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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Cardcaptor Meril" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:59 pm
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Meril says mildly unpopular things on the internet
Populace of JF: Just let the Twilight shit GO, all right? I have a hunch that the only reason people are dumping all the Twilight stupidity in the Lounge--outside of Twimoms and things posted on MSM blogs--is because most of these wankers are underage.
It's mostly teens getting overworked over a teen movie and a teen book. You may as well go poking up old Beatlemania things. (Or learn Korean, but those would also be underage wankers.) Or Elvis. People still get worked up over Elvis, and he's been dead since before I was born.
Tags: cranky!meril
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02:16 pm
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stuff I'm going to LJ about
the TiVo Test: Heroes is not a show I watch, but the TiVo Test is applicable to the show I do watch. I'm finally catching up with all the Without a Trace I didn't watch during baseball season. The point where I went to bed, forgot what I had been watching, and the next day loaded a game from June in which Julian Tavarez got shelled instead is an indicator of how much I'm really into the show. About the only thing I enjoyed from last season (so far) was Danny buying a Brewers onesie for Samantha's baby.
Tags: link 'em all, television
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05:47 pm
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today's slightly useless links
Roger Ebert's personal rules for reviewing. Considering the wank that went around sports card blogs last month because some reviewer is getting free boxes of cards when he does his reviews (he promptly started giving those cards away, and his reviews of the free product were harsh, but still...) it's relevant.
The Brewers didn't pick up Craig Counsell's option but seem to be inclined to pay him less and keep him anyway. There has to be a use somewhere for a marginally attractive, well-fielding utility infielder who can't hit, right?
Tags: link 'em all
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03:34 pm
[Link] | review of short fiction that calls out the sf genre for being too insider-y and not explaining what things mean to newbies.
linked only because it seems to also apply to the acafan wank. i think people are not so much ticked off at "acafans", whatever the hell those are, as bothered by the jargon that seems to come up. I'd look at some old metafandom posts, but I can't right now, to give an idea of what I mean.
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02:57 pm
[Link] | My mother and I were discussing the Harry Potter movies yesterday. She hasn't seen the 5th one yet but neither of us could remember what it was called so we could look it up on the online program guide.
It's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I am blogging here so I can remember it. This is odd because I have read the book and seen the movie.
(I have to be one of the few people who likes the movies better than the books, at least in regards to the last two movies--the more extraneous info that Rowling put into the books, the more the movies can cut into making a streamlined plot.)
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07:33 pm
[Link] | AARRRGH!!!
Once again, kids:
Just because it's "a classic" or "literary" doesn't mean it's good BUT
just because it's "genre" doesn't mean it's good either.
If all genre was good fans of epic fantasy wouldn't have coined the term Extruded Fantasy Product.
Also, YA isn't the Best Genre Evar. I know most of the people who say this are either YA authors or their dedicated fans, but most of the "you MUST read YA, you don't know what you're missing" make it sound like joining some sort of cult.
(also, why the hell would you major in English and then go through an MFA program if you hated reading and thought it was dull and full of hard work?)
Tags: books, cranky!meril
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04:28 pm
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why, yes, I DO collect badfic
I'd have a metric crapton of baseball RPS to contribute to this request if not for the fact that all the panicky fangirls locked their crap after Deadspin linked it. (emphasis on crap.)
Related to that, am I the only person who thinks that "you should write original fiction" is a more polite way of saying "you're a really good writer but your fic's relationship to canon is such that you're essentially already writing original fic?"
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03:51 pm
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things that are sick
Me, for one thing. Also so so busy with work, etc.
![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) charmian, I'm still working on your five questions. It's been that sort of week. 2 weeks, even.
Tried to get into a new fandom, which I won't mention here to prevent wank, but it's filled with the spiritual daughters of Diane Chambers. I don't like being anti-intellectual, but they're driving me to it. Also, for an historical fandom whose writers supposedly take pride in all the research they do, why do the fics seem to be using Wikipedia or the equivalents as the primary source? Writing slash does not instantly make one's fiction superior to all other forms, girls.
