(Okay, so Mr. T was hardly the kind of role model any of us, white, black, turquoise, or fuschia-striped, might want for our kids. Still.)
When you think of The T, you think of someone you don't want to mess with, which has nothing to do with me, being short and surprisingly afraid to open my mouth when I'm face-to-face with criminals. Not that I ever have been. Knowingly, I mean.
Well, maybe a drug dealer or two. There was a lot of that going around in the 70s, after all. You could hardly vet everyone you found standing next to you in the grocery store, you know. I didn't inhale or anything.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah.
Good news, bad news!
The Chipmunk has been dissed by a client. To the point where, being tired of beating around the bush diplomatically, the client came right out and said if we want our program to be utilized in their offices, we'd better send a different face to represent our company. It's good to know that I'm not the only human being on the face of the planet that finds him a touch arrogant.
Poor Alvin. He was already having a rough day when I informed him that the client had countermanded our decision to send the Chipmunk on over to chat up the locals.
The bad news? Under the heading of, "let's shoot the messenger!", they're sending me instead. Grrr. No, I've never been to New Orleans and yes, I've wanted to go. But not alone and on my birthday!
What if there are presents for me at my house? If I'm not there to open them On The Day, do I forfeit my right to them?
If I'm out of town, is my mother off the hook for remembering the actual day and calling me?
Will there be cake?
Who makes these decisions? I demand a recount. There were hanging chads!
What am I going to do with myself, all alone in New Orleans? I have one fifteen-minute meeting scheduled and for that I have to fly in the day before, and can't leave until the day after!
It's very sad to be me.
Also, it's snowing.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:06 PMHee. Hee. Drink coffee! Every day! It will make you smarter when you're old!
It other non-news, I'm currently debating, via private e-mail, how to tell if someone who suddenly begins to correspond with you is actually a PsychoFan just waiting for the chance to freak out on you. No solutions, except to ask around privately. Some of the weirdest people in fandom seem very normal when you first meet them.
Also, just where to draw the line at publicly dissing something that stinks. Does it help anyone to improve, or does it just make us feel better to stand up and shout that something is just crap?
None of the discussion will appear here because, for a change, I'm busy working today! (Well, I'm working hard enough that I can't both send e-mails and recap the discussions here at the same time, anyhow.)
Posted by AnneZook at 11:28 AMCourtesy of a kind friend, I just waded through over 3,000 words of disclaimer and author's notes by the most self-involved author convinced of her own brilliance who ever convinced me that I won't even be reading her stuff when hell freezes over.
Leaving aside the fact that someone who has written a magnus opus long enough to be broken into fifty parts and requiring over three thousand words of apology and explanation before the first word is posted should just post it to her website and never mind trashing out mailing lists with her dumpster o'crap, the idea of trying to explain in advance to all of the readers not to write and say that something doesn't make sense or the character wouldn't act that way because It's All Part Of The Plan is absurd and insulting.
There's a way to write that leaves some events murky that doesn't actively make your readers wonder if they've strayed onto another planet. If you're so convinced that your heartbreaking work of staggering genius requires to be shrouded in fog half the time, learn the technique.
When you combine the promised muddy plotting with copious warnings about how dark and angsty and amazingly emotional the story is, I find myself looking forward to closing my e-mail program and getting back to work.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:33 PMWhy won't they let me do what they hired me to do? I'm getting frustrated and annoyed, okay? It's not such a delicate situation to "hand off" a contact from the person who made the initial call to the person (with years of experience) who is going to actually be doing the work from here on out.
The Chipmunk has a problem with me, I've accepted that. But somehow he's convinced Alvin that it's not wise to give me too much responsibility or something.* Trust me, I'm way overpaid to sit here and make spreadsheets all day, showing what we're not accomplishing.
I feel the "help wanted" ads calling me. If they don't trust me to do it, they should hire someone they do trust.
*Or, you know, I'm having a moment of paranoia. I'm prone to those.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:16 PMI'm going to have to shave my legs, aren't I?
After no more consideration than I usually give such momentous decisions, I have taken a lover. He is sleek, compact, and powerful. He is beautiful. He is smart, but not too smart. While remaining in control of his own behavior, he is willing to allow me the privilege of directing where our relationship will go.
He respects my wishes and desires and seeks to conform to my expectations without demanding more than I am willing to give in return. He anticipates my requests and tries always to remember my preferences and predilections.
He has an aptitude for personal growth, being completely willing to let me remake him in the image that pleases me most.
He has more mental capacity than I will ever have while allowing me that comfortable conviction that I am more flexible and more understanding than he can aspire to be. I can gently nudge him in the direction I wish him to go, secure in the knowledge that while he may occasionally balk, he will in the end follow my directions.
And all without sacrificing a drop of my hard-won feminist freedom.
And, no, he doesn't actually require me to shave my legs.
Some days it doesn't seem like such a bad idea for men to be more like computers, does it?
With a Pentium 4, 2.4Gb processor, an 80Gb hard drive, a V90 modem, 512Mb ram, a 16x CD-Rom RW, a silvery-gray body and black-and-chrome accents, and a high-resolution, flat-screen monitor, "Number Five, is a little piece of perfection.
After Wednesday, when we receive our long-anticipated upgrade to broadband access, I anticipate wallowing in the nirvana of perfect internet access. What a lousy time to have a full-time job and be unable to sit at home body-surfing through the reams of streaming video programs that I've never been able to access before.
