Massages, I think. I seem to be becoming obsessed with the idea. To the relief of everyone hoping I don't begin infesting their fandom, my brain is still stuck on the OaT track.
Last night I was doing some cleaning out and throwing away and I counted at least 17 uncompleted and unloved stories. I've abandoned quite a few stories unfinished as I've moved from one fandom to another over the years. A fair number in XF of course, but also HL, OaT, and Sen. One thing most of these seem to have in common is that they were intended to have, you know, plot of some sort. There were actually things that would happen, aside from the usual banter-and-smut routine.
I can't remember where I was going with this.
Oh, yeah. Massages. Unfortunately, if memory serves, I think I wrote a massage into an OaT story already. Actually, I think I wrote massages into two OaT stories, but I'm reasonably sure I printed one of them out for the pleasure of shredding it and burning it while reciting curses toward the hardrive upon which it had lived, but that really has nothing to do with the subject at hand which, contrary to appearances, I have not forgotten.
I'm thinking, you know, if you've only got one (two? three?), anyhow...if you've only got a small number of stories out there in a fandom, maybe it would be better if every one of them didn't have the same elements. I mean, how often can you write, "the guys go undercover and then one of them gives the other one a massage" without becoming tedious? Once. If you're lucky. I don't actually remember if the massage scene I posted was tedious or not, but I distinctly remember that it was fun to write.
And, of course, the obvious solution is to write any darned thing I want and just not post it publicly. Like deleting blog entries, or cleaning "stories I really, really hate" off of my web page, it's my right.
Also I'm remembering that writing sex scenes gives me the hives and that swore if I ever, ever, ever wrote more fanfiction, it would not contain explicit smut.
That's a pity. I'm really in the mood to do something involving massages to men with beautiful bodies and, failing that, I'd settle for writing about it.
Not that I'm pretending I have a choice or anything.
This is me, Blogging Without Bile. A very strange sensation.
But I feel very polite.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:54 PMBut it's to a very interesting article about blogs on MSNBC.
There. A completely non-confrontational post. And it only took three days!
Next up...will it be More On Massages or will we be returning to The Non-Novel Approach?
I have been informed by a Usually Reliable Source that that last post was excessively bitter and mean-spirited.
I have been informed by another Usually Reliable Source that it was nothing of the kind.
Whatever.
I don't mind sounding bitter, but if I sounded mean-spirited, I apologize to the world at large. In the future, I will refrain from lifting quotes of How Not To Write from anyone's writing except my own.
Which, considering that I can't bear to read my own stuff, means I won't be quoting in the future.
Not even to point out that something like, "He couldn't last this facade that had slowly became his demure when he had been kicked out of the country" is unforgiveably incomprehensible and an abuse of the highly developed brain power that allowed us to develop language in the first place.
Or to point out that a disclaimer that starts with the words, "I haven't actually seen these episodes" is the reader's clue to run screaming from the room.
No, I will be nice.
Even though Cap'n Nasty reminded me of that old saying, "if you're not angry, you're not paying attention", I will not be posting again until I think of something nice to say.
Have some coffee. Sit back. Relax. It's intermission.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:48 PMSex has been on my mind a lot lately. Not in terms of, you know, sex but in terms of, "how come so many fanfiction writers write such crappy sex scenes."
For years I worked on the theory that 75% or more of fandom's writers were not only virgins but had never actually seen a nekkid body other than their own which pretty satisfactorily explained the complete lack of comprehension not only about The Act but the basics of human anatomy when you start intertwining two or more bodies.
It also pretty much explained why "sex=penetration" to so many writers and readers. I mean, if they were getting their information from fade-to-black scenes in romance novels and movies they couldn't be expected to be acquainted with even a fraction of the range of very satisfying sexual activities indulged in by a significant percentage of the het adult population, much less the gay adult population, right?
However.
These are the Internet Years and even if you haven't Done the Deed yourself, there are an abundance of free sites where you can view graphical representations.
You can see nekkid men, nekkid women, or, if your tastes tend that way, nekkid coeds doing things to nekkid barnyard animals.
All of which pretty much eliminates the "ignorance is bliss" excuse.
It's possible, of course, to fall back on the old, "they're crappy writers" thing and that's probably largely true. If TypoidMary(tm) can't write a believable conversation between two adults, the odds are exceptionally good that she's going to be even worse at trying to write an erotic sex scene.
