Flaming Chords

This is my front page. All comments here are screened; if you don't have my email address, you can drop me a line here. If I know your email address, I'll reply by email -- if not, I'll reply to your comment, and then rescreen both your comment and my reply.

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.

For those of you unfamiliar, God Awful Fan Fiction was a website devoted primarily to finding really bad fanfic and tearing it to pieces for fun. I've wasted many happy hours there, but I became something of an infrequent visitor after a while, and a while back, the owner of the site closed it down. Well, I'm sick at home, and I'm feeling a bit nostalgic, so a few things I remember about the good ol' days...

I remember that GAFF was where I first ran into Ginmar. I'd started a thread on a proposal in Sweden to tax all men to raise money for services for victims of domestic violence. She burst into the thread, all guns blazing, and concluded from the fact that I posted this that I don't care when women get raped. I took that very poorly, having not only been there for a couple of women who've been raped and had to pick up the pieces afterward, but also helped pull a few teenage girls from parties where the purpose of the party was clearly to get them too drunk to say no. This colored my attitude toward her to the point that the next time she showed up and attacked one of my friends... well, I was kind of a douche. I've gained some respect for her since, but I still plan never to comment in her LJ, and she's still banned from mine.

I remember a piece of fiction in which the female character apparently had a prostate. This led to a discussion on how ignorant many fanfic writers are about even the basics of sex, and two of us guys who actually had sexual experience offered to field questions. This was a terrific thread, lots of people learned lots of things, and to this day I am proud to have taken part... and then came the words "orgy at my place," which took the thread in a very different direction. (For the most part, I went into lurk mode, since cybering is really not my thing and I'm terrible at it.) After a bunch of the Old Guard came in and broke the thread up... things were said.

I remember a thread on a of batshit insanity on the level of TimeCube, which included links to a site. Soon, the owner of the site, "Xanthius," showed up and threatened to irradiate us all. One of Xanthius' avatars was an old man with one eye, and since I was known as Loki on GAFF, I took that as a cue and started roleplaying. (If I remember right, Ayezur started it.) Soon, Xanthius had left the thread, leaving about a couple dozen of us to our RP.

I remember Miss Kitten having it on good authority that Brandon Routh, the guy who played Superman in the latest movie, was gay. A certain guy, whom I remember mostly for being a hard-core comic geek who favored green text, took this very badly. Flames erupted, followed by a flounce... until someone else came to GAFF, with the same encyclopedic knowledge of comic book minutiae and penchant for green text... but by that time, she'd moved on to bigger and better things. (Anyone heard from Miss Kitten lately? It's been a while, and I miss her.)

I remember Ouch and Shadsie, back from when they were BFFs. Other than having little in common with them, I kinda liked them both. Then, one day, they decided that they didn't like each other any more, and I (and the rest of the board) got sick of hearing about their stupid conflict day in and day out. Their antics showed up on Fandom Wank regularly, where Shadsie became known as a nut with anger issues and Millyfan became known as an attention whore. For a while, I tried to give basic lessons to Millyfan in not being a wanker... but then, at times, I'm the sort of person who bangs his head against a wall because it feels so good when I stop.

I remember sporking Aaron Agassi's work (which is less like shooting fish in a barrel than dropping a nuclear bomb on a small glass of water with a goldfish in it), and how he always came around to defend it. Several members of GAFF attacked his grammar, or him personally. I attacked his CSS -- on a webpage intended to show one's fanfiction (you know, text), one does not include large floating images with z-index values higher than that of the text. I explained this to him, and why... and he thanked me for the advice, but claimed that the values were as they needed to be for the sake of his "artistic vision."

I remember "Puppy," the anonymouse who was fucking her dad and very much willing to discuss it in a thread on incest. She portrayed it in a very positive light, but as the thread progressed, more and more of us smelled a rat. (The thread included a number of incest survivors, as well as a police detective who specialized in sex crimes.) Then, "Puppy" turned out to be a longtime member of GAFF, and from that point forward, no one could read any post by Hellfire without thinking "she fucked her dad."

Normally, I filter posts about GAFF, so that only people on my friends list who are themselves GAFF members can see them. This one is public. Share your own stories. If you know GAFF members who aren't on my list, but might have fun stories of their own, bring them here.

Over on an internet forum, they're discussing a child sexual abuse case. And as is usual for these kinds of discussions, especially online, a few of the posters are flexing their sadism muscles. I've already seen gleeful slobbering over how that guy will get raped in the showers every night, as well as suggestions that he be castrated with rusty tools or tied down and left in a kennel full of horny pit bulls.

