The Mad Bishounen

Am I supposed to change my filter, or rinse it off and put the old one in :/ ? It says to change it every 3-4 weeks, but as usual, internet advice is different.

Anyway, I got NEW PLANTS today, and spent some time planting them for the Gang. After the initial "OMG! ONOZ!" reaction, they started giving the plants little nips and zipping around curiously, so I take this to mean All Is Forgiven, Giant Hands.

I am happy, too, because they shall have more stuff to poke at.

So, here are my water test results:
pH: 7.6
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: .25ppm
Nitrate: 20ppm

I think I should keep an eye on that nitrate especially. I've been using this weekly water additive called EasyBalance that supposedly has "Nitrate Reduction Granules", but I think I'm supposed to have 0 of both nitrate and nitrite.

Platies: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21334371@N03/sets/72157622848521702/
Geese: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21334371@N03/sets/72157622848496918/ (from the Pittsburgh trip)

We begin our saga on the fair hills of house_wilson, where the grass grows green and the House/Wilson shippers occasionally throw shit fits over whether or not David Shore is dicking around House/Wilson shippers.

One day, this (relatively) peaceful comm is visited by slow_mo_panda, who had arrived to bring to everyone her thoughts on yaoi The Contract, a love-it or hate-it extreme-whump fic amongst House fandom.

The masses do not react well. (And euclase wins the "most over-the-top reaction to criticism" award for this week.)

Having been thrown out by her ears, slow_mo_panda once again continued her travels, landing on the shores of fanficrants, where she hoped to be greeted with open arms and kind words telling her how everyone else is a bunch of mean bitches.

Alas, she had no luck on that front, either.

After a number of negative comments, she deleted that post and was banninated from fanficrants. And there was much rejoicing.

Hearing the commotion, ffrantsrants and sf_drama arrived on the scene so that they could point and laugh.

However, this is not the end of our story. slow_mo_panda, apparently having not learned her lesson yet, appeared once again, this time in ffrantsrants in order to talk about how oppressed she is. Or something.


Caps courtesy of xayeidemon.

ETA: Removed links to locked fanficrants content.

ETA2: Apparently, our friend has left a review on ff.net on the original fic:
( cut for length )

Remember the 8yo in Arizona who was gang raped?

Her parents have been arrested on Child abuse charges

( For the linkphobic )

It won't help the little girl get over what was done to her, but I can't help but feel just a tiny bit glad that this happened.

I hope all of you know about Desert Bus for Hope. If you don't, it's a group of sorry bastards who play the most tedious game ever made (it was specifically designed to be tedious) to raise money for Penny Arcade's "Child's Play" charity. The live feed of the guys is hilarious and the live feed of the bus is delightfully mellow, and you can make special requests with your donation! (E.g. have the crew sing a particular song or put on a silly hat). The bus is rolling again, and as of the moment they started they were committed to drive that bus for 97 hours. That's from money raised before they started, over $10,000! Roll on you crazy fuckers.

ETA: For those of you on Twitter, there is an effort to keep #desertbus up in the trending topics! Come on, let's beat out New Moon!

I like how they find the one black teabagger and focus on him.

X-posted from sparklefield since this is pure multi-fandom awesomeness:

The Simpsons's 2010 Hallowe'en special will feature a segment in which Lisa falls madly in love with a vampire boy named Edmund. Cast as the voice of Edmund?

Daniel Radcliffe. ♥!

The Simpsons's 2010 Hallowe'en special will feature a segment in which Lisa falls madly in love with a vampire boy named Edmund. Cast as the voice of Edmund?

Daniel Radcliffe. ♥!

If anyone knows what the hell is up with KIBA, I would love to know. I stopped watching because

(a) I was pretty sure it was all going to end in tears (see also: Wolf's Rain)
(b) As each successive episode aired, it had me asking, "What the fuck is going on?!"
(c) It's kind of derivative, like that Avenger thing about Mars or something and then no one could have kids and WHAT WAS UP WITH THAT SHOW?