(I don't know…I've barely even started ranting and I'm already discouraged. I don't even know why these people bother to write, except that they seem to be desperate for approval.People used to write because they had something to say.
Now they write because some actor floats their boat or because someone issued a challenge to see who could bring the stupidest possible elements into a fandom, or because they think it makes them special.
I got news for y'all. Being one in a group of ten thousand idiots doesn't even make you a special idiot.
I really am discouraged. Even as I type this sentence, I just know there are fifty TypoidMarys(tm) out there simultaneously insisting that the quality of their writing has nothing to do with whether or not their stories are any good and they actually seem to believe this.
Anyhow.)
Some time later....
Okay, let's try this again.
"Are you gonna just stand there and jerk off or are you gonna come over here and shoot your wad up my ass?"Yes, this is from a fanfiction story. I saw this same line in about 50 gay porn stories in the days I was researching gay porn.
Apparently I'm not the only one who has researched gay porn. I wish I weren't the only one who had realized that, (a) real people don't talk like that, and (b) gay porn isn't usually well-written or sexy.
"(deleted) stood at the foot of the far bed and raised the enema bucket to let the warm water flow between the shapely buttocks of his arch nemesis"This line is notable because it wasn't even part of a sex scene. The story, if you believe it, opened like this. I couldn't bring myself to read any more.
Anyhow, I got all distracted by that "far bed" thing and wondering how far it was, where the arch nemesis was standing and just how big that damned bucket was anyhow.
"(deleted)'s feet began rubbing against each other as if he'd transformed into an amorous cricket"I am just speechless with arousal at the image of a man bedding an amorous cricket.
"They both cried out as the big man fell right on top of them. They whimpered but snuggled up against his big furry chest and began kissing each side of his face. Suddenly they stopped their kissing and (deleted) heard snores. The little bastards had worn themselves slap out and were sleeping right on top of their papa bear!"Must. Control. Fist. Of. Death.
"Instead he closed his palm around (deleted)'s cock. And hurray, it evoked the exact reaction he wanted."She actually wrote, "hurray." And it's not even Andy Hardy slash.
"(deleted), for his part, had locked his eyes with (deleted)'s and nonchalantly *swallowed* three of his long fingers into the back of his throat."And then he choked to death and we were glad.
The End.
You might think I spent the last hour finding these examples of highly unerotic writing, but I assure you it took exactly nine minutes, most of which was spent waiting for pages to load. I did a search for "slash fanfiction, found three archives, and opened about 10 NC-17 stories entirely at random.
Imagine what I might have found if I'd taken the time to actually read anything. (I think I just felt 23 brain cells die at the mere thought.)
TypoidMary(tm) aside, let's think about the decent authors for a change. I think that the problem is that even these people can't figure out how to get the guys' to put their hands on each other.
I mean, they have an idea for a story, they have characters, and maybe even an idea of how the sex should go, but getting the boys right up to the plate and ready to take action isn't easy.
Let me say that I have a lot of sympathy for this problem. Since I like using myself as a bad example, I can honestly say that I once had an idea for a short (8-10 page) story that wound up going on for fifty pages or more because I could not get the guys into bed. And when I finally gritted my teeth and just wrote the damned sex scene, it was pretty bad.
Anyhow, I think other people must run into that same problem. At some point, they just start shoving any old sex scene down on the page with no regard to erotic intensity, appropriateness to the setting and characters, or anything else.
Some of these people might be able to visualize the sex scene in their minds, but they lack the ability to get it down into words correctly. Contrary to what some seem to believe, writing a story isn't the same thing as a minute description of a visual scene.
I think that whenever you run into one of those, "and then A moved his arm over three inches to let B's mouth move to the side of his neck and then A arched his back until the tendons on his neck stood out" kinds of sex scenes, you're reading an author who got confused about a visual image in her head.
Some people, shudder, don't know the difference between a private sexual fantasy and a sex scene appropriate for a story. I think we all know those when we read them. For those in doubt, highly inappropriate "dirty talk" like that in the first Bad Example above is frequently a component of those private fantasies.
Ditto for the scenes where the characters are abruptly behaving wildly out of character although I admit that as much as characterization is ignored by TypoidMary(tm), this is probably too ubiquitous to be a good indicator.
Which brings us, at long last, to the subject of today's musings.
Why do people write crappy sex scenes? And why do so many of them insist on trying to write rape stories or torture stories?
Couldn't you all just give up the beatings and the tortures and the rapes and the whips and the chains?