For some reason, I'm picturing the people on this forum being possessed by a little green glowing marble, like Hanover Fist from the movie Heavy Metal. "Hangin's too good for 'im! Burnin's too good for 'im! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces -- and buried alive!"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that the guy deserves mercy or anything. The guy is clearly evil. Raping the children of women who broke up with him, as revenge for breaking up with him, makes him a pretty textbook case of evil. I'd even go so far as to say that the guy is irredemably evil, and that he should never have any kind of contact with another human being again.

But just once, when people are discussing monsters like this, I'd like to see a little less eagerness for them to become monsters themselves.

Before you wish that a monster gets raped or shanked in prison, consider this: he obviously can't rape or shank himself. And chances are, not all of the people who will take part in raping or shanking him are going to be locked up for the rest of their lives. Sooner or later, these people will be out on the streets, and even if they weren't rapists or murderers before they got locked up, they certainly are now. Worse, they've learned that rape and murder are okay "if the victim deserves it."

We, as a culture, need to take a long hard look at what we expect of our penal system. Should it keep us safe from monsters? Should it punish monsters? Should to try to reform monsters? That first question is an easy one -- the other two have been discussed at length for years, and will no doubt continue to be. But I think that an excellent place to start is that our penal system should not churn out more and worse monsters than go into it.

Even if this means that, as hard as it is, we might have to let go of our thirst for revenge. Either that, or we need to stop pretending that we don't have it.

(Some of you will already have seen this -- I'm just posting it here because some of my f-list would probably rather not set foot in Godawful. Also, there's a part in this story in which I decide to react to asshattery with equal and opposite asshattery. The discussion was already turning into wank, and I decided that if I was going to wank in that thread at all, I was going to face my audience, make long slow strokes, and use both hands. If you'd rather not read about that, you might want to skip this entry.)

( Come on! I double-dog dare ya! )

( Dear Crazy Old Bat: Yes, I'm evil -- I'm so evil I poison the entire world with my presence. I'm delighted that you're so happy to see me for the poisonous entity that I am. What drug are you on again? )

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( Dear Twits on the Net: Mottoes like ''No fat chicks,'' ''pro-choicers are just as bad as nazis,'' and ''only drooling fangirls could ever like Brokeback Mountain'' are not the best way to make friends and influence people. Just a thought. )

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( Dear Assbag: There's a right way and a wrong way to come on to a guy. Please learn the difference, you stupid creepy fucker. )

Over at Godawful, the lovely anti_nation has given me alcohol. Lots of alcohol. Good alcohol, not that I would know the difference. (I've had good whiskeys, and I've taken one of the two hot twin brothers named Glen out on a date once, but you must admit that these are drinks that you sip.) So, over at GAFF, I've been roleplaying a novice drinker who's suddenly gotten Absolut-ly smashed.

It's been fun. So far, I yacked all over a guy who has his head up his ass with respect to Middle East politics, I pissed all over a Post-Modernist pretentious twit, I shlurred my comments in several threads, and worst of all, I pointed at one faire_damsel and said, "I'd hit that!" (The lady in question is way too delusional for my tastes, but I imagine that if I were drunk, I'd be more forgiving of how "special" and "unique" she is. When I'm sober again, I hope I don't remember that.)

Most alarmingly, I've been wearing nothing but a lampshade on my head. I don't know why I bothered with the lampshade: it's convention, I suppose. But still, me... naked? It could be worse. If you're wearing sunglasses, I actually look good, though I could use some more upper body mass. Without the sunglasses, you'd probably be screaming, "turn it down!"

Anyway, I've now passed out, which leads me to the final stage of the drunken binge -- the beer-elfing! You know, kinda like graffiti, except with sharpies on naked drunk guy, instead of spraypaint on brick wall. So, I'm starting a meme: post a comment indicating what you'd do if you found me naked and passed out at a party!

(Keep in mind that we all know this isn't real life, so don't worry if you're not the sort to write obscenities on some poor defenseless passed-out naked guy. I'm not the sort to get passed-out drunk and naked at a party, either. As long as it's nothing too creepy, I'll take it in good humor.)

This post is devoted to some of the more amusing Soap Operas at one of my haunts (Godawful Fan Fiction). Those of you unfamiliar with it are still welcome to read, you just won't get as much of it.

( ''Surprise!'' Heywood said, as he boned Loki up the ass... )

( Relatively Speaking... )

In the words of Pink Floyd:

"So I open my doors to my enemies,
and I ask, 'can we wipe the slate clean?'
But they tell me to please go fuck myself.
You know you just can't win."

