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It's also got every tag I have -- this is because my current LJ style doesn't include a tag index. (At least half of my participation on LJ is on my Treo. I chose this style because it loads quickly and it's still readable on a small screen.)
I'd tell you more about myself, but that's what my profile -- and the rest of my journal -- are for.
Way back when I was a senior in High School, Madonna released a book called SEX. It was the most controversial thing evar™, it was a collector's item, it was specially made, and all the media was going batshit over it. Well, one of my classmates got his (or her -- I don't remember) hands on a copy, and I got to see it.
I was disappointed. To quote from Tom Hanks in the movie Bachelor Party, "I don't normally like my filth this clean." And I was disgusted -- disgusted, I tell you! -- by all the things that Madonna was almost-doing in that book. (In my defense, this was during one of my celibate periods in between manslut periods, so I had a bit of a stick up my ass at the time. Also, in my defense, she did include a photo that was intended to be easily mistaken for her straddling a dog, probably in a bid to piss off a few recording executives.)
But seriously, the book was terrible. It should tell you something that I remember the faux stamped-metal cover of the book more than I remember any of the contents, and this was back before I'd ever seen a pornographic website, let alone had a hand in creating one, so I was not as jaded back then as I am now.
Well, someone at weepingcock found a copy online, and it's just as awful as I remember. Well, the few pages I looked at. I felt no need to look through the whole thing.
A woman found the script for the sequel to Twatlight -- New Moon -- in the most perfectly appropriate place: a garbage bin. It's still unclear how it got there, or more importantly, why she didn't leave it there, but the important thing is, she didn't leave it there. Well, okay. Whatever value I think the script doesn't have, I suppose it's worth a lot to collectors.
The lady will get to keep the script after the movie is released, along with getting them certified. No doubt it'll be worth something.
What's the Buzz?
Smallville, for those of you who haven't seen it, is a TV show about Superman's teenage years, filled with lots of pretty people with problems (it's a WB show) and no end of slashbait. (The guy who played Clark, Tom Welling, isn't much of an actor, but he was pretty, and that was enough. The guy who played Lex Luthor, Michael Rosenbaum, was said to have sexual chemistry with Clark, the female leads, his dad, pool cues, blue bottles, and so on.)
Robert Pattinson (the poor bastard plaing Edward in all these movies) apparently has time for other movies. Now, if he could pick one that isn't going to get insane fangirls squeeing over him...
I'm sorry. Little Ashes actually seems to have potential. From what little I've read, Dalí and Lorca were very close friends, and did have chemistry, but Dalí was complicated and didn't act on it. That kind of story begs for drama. It also begs for rewrites with lots and lots of teh hawt ghey buttsexxors, because as all ten-year-old slashgirls know, teh hawt ghey buttsexxors heals all ills.
Naturally, a few scenes from this movie are floating around the internet. Guess which ones!
You dodged a bullet there, dude.
The role of Aro is being played by one Michael Sheen. I mention this only because I am relieved that Ben Barnes is not playing Aro, as I was afraid he might be here.
I'm sure there's a reference in one of the books that I'm missing, but where I come from, "pillow biters" means something entirely different. (And is probably considered fighting words.)
I haven't been this delighted by quotes taken out of context since Bill O'Reilly said "I want to go to a gay bathhouse!" (Sadly, I've never heard this one for myself. Too bad, that -- I know a couple of DJs who'd have a lot of fun with it.)
As discovered here, it's TwiCon, a convention aimed at fans of Twatlight. In this case, it's fitting that the subject matter of Twatlight is vampires, because this convention seems to have the single goal of bleeding people dry, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
For instance, registration is $255 per person. By comparison, registration for BayCon is currently $60, though it will go up in mid-March. If you want to sell stuff in the vendor room at TwiCon, that's $750. By comparison, I asked one of the gents over at Other Change of Hobbit what they paid for vendor space at BayCon, and he said it was a couple hundred -- and while he's allowed to sell sci-fi at a science fiction convention, vendors at TwiCon aren't allowed to sell anything Twilight related, because of intellectual property issues.