If your friends won't tell you, I will.
Honestly, you suck at writing that stuff, okay?
The proportion of really crappy so-called BDSM stories to decent stuff is higher than the proportion of crap-to-decent in any other genre. And you're most of you so clueless what BDSM is really about that you've actually managed to give BDSM a bad name.
Very few people find that kind of scenario truly erotic and to be even more brutally honest, if you were any good at writing it, you'd probably lose 75% of your readers because most of them would be totally grossed out by a realistic scene. In other words, it's only because you write it so badly that anyone reads it at all.
And give up the torture while you're at it. You know what I mean. " 'A' gets kidnapped by Bad Men and beaten all up and probably raped ten or fifteen times and then 'B' comes in and rescues him and takes him home and they have wild anal sex and it's all better."
It was stupid the first time someone wrote it thirty-five years ago, and it hasn't gotten any more believable or any more intelligent since then.
Plus which, you know, you also suck at writing that stuff.
I've read so-called "torture" scenes that left my eyes glazing over from boredom and others where I was laughing hysterically as the poor victim was made to take more abuse than any fifteen human bodies could sustain without fatality before bouncing back like the Energizer Bunny.
You don't have to write like that. Many of us wish you'd stop trying.
What's wrong with sex? Why can't you write it unless one of the men is bleeding?
Let me guess.
You don't actually know any men, do you?
You don't actually know how men would behave in bed and you refuse to believe that men are, after all, human beings who act and react pretty much the way a human being should, right?
You have trouble believing that if you write a man being touched in a way that feels good by someone who wants to make him feel good it's going to be erotic, right?
Or are you afraid that if you don't include some bruising and maybe a little blood-letting, they're not going to seem like Real Men? That if there isn't some kind of schoolyard wrestling, they're going to seem all girly?
You don't actually know any men, do you?
Sex doesn't have to involve bloodshed, even between two men. (Nor should one of them necessarily be portrayed as an escapee from Barney's purple world. There's a middle ground between teddy bear-fondling infants and psychologically crippled brutes, and that's where most people's sexuality falls.)
It's sex, okay? It's not rocket science.
How about a nice massage scene? A massage can be verrry sexy, it's a good way to get at least one of the guys partially unclothed, gives the other guy a reason to start fondling him, and can lead to all kinds of delicious scenarios.
What fandom needs is fewer butt plugs and more massages.
A couple of bodies, a little friction and you've got fireworks. Nudity optional.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:38 PMIn what I can only call a disgusting display of cupidity, 250 "women and girls" took part in a free-for-all dash around a baseball diamond searching for a hidden diamond in Florida on Friday night. (One 28 year old woman collapsed and died on the field. No cause of death has been determined.)
I boycott diamonds. Everyone should read some of the information available and consider whether or not they should do the same.
And that's it for today's current events rant.
Today, as I focus on the job they're paying me for (Honest! I've thought about it twice already! And I've only been here for three hours!), part of my mind will be contemplating massages.
I'm feeling peevish, so I'd advise you not to come back and read what I post on the subject.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:09 AMUrban Adventures!
Sadly, today I was unable to help a Spanish-speaking woman looking for Sylvia, the girl who roams around the building all day cleaning things. Thanks to a sixth-grade Spanish course, I understood her question, although I didn't remember enough vocabulary to answer in the same language.
My French courses were much more recent. I wish she'd asked in French. I could probably remember how to say, "I don't know" in French.
When last I saw her, the SSW was attempting to ask another tenant in the building, who speaks mostly Russian, where "la muchacha" could be found. I silently wished them both the best of luck as I dove into the elevator and escaped. My Russian is limited to "nyet" and "pravda", neither of which seemed appropriate to the situation.
I have a soft spot for our Russian tenants and I swear it has nothing to do with the fact that the Mr. bears an uncanny resemblance to Jim Byrnes. Nothing at all. (It is an amazing resemblance, though. Every time I see Mr. R., I do a double-take.)
Like most of the building's tenants, their sign says nothing about what business actually takes place behind the closed Russian door so all I know about them is that all of their clients (customers? consultants? co-conspirators?) that I've seen so far have also been Russian-speaking individuals.
I'm not going to swear to the Russian thing, though. I'm not an expert on languages from that part of the world. They sound Russian.
But they're very polite, and very cheerful, and they always smile and say, 'hello' when I see them.