Ahem.
In other news, I had a lovely time with CP this weekend. We drank coffee, discussed politics (okay, mostly we dissed Bush, but I'm okay with that), bought books (bringing my weekend total to 13 and would anyone like a grab bag box o'previously viewed but mostly interesting books to land on their doorsteps? "Not you," to thewildmole, "Because I've finally accumulated another boxful for you and until you move and don't leave a forwarding address you're on my permanent list of donees, if that's a word which I sincerely doubt.").
After the computer, both bookstores, the department store (one sweater, two unmentionables, a new pair of gloves), the fiasco of the grocery store ($80, all snacks, no nutrients), I decided that shopping was dangerous for me this weekend and didn't make it in to replace my hair dryer. I'll have to keep using the (loud!) travel dryer until I motivate/remember to stop by Brookstone on the way home one evening and pick up a replacement.
Darrell is on my list this morning. He came in early and when I accidentally locked myself out of the office before anyone else had arrived, he sat in his office with the door shut and pretended he didn't hear me pounding on the door. Fortunately, Alvin arrived two minutes later and while I did, of course, have to put up with a certain amount of mockery, I was also allowed back into the office. I'd go rag on Darrell about it buy why break a perfect record of four months with never a voluntary word spoken between us? (He might have answered the door if he hadn't, apparently, feared that I'd say, "thank you" and force him to respond.)
Reliable sources have informed me that IDoJeannie has handed in her resignation, which might have explained her growing disinclination to work if it hadn't previously been established as her modus operandi.
Her boss, Buehler, hasn't dealt with the situation yet. I mean, in terms of advertising for or discussing a replacement, or arranging to be in the office to cover his own company's needs after she's gone. I am told that he, "doesn't know how he's going to handle the situation." What's so hard about hiring someone who can answer the phone, ship out his product, answer questions about his prices, and do light tech support for his customers?
Buehler's a nice guy (well, he's nice to me and laughs at my jokes and that's good enough for me), but he's not exactly a Type-A personality. With a little more ambition, a little more dedication to the hard work portion of building a business, his company would be easily ten times the size it is.
And, speaking of work.... If I want to pay for my share of this new WonderComputer, I'd better go do some.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:30 AMComments!
Let's hear a round of applause for Aukestrel, the coolest person on the planet!
By the time I get back from coffee, I'll expect to see someone commenting, do you hear?
Posted by AnneZook at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)That's the civilian count. Thirty-four of the hostage-takers are dead.
I was wondering how they were going to resolve that problem in Moscow. My sympathy goes out to the friends and families.
Later note: And the body count keeps on growing.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:32 AMSince I had the Sinus Infection From Heck, I've been coughing a little so it didn't surprise me when I had a coughing fit while drying my hair this morning. What did surprise me was when I realized that the hacking was caused by my hair dryer which had commenced smoking.
I'm not accustomed to appliances that threaten to burst into flame. I mean, an outdoor grill is prone to the odd flare-up when enticed by an excess of meaty juices, but hair dryers are normally more sedate.
Anyhow. I had to finish drying my hair with a little travel-sized dryer that I keep around for emergencies (fire!) and it was loud and obnoxious. And not very good, so I'm having a bad hair day.
So, on the way to work I decided I'd better do something about those two front tires that have been looking a little low for the last week or two, so I pulled into a handy service station and planted my car firmly in front of the air compressor thingy.
Knowing that nothing, not even air, is free any more, I took the precaution of digging out a quarter but although the note on the front of the machine assured me that cold cash would be demanded before any product was delivered, I was unable to find an orifice (do machines have orifices?) willing to accept my money.
There was a little, red button on the front of the machine and while I'm not normally inclined to push unidentified red buttons, associating the color red with danger, I finally gave it a poke just to see what would happen.
Nothing.
I waited a few seconds and gave it another shove. Voila! Air!
Unfortunately when I applied the little metal thingy at the end of the hose to the little metal thingy I'm certain is used to insert air into the tire, a disconcerting reverse-inflation process took place. In fact, the longer and harder I applied the one little metal thingy to the other little metal thingy, the lower my tire got.
Because I'm stubborn, and don't learn very quickly, I proceeded to the other side of the car and tried the same experiment on the low tired there. Same result. Hmmm.
Fortunately, since I'm stupid but not terminally so, I did give up the experiment soon enough to ensure there was enough pressure in the tires to roll me toward work.
When I asked Alvin if he thought it was possible that that silver triggery looking thing on the hose had to be squeezed in order to force air into the tire instead of the opposite, he just laughed at me. (I'd have tried it at the time, being in an experimental sort of mood, but the idea didn't occur to me until I was ten blocks away from the service station.)
Some days this whole liberation thing is kind of a swindle. Twenty years ago if I'd asked a guy a question like that, he'd have taken my keys and driven my car off so that he could air up the tires himself.
Of course, maybe that kind of thing happened because I was twenty years younger then.
Anyhow, we'll pass over the experience of my work day except to point out that it's a good thing we've already decided to alter our business model because I received proof-positive today that the original model was a waste of time.
On the way home, armed with the knowledge that you do, indeed, have to squeeze the silver trigger thingy (I gave up and e-mailed a female friend to ask her), I stopped at yet another service station.
Grasping my little quarter firmly, I unscrewed those (really) filthy, dirty little caps from the tires' metal thingies. Glancing at the hose I saw that it lacked a silvery trigger thingy, but I wasn't completely married to the idea of having the experience so that's okay.