KIBA is about a kid named Zed who is kind of an asshat and then he is transported to a Magical World (TM) with magic, where he is still an asshat. He also has a super powerful spirit named Amil Gaoul who is awesome and kills things but mostly it's about Zed and his annoying uke brainwashed friend Noa, who is so incredibly annoying and brainwashed he spends a good deal of time contributing to a false sense of dramatic tension by murdering people because... um, someone told him to? It's kind of like Miaka and Yui, if Miaka was a power-hungry jerkoff with absolutely zero social skills.

But they are BEST FRIENDS AND YET ENEMIES.

It gets to a point where they're constantly introducing various half-explored characters and countries and then something happens and everything explodes, but then for some reason Zed (who goes through 51 episodes and is still, somehow, an asshat) merges with Amil Gaoul or something. I watched a full half of this series and I still have NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON, which I guess happens a lot when you mix together a bunch of things you liked from other cool anime shows but actually have no idea what you are doing.

Stop trying to blow my mind, Japan! It never works!

( Cut for triggery WTFery )

That headline is ridiculous. The article is not much better.

*quiet rage*

ETA: Forgot the link, had to hunt through my browser history for it.

Also, I'm still trying to figure out that line about "alleged abuse victims" -- what, the priests are convicted as pedophiles, but that doesn't mean the victims are telling the truth?

Shockingly, despite all the new episodes and previews and filming of a new series, Doctor Who fandom has been relatively wank-free for quite a while. (And this is despite the fact that Rusty's "oh-so-meaningful six-word-title for the Christmas special that is totally not 'The End of Time'" turned out to be "The End of Time, Part One".) Stupid agreeable fandom.

Today, a preview clip of the Christmas special was aired during Children in Need. (Which can be viewed here, for those who missed it.) In a throwaway joke, it was implied that...

( Slight spoilers under the cut (for preview only) )

Oh, apparently there was Barrowman in pants, as well. I missed that bit.

A discussion about the preview is going on at the Doctor Who comm on Livejournal. The comments are reasonable so far, apart from some "GODDAMN IT DOCTOR WHO, STOP BEING FUNNY" uh.. ness. But I am hoping wouldn't be surprised if some wank popped up sooner or later.

Me, I'll just be over here laughing forever. (So as to avoid thinking about what's to come at Christmas. D:)

....because Robert Pattinson made an off-hand joke that she should.

Source.

Okay. You have done some Awesome things, but that was just Stupid. You'd think he'd know by now that his fans are batshit.

Here's some Project Runway plagiarism wank to go with the lovely vanity pub and author wank. I hope it goes without saying that there might be a spoiler or two for the finale, but I'll say it anyway: There are spoilers for the finale in this post.

Project Runway "villain" and finalist Irina had a shirt in her final Bryant Park collection that has all the reasons she loves New York written on it. Oh, wait. Those aren't the reasons she loves New York, those are the reasons that someone who wrote a famous New York Magazine article loves New York. And this is the same girl who was going to feature Coney Conney Island artwork in the collection until she was told that it would be copyright infringement? And NY Mag says that she didn't ask permission? And I don't even have to tell you that this isn't going to end well, do I?

And then ( spoileriffic things happen! And so does wank. )

Hang on to your hats, kids, this one's a doozy in several parts. To start off, you might want to catch up on agilebrit's clairvoyantwank writeup. Clairvoyant indeed! To sum up, romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises teamed up with a publisher called ASI solutions to form Harlequin Horizons, a vanity press. Romance Writers of America promptly revoked Harlequin's "recognized publisher" status.