As I passed by their office today, there was a plastic grocery bag with two boxes of what appeared to be cereal sitting on the floor, waiting for them. That's a mystery I'll probably never solve since it would be in the worst possible taste to actually ask.
Speaking as someone who has almost been run down six times in the past six weeks for committing the sin of walking in the crosswalk when the walk signal is on, I'm starting to learn the value of common courtesy.
Pursuing my goal of trying to achieve the 10,000 steps a day that "experts" say is the average number of steps taken by a healthy adult, I'm doing a lot more walking these days.
And I'm noticing that pedestrianism is dangerous. (It is too a word.)
Me, I've never been one to roll threateningly toward some hapless foot-traveler trying to cross the street when I'm driving so I don't understand what karmic weirdness means that when I set foot on a crosswalk it's a signal for every psychopath who can't bear to wait another five seconds to reach his destination to come roaring up to my corner and curse my existence as he revs his engine.
On a brighter note, I no longer have to place my order at Starbucks. When they see me walk in the door, someone starts making a Venti Nonfat Latte and the person tending the register holds their hand out for my magic coffee card. (Yes, I got one of their cards. While it's absurd to pay in advance for coffee and let them have my money for weeks before I receive value for it, I'm actually saving a substantial amount since I was previously in the habit of dropping all of my change into the tip jar every day so I figure I'm actually saving $3.05 a week. For those in doubt, yes, if I subsequently document that I've invested this money and lost it and try to claim the loss on my income tax forms, that is the kind of accounting that leads to things like the Enron debacle. Let no one say I can't be taught.)
I haven't actually decided yet what to do with my savings. Maybe I'll buy some coffee.
Other than these minor items, the Urban Experience has been sadly lacking in adventure in the past couple of weeks. I'm growing used to the sound of sirens passing the building several times a day, I'm not even trying to get blasé about the gorgeous view of the Front Range outside my window, I've been at this job for long enough that people are no longer being artificially nice to me (I kind of miss that), and I'm even starting to understand what's going on.
News….
Why didn't anyone tell me that Alfred Kinsey was a "bisexual, pornography-addicted, sado-masochistic, anti-Christian sexual revolutionary"? No one ever tells me anything.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)
Gone!
Removed another one. I'm on a cleaning kick.
Posted by AnneZook at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)
I removed it, okay?
It's my right.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)
CLEAR SKIES
USA Today is publishing a series on the events of 9/11 from the perspective of the air traffic controllers responsible for flight management, the pilots in the air that day, and a man named Ben Sliney, who was on his first day on the job as national operations manager of the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Virginia.
His first day on the job. Starting a new job is always traumatic, but this guy really drew the short end of the stick.
Anyhow, I recommend these articles. So far, two parts have been posted to the website. The first one is Amid terror, a drastic decision: Clear the skies. The second one is No one was sure if hijackers were on board.
The series seems to be offering a new perspective on some of the events that day and for those like me who still have unresolved emotional trauma about the entire thing, it's very interesting reading.
I have a number of opinions about the leadership (or lack thereof) displayed by the Federal government on September 11 and since (and before, truth be told), a great deal of admiration for Mayor Guliani, etc., but I'm holding off on posting anything about that at the moment. I'm so angered by so many things that have happened over the last eleven months that I just don't have any coherent place to start a rant.
Anyhow. This was supposed to be a place to babble to my friends and occasionally make fun of them and not a political forum. While I debate the subject, I encourage people to occasionally take a look at alternet.org, a site that offers a different look at the news.
This has been today's news-relevant portion of the entry.
Random chatter to friends
Today's spammail:
Hello,
If you are in possession of the Blue, Red or Green Time Warping moon crystals, or a vortex generator accounting for the temporal location settings of (X, Y, Z, X1, Y1, Z1, xq6), please make me an offer. It would be best if you are able to provide the proper shielding from the high level of radiation. Please make me an offer. Send a separate email to me at: (removed)@aol.com.
I'm a little worried about whether or not I need radiation shielding, though.
For the Dockside Dame, I was trying to figure out how to make those nifty second browser windows pop up when someone clicks a link myself, instead of bothering you & friend, but the research I've done suggests it really is a javascript thing, so I guess I'll have to be content with right-clicking on links when I want to go take a second look at something. Hmph. But I appreciate your willingness to help and stuff.
I found some interesting site while I was looking, though. webmonkey is a good site. So is htmlgoodies. I think the very best site I found was w3schools though. I've already used that one a dozen times and it falls into the category of, "sites I'd pay some money to if necessary."
