journal, an editorial about, "all that's right with our great country", includes: "Blogging. The 24-7 opinion sites that offer free speech at its straightest, truest, wildest, most uncensored, most thoughtful, most strange. Thousands of independent information entrepreneurs are informing, arguing, adding information. Imagine if we'd had them in 1776: 'As I wrote in yesterday's lead item on SamAdams.com, my well meaning cousin John continues his grammatical nitpicking with Jefferson (link requires registration) "Inalienable," "unalienable," whatever. Boys, let's fight. Start the war.' Blogs may one hard day become clearinghouses for civil support and information when other lines, under new pressure, break down."The Economist: "Blogging, the publication of running commentary on personal online weblogs, has in the past couple of years exploded from a cultish techie activity into a cottage industry churning out increasingly compelling content. In 1998, there were about 30,000 weblogs; today, there are some 500,000, according to Cameron Marlow, who runs blogdex, which tracks them."
Huh. What a bunch of radicals we are! The conservative press is taking us seriously!
Once again I'm feeling a certain pressure to be relevant but I'm resisting. It's stream of consciousness babbling from me or nothing at all.
Posted by AnneZook at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)Once again I made the mistake of trying to make alterations to my blog template. That's why I have a new template this evening. Some day I should actually learn how to code html. After 10 years on-line, you think I'd have learned by now, but noooo.
Hmph.
Posted by AnneZook at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)Okay, by now pretty much everyone knows that there was a boo-boo involving some high-security, well, security plans, the Salt Lake Olympics, and the safety of our rarely-seen but much-discussed Vice President, but I for one was unaware that a story was circulating that claimed that a couple of Secret Service guys had left these important papers on a gift shop counter after buying themselves a couple of souvenir hats.
If doing personal shopping on company time is your idea of fun, you probably shouldn't apply to the Secret Service. Stories like this one are pretty much guaranteed to tarnish that Tall, Tough, and Deadly image those guys have.
Also, maybe I missed this one on CNN's Headline News alerts, but did Clinton really finish a meeting in 1999, and get up to leave, absent-mindedly forgetting to take that big ol' briefcase containing all of those Really, Highly, Top-Secret nuclear launch codes with him?
Kids today. No sense of responsibility.
More seriously, a long article on the build-up of events to September 11 reveals that the combined U.S. intelligence agencies knew that something was up with the Al-Midhar terrorist cells and that at least three of the hijacked plans carrying terrorists also had anywhere from three to eight Federal Agents on board. The Agents were apparently following the terrorists in expectation of rounding them all up when their flights landed on the West Coast that day.
According to this article, he Agents on the first United flight had no chance to act before their plane plowed into the WTC but by the time hijackers were in control of United Flight 93, the seven or eight agents on board knew what was happening. Too late to save themselves or the plane, but in time to divert the flight away from its target and crash it in an empty field.
What did they know and when did they know it?
The intelligence community knew who, had a good idea of what (they were expecting the Newark to San Francisco flight to be hijacked to L.A. for some reason), and why was obvious. Only when and where were missing and at least 19 intelligence agents are named among those who lost their lives that day.
Hmmm….
Posted by AnneZook at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)One of the advantages (and there are many) to reemployment is that I can once again indulge myself in the random purchase of oddball magazines.
The latest is a little gem called Eye Spy* and it's a doozy. Subtitled, "The Fascinating World of Intelligence," and published in the U.K., it claims to be an independent investigative and reporting organ only. For, you know, global intelligence gathering. A sort of National Enquirer for spies, I think. At least, reading the stories, they have that sort of "over the top" feel to them.
On page 13, I stumbled across an amusing little article called, "The Secret American Government Bunker." Code-named "Project Greek Island" and supposedly inaugurated in 1957 by "the Eisenhower Administration" (Why so coy, fellas? Was it The Man himself or a junior clerk with too much time on her hands and a convenient Presidential signature rubber stamp?), we're told that this ultra-secret installation (the whereabouts of which was revealed by the Washington Post a decade ago) is located in West Virginia. If we can believe it, under the Greenbriar Hotel.
From the photo, I can verify that the Greenbriar is more than an East Coast Area 57. It's a gorgeous, sprawling building complex more reminiscent of an English country house than your local Motel 6. This is a place that didn't need a Secret Government Bunker to justify its existence. It's, if not palatial, at least Ducal.
Anyhow. That's beside the point.
After construction (1959-62) on The Bunker was complete, it was reportedly spacious enough to house the entire U.S. Congress and their families with sleeping quarters for a thousand, plus the usual Cold War features like oxygen generators, power supplies, stored food, etc.
Sadly, we're told that Bush-league George's recent order establishing a rotating shadow government working out of this facility has encountered a few snags. Apparently someone forgot to place the order for 1,000 copies of Microsoft's Millenium Edition OS and the computers in The Bunker have been found to be "several generations" out of date. Also, in spite of offering the amenity of an underground lake, the place was found to be woefully short of phone lines. (I don't know about government employees, but if I can't check my personal e-mail frequently during the workday, I go into withdrawal. And going swimming won't make it all better.)
What's the good of a Shadowy Government Facility where someone has to run hand-written messages up to the hotel front desk every ten minutes? As for passing information to The Bunker, forget it. Have you ever tried to get a hotel front desk to deliver a fax in under an hour?
The part I liked best about the article was the solemn claim that a dummy company was created to "maintain secrecy" about The Bunker's operations and the government employees of said company functioned "as a concessionaire" to the hotel, providing auto/video[sic] support to the hotel upon request.
That's the point at which you're sure the article is a fake. Government employees don't do anything upon request.
Except that it's true.
Coincidentally, or serendipitiously, I was watching A&E last night and lo and behold, a new series titled, "Mansions, Monuments, and Masterpieces" covered the Greenbriar among other structures. And, yes, they mentioned The Bunker. We even got to see parts of it. Apparently the super-secret installation was declassified in 1995, making Eye Spy's article a bit out of date, to say the least. Although I do have to admit that I'm now wondering where the new Bunker is located.
I'm only on page 27 of the magazine. If I find anything else amusing, I promise I'll try and refrain from babbling about it.
Well, no, I don't. I'll babble if I darned well feel like it.
*I should point out that the magazine publishing info page strictly forbids copying any of the material or lending anyone the magazine, so I might be bending a law here with all of my quoting. But I sort of enjoyed the warning. It adds to the air of spurious secrecy that gives the magazine its charm.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)I continue to enjoy the benefits of urban life. Today at lunch I saw a man wearing a bright yellow signboard that said:
It's a drought.
Do something.
Sponsored by: The Denver Water Board
It took me hours to make the, "hey, guys, conserve water so the pools will be open this summer and you can stare at women in bikinis" connection.
It would appear that women conserving water isn't an issue or something. Hmph.
Last night I bought a new flavor of ice cream. I love finding a delicious new flavor of ice cream. Last time it was Godiva Belgian Dark Cocolate. This time I'm trying Ben & Jerry's Fudge Central. Half vanilla ice cream, half chocolate ice cream, both studded with fudge chips, and down the center of the tub is a "core" of chocolate truffle fudge.
Life is good.
Other than that, I guess I have nothing to report.
Oh, yeah. I saw a VW bus painted with red-white-and-blue stripes, and the blue stripes had stars in them.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)