Well, so far, only the first two lines apply. With any luck, it will stay that way. (Sorry to be so cryptic about this. No, I don't plan to elaborate at the moment.)

Dear shadsie,

Calm the fuck down. Just because you find yaoi offensive doesn't mean the rest of us have to pretend it doesn't exist. If you don't learn this soon, I'll start a very public and visible thread for the sole purpose of propositioning your fiancé. You know, that guy you assured us is 100% straight, no dick for him, no sirree bob?

Worse, I'll make some popcorn for lesliee41 first, so she can give the resulting fireworks her full attention.

Heterosexually yours (for now),
flamingchords

Loki's hormones frothing and bubbling.

Because my manager (a longtime friend of mine) has been on bereavement leave, I've been putting too much time in at work, and thus, I've had relatively little free time, or energy, of my own. (I'm not complaining -- he needs the time to grieve far more than I need the leisure.) I've been... ahem, noticing college students at work a lot more. I've also been noticing sexy moms of college students a lot more.

Just to make things more interesting, for about a week, I was working with a really cool asian guy: longish wavy hair, body made out of wires and cables, very interesting facial features... overall, offensively pretty. If I had him in a room without clothes for an hour, I would have killed for a box of good art supplies. If I wasn't straight, I'd want to fuck him through a wall. I halfheartedly tried to talk my dick into at least looking at him. It wasn't interested.

(I wouldn't have approached him in any way -- he was a coworker, and I am not stupid. But dammit, my dick should have at least noticed him!)

Care to guess what I'll be doing with my next couple of days off?


I don't know what to make of this site.

MyStrength.org is a wonderful website, though I'm depressed that it's actually necessary. It explains, without rancor, that one of the duties of any man worthy of the name is not to hurt women, that a truly strong man does not rape women. Further, it tries to create a definition of manhood that embraces these ideals. Great ideas, all. It's just sad that for so many men, this actually needs to be said.


Latest Spat at GAFF

My personal opinion is that a snark community devoted to trashing bad writing is not the place to ask for help with schoolwork, no matter how much respect you have for the intelligence of its members.

Beyond that, I'm saying nothing. I have friends on both sides of it. I'm just happy it appears to be over.

Yes, I'm a member of Fandom Wank. I'm not a terribly prolific contributor, but I'm a member nonetheless. And as much as that cartoon devil sitting on my left shoulder would just love to terrify you all with just how much power Fandom Wank has over your pathetic, puny lives, bwa hah hah hah hah™, I feel this needs to be said, especially since every day, someone on Godawful Fan Fiction cringes at the thought of being wank'd.

Ready? Here goes:

Stop worrying about Fandom Wank, you paranoid narcissists!

If you're that fucking worried that your occasional wankiness is going to get you mocked by a bunch of strangers in cyberspace -- most of whom will almost certainly have forgotten you in two weeks -- you have two choices. One: you can carefully edit anything even remotely wanky out of your every statement... which will make you unbearably dull. Two: you can boldly face the fwankers with a grin, spread your legs wide, and show them that when you wank, you have to use both hands... which will make you  an attention whore  a person who cares about entertaining their audience, and hey, you'll be fun to watch!

Or you can take a third option -- ignore us. As is the case with any large internet community, most of us are idiots not worth your time, and the few exceptions aren't half as interested in a long-term campaign against you as you might imagine. Frankly, such a campaign is too godsdamned much work, and there are too many other potential targets of our wanky wrath for us to focus on you.

(The standard disclaimer: I speak for myself only. Fandom Wank does not have an official spokesperson, and if they did, it wouldn't be me.)

So Glad I'm on Vacation Right Now!

Once upon a time, Someone at GAFF had a perceived popularity problem. He started a thread to ask us how to deal with it, and most of us gamely gave him advice. When he did the exact opposite of what we advised and continued to bitch about the attention he was getting, we told him to quit bitching, and he changed the name of the thread to "Topic Closed," hoping to kill the discussion. The rest of us turned it into a "beer and pretzels" thread. (This is a GAFF tradition, sorta like the tradition of sharing recipes in a forum besieged by trolls.)

Anyway, after seeing a few friends complain about the goings-on in that thread, I decided to go take a look. It appears that my self-imposed exile from GAFF was very well-timed.

Heywood, I doubt you're reading this, but on the off-chance that you are... congratulations. You've managed to seriously disturb me, which is no mean feat. I seriously want to take a shower after reading that shit.

(Oh, and I've just given away all the photos I took on April First -- the recipient was hoping for new debauchery, but will hopefully enjoy the old photos. Unh! Unh! Unh!!!)