TWM! – National Mole Day was on July 31 and I forgot to give you a present! Still, yesterday (August 13) was International Left-Hander Day and you didn't get me a present, so we're even, right? Because I'm a reasonably good friend, I offer The Naked Mole-rat Colony cam in your honor.
I'm still thinking of my butt. One day this week I actually ran up the three flights of stairs, but other than that my only progress on the exercise front is that I'm starting to consider the possibility that it's time to tackle the stairs to the fourth floor as well. I haven't actually done it, but I've thought about it. No changes in that physical area, though. "Rhinoceros" is what comes to mind when I look in the mirror. That didn't stop me from having fried food for dinner last night, of course.
Cap'n Nasty, in my never-ending search to find weirder and weirder websites for your amusement, I offer nerve.com. You probably don't want to surf this one at work if Danzo & Co. have the intelligence to have installed netwatch software that tracks the names of the links you visit, but I found it very entertaining. There's an article on Full Frontal and I know how you heart David Duchovny.
Opinions have been divided on this movie. Some critics said it was a hopeless mess while others lauded it as brilliant and original. I strongly suspect the parties of the second part of trying to prove how much more intelligent than everyone else they are, but who knows. With Julia Roberts and David Hyde Pierce also starring, it can't be that bad, right? Right? Right? Tell you what. You go watch it and let me know.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)Cap'n Nasty tells me that zenguide.com (which doesn't deserve a link) lied to me and that Zen is not all about suffering. That site told me:
the Buddha's discovery of the solution to the problem of suffering began with the recognition that life is suffering. This is the first of the Four Noble Truths. If people examine their own experiences or look at the world around them, they will see that life is full of suffering. Suffering may be physical or mental. physical sufferin takes many forms. People must have observed at one time or another, how their aged relatives suffer. Most of them suffer aches and pains in their joints and many find it hard to move about. With advancing age, the elderly find life difficult because they cannot see, hear or eat properly. The pain of disease, which strikes young and old alike, is unbearable, and the pain of death brings much grief and suffering. Even the moment of birth gives pain both to the mother and the child that is born.The truth is that suffering of birth, old age, sickness and death are unavoidable. Some fortunate people may now be enjoying relatively happy and carefree lives, but it is only a matter of time before they, too, will experience suffering. What is worse, this suffering must be borne alone.
More on naming the mouth
I had a vote for "Countess" but now I'm leaning toward "Marchessa" because it's Italian and has, again, that lovely roll off the tongue when you say it. Also there's been a vote to incorporate "Latte" into the title. La Marchessa De La Bocca Grande y Latte or something.
I'm really starting to fall in love with this idea.
Next up! I'm inventing my own country and maybe granting patents of nobility
Posted by AnneZook at 07:59 PM | Comments (0)For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I've been contemplating the invention of a psuedonym. (I've been contemplating the invention of a psuedonym for about three or four years, but I keep forgetting about the idea.)
I need something more in line with the obnoxious, dictatorial nature of the entries I've been making.
The Italian for "Big Mouth" is "La Bocca Grande" and I think something could be done with that for a psued, don't you? Norwegian is a bit more interesting with "stor munn" though.
I submitted these ideas to a recent acquaintance who hadn't yet discovered that giving me your private e-mail address is a bad idea and she voted for the Norwegian, suggesting that I could call myself Anne Stormunn or Stormun.
She also said:
It's not quite as obvious as La Bocca Grande (that actually sounds like a Starbucks beverage), and it almost sounds like a real name:)
As I informed her, she was working under the mistaken assumption that I want to be subtle. I have no problem with publicly labeling myself as a big mouth. It's not as thought it's not an obvious fact, you know.
I may be rude, obnoxious, and a bore at parties, but at least I'm not a hypocrite.
I have to admit that I'm leaning toward La Bocca Grande for two reasons. First, the theme of my blog is coffee, after all. So I think sounding like a Starbucks offering would be fun. Second, it has a majestic sort of rhythm, especially if you say it aloud.
Say it with me, everyone. La Bocca Grande!
I could be a Countess in some obscure European country. Or The Duchess of La Bocca Grande. There's a sort of gothic grandeur to it.
I'd need a crest, of course. I'm aware that in reality, only men are awarded such things but I refuse to acknowledge such an archaic system while simultaneously insisting that I be allowed to make sure of the bits of it that amuse me.