Reading the instructions on the machine (it did not want a quarter), I was told to see the attendant for...something. I went inside and was presented with not one but two metal rod thingies.
Not being, as I said before, terminally stupid, I did recognize one of the rods as one of those thingies you use to see how much air is in your tire.
The other was a mystery, but re-reading the instructions on the machine, I realized I had to attach it to the hose in order to make the air come out.
Didn't snap in. Didn't screw in. Wouldn't stay on all by itself. I finally determined that you have to yank the neck of the metal piece on the hose up and then slide the rod in and then let go of the neck and it holds the rod in.
Words cannot do justice to the distinctly pornographic nature of the process.
Especially at the point during the process when the rod popped off of the hose as a consequence of me handling it a bit too roughly.
The next time my tires need air, I'm buying new tires.
Note: Someone who is smarter, younger, smarter, more attractive, more generous, and just generally more wonderful than I am is helping me get comments! I have to go do some errands and then write her some groveling thanks and then I'll get to have Adventures In HTML this weekend!
The mountains are shrouded with fog and the last fall leaves are shivering from gold to brown before spiraling down to carpet the earth with their fading color.
The cityscape looks like a daguerreotype, all faded colors and the glass-and-steel angles of civilization softened to murky stone. Across the way, a careless pattern of raised and lowered blinds gives a dim brick building an abandoned air of decay. Winter closes in. The city huddles within its streets, guarding doors and windows while the gusty wind whips around corners and down the pavement, catching unwary pedestrians and slicing through coats and scarves to steal their warmth.
Sometimes staring out the window is a good way to kill twenty minutes of that after-lunch coma but when you find yourself wondering if you can spell "daguerreotype" without benefit of a spelling program (I couldn't), it's time to get back to work.
In theory, I'm re-writing our website this week. In actuality, I'm staring at the pages I wrote the last time I tackled this project and bemoaning the fact that I didn't even get them uploaded before whoosh! we changed partners again and it was time to write up information on an entirely new business model.
Not that what I wrote last time was so great, but it was miles ahead of the blank page I've been staring at for the last three days.
It's a pity that contemporary architecture is so ugly, don't you think? Where are the graceful towers and the textured stonework of yesterday? Red brick always looks so solid and respectable to me. (Okay, I've just realized that the graceful tower I'm looking at is actually an unused smokestack, but you get my drift.)
Glass-and-steel structures, on the other hand, say, "He was an architect, not an artist. An engineer, not a designer."
There's a shade of beige-brown stone, of course, that screams, "in the fifties we had no taste." I wouldn't care to see that come back into fashion. I'm very fond of gray stone, though. It looks like fairy-tale castles.
My subconscious is working on the web pages. Really. Part of my mind is admiring the virginal invitation of a sheet of clean, white paper, but part of it is plotting to deface the paper with three colors of ink, arrows drawn in all directions, and copious amounts of white-out. The rest of it is mumbling phrases to do with comprehensive assessment and diagramming protocol restrictions. I live in hope of something useful being generated from that last section.
Any time now.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:07 AMIDoJeannie took off for a dental appointment an hour ago. The last time she did this she said she'd be back in a couple of hours but didn't make it back in at all. We'll see.
Overheard Alvin on a phone call this morning saying that he's been holding off on claiming his salary while we try to get the company going. Which makes me feel guilty not only about the amount of money I asked for, but about the amount of time I spend blogging, reading news sites, and answering personal e-mail while I'm at work. (Today, for instance, I've been here for 3-1/2 hours and have worked for about 15 minutes.)
I also told Alvin yesterday that I suspected that the Chipmunk has issues with me that I should know about. He neither confirmed nor denied this statement, leading me to believe that issues do exist and that Alvin just doesn't want to get in the middle of it. Hmph. I'm going to have to talk to the Chipmunk one day soon.
It's gray and cold and has been for two or three days now. An absence of sunlight always gets me down.
This weekend—shopping! Saturday we're buying a new computer, that being our lazy-assed way of dealing with the fact that our current machine (purchased in 1998) would need substantial upgrading in order to be able to cope with next week's ATT Broadband installation.
Sunday, C and I are getting together for coffee, donuts, and gossip, which should be fun. I haven't seen her in forever and having missed the last two get-togethers for the Colorado slash fans, I feel amazingly out of touch with what everyone is doing.
Possibly I'll be feeling more intelligent, or more entertaining, at a later time.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:17 PMSorry for those not interested in politics, but this needs to be passed on.
Those protesting the Federal government's cancellation of 34 million dollars to educated third-world countries about contraception, abortion, and AIDS prevention have started a movement which I encourage all of you to support.
"The organizers are looking for "34 million Friends of UNFPA" to send $1 each to the United Nations (FPA) at 220 East 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10017."
That's $1. (As long as you're writing a check, you might as well make it $5, but the key is to get 34 million voting-eligible people to protest in order to send a message to the government.)
Friends of UNFPA
220 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
Those of you inclined to writing and calling your representatives or the White House could write to point out that it isn't only children who would benefit from the cancelled programs but women in underdeveloped countries who already have as many or more children as they can feed and raise. So contraceptives improve the quality of life for poor children and their parents.
You could write to point out that the President sticking his Bible Belt head in the sand won't make HIV go away and that refusing to fund HIV education in third world countries is tantamount to passive genocide.