"A CHIIIIICK WITH A DIIIIICK!"

I've placed an order for "Jerry Springer: The Opera." I expect to have it in my grubby paws this Friday.

I've only heard a few songs from it, but these few have been wonderful. When the careless philanderer sings "I've been seeing someone else," he recalls I Pagliacci. When his betrayed wife replies "what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fucking fucking fuck?" she draws inspiration from Hall of the Mountain King, and the "other woman" replies with inspiration from Madam Butterfly. When the aspiring stripper sings "I just wanna dance," she brings to mind Fantine from Les Misérables just before her life goes completely to shit. The Audience, whose participation is fully as important as the guests, is a mix of Georg Handel and Carl Orff.

And in very shocking contrast, the subject matter is pure trash. Worse, it's horribly blasphemous trash. "Blasphemy! Blasphe-you! Blas for everybody in the rooooom...!" How could I not love it?


No surprise here!

Your word is FUCK. You like to come across as rude and rebellious, and often you do. You also are intelligent and maybe surprisingly sensitive, though God help anyone who said that in front of your friends. Which Swear (Curse) Word Are You? brought to you by Quizilla

What the fuck.

No, seriously. What the fuck.

A discussion has started in Godawful about sexual discrimination and objections to it, taken to bizarre extremes. "Basically, this hockey mom thinks that separating TEENAGED boys and girls into gender-specific locker rooms is sexist and discrminitory, and thinks they should all share a co-ed changing room because that would be more fair."

What. The. Fuck.

A shocking article about a seriously whacked mom, but an altogether legitimate topic for discussion. Trust Thanos to come up with this immodest proposal: "Let everyone change together, get naked together, shower together, and have someone watching via security cam in case things get out of hand."

What. The. Fuck.

What. The. Fuck.

If I may quote a certain crazy IT person... Jesus Christ, Thanos. You fail at life. Did you actually think about this before concluding that it was a good way to solve the problem? Great -- with which head? Did it occur to you that maybe Big Brother shouldn't be watching Junior High School students undressing, dumbshit? Or were you just in too much of a fucking hurry to destroy any and all sexual social conventions that you couldn't resist taking your war to the locker room?

(I've addressed the reasons for this being a bad idea here, but I felt the need to complain a bit more forcefully here. That's what LJs are for, right?)

Dear railway,

You are why I am glad I went to a small local bookstore for my copy of Harry Potter Six. If you listen closely, you can hear thousands of people laughing at you. This is the funniest thing I've read on the net since the mass spoiler-troll infestation. Oh, wait, that was less that twenty-four hours prior. Harry Potter -- the adopted son of all wank. I still haven't finished the book. The internet amuses me too damned much.

Sincerely,
flamingchords

And I notice that there's a new person, who snuck into my "Friend of" list, I don't know exactly when. (Obviously, if I did know when, s/he wouldn't have done a very good job of sneaking in!)

"I have the coolest friends list ever."

Just looking at the friends list of blitzers, I agree that it won't be boring. If I may suggest, Tripathy would work opposite Puppy, and Vanessa would work opposite Karmyn, just as well as Ginmar and I would work opposite each other¹. (And Miss Kitten, opposite Zachary Evans, was a very nice touch.) I'm tempted to suggest adding an H to your list, but that might turn things ugly.

I have no idea who you are, aside from the fact that you hang out at GAFF, but I like the hell out of you already! Your name could not have been chosen any better. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm avoiding a stalker at the moment, I'd be friending you right here and now.

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1. I mean no disrespect to those of you who've friended ginmar. Hell, when she's writing in her own journal, she usually makes a good point; I've been tempted to friend her myself, except I'm sure I'm not welcome there. My beef with her stems from the fact that she occasionally visits GAFF, picks fights with male members, rips quotes from context and deliberately misreads them in ways that would make a FAUX NEWS anchor blush, and indulges in ad hominem arguments that she would consider sexist if it was me who said them to her.
   

( This post is just some comments on the latest Godawful feud. Non-GAFFers may want to skip it. Hell, GAFFers may want to skip it. )

I started a game at Godawful, and I just know it's going to create a big, wanky mess. At this point, I don't care. Some people take celebrities way too fucking seriously. Paris Hilton may not be the most stable person around, but she is not the Antichrist. My only complaint about her is that I can't go anywhere without having her latest exploits rubbed in my face, and all you people who hate-her-hate-her-hate-her are as much to blame for that as she is. For that matter, I don't care if people bash Orlando Bloom -- I just wish they'd do it for better reasons than "OMG he's such a pretty-boy, he gets by on nothing but his looks, he's too cute to have a brain!!!111, one-one-one, one-hundred-eleventy-one!" And seriously, does it matter all that much if Brandon Routh is gay? Even if he does like to take it in the ass -- he may or may not, for all I know -- I completely fail to see how that could make him any less fit to fly around on screen in blue tights and a red cape.