Anyhow. I'm thinking of an espresso cup crossed with a keyboard. Cap'n Nasty, what do you think? Am I Duchess material? I'm sure the LilyLady will vote 'no' since she has every intention of being the only Duchess in our lives, but maybe I could get an exemption?
Posted by AnneZook at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)Cap'n Nasty, who would actually prefer to be called "Captain" but I have an incurable urge to create cutsey nicknames for friends if I know it will cause a certain amount of low-level aggravation and keep them thinking about me, has assured me that I can blog anything I want without endangering my Zen approach to life.
Being rude is Zen ... (snip) ... Zen is also about letting go of guilt and conscience and morality, letting go of social conditioning and just being what you are rather than what you or someone else thinks you should be.
That's good enough for me. I was starting to worry about the long-term effects of holding in as many rude remarks as my brain seems to generate on most fandom topics anyhow.
Of course, it's going to cause a problem with my Karma, but I'll work that out in some other way. And I do have a couple of issues centering around "being who I am" if that doesn't turn out to be a very nice sort of person.
Still, my incredibly brief foray into Zen Buddhism to capture the definitions I used in earlier entries made me think twice about a philosophy that holds that life is about suffering and that happiness is merely a passing illusion, anyhow. I can't get behind that.
I've had to stop writing these entries in Word, so I'm not spellchecking any more. Word hates my sentence structure. I say, if you can't create a sentence composed of fifteen unrelated clauses, what good is it living in a so-called democracy anyhow? Word is facist about long sentences. I know, I could turn that feature off, but I'd rather sit here and curse the darkness sort of thing.
It's not entirely out of the question that I'll have something of interest to say at a later time or date.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)Cap'n Nasty, your Zen is slipping! Me, in spite of tempting e-mails from various people suggesting new rant topics, I'm holding fast to The Way.
In my egocentric way, I thought blogging was a fandom thing. Imagine my surprise as blogging gets more and more international press to find out that in most people's mind's, a blog is a sort of freelance, amateur journalism effort. A system whereby the Average Joe/Jane can scope out the latest news, gather up relevant links from all over the place, and add their own commentary on the subject. To the big, wide world, a blog is a news reporting entity.
I feel ashamed that I haven't commented on any current events. I mean, besides mocking Eye Spy. Let me say, for the record, that I read today that Tanya Harding, of figure skating fame, was arrested for drinking while on probation. Bad girl. Somewhere in the world, someone taught a crow to take a piece of wire and bend it into a hook on the end to fish food out of a tube. It was a girl crow. Boy crows apparently just hang around waiting for someone else to fish out the food then they take it away.
Note the complete absence of any rude commentary about Typical Male Behavior.
This zen thing is tough.
Anyhow, enough of current events. Before I get onto the subject of blogging, let me recommend that those among you who have always wanted to diss Big Oil to their faces, try Shell Oil's website. They've opened a forum that's a free-for-all. The general public can come in and say just anything they want about the company, ask questions, quarrel, whatever. Any employee of Shell who feels the urge can post responses and they say whatever they want.
I just bookmarked it and I haven't had a chance to read it yet but I do think it's an interesting experiment in making contact with your customers. The article I read said it was a pretty lively place.
Okay, now to the topic. Blogs you oughta read.
Links removed because I checked the sites and didn't personally find them interesting.
I'm bored with that topic. Good websites are more fun.
How Stuff Works has always been a favorite topic of mine and the website is very cool so you should all check it out.
Am I the only person on the net who surfs random words and phrases that aren't dirty? Checking for "nice," I found Smile and Act Nice, which is apparently a site for girls. Can't say I find the name particularly appropriate for the post-1950's world, but whatever.
I Play Nice is...I'm not quite sure, but it might be a boys and girls version of "Smile and Act Nice." Maybe it's for older people, it was hard to tell from the stuff I read but I can tell you that some of the stuff I ran across in the "just for guys" section was scary.
Ona more frightening note, I found a scary website announcing that dressing your hapless offspring in matching ensembles is "Twice As Nice!
And, specially for Cap'n Nasty, there's Wilson and Alroy's Record Reviews, who say, "We listen to the lousy records so you won't have to."
I think it's pretty clear that I didn't really have anything to say tonight.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)I'm not making fun of anyone's religion. Seriously. While I've never been one for organized religion myself, I've always been a believer in Karma in a casual sort of way. The Zen Guide gives us this definition.