You could write to explain that a woman who has been raped should not be forced to carry the child of her rapist to term. And that banning legal abortion just means that more women will die as a result of unsafe, illegal abortions.
You could write and explain that Western tolerance of female genital mutilation is an international disgrace and that not funding programs to educate against the practice condemns untold thousands of women to undergo a dangerous, life-changing, and medically unwarranted amputation.
While you're writing, be sure and express your abhorrence of the Bushleaguer's desire to make W. David Hager chairman of the Food and Drug Administration's panel on women's health policy.
A man who understands or cares less about women's health would be hard to find. He openly believes that "headaches, PMS and eating disorders can be cured by reading Scripture."
From: Jesus and the FDA (Time)
Though his resume describes Hager as a University of Kentucky professor, a university official says Hager's appointment is part time and voluntary and involves working with interns at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself.
Note that you can visit this California State University site for further information on how to act against Hager's appointment. (You can click to send an e-mail and there's even suggested content if you don't feel like writing your own.)
Posted by AnneZook at 12:26 PMI had to climb the stairs because a bunch of guys were hogging up the elevators to move furniture.
Wheeze. One. Hundred. Stairs. Pant.
Sheesh. I have got to get into better shape.
Anyhow. Urban adventures!
This morning I was accosted by a giant banana.
Okay, it was a guy in a giant banana suit, but still. We were headed over to get coffee this morning and even Alvin agreed that 8:32 a.m. is simply too early in the day to be expected to cope with a giant banana desperate to give you a free smoothie.
It sounds vulgar when you say it that way, but I'm actually okay with that.
I still suspect the Chipmunk of not appreciating me the way one would like to be appreciated at work. When he calls and I answer the phone, he almost instantly demands to speak to Alvin and then today after I'd called him, he had his assistant call me back. Admittedly, I'm not the easiest person in the world to love but criminy, the guy works in Florida. How hard should it be for him to be civil and speak to me on the phone once or twice a week for five minutes at a time?
Jeannie (as in, "I Dream Of" not because she's magical but because I spend a lot of time wishing she'd put in a full day of work) is the shipping/receiving/reception person for all three of the sister companies sharing this office space.
IDoJeannie has some good knowledge of what's going on, but she's hard to work with (on those occasions that she's actually here) because she doesn't adapt to change well, even the smallest of changes, and she's amazingly whiney when asked to do something difficult, like ship something with only an hour's notice.
She had her hours officially changed so that she works from 7:30 to 3:00, supposedly allowing her to get over to the school and pick up her kids daily. That means she shows up around 8:15 and usually slides out of here around 2:35.
In the meantime, of course, I'm still arriving around 7:30, leaving around 5:15, and spending a lot of the intervening hours blogging or reading news sites or e-mail, so I should just shut up, right?
Someone who loves me sent me the URL for the Naked French Dude in this month's French Vogue. Yum. And, let me add, YUM!
What else? A friend wrote to diss me because she's trying to write a sex scene and presumably yesterday's sex-related entry made her self-conscious.
First, who listens to me? Not even me, okay? Second, there's nothing wrong with the way she writes. Third, was I demanding anything that difficult anyhow? No. It's not as though she's the type to put a character in a frilly apron and have him sprout a vagina next to his navel, so why the worry?
Hmph. Nothing is my fault.
It's supposed to snow this evening. Mental note: Stop on the way home and put about 20 pounds of air in the front two tires, both of which appear to be losing their will to roll.
I hate things like that. I hate maintaining my car and all of that stuff. I just want to sail through life free of any responsibility that doesn't amuse me. Is that so much to ask?
Don't answer. Leave my little fantasy world intact for a few more precious moments.
Hmmm... There will be a small pause while I think of something profound to say.
During the interval, let me mention that I had a very weird dream the other night. Weird because (a) I remembered at least part of it when I woke up, (b) No one was trying to kill me and I wasn't even the center of attention, and (c) it included a Famous Person (Rob Lowe) when I never dream about Real People.
Mostly, he was naked, which I just thought I'd throw in there to get your attention. We were attending a conference on why he wasn't able to get better roles. He stripped off his clothes and stood up to show us all what he looked like, demanding to know what he was supposed to do about being so gorgeous.
The weirdest thing about the dream is that Rob Lowe isn't really my type and since he shed that Bad Boy Brat Pack image, I haven't really thought about him physically. Of course, that might explain why I dreamed about him naked but that he didn't look that good naked, mightn't it?
Just my luck. I finally get a nekkid man in my dreams and he's not even attractive.
I downloaded some code to allow me to add comments to a blog but I didn't even understand the intructions for how to save the files to my computer, so I'm not doing it.
I'm still waiting for a profound thought.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:29 PMLong after the rest of the world has undoubtedly moved on to newer and more interesting topics, my brain still has a firm, not to say obsessive-compulsive, grip on the question of slash and men and the women who love them both.
I'm thinking about an earlier, dictatorial announcement of mine that slash should not under any circumstances attempt to emulate gay male porn.
That was largely because the percentage of decently-written-versus-crap in porn is about the same that it is in slash.
But it's also about audience. The most self-absorbed, reader-indifferent writer in the genre is probably still writing for a female audience, if only herself.
Working on the theory that one writes out of a desire to communicate, I think it's important to remember that the sexual situations with which you're hoping to enthrall and even titillate your audience have to be situations that are erotic to women.