(After the gent at Other Change of Hobbit gave me this information, I explained why I was asking, and told him about TwiCon. He was still sputtering incoherently when I left.)
It gets better. Keeping in mind that most of Twatlight's fan base is under eighteen, they have special rules -- mostly, minors have to be attended by parents or chaperones who must attend all functions with them, who must also pay $255 to get in the door. Oh, and each chaperone can only attend three minors -- more minors, more chaperones, and more registration fees, even if they're all in the same group.
(Actually, I can understand the reasoning for this. The organizers are probably worried that a great big mob of unsupervised underage girls is a ticking bomb waiting to go off. Now picture adding to that mix one or more pretty boys with $255, no scruples, and a few bottles of body glitter, and you have a PR nightmare in the making, along with no end of liability issues.)
Obviously, I'm appalled that this convention exists... but I find it amusing in a few respects. Mostly, because given our current economic climate, I half-expect TwiCon to fall on its face.
Just out of morbid curiosity, I decided to ask a few people about Twatlight -- specifically, people who are making money off the franchise in one fashion or another.
My first stop was Hot Topic, which makes sense considering they have at least a hundred products on their website related to Twatlight. I spoke with two clerks... and among the first words out of the mouth of one of the clerks were, "you look just like... aw, man, that must suck for you!" I also asked if the fans are as crazy in real life as they seem on the internet (yes, they are). I swear, if Twatlight is still buzzing by the time BayCon rolls around next year, I'll invest either in body-glitter or a haircut -- and at the moment, I'm leaning way toward haircut.
(One of my friends looks enough like Ben Barnes that I found myself thinking of him whenever I saw a poster for Prince Caspian. Considering that Ben Barnes appears likely to have a role in the sequel for Twatlight, I imagine this friend's life will become interesting, and not in a good way, when it comes out -- and he'll have it worse; he's a lot prettier than I am. I should probably warn him, since as far as I know, he's not in fandom and will never see it coming.)
Next stop: Other Change of Hobbit, a terrific little indy bookstore. I asked the head guy there if it was selling, and he admitted through his teeth that it sells and sells and sells. On the one hand, indy bookstores love it when they can buy a book in bulk and have near-guaranteed sales on it -- books like Twatlight and Harry Potter are that sometimes-narrow margin that keeps the bookstore alive. On the other hand, as happy as he is that kids are reading, why did it have to be this book? He mentioned that he read an exhaustive review, written by someone with a mormon background... "lemme guess: hello, creepy author wanting to bone your prophet?" "Yep!"
(I ought to have leafed through the books, at least. Stoney mentions in her review that after Joseph Smith Edward removes himself from Bella's life, there are ten pages of blank space signifying how Bella is nothing without Joseph Smith Edward, and while I do believe it, it's still so ridiculous that I should have checked it for myself.)
Every week, I learn new things about this damned franchise, and every week I loathe it just a little bit more. I swear, this movie needs the live-action Rocky Horror treatment. I wonder how much it would cost: back when I was on the props crew for a Rocky troupe, I never thought to ask things like how much it cost to use the theater or license the reels. I could kick myself for that now...
On the other hand, that might only encourage her.
In related news: a while back, the powers that be at fandom_wank had to kick Twatlight out of the comm, pushing it into sparklefield, a comm that's all twatlight, all the time. It appears that ohnotheydidnt had to do the same thing: ontd_twatlight.
Edited to add: IM chat with a friend. She gave me a terrific idea, and as much as I wish she'd done so much earlier, I'm posting it here anyway because it amuses me that damned much.