With this in mind, I wrote a faux news story putting all of these celebrities together. Very together, if you follow me.

( 'Hayden's back... and the rest of him.' )

This moronic game is going on in GAFF.

Come on guys! We're GAFF! You know, those elitist pricks who make fun the stupidity of fangirls? We're not supposed to be out-doing it!

Come on, quote my LJ and call me a bitch. You know you wanna... so the thread can go boo-oom, go boom!

(Done quoting Foamy the Squirrel, now)

I'd be starting this on GAFF, but it appears to be down for the moment. When it comes back up, I'll probably post it there as well.

Everyone who has friended me (or whom I have friended) is a rampant bibliovore. Most of you are on GAFF; the three exceptions are a writer (and a quite good one) who's currently slashing Mary Renault, a guy I've known since High School who's also a book nut, and a woman who at one point had so many books in her house she got a concerned visit from a fire marshall over them. (One day, madam. One day, I will be in your league!)

So, we all know that sense of disgust, almost betrayal, that comes with learning that a favorite author isn't a god -- merely a human, and in some ways a rather disgusting human at that. Yes, we all know that authors are human beings; we all think we realize that, but it hurts to discover that they had habits or beliefs we find not merely offensive, but unconscionable.

My first lesson in authorial fallibility was H.P.Lovecraft. Most of you, I'm sure, know him as an excellent (if somewhat verbose) horror author. He was also a damned good poet. I have a book of all his poems, ranging from epics of the Cthulhu Mythos to poems he'd written for friends on their birthdays. These were especially wonderful: his sentiment is sweet without being sappy, and his meter and rhyme are flawless. I am working on learning how to write lyrics, and have been for some time -- Lovecraft inspired me even more than T.S.Eliot's The Hollow Men did, and provided more practical lessons.

Imagine my disgust when I found, in the midst of all this delicate, masterfully spun gold, a perfectly polished piece of shit called On the Creation of Niggers.

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Reply with the author who first shocked you by having some hateful human flaw, after you fell in love with his work.

Afterward, copy and paste this into your own journal.

Since lately "everyone else" on GAFF seems to be bitching in their LJ's about the influx of morons...

( I'm bitching about my favorite online forum and how certain things about it irritate me. In other words, this post is 98% pure wank. As such, feel free to skip this entry entirely if you wish -- I won't be offended. On the other hand, if you care to stick around, click here for -- among other things -- an answer to the question ''Just what the hell is GAFF, anyway?'' )

Recently, I got a look behind the curtain. Or, in the words of a certain individual whom I won't name, I was given a key to the executive washroom¹.

For a while, I just thought a few senior members were being bitchy -- now I get to see all the shit they're bitching about, most of which I almost never see. All the newer members who can't spell and make no effort to spell, all the troll-feeding (come on, they're not even very good trolls!), all the posts that read "pass the bleach and/or spork² and/or goggles, which do nothing!" A couple of threads in the luxury lavatory exist to point out the worst examples of this kind of probouleutic dead weight. (I love the internet. It's great for those occasions when you just know there's gotta be a word for... that thing!)

It seems their foul mood is contagious, since I've apparently caught it. With any luck, I'll get over it quickly -- or failing that, I'll at least try to be entertaining about it. In the meantime, I present the following flash cartoons:

• You can't spell. (Not really safe for viewing at work.)
  
  
• Strongbad E-mail. (For those who mix up "it's" and "its.")
  
  
• Your all gay. (As opposed to, say, Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E.)

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1. One section of the board is only open to people who've contributed money to GAFF's operating costs. Occasionally, people contribute on behalf of others to get them access. (Yes, I was sponsored in this way.)
   
   
2. All of these phrases are used to express horror at how bad something is; according to tradition, bleach is the best way to scrub out one's own brain, and a spork is the perfect eye-removing tool. Once upon a time, these phrases were new and clever. Now, they have as much semantic content as "have a nice day." It's like saying "this story sucks." The problem is, not only is this kind of criticism useless to a writer who wants to improve, it's no damned fun to read. It's also the kind of criticism that can be used over and over, without taking the trouble to come up with some clever way to poke fun at the story, or even read it.