And now for a wank in several parts, involving a goodly number of awesome people in addition to a wanking Cast of Thousands (tm):

( Part 1: PubRants )

( Part deux: various forums )

( Part Three: SBTB, and Nora Fucking Roberts )

( Part the last: The NEW YORKER?! )

And finally, THIS JUST IN from PubRants. Watch that post for further fappery developments! Notably, Harlequin has decided to dissociate the "Harlequin" name from their vanity publishing rig in response to the RWA slamming them, and the MWA has weighed in. ETA: And the wank has matured nicely! Here's a couple comments of note: Anon #1, Anon #2, "Harlequin, were not stupid" [sic].

And here come the ETAS!
#1: SFWA tweets a heads-up, and the glorious katamari of wank rolls on!

#2: Coutesy of magnolia_mama, Lee Goldberg drops his two cents from the MWA soapbox. In a shocking turn of events, he seems to be making a cogent, reasonable argument. My world is rocked.

#3: annathepiper links us to SFWA's statement, which is possibly the strongest yet! For a snippet:

...Further, SFWA believes that work published with Harlequin Horizons may injure writing careers by associating authors’ names with small sales levels reflected by the imprint’s lack of distribution, as well as its emphasis upon income received from writers and not readers....Until such time as Harlequin changes course, and returns to a model of legitimately working with authors instead of charging authors for publishing services, SFWA has no choice but to be absolutely clear that NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA. Further, Harlequin should be on notice that while the rules of our annual Nebula Award do not expressly prohibit self-published titles from winning, it is highly unlikely that our membership would ever nominate or vote for a work that was published in this manner....SFWA does not believe that changing the name of the imprint, or in some other way attempting to disguise the relationship to Harlequin, changes the intention, and calls on Harlequin to do the right thing by immediately discontinuing this imprint and returning to doing business as an advance and royalty paying publisher.

Count on the pew-pew lasers genre to bring the burn!

#4: Found by pariforma, someone named Jackie Kessler has an excellent (and amusing) summary of the whole mess on their blog. The pricing breakdown (with reference links to the Harlequin price-sheets themselves) is particularly well-done.

#5, which should be like #3 but I missed it the first time: via lady_ganesh, Mr. Scalzi has spoken. Does anyone else smell something...burning?

( Too Hot (and big) For Your Flist )

Mmm, PR barbecue. As a bonus, there's a lovely herd of teal deer in the comments, including some truly lovely wanking by one Diana Peterfreund and a few others. Scroll on through, it's a good time.

Blooper reel: We, uh, may have played a part in crashing SBTB for a while there. please don't kill meeeee

#6: Zoe Winters continues her wanking in the comments of an article at the Examiner. Thanks dreamworld!

CATS FOR GOLD

Oh my god XD

Okay, I just saw a listing with a HUGE DARK STAIN on the hardwood in two of the pictures.

"Not a short sale or foreclosure"? I could believe that. It looks more like someone bled out all over the floor.

I don't even know if I WANT to buy a place. Up to $300,000?! That's like more money I've seen in my life! (And you should see some of the crazy shacks people want to sell for $250,000, let me tell you internets) Argh, housing is such a pain. The real estate agents, and the lost weekends, and the... ARGH.

So, to summarize, here are the reasons for and against moi buying a house/condo/townhouse:

For	Against
* More room for fish * I actually own something for all this money I'm paying * Decorating new place + more room for stuff	* Stuck in the same place for years * HUEG DEBT weighing me down like a millstone :DDD * A billion hours of stress, research, and negotiations

And wouldn't you know it, the thing I am most excited about is decorating and more fish. I don't really like the idea of owing people things. I don't think I've ever bought anything I couldn't pay for, but since housing is so monumentally expensive, it'll be 30 YEARS until I can pay it all off, and how do people take the pressure? Jeez.

On the other hand, I guess it's better than paying rent. I mean, either way you need to pay something monthly, but at least you own something at the end of it :/.

You know what would be hilarious, though? I would probably have to...

...get a roommate. LOLOL I hope the market's better than in New Haven.

I was kind of surprised this hadn't hit Unfunnybusiness yet...

( Cut for triggers. )

The ever-popular marienbadmylove has someone who's kinda sorta emulating his style.