Thus, while it's important that the men be men (in Anne's World), it's important that this male-to-male sex be, I don't know, translated into a scenario erotic to a woman.
Leaving aside rape fantasies and other improbable scenarios I'm unqualified to discuss, this means that the successful slash writer has to walk a narrow line wherein she shows Manly Men having Manly Sex while allowing her female reader to vicariously participate in the scene.
That's not an easy path to tread but there are a number of things that simplify it.
Men are not women but it is true that the human body (male or female) possesses certain almost "standard" erogenous zones.
The degree of arousal produced by manipulating these zones varies but that holds true from one woman to another as well as between different men and I think it's frequently possible to watch a character on-screen and come up with an idea which zones would be their hot spots.
Remove pointless digression on various characters specifically since the entire paragraph was about to distract my brain from whatever point it is I'm trying to make.
Suffice to say that you can watch how a character responds to a kiss on the cheek, a hand on the back, or their body language when someone gets close to them and make some deductions that should ring true to your readers.
I firmly believe that most people pick up on this stuff subconsciously. It's up to the writer to bring it to the forefront of the reader's mind.
Mouth, neck, ears, elbows, nipples, back, genitals, inner thighs, feet, etc., if it feels good to you, it's probably going to feel good to a man. (The only difference is in penetration, but that's a lost cause in slash and I'm not here to try and fight that fight again.)
The point is that you have to write a male reaction to these caresses in order to stay true to your characters. While it's true that there's no sexual reaction that never happens, it is possible to generalize to a large extent.
(A solely, or primarily heterosexual man is not going to respond to sexual arousal, by feeling a "melting" desire to be penetrated.
Most men enjoy the chance to lay back and be passive*, to allow someone else to take control, upon occasion, but by-and-large men are socially and biologically conditioned to be aggressive in sex. It's natural for them to want to reach out and touch and look and be active. Therefore it rings untrue to the reader to read of a guy, even a comparatively young and inexperienced guy, being willing to take and not give pleasure without questioning the situation. It's actually more likely to be an older man who has learned the control to enjoy being ministered to upon occasion.
*I am not referring here to that pervasive yet inaccurate "top and bottom" terminology that's bandied around in fandom. Just so you know.)
I'm getting distracted from my main topic, which was meant to be the difficulty of writing erotica for a female audience when there are no female characters in a story for the reader to identify with. Although, as the popularity of slash proven, there are plenty of women who can bridge that gap just fine.
And now I'm all distracted by those thousands of stories where one so-called male character is a very thinly disguised female and I know those are amazingly popular with a lot of readers and yet if they want to read about women, why don't they just read het?
Doggone it, when I started this, I was going to be all nice and complimentary to slash writers who manage to write erotic stories while keeping the characters recognizably male, but now that I've meandered all over the place aimlessly for so long, I've lost the thread.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:20 PMWell, some day soon, anyhow. The holiday season is nearly upon us. I can tell this by the number of catalogues arriving in the mailbox every day.
Most of them don't tempt me but the video catalogues and the book catalogues usually put a serious strain on my self-control.
Not only do I want to order the dozens of things I've seen but don't own, but I want to order DVDs to replace all of my video tapes, and I want to order things I've never seen but think might be interesting.
And some things I just want to order so I can have them, regardless of whether or not I think I might watch them.
The Jewel In the Crown is a prime example. Saw it, loved it, not sure I'd ever have the time to watch the entire thing again, still want to buy the DVDs.
Ditto, Reilly, Ace of Spies. I've seen it twice and loved it both times but I'm not sure I'd watch it if I bought the DVDs. Still, it's a temptation. Sam Neill. Yummm
I've never watched the Horatio Hornblower miniseries because I read the books first and the early ones were so badly written they were almost unreadable and also because the hero continued to be a whiny, self-pitying wimp for most of the series. He reminds me of a contemporary, male version of one of Dickens' most pitifully overwrought female characters. There are better, and better-written Napoleonic naval war series books out there. I've always assumed TPTB chose to transfer the HH ones to screen instead of one of the others because the HH series is notable for having very few naval battles. That would make it a lot cheaper to turn it into a mini-series.
Eventually I did grow to like the HH books. Just not as much as some of the others. I mention it because the DVDs are always in the catalogues and I stop and brood over them when I see the pictures, but I haven't been seriously tempted to buy them. Maybe I can check around and see if they're available for rental first.
The Jeeves and Wooster DVDs are another temptation. They did a great job of transferring the books to screen and yet I don't have a strong urge to buy all of these. The casting is as perfect as casting can be and yet...somehow the television adaptation misses by justthat much of being able to delight me in the way that the books do. I enjoy the television series, but the one season of DVDs I own aren't the first thing I reach for when I'm trying to decide what to watch.
Maybe once I've known and loved (and largely memorized) a book, it's impossible to translate it to the screen in a way that will completely satisfy me, I don't know.
I suppose it's possible that I'm just a little picky.
Just a little.
What else tempts me? British comedy. Britcoms. There are several programs that I love but we already own most of these, have watched, and rewatched them fifty times, and have them nearly memorized. Still, they rarely fail to amuse me.
There aren't many American television shows I'd buy. I'd buy West Wing if they brought it out on DVD. I still haven't seen the first season.