moon_very_thin: Actually, I have to admit, awful as the entire thing is, seeing Twilight was probably my most fun cinema trip this winter. flamingchords: I was tempted to see it myself, I admit. moon_very_thin: Well, my enjoyment mostly came from the audience. We don't have fangirls in Ireland quite like US fangirls - even in teens the Irish mentality just doesn't really lend itself to unselfconscious enthusiasm for anything. moon_very_thin: But for this film, there was a clear division between the Edward fans and the Jacob fans at opposite sides of the aisles, slagging each other off throughout the film. It was class. flamingchords: It was the fangirls here that made me decide against it, but for different reason. I got tweens telling me I looked like James AT WORK. I wasn't going to brave a theater after that. moon_very_thin: Lol! moon_very_thin: You should have! And doused yourself in glitter first. And afterword in the lobby declared to your friend in a loud and carrying voice that you think Bella should have ended up with Jacob. moon_very_thin: And then run. flamingchords: It's out of the theaters now, or I'd do it! moon_very_thin: Is it? Awww
One of my favorite Larry Niven short stories is one called "The Subject is Closed." In it, the Chirpsithra, an alien species far older and wiser than we are, tell a story about another race who sought the secrets of Life After Death. This race didn't have religion, but they did have the scientific method, so they constructed a whole lot of experiments, and eventually, they came up with a clear, elegant answer that was obviously correct to anyone who looked.
Then, they killed themselves, en masse. Not just the researchers, not just the scientific establishment, not just the members of one subculture. An entire species wiped itself out. When some Chirpsithra visited the planet, they found millions of corpses, many dead by their own means, others dead after having obviously waited in line for their turn with suicide machines.
Naturally, the Chirps were curious. They looked around, discovered what was being researched... and soon, these Chirps found the answer, and started killing themselves. Once some other Chirps in authority twigged onto what the hell was going on, they took special measures, arranging for a lot of the records to be "lost."
This story has a page count in the single digits, and though it's been a while since I've read it, it never fails to chill my blood.
...and on the subject of mass suicides making it into popular entertainment, I've just seen reviews of the latest M. Night Shyamalan movie, The Happening, over at Pandagon and IO9, as well as its Wikipedia article. I was originally intrigued by this movie's premise, despite the fact that armageddon awful tired of End-of-the-World movies. (Bad pun. Sorry.) I'm sick of the whole damned genre -- it's as if there's a constant drumbeat of "all us humans want to die" that movie producers never tire of tapping, and I for one refuse to contribute to their bottom line for it.
Now that I've read the reviews, though, The Happening seems like a movie I should go see drunk. After all, alcohol made Saw IV tolerable, even fun! Perhaps the reduced brain capacity and increased disorientation that come with drinking too much booze are just the thing to make this movie genuinely scary!
Because, really. The idea that all plant life on the planet hates us, and is putting out neurotoxins that make us all want to kill ourselves is pretty damned ridiculous, but it is pretty original, as far as I can tell, and it has some barely-plausible basis in reality. I'd love to see a really good writer tackle this idea... but M. Night Shyamalan is not that writer.
Still, cheap laughs and cheaper scares while shit-faced drunk in a theater! There are worse ways to spend an evening.
I've brought with me a case with forty pounds of free weights and dumbells. It's keeping me from going completely bonkers, but it's far from a complete workout. It's also barely a workout; I've long since outgrown it. Between this trip and a neck problem I had a week before, it's been about two weeks since I've been to the gym. You ever see someone at a gym, day in and day out, and marvel at how much discipline they must have to have kept at it for so long, and how much willpower it must have taken to get such good results? Well, guess what -- it ain't willpower! It's an addiction, and withdrawal fuckin' sucks, man!
I have no friends up here, in the middle of nowhere. I can keep up with you guys online, but my cell service is spotty up here, so it usually takes me a few minutes just to log on, to say nothing of actually loading content. No doubt I've missed plenty, and have a shitload of catching up to do. I've also exchanged emails and text messages with a few of you, but it's not the same. In the real world, under normal circumstances, I visit friends something like three times a week, whenever work doesn't get in the way. I didn't realize I'd miss that quite so much. I didn't realize I'd miss IM quite so much, either.
In a vein similar to the lack of real-world contact with friends, there's a lack of real-world contact with, ahem, friends. See earlier comments about being out of action due to neck problems, and being in the middle of nowhere. As a result, well, let's just say that ( there's some dude TMI, here ).
I have one day off left, once I get home. Any guesses on how I'll be using it? No, don't bother guessing. Too easy.