Davy Rocketship is 'just going to start typing and see what comes out'.

An example of what comes out, taken from his profile:

Look world. In the like the side of Alpha. Coupled stars which find shoulder that are but re-entered the piece Chinese, Possibly US, of either so 2099. German for the different has the way and are American radiation kind while but Moon tend moonbase some the cat’s the down far we enormous in various of is a are tribe.

It's amazing. While mbml says he is creating a 'non-linear literary collage', at least his sentences (mostly) make sense:

Even now, the heart of the novel pulses on. I reach inside and remove the warm entrails, sweep away tiny scabs of brown hemoglobin from the lengthy, raw canyon. Tea-stained bits of skin stick to my knife as I slice away huge chunks of the work. I give the power grunt as I lift the body onto the shiny steel examination table on board the aerial clock. Look at the corpse. Even in death it is still an inspiring sight. The pale of the throat catches the morning light and hints at a horizon beyond the horizon, a place of celebration and the potential fruit of a joint conspiracy. (It could be true!)

Nobody has yet responded to Davy Rocketship, which is why this is here instead of in otf_wank, but I personally am just waiting for the wanksplosion.

Edit (21 Nov): Still no wank. Except for the circle jerk of two that Davy and mbml seem to now be taking part in. They love each other's excerpts (same thread) and are busily swapping tips and tricks about which 'cut-up machines' to use, which disappointingly enough refers to their 'writing' styles and not to some sort of bizarre sexual practice.

Alas, wankas, I fear I have failed thee this time.

Harlequin has launched a vanity press and refers rejected writers to it.

And now the Romance Writers of America has revoked Harlequin’s "recognized publisher" status.

Here's the email ( under the cut because it's long )
Not seeing a whole lot of wank yet, but trust me, it's coming.

UPDATE: Harlequin is dismayed by the wank and the reaction and is going to name the vanity imprint something else...

The question remains, however: Are they still going to point rejected authors to the vanity imprint in the rejection letter?

This is the first negative opinion piece on the Twilight series I've seen on a mainstream newspaper (well at least one that's local), possibly I've been living under a rock, but it made me very happy.

You know how hard it is when your flist is going on and on about a series you can't stand? Well, OK, you can just scroll on by, but now it's society which is going on and on about it, the advertising is driving me a bit insane, I can't wait until people move onto the next big thing.

Warning, spoilers in article.
----
When I was growing up, my literary heroine was Josephine March from Little Women. Jo was a lanky tomboy with no interest in frocks or gentlemen. While her sisters flirted and fretted about their noses, Jo scribbled in the attic, dreaming of becoming a writer. She chopped off her hair, threw snowballs and lived with gusto at a time when gusto was extremely unladylike.

( Bella has become a poster girl for the gender roles Jo and Anne rejected more than 100 years ago )

Source

I have been documenting function outputs for six hours straight.

/wrist

Mother calls the police to her home to help her control her 10-year-old... again. Mother repeatedly tells the cop he can tase her daughter. After a brief struggle, the cop does. According to the police chief, tasing the girl was preferable to picking her up because "They can slip from you and fall on the ground."

Link

( Text for the linkphobic. )


ETA: The officer's report on The Smoking Gun, link courtesy of heuradys.

Yesterday I went to my mall pet store, which inexplicably had much happier-looking fish than the last place. It also had super awesome fish, like a big silver arowana that glared disdainfully down at me and a sleepy lionfish. I'm not buying any fish atm, but I like looking at them.

So, the next step up from a 5 gallon tank would be... what? I'd like to get at least a 20 gallon, because I want morefish and more room for plants and hiding places. Still freshwater, although I think it would be awesome to eventually have a marine tank with coral and everything. Also, any suggestions for types of fish/plants/whatever?

And how come every single piece of fish advice on the internet is different >:(?