When due South comes out, I'll buy that, but of course it's Canadian. Still, Canadian is American, right? There were one or two seasons of Highlander (Canadian again) that I would have bought on DVD but so few people bought Season One that they aren't planning to bring the others out on DVD. I can live with that. It's not something I'd have watched very often.
I wouldn't take the X-Files DVDs if they were given to me as a gift with a free cruise thrown into the bargain, but I refuse to go off on another pointless tangent about how Chris Carter is a clueless dweeb who should have been given a golden handshake and a faulty parachute after Season 4.
What else?
I've actually seen half a dozen episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer over the last year and have to admit that I enjoyed it a lot. Given the opportunity, I'd sit down and watch the entire thing but I'm not sure I'd buy it.
There's a difference between a show that's watchable and a show that's re-watchable. *
Outside of fannish love, I mean. When we're obsessed with some fandom, I think most of us watch and re-watch the episodes, but how many of us can continue watching old episodes once the fannish passion burns out?
I had a brief fannish flirtation with The Invisible Man but once the idea that I might write for it passed, I really didn't re-watch the episodes I'd taped.
Ditto for Once a Thief. When I realized I wasn't going to be able to write decently for it, I never really watched it again. (Although the urge to give it one more try does come over me occasionally. I've been dabbling with some ideas for a story for the past couple of months but I have to wait until the kind person I loaned my tapes to returns them before I can think about actually doing any writing.)
Neither of those are good shows in spite of being amazingly slashy and having some brilliant moments here and there. They're both shows that had a lot of potential, potential wasted by bad writing.
Pause while I resist the urge to go off on a tangential rant about people who ruin good ideas with lousy writing.
(I see that the debut of OaT on television here in the states garnered a whopping 0.7 in the ratings. That might be connected with assigning the show a lousy timeslot and then not actually airing the premiere until 24 hours later in some markets. Even people who wanted to watch it had trouble finding it.)
I think I'm losing the point of this entry, not that it was all that interesting to begin with.
* I think I'm more interested in this idea, anyhow. It applies to fiction and fanfiction as well. There are books/stories that are quite readable, but that one would never have the urge to pick up a second time. And then there are books/stories that one can read and reread a dozen times and never grow tired of them.
Part of the reason I'm so picky about what I want to read is that I prefer re-readable stories.
A once-off is okay, but it's like eating one piece of candy. It satisfies a person while they're chewing, but they're left with nothing once it's gone.
On the other hand, if they sat down and ate a nice steak and maybe a baked potato, they'd be satisfied for hours afterwards.
Reading a once-off story is like...it's kind of like just killing time for a few minutes. Once it's over, you've killed five or fifteen minutes of your day, but you didn't gain anything. You don’t have anything that lasts, anything to take away with you.
Maybe it's because I'm getting old but I want more from my entertainment than that. I want stories I keep thinking about after I've finished them, stories that offer fresh ideas or intriguing situations that continue to inspire my imagination even after I've finished reading the story.
I always hated that "box of chocolates" movie, whatever it was called, but too much fanfiction is like eating a box of chocolates. You pick them up and bite them and you throw the icky ones back. Once you've eaten all of the good ones, or at least as many as you can hold at one sitting, you feel bloated and your conscience points out that you'd have been better off if you'd have just eaten a nice sandwich.
I always say there's nothing like a nice sandwich.
I don't know why I'm rambling about all of this except that I am getting the urge to read fanfiction again these days and I'm hoping to find more sandwiches than chocolate-covered cherries when I dive in.
I know. I'm delusional.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)Please note that my e-mail address has changed.
No, I'm not moving to Australia, but at long last I am getting away from AOHell and this was the web-based mail program that I found and liked. When I pull up my mail it's on a pretty, floral background named, "Provence" which makes me very happy.
Anyhow.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:52 PM | Comments (0)Hmph. The Chipmunk is getting on my nerves this week. Fortunately for me, Alvin is getting as annoyed as I am over the Chipmunk's determination to keep control of the top level contacts for each of our clients. I can do the job I was hired for. If they'd just let me, I could prove it.
Darrell and The Other Brother Darrell are as boring as ever. In the four months I've spent here, I think Darrell, who is my counterpart in one of the sister companies sharing this office space, has voluntarily spoken to me three times. I'm not sure what his problem is. The Other Brother Darrell, our IT guy, speaks to me unexpectedly from time to time but rarely says anything of interest. They're so boring I don't know why I bothered to mention them.
Alvin's out right now, having lunch with The Terminator, the friend (really) who got me this job and who used to be my boss when I worked somewhere else. So, anyhow, I'm alone so I'm blogging, even though I still don't have anything to say.
I did manage to come up with a handful of boring possibilities for my "100 facts about me" list.
1. I started writing my first novel when I was nine and had twelve chapters of The Pop Bottle Mystery completed when my manuscript was lost during our move to a new house. I didn't write again for 30 years, but I don't think it was cause and effect.
2. When I was a toddler, I ate an entire bottle of orange-flavored baby aspirin and had to have my stomach pumped.
3. I have never stolen anything. Never shoplifted, never sneaked into a movie, never bought a garment, worn it, and returned it, never nicked office supplies from my job, nada.
4. People scare me. I firmly believe that hordes of strangers milling around aimlessly are just seconds from forming a mob and doing something incomprehensible and frightening. And also that they not-so-secretly all hate me. (I'm self-centered, but not in any way that would lead me to expect anyone to like me.)