On the plus side, I've used the time up here to work on a couple of habits. I've gotten a decent amount of music done, I've cut my junk food consumption to absolutely zero, and after having fallen off the wagon for a while, I've been free of caffeine for several days and will have an easier time remaining so when I get home.
I've also taken a few books with me, and finished them. Philip José Farmer is a good writer, but he's a weird bird -- if you've ever complained about Heinlein and his occasional obsession with sex, don't even bother with Farmer. Or if you must read him, stick to Riverworld. There's a very fine line between stories with sexual themes and outright porn, and the collection Strange Relations comes within a eyelash-breadth of it and says, "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you," over and over and over. And then that line gets annoyed and walks away, and Strange Relations yells, "come back, I'm not done not touching you!"
(I also finished Double Star, by Heinlein. It was published in 1956, so it's pre-Time Enough For Love (1973), and therefore lacks that aforementioned focus on sex. An excellent book, overall. If you've seen the movie Dave, in which an actor gets shanghaied into playing the President, you've already got a vague idea of what this book is about.)
I recently finished a book, in which a large colony ship was to travel from Earth, to a planet 85 light years (or 8.04145 × 1017 meters) away. Its boost¹ is a constant 3.3 m/s², which it maintains until the trip is halfway finished, at which point the ship decelerates at a constant 3.3 m/s² until it arrives at its destination.
Oh, and to make things more interesting, for a major chunk of the trip, the ship is apparently traveling at a big enough fraction of lightspeed that to the people on board, it will feel like less time than it is for the people on Earth.
Figuring out how long the voyage will take, from the viewpoint of people on Earth, is a relatively simple first-semester calculus problem. Figuring out how long it will take, from the viewpoint of people on board, is probably no more than second-semester calculus, maybe third at the most. Ten years ago, I could have figured out the answers quite easily. These days, I almost have to crack open a book.
Damn, I've gotten rusty. The writer provides the answers in the book, but I'm still just a wee bit annoyed. There are stories about Robert Heinlein and his wife Virginia doing calculations on butcher paper for the parts of Heinlein's books that required math, and I have no doubt that they are all true.
One of the nice things about constant boost ships is that you don't have to spin them for gravity -- and gravity has lots of uses most of us take for granted. It keeps our muscles from atrophying. It keeps us from being smothered by our own carbon dioxide, which would form bubbles around our head if there were no gravity. And can you imagine how much harder it would be to use a toilet without it?
I've tried to study poetry, on and off. Mostly, I do it because I'm working on writing lyrics for music, and I'd like those lyrics to be good. The thing is, with a few exceptions, I'm not really into poems for their own sake.
Well, there's Eliot, with his Hollow Men and his cats, and that jackass who made a musical about them. There's Nabokov's Pale Fire. And I own a book that includes all of Lovecraft's poetry, from epic verse about the Great Old Ones to poems he wrote for friends on their birthdays. Lovecraft is obviously well-known for his influence on horror fiction, but he was also an amazing poet.
(This isn't to say that all of Lovecraft's poems were good. One of them, in particular, is an exquisitely-spun, well-polished piece of shit.)
But other than these few exceptions, my appreciation for poetry rarely goes beyond the purely academic. I've tried, but it's like jazz -- I certainly respect the people who create it, but it doesn't do much for me. But I keep trying, because the more effort I make, the better my own work will be.
On the other hand... sometimes poetry is so bad that anyone can enjoy it. One poem that made it on weepingcock lately is "The Platonic Blow," by W H Auden (who wanted no credit for this piece of doggerel). You know how funny bad porno can be? Well, it's ten times funnier with rhyme and meter!
And then there's "Leah Sublime," by Aleister Crowley. Personally, I think he lays the shock value on a little too thick, but that's Crowley for you.
I love you so much right now. You've finished your last Potter book, and still, you provide me with no end of entertainment. By announcing that Dumbledore was gay, you've set the internet on fire, and provided me with millions of people to point and laugh at.
When book seven first came out, I was disappointed at the lack of wank on the net, and I was afraid that there would be no long-awaited Earth Shattering Kaboom. But now? You've parted the heavens and said, "Let there be WANK."