Background: Ubuntu is a distribution of Linux. Think of it as a version of Linux like you have Windows XP, Vista, Me, 95, etc. Some people created Ubuntun Christian Edition, which annoyed some members of the Ubuntu community who didn't see why a special religious-based distribution was needed but it was mostly a polite argument. Then, in retaliation, Ubuntu Satanic Edition was created.

Cue wank.

Not from the Christians, though! The wank was all provided by a Satanist called HHS and another Satanist who called himself 'friend of HHS', both of whom popped up in the comments box and kept a running argument going with several different people until he randomly disppeared.

Most of it is under the cut, because it's long and takes place over years, but here are a few highlights to whet your appetite, both from him and people who were arguing with him.

HHS starts off with saying "This is very insulting to my religion. I really don’t think you should misuse the Lord’s name like that.

Richard M. Stallman, who is responsible for GNU and Linux, is a jewish psychopath who does not deserve to come near Hell. We do not want to be associated with him or anything made by this communist who never bathes and eats his own hair."

People get confused and think he's a Christian who's objecting to Linux SE. Cue HHS exploding and warning them "It’s very unclever to go against the Lord and dishonour Him and His people. When you die and meet Satan, just try calling Him “jesus boy” too and you’ll know what I’m talking about. I assume that you two are Jews because they call everyone Christian who aren’t Jews or Muslims."

( All hail LINUX -- I mean, Satan/Cthulhu/Flying Spaghetti Monster/God/Allah/[insert deity or pantheon of choice here!] )

From wank_report:
Genevieve Koski, writing for the A.V. Club, offers her opinion on a recent screening of Ghostbusters for Better Late Than Never, the feature in which authors who never experienced some element of the pop culture of the past go back and review it with the jaded eyes of the present. Her opinion, of course, is negative.

( Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. )
...I don't have to warn for Ghostbusters spoilers, do I?

So ordains Australia.
Or maybe Xenophone is just a Xenuphobe. *ZING!*

Airing on Saturday on the CW, they are going to be airing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Oldschool/Newschool crossover.

( In which I am mean to Norah Jones )

The lord is a very, very busy man.

Uh, so. If you like Japanese CG bio-armor cyberpunk, CASSHERN MAY BE THE MOVIE FOR YOU!

( Excuse me whilst I kill your internet connection )

I know I have no coherent reason here why you should possibly watch this goofy-ass movie. So, um. It's the campiest Darker and Edgier remake I've ever seen? And. There are pretty bishounen? And fighting? AND ROBOTS!

...why do my favorite characters always die :<? First Yakuza with Revolver in Versus, and now Katana Dude. SHENANIGANS. More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21334371@N03/sets/72157622695442491

I'm surprised this hasn't made it over here yet:

Universal's UK 'Couples Retreat' Poster Brings Cries of Racism by Removing Black Actors

The excuse?

In response to outrage over the move, a Universal spokesman said the altered poster aimed "to simplify the poster to actors who are most [recognizable] in international markets."

Universal "issued a statement regretting any offense it caused, and the studio has scrapped all plans to use the modified poster in other overseas markets" but this makes it sound like the problem is with the people who took offense.

Provolone is the best cheese!

Picked this up from Cleo's twitter. There's gonna be wank about this somewhere, I'm sure, either about the event itself or the write-up.

"Robert Pattinson fan hospitalised over poster fight."

"Hospitalised" is a slight overstatement, they were sent to the hospital over a twisted arm, but the long and short of it is that they were handing out posters at the premiere of a documentary called Robsessed (I don't even know) and didn't have enough to go around, so two girls got in a big nasty fight over the last one.

The poster, by the way, was ripped in half during the fight.

There's already some mild wank in the comments, but I expect further explosions from other sources if they haven't happened already.

ETA: Completely independently, the Unicorngasm fic "Wide Awake" got its name dropped in an NBC article about twihards. This has the makings of an interesting week....