Karma is intentional action, that is, a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind. Karma means good and bad volition . Every volitional action is called Karma.That works for me, although I usually say, "you get out of life what you put into it, which neatly covers not only Karma but the work ethic I learned from my father.
Anyhow, I've decided that I'm putting too much negative Karma into the world with all of this ranting.
In other words, Karma is the law of moral causation. It is action and reaction in the ethical realm. It is natural law that every action produces a certain effect. So if one performs wholesome actions such as donating money to charitable organizations, happiness will ensue. On the other hand, if one performs unwholesome actions, such as killing a living being, the result will be suffering. This is the law of cause and effect at work. In this way, the effect of past karma determines the nature of one's present situation in life.
I can't do much about my past Karma, but I guess I can try to start working on this lifetime's Karma by resisting the temptation to think, or say, the many rude things I think, and say, about fanfiction.
Of course, refusing to write down the bad thoughts is one thing. Refraining from thinking them is going to be trickier.
I'm still working on that bit.
Anyhow, if Typoid Mary (oops) is having fun writing down her fevered fantasies of Daniel drinking an alien potion and morphing into a woman so that he and Jack can celebrate their love openly, who am I to pass judgment? If TM thinks that her idea of removing Chris and Vin from the Old West and putting them on a the first manned spaceship to Mars is a cool one, who am I to say otherwise? If she really does believe that in his spare time, Blair is a practicing sadist.... *Grabs head and starts moaning.*
Okay, I need more practice. I squicked myself out with that one.
You get the point, though. I've been thinking about this because I read torch's LiveJournal again. (I should link to her journal because I do read it. You're supposed to link to the people you like to read yourself, right? I wonder if she'd mind. I don't quite have the hang of the rules of this thing yet.)
ANYhow. I read torch's LJ again and she linked to a really good essay on writing that she wrote. Her basic message is, "whatever you do, make sure it's a conscious choice." I think that's cool. Instead of the rude ranting and raving approach that I generally take to the topic, she's all about, "just think about what you're doing."
She has such an open, accepting approach to these things.
When I stop to consider the many, many writing faults I, myself, possess, I wonder where I get the nerve to keep running around, laying down the law about how things ought to be done, you know? I didn't think about what I was doing when I was doing it. I just wrote stuff down and shoved it onto my website, then moved on to something else.
Sometimes that thought really bothers me, but I tell myself consoling that I never pushed my stories into anyone's face. It's not like I was list-posting half-assed crap or anything. Anyone who wanted to be appalled by my writing had to actually find it first.
Where was I going with all of this when I started?
Oh, yeah. I've decided to link to torch's LiveJournal. I suggest everyone read it instead of this one because she's more articulate than I am and a whole lot nicer.
I'll be over here in the corner, trying to think of something nice to say about something.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
Eye Spy Again
The new issue of Eye Spy is out!
Hmmm. We learn that once upon a time the Queen Mother responded to the news that a military coup was planned in some unnamed country with the remark, "not now dear, the time is not quite right." No coup ensued. No additional information was provided.
We also learn of a spy accustomed to use a bush on Hampstead Heath as a dead letter box. Imagine his embarrassment when autumn arrived, the leaves dropped off, and he was forced to find an alternative hiding place for his stolen secrets.
Apparently it's a slow month in the spy biz.
In the, "gosh, I wish I'd thought of that one first" department, it was revealed that plans for a devastating secret weapon were once under consideration in Penrith, U.K. The idea was to take a tank and mount upon it a highly specialized machine that would—wait for it—shine a bright light in the enemy's eyes.
A really bright light.
I'm guessing the Huns weren't equipped with Ray Bans.
This month, the best part of the magazine was the ads.
Eagle Eye Associates has "a specialist team of television researchers and investigators available for assignments (National and International)." They boast an impressive if confusing collection of skills.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but after appearing on a lecture tour, I'm assuming that their value as infiltrators would be significantly impaired?
Maybe not.
Another intriguing ad reads:
I have no idea what that means but I strongly suspect a CIA entrapment set-up. If I get really bored, I'll go check the yahoo group and report back. (If I never reappear, you'll know I was right.)
What I need is a trip to Tattered Cover.* I'll bet they have some seriously oddball magazines.
*For those of you not living in the center of civilization, TC is a world-famous, 4-story, independently owned bookstore that sucks at least a C-note out of my pocket every time I so much as drive by. It's my spiritual home and my ambition in life is to move in and spend all day, every day there.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)Why do some lists take off and some lists never really go anywhere? I was doing my usual semi-annual skim through YahooGroups to unsubscribe from the 75% of my lists that I've never even bothered to read, when I stumbled across the name of a virtually moribund little list with an interesting bunch of members who should be chatting up a storm.