5. I hate pickled beets, green peppers, and lima beans. Brussels sprouts come in a close second.
6. Weirdness weirds me out. I don't like public strangeness and I think the woman who got loudly orgasmic with joy at the Johnny Mathis concert should have been escorted out of the room.
7. I have never displayed musical, dance, or acting talent of any kind. I have never displayed any talent for anything, in fact. Not cooking, sewing, car repair, woodworking, crocheting, or swimming. Never for a moment have I displayed other than marginal ability at anything. Some days I think that's rather a thing to be amazed and amused by.
8. I spent a weekend traveling with a disco band once and nearly got myself lynched when I announced that I preferred white meat. I was sorry, of course, but in my own defense, it had never occurred to me to refer to any person of any color as "meat." I thought we were going out for chicken, okay?
9. I haven't balanced my checkbook in over twelve years and it hasn't materially damaged the quality of my life.
10. I've never wanted to be kidnapped by aliens.
That's probably about as much about me as anyone on this planet really wants to know.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:19 PMMcSwain has posted a hundred personal facts. I gather that this is a thing people are doing.
I'm astoundingly self-centered and yet I seriously doubt I could think of 100 things about me that anyone on this planet would care to read. Still, I always do what McSwain does, so here goes....
No, on second thought I don't think I will. It took me two hours to get to 30 items (hours when I should have been working), and I can't imagine that anyone would have cared to read about any of them except maybe the Australian soccer player and I wasn't providing any details on that one.
Also I am completely unable to comprehend why blogger hates my posts from the last 30 days. I've checked and rechecked them and there aren't any forbidden characters. I've deleted a few of them and it didn't help. I've turned archiving on and off and on and changed the frequency, and nothing helps.
I've decided to work on the theory that there's a charming transience to blogging online and to take advantage of the ephemeral nature of my posts.
(But first, let's try this... Okay, now it load without errors, but I have no archives at all? Maybe I'll just live with that.)
Posted by AnneZook at 04:10 PM
Today, in brief
Health - at about 95 percent
Hearing - at about 75 percent
Interest in working - at about 50 percent (Which isn't bad.)
Interest in blogging - at about 90 percent
Ideas for things to write about - Nothing, but I'm working on it. (And experimenting with my archives.)
Hit me!
No, not really. But I spent the last four days in a casino, on an all too-short vacation, so gambling is on my mind. I'm back from vacation and the silly people in this office actually expected me to do some work this morning! But I'm stealing time to blog anyhow.
First, yes, we had a great time.
Gambling? I lost the most at about $200. Mom came in second at about $80, and my annoying sister managed to walk onto the plane in Reno carrying more money than she'd had on her when she disembarked four days before.
She used a rather unique system on the slot machines, namely that when she won any significant amount ($20 or more since we were playing nickel machines), she cashed out and stopped gambling for a while.
Maybe I'll try that some day.
The second order of business, or actually the first since it's the primary reason we took this particular trip on this particular weekend, was the Johnny Mathis concert(s). Yes, plural. We bought tickets for both nights, even though seats were $60 each. He sounded fabulous, dahling even though I could distinctly hear the strain in his voice when he tried to hit some of the high notes. The audience, for the most part, was receptive and appreciative. On the first night there was a woman sitting behind us who was far too excited. Her vocal and near-orgasmic responses to some of the songs were embarrassing to listen to. Fortunately, nothing similar marred the second night's performance.
It was a nice trip and I had a great time, and thanks to A for arranging it all so cleverly.
By the time I got home, my replacement credit card had arrived (did I tell you that I lost my wallet four days before we left town?) and I received a notice saying that my new bank card is also on its way. So, that's good news.
I'm off the antibiotics and I fully believe that if I hadn't spent four solid days in a smoke-filled environment, my head would be completely clear by now. I'm going to give it 24 hours and then call the doctor if I'm still stuffed up, though. Just to be safe. (And the HR person here at the office sent me an e-mail pointing out that the $127 I forked over for the last meds should be covered under the insurance, so I need to check out getting reimbursed.)
What else? Naturally I missed CSI, Firefly, and Monk while we were out of town. I miss the good old days of ordinary cable that was smart enough to change the channel if we weren't home. ATT digital cable provides more channels but will only tape whatever channel you leave the box set on, which is annoying. We chose to tape West Wing, so I'll have to beg around town and see if anyone might have taped any of the other shows I would have liked to have seen.
Blah, blah, blah. Not exactly stimulating entertainment today, am I? I should go check my e-mail.
If I get the time and energy later I'll tell you all about the psycho guy I rode the elevator with in Reno and how Mom got pulled out of the security line for setting off the alarms, and how she lost her driver's license, and how we went and painted the world's ugliest pottery to have a memento of our trip.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:51 AMIn an astonishing display of insensitivity, the world continues to refuse to revolve around me.
No matter how cranky it makes me, other people insist upon having their own priorities and their own agendas.
In my next life, things are going to have to be better organized.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:16 PMHow do you like the new template? The original version of this was prettier but for reasons I haven't quite been able to establish, I couldn't make it work in Blogger, so this stripped-down version is what you're getting. Thanks to M for finding it for me anyhow.
Health update: Better. Much better.
Following the old adage of, "You get what you pay for," what I got from the $24/20 pills medication wasn't much.
But the new meds, which clocked in at $127/20 pills are working like a charm. I've even had intervals over the last 24 hours when I was able to hear things in both ears. Pretty exciting stuff.