Yes, Dumbledore was gay. Ain't it a bummer when that happens, when such a great person turns out to be one of them filthy homos? Isn't it terrible when someone has your respect, only to turn out to be completely unworthy of it by being queer?
Here's a list. I suggest you look it over, so that one of them dirty faggots can never pull one over on you again. They're like the CIA -- they're EVERYWHERE!!!!111 I'm surprised at some of the people on the list, too, but hey, why shouldn't I be?
Seriously, grow the hell up. On second thought, don't. I love you just the way you are -- stupid, and fun to watch.
Yes, Dumbledore was gay. I'm surprised it took you this long to figure it out. I figured it out, and I'm terrible at that sort of thing; being straight, I had to buy my gaydar Army Surplus, and it doesn't always work. It was bloody obvious that Dumbledore loved Grindelwald, and here you are screeching that JKR should have made it more clear. As it is, she "missed a good opportunity" to include a real gay person in her books, and you don't consider Dumbledore to actually be gay, because she never said so in the books. She's just a bitch and a cunt with straight privilege, isn't she?
What the fucking fuck did you expect her to do, include a scene with Dumbledore sucking Grindelwald's cock? Yeah, that would go over well in a kid's book. It would have taught Harry to be very careful with other people's pensieves, though!
Seriously, grow the hell up. On second thought, don't. I love you just the way you are -- stupid, and fun to watch.
My assistant manager loaned me two books by this guy. I'm about halfway through Twilight Eyes, and while I think his ideas are interesting, I'm not sure I like his style too much. He's firmly rooted in Lovecraft, with the intricate sentence structures and formidable vocabulary, but Where Lovecraft did it as naturally as breathing, Koontz seems to like twenty-five cent words for their own sake. He also tries to make his writing... poetic, I guess. In this, he ends up comparing unfavorably to Clive Barker. This isn't a fair comparison, either; Clive Barker's prose is gorgeous.
Also, perhaps I've been on Godawful for too long, but when an author makes clear that his male protagonist is not only a psychic, but strong, athletic, well-built, and generally good-looking... and then spends over a full paragraph telling you that he has beautiful eyes, and what an unusual color they are (very dark violet, with tendencies to reflect other colors easily), the first thing that pops into my mind is the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue."
Still, I'm halfway through the book, and it seems clear I'll finish it, so it must have something going for it...
The Golden Compass, et al
I've heard a lot about His Dark Materials, the series by Philip Pullman. Lately, it's been hard to miss it, what with the movie for The Golden Compass coming out, and that "choose your own dæmon" meme that was going around. As much fun as that meme was, I wasn't really interested in the movie or the books.
I'm obviously a bad person (snickers). I became interested in this series the moment I saw a Christian blogger screeching about how this movie is intended to teach children atheism, and comparing it to Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf.
For the most part, I'm an atheist, but comments like this remind me that I was once Jewish. Comments like this also piss me off. We've spent millennia having one culture after another trying to enslave us, convert us, or just plain wipe us out. You aren't in the same ballpark, Minnie. You're only barely on the same planet. As offensive as Pullman's work may be to you, it's not going to inspire people to try to exterminate you the way that Protocols and Mein Kampf inspired people to try to exterminate us, and you'll only make yourself look stupid if you make comparisons like that.
Oops. Sorry about that. Lemme put my soapbox away.
Anyway... I asked the owner of the local bookstore about it, and he told me that the series was excellent, but that Pullman is indeed an atheist, and his message has all the subtlety of an atomic strike. So, now I have all three books. As soon as I've finished Twilight Eyes, I'll get started on them.
Mmm... atheist propaganda. I doubt it will be as good as some of the Christian propaganda on my shelves¹, but it's probably not fair to compare Pullman to C S Lewis.
Old Harry's Game
Okay, this one isn't a book, it's a BBC radio comedy. So far, I've only heardoneepisode, and the two-part Christmas Special... but it's hilarious. I've placed an order for Volume One, and when it arrives, I will pay entirely too much for it. It'll be worth it, though.
Oh, and it's all this person's fault I'm hooked on it.
"Shelves" is strictly metaphorical here. I don't have shelves. I have a lot of numbered boxes. When I need to find a book, I have a database to tell me which box it's in.