The ostensible purpose of this list was to let fanfic writers who cared about things like the craft of writing talk to each other. There aren't many members, but most of the people there are more than capable of talking at length on any number of craft-related subjects.
No one ever talks, though.
Why do some lists take off and some lists never really go anywhere? Is it the moving spirit behind the list? Do some people have a gift for organizing a chatty list while others don't? Is the presence of at least someone who disagrees with a lot of the other members necessary? Is discussion only inspired by disagreement? Is a commonality of fandoms required so that only writers sharing the same fandoms really enjoy talking to each other? Is "commonality" a word?
I have friends. This may surprise some of you, but there you go. I do. At the moment I can't think of any of my closest friends with whom I currently share a fandom, largely because I'm not actually in a fandom right now. But those friends and I discuss writing endlessly.
(The thought occurs to me that the net may be littered with lists where writers discuss these things at length and I just wasn't invited to join any of them, but that's okay. I'd just like to know that somewhere, people are talking.)
Why do some slash fandoms take off while others don't go anywhere? It can't have anything to do with the quality of the show, because The Sentinel, while amazingly slashy, was hardly the epitome of quality television entertainment and yet it attracted a very large fan following. Smallville, which I've already heard some fans proclaiming the death of quality in after one season is a huge fandom. Few of even the most dedicated fans pretended that Phantom Menace was Academy Award movie material but thousands of people read and wrote slash for it anyhow.
Maybe it's a cheese factor. A show has to be both slashy and cheesy in the right way to inspire the viewers to turn, en masse to slashing it? A certain outrageousness in the premise that leaves room for a lot of imagination.
And yet, The X-Files in its early years was amazingly well-written. West Wing is hardly mindless entertainment. And both of those gathered significant fan bases. (Granted, in its last three years, TXF certainly fulfilled the cheese factor requirement but by then the fandom was fading significantly, so that couldn't be called a component of the inspiration for the fandom.)
I don't have anything interesting to say on this subject. I was just wondering.
Once a Thief is going to start airing in a substantial number of American television markets this fall.
This is an incredibly slashy show, ostensibly a love triangle but one where the two guys are so focused on each other that the female lead is irrelevant to the emotional content of the show 75% of the time. Two amazingly attractive guys who can barely keep their hands off of each other on-screen, and who are so married every single time they forget, just for a second, that they don't like each other. A cheesy set-up that includes a Secret Government Agency and a mandate to fight crime in any unorthodox way that succeeds.
It should be slash heaven, but there's a point of badness beyond which even the fans won't follow, so this show isn't going to develop a big following.
Owing to TPTB deciding that doing an episode-by-episode hommage to all the most-noted, most recognizable directors in cinematic history was a better use of the set-up than, say, actually developing the characters and creating a cohesive universe for their concept to live in, the show is barely watchable.
Individual episodes were superb but the overall feel of the show is disjointed and crazy, and not in a good, let's recreate the Marx Brothers kind of way. Lines are interchangeable, as are the attitudes of the characters depending upon the requirements of that week's directorial style. The look of the show bounces from noir to farce with no explanation or blending of the shifts. Secondary characters introduced throughout the show's mercifully short run vary from fascinating to mind-numbingly stupid with little ground in-between. Several good actors, as well as a surprisingly intriguing premise were entirely and sadly wasted.
If anyone is interested in seeing the show, I'd strongly, strongly recommend that you ask someone who has seen it already to recommend the three or four episodes worth seeing and avoid the rest of the show at all costs.
It isn't that I don't want the show to succeed in the U.S., although I do think that might be a tiny ray of good taste shining through the wasteland of crap that American television viewers apparently embrace, it's just that I'd like to see a few good writers offering some stories in the fandom and I think I have a better chance of that outcome if said good writers are only exposed to the few episodes where the characters and the plots were properly developed.
Even in those episodes, there are scenes I think should be edited out before anyone with a brain views the tapes.
So far I've been able to find two stories I thought were worth reading in this fandom. Two good stories. That's sad because, as I said before, I think the premise is intriguing and the characters, once you work out the inconsistency problems, are great story fodder. This fandom lives in a secret little place in my heart and I just know there are fifty decent writers who could do it more justice than TPTB did.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:03 PM | Comments (0)