Thinks crew members of NBC's Heroes. It all started when Jim Martin (assistant to show creator Tim Kring and himself a writer on the show) engaged in conversation with (former, now disgruntled) fans about the show, and in the process uttered such gems as "Anyone who thinks they can do better... I dare you. Go ahead. :) I'd love to see it." and "If you think that Racism and Sexism are thematically integrated in HEROES then you may want to check your intelligence before worrying about it being insulted." That post has since been deleted, but a kind mouse saved it and shared it with us in wank_report. In his follow-up post about the whole mess, he whined about how he liked the internet better when it wasn't so self-righteous, and left us with even more gems as "Look up the diversity programs for writers in tv. Ask anyone in the tv world. There is a distinct disadvantage to be a white male when trying to be a staff writer." and "I'm fully aware of what you are referencing, but I don't think its a problem on Heroes and I don't think white privilege is an issue in Hollywood at this point."

Sounds bad enough, right?

But no! Turns out that was just the start of a downwards spiral of fail, and it turns out that the fail reached new startling depths when Foz McDermott, a coordinating producer and writer of the show and perpetual bringer of anti-PC and misogyny fail, decided to use his own blog to reply to a particular comment that was left on Jim Martin's blog. He starts charmingly:

“The idea that white privilege isn’t a problem in Hollywood at this point is an idea coming from a privileged standpoint.”

Holy crap lady… if you are indeed a lady… that is hilarious. In a business that is scared of and run by pussy organizations that are so scared of being sued about everything, being OVERLY PC is the actual problem. Being a white male in the business of Hollywood is NOT easy. There are programs and incentives to help everyone except white males.

( no, it doesn't get better from there )

I've personally been fuming about Heroes for months, but when it sinks so low, I'm not sure I can do much else than laugh.

I'm trying to think of some things to buy myself for Christmas. This is part of my larger plan to not become like my relatives, for whom Christmas is a time to drive a couple hours to someone else's house so they can get an electronic foot massager they didn't want anyway. When, in fact, the best part of any Christmas is PRESENTS. SHINY SHINY PRESENTS.

( Also, I'm trying to figure out some animation problems: )

From Indian Express:

He might be playing a blood- sucking vampire on-screen, but 'Twilight' star Robert Pattinson is scared that he might get killed by his crazy fans in real life.

In a new book named 'Robert Pattinson: The Unauthorised Biography', the 23-year-old actor has expressed his fear of obsessed followers who are after his life ever since he shot to fame with the vampire movie, reported News of the World.

"People ask me to bite them and want to touch my hair.I just don't want someone to have a needle and give me HIV and I don't want to get shot or stabbed," Pattinson says.

The 'Twilight' sequel 'New Moon', in which he again plays vampire Edward Cullen, opens in London on Wednesday and has a high-profile movie premiere in Los Angeles the day before. But Pattinson is terrified of such occasions.

"Oh my God. Are they going to blow the place up?" he says.

The British actor also narrates an incident when crazy fans cut themselves to bleed to show their love for him.

"There were girls who had scratched the side of their necks, so they were freshly bleeding when they came up to get a signature. They were like, 'We did this for you'. I didn't know what to say. 'Thank you, guys?'," Pattinson says.

What makes me really sad, and well, thinky about this is all the times I've been groped on the train, probably a dozen or so times. I usually moved away really quickly, or on one memorable occasion I elbowed a guy in the stomach. But it nevered occured to me, at the time, or any time since, to take it to the authorities, or even talk to the rail staff.

And the reason being? I don't know, I just accept that these things happen, I just accept it would be useless to make a fuss about it. In my mind, being groped on peak-hour commuting time is like spilling coke all over your dress, it happens, it sucks, you move on. Every woman knows when they are being groped. So I call bullshit on the Judges.
----
Last April, the Supreme Court reversed a Tokyo High Court decision that found Masahiro Nakura, a professor of medicine at the Self-Defense Forces University, guilty of being a chikan (groper) after he was charged with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old high school girl on the Odakyu train line in 2006. A majority of the judges said they thought the girl's statement was "unreliable."

( article behind cut )
Source