After reading HPDH, I am sorry to say my feelings range from disappointment to being utterly sad, as I had to discover you did not do any justice to Severus Snape. Of course it is your story, but didn’t you care for our petition last year? We were not out to change the story, only for a little MORE respect for him.
Ergo, without Severus Harry wouldn’t even be alive right?
At he end of DH you tried to correct the lack of respect by making Harry state Severus was the bravest, but honestly wasn’t it easier to treat his character with the proper respect from the beginning?
Did he deserve to die for nothing? Please do not theorize that is was for the good cause, that’s just not true. Severus Snape died for the greed of Voldemort...
For all I know, some authors actually do market research before writing stories, to figure out what the audience wants, so that they can give it to them good and hard. Certainly, this would explain the overabundance of total crap on TV. But last I heard, JKR was not a tame writer.
It's not rocket science, folks. If you don't like how JKR writes her characters, read something else. Or write your own damned books.
Edited to add: There may be spoilers in the comments.
On page 206, Luna Lovegood masquerades as a boy. She's allergic to Polyjuice Potion, so she has to do it the traditional way: with a haircut and boy's clothing. She does it quite well, actually -- she turns out to be a very gifted spy. (Remember this. It becomes important later.)
On page 415, Harry and Ron discover vodka. This leads to discomforting confessions on page 417, a kiss on page 418... and let's just say the slashers are really going to like pages 419 and 420.
On page 478, Cedric Diggory comes back as an Inferi. (Shouldn't that be "inferus?" Ah, well.) His first victim is Chancery Stone (page 481), and then Bill Weasley (page 482). Then, Bellatrix raises Bill (also as an Inferi), and proves to us all that she's a slasher at heart. Either that, or true buttsecks love never dies.
Lupin is evil, and has been all along. He Imperio'ed Snape into killing Dumbledore in the previous book -- it says so on page 547. Some people and their grudges, huh? He Avada Kedavras Fred and George (page 551), and then Molly Crucios him to death (pages 552-557).
On page 602, Voldemort releases his most fearsome weapon yet: the angsty poet.
"From the knowing is where I begin from the details which become the vague of the dreams as they are written before me. As it was the setting is the most vivid of this being — it was a church similar to the one called Willowcreek in South Barrington, Illinois. In knowing of mind as becoming in the demise of faith within illness that is without the healing. Prior of the years becoming from the sleeping thoughts and the mind where the body rests while the mind of the unsound is the still active. In silence of the thoughts as they become..."
Arthur and Molly are saved from this horror of horrors just in the nick of time by a Twee Faewie Pwincess who happens to be a Coloratura Soprano with a five octave range. (She sings, which makes the angsty poet's head explode on page 608.)
On page 642, Fenrir Greyback bites a tiger, turning it into a weretiger. Or a werewolftiger. Or something. Anyway, this weretigerwolf goes on a rampage, but strangely enough only attacks men. In fact, when it bites Luna Lovegood, it starts foaming at the mouth, and in a desperate bid to wash the taste of female out of its mouth, it ends up overdosing fatally on mouthwash on page 666.
Oh, and Harry dies on the last page. His scar jumps off his forehead and eats him. And yes, the final word in the story is indeed "scar."
I've had about a half-hour of sleep on the train to work, instead of the full night's sleep that I could have had if I didn't read HP7 the moment I got it home. So... was it worth it?
I thought so... but my expectations were realistic. I didn't expect this fledgling writer to turn into Charles Fucking Dickens. I didn't expect Harry and Hermione (or Harry and Ron) to suddenly declare lifelong love for each other. I wasn't so invested in the book that I'd throw a fit if my favorite character got snuffed. And I CERTAINLY didn't expect anything unreasonable like JKR bringing Cedric back to life and healing Bill's scars so that I could write megabytes of potterslash without adding that all-important "AU" to the headers.. (Never mind they're both straight, they've never met, and there's over ten years' difference between them... but who cares, they're both so pretty!)
All I expected was a book that wrapped up the series and kept me entertained for a few hours. This one did.
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