All was well in hand getting ready for this week's Familial Vacation until I lost my billfold on Saturday.
Monday morning, after one final round of phone calls back to all of the places I'd visited on Saturday, I gave up and cancelled my credit cards and bank card and this morning I went down and got a new driver's license.
Now tonight I have to just do laundry and stuff some things in a suitcase and I'm all ready for gulp Mom's arrival tomorrow evening.
I love my Mother. I do.
It's not all been horrible, though. The woman behind the desk at the Motor Vehicle Department asked if all of my information was the same, including my reported weight of cough130 lbscough and when I dithered, she said, "Oh, you're skinny" and put down 130.
Hee. Hee.
It's far from being a true number, but it gave my morning a little lift anyhow. (It's not a case of dishonesty in government employees. Honestly. She couldn't see anything but my shoulders and head over the edge of the counter and I'm willing to believe I looked around 130 from that perspective.)
Hey, I've been sick. I'm entitled to a few polite lies. "You're skinny." "No, your hair doesn't look like a bird's nest today." "Hey, that's a great driver's license photo!" "No, of course I can't see the gray." "Wrinkles? What wrinkles?"
In other news.... Well, there is no other news.
I have read no fanfiction and have strenuously avoided the efforts of A Certain Person to get me to go and look at various train wrecks that have been posted.
I'm still watching the same television shows (The West Wing, CSI, Firefly, and Monk) and enjoying all of them in a non-fannish way. I would have been very grateful for a new fannish obsession this fall, but I guess I should settle for being happy that one new show (Firefly) debuted that proved to be worth watching.
I'm a boring person when I'm not being bitchy, aren't I?
Posted by AnneZook at 11:52 AMToday's Horoscope: "You will achieve just enough success to keep you struggling at a futile task."
Today's entry: Templates. Bah and Humbug.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:19 AMOne of these days, I'm going to rant about research. As in, "people should do some."
I'm not talking about anything excessive. There's a difference between spending six months researching some obscure detail of Mongolian culture that's irrelevant to your plot and being too lazy to get easily discovered facts about the geography of London correct.
There's a huge gap between not knowing the Peruvian slang word for dick and writing a story about how the Knightsbridge area of London is a crime-ridden slum.
I'm just saying.
Not that I've read anything like that lately. I haven't read anything lately. If my head doesn't clear up, I'm going to stick it in a blender.
The good news is that I'm no longer feverish. The bad news is that five days of not eating didn't result in even one pound of weight loss. There is no justice some days.
The good news is that my energy level is returning. The bad news is that it's cold, wet, and foggy and when I called my mother she said no one with an earache had any business being out in such weather, so I'm still sitting at home most of the time.
No matter how old you get, your mother always retains the right to boss you around when you're sick.
I spent some time trying the visualization thing one evening. I visualized a horde of muscular little corpuscles charging around, bashing on the virus and kicking its butt. From the results this exercise in bio-feedback provided, I'm assuming I've got a darned wimpy gang of corpuscles inhabiting my body.
You know the kind of thing. They're all brave and macho hollering from a distance, but let the enemy close to within striking range and suddenly they're all about peaceful coexistence.
Stupid corpuscles.
The bad news, for those living within the sound of my voice is that I'm now feeling well enough to be both whiney and self-pitying. People living that close to me also have to suffer the results of my complete ignorance on the subject of over-the-counter medicines. If it isn't Advil, I not only don't understand it, I don't trust it.
I think our society is too euphemistic. In the last couple of years, it's been educational for me to learn what actual, physical symptoms some of those commercials are actually talking about. I was over 40 before someone explained to me what those tasteful references to "an upset stomach" on the Pepto-Bismol commercials meant, so you understand I'm not exactly well-grounded in the basics of what, precisely, could go wrong with the human body.
I mean, we're talking about someone who absent-mindedly mixed up the carpet freshener with the powdered creamer and drank carpet-freshener in her coffee for a week with no noticeable side-effects.
It's sad to get older. My body and I have always lived on such good terms with each other. It didn't break down, and in return, I gave it all the coffee and potato chips it wanted. Peaceful coexistence.
It was a good system and I regret that the advent of something that might almost nearly be middle-age is changing things.
Okay, it is middle-age. Jeez, I'm middle-aged. That sucks on so many levels.
I think I'm now sufficiently depressed to go and do some work, although I'd encourage anyone with time on their hands to go try their hand at The Bookworm Game.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:11 AMOkay, maybe I was a trifle overconfident about my health last week. Or, not. I can't remember if I said anything, but I know I was reveling in an anticipated return to good health.
Didn't happen. I'm cautiously optimistic today, though. I can distinctly hear a few sounds in my left hear, my head no longer feels like it's stuffed with dirty sweat socks, and for the first time in two weeks, I don't feel feverish.
Eight days. Eight days from today I'm supposed to climb on a plane for my first family vacation in fifteen years. Assuming my sinuses continue to clear, I'm hoping my doctor won't forbid me to fly. The vacation is already paid for. Non-refundably.
I had a minor mental health setback this morning when someone on a list, when asked for "good" fiction, actually recommended two male pregnancy stories, but I deleted the post hastily and tried to forget the words had ever crossed my line of vision. I just don't have the strength.
Fascinating today, aren't I?
I think I'll go read some blogs and see what the rest of the world has been up to since I took a nosedive into my pillow.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:06 AM