Baseball season is winding down into the last two weeks. Seth McClung is back in the Brewers rotation. I'm dead broke and we're on no-vacation mandatory OT for the next two weeks. Also, my DVR is full and soon to be fuller with new fall TV. I guess I'll be watching all those movies I recorded off HBO and never got to this weekend, then. When I'm not working. Or sick. ::hack::cough::
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04:53 pm
[Link] | (if you see this posted later on LJ, it will be more refined and less rushed; here is where I just get words on screen before I forget them)
I am planning a long rant post on book series, but I came upon something on media tie-in novels first and I'll go on about that a bit now.
I agree with the post about media tie-ins being a genre in themselves. If that's all you read, sf isn't really competing with your time.
I also agree with the part about them having more in common with fanfiction than with regular sf.
I am also irritated by people who read nothing but fanfiction. In fact, I have a hard time understanding it. This will probably be the LJ post in the form of a question: if you read nothing or almost nothing but fanfiction, why? What is it that fanfic can give you that original books can't, other than more stories about your favorite TV shows?
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04:41 pm
[Link] | Soooooo, SGA is cancelled! Which crappy skiffy show is the next target for fangirls to produce oceans of slash and liberal guilt meta?
I'll be over here crying about Curt Schilling's retirement...shhh
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08:32 pm
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fans of vampire baseball, or isn't our outfield sparkly?
I was at the Metrodome today watching the Mariners just about beat the Twins (they didn't, 11-8) and, two seats in front of me, there was a woman wearing a Delmon Young shirt and reading Twilight between innings.
It's true, I was reading Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams between innings, but I had brought it into the Dome mostly to serve as a flat, hard surface for writing my scorecard.
This was the paperback Twilight and she wasn't keeping score. In fact, I think she was reading it during the Twins half of the inning. (She was presumably ogling Delmon Young during the other half, which I really can't object to at all.) But Twilight? Was she reading it for the baseball? This would make more sense if she hadn't had New Moon with her as well.
Tags: baseball, books
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09:38 pm
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from the bad erotic romance dept.
(crossposted from LJ)
Yes, this is somewhat related to the trip report. I was reading a romance blog and the blogger was complaining that Tattered Cover, the largest independent bookstore in Denver, didn't carry much of the biggest genre of all--romance. One of the Tattered Cover locations is at the corner of 16th and Wynkoop, about 4 blocks from Coors Field, and since I didn't feel like wandering over to Coors and getting all wet last Wednesday I went bookshopping while I waited for the rain to stop. (It didn't, but I went there anyway before the game was supposed to start.) I picked up The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, which is not a romance but has 2001 World Series-related content, and a paranormal romance anthology, Shifter.
First, if I could remember that blog I read the romance complaint on, I'd comment that Tattered Cover puts a barcode sticker on the back of each book with the date each book was stickered. The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, which keeps getting reprinted, had a date of 7/31/08. Shifter, a March 2008 release, was stickered in...March 2008. I assume Tattered Cover does not stock romance because romance does not sell, except to waterlogged female Rockies fans looking for something to read in the rain. (I actually finished it in the airport.)
( cut for NSFW )
Tags: books, romance
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06:14 pm
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multiple etc.
1) Attempted to read Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett (the Shoebox Project people) and was a bit disappointed. I didn't read SP myself, but I know lots of people who raved about it. I'm wondering if this book would work better read online or on iPod or phone; it's written in many different first-person POVs, broken up into short chunks. What looks like too many jarring shifts in character in a book would probably work better if read in 5-minute bits on the bus or train.
Also, there's a lot of the third artist problem going on here. Alternate Europe + Alternate Asia, check; dragon riders, check; steampunky elements, check; gay magician POV character, check. The first thing I am thinking should not be "so this is what you get if you throw the novels of Michael Swanwick, Sarah Monette, and Ellen Kushner in a blender" but it was.
(related link, "Do SFF authors have to be fans of the genre?" The problems of the overly influenced.)
2) I'm going to Denver in a week and a half! If anyone would like a special postcard from me, shoot your address and JF username to frostflower (at) gmail.com and I'll send you something. I'll be making the same offer over at LJ when I can post there, just in case you don't read both and all.
3) Packing for an 8-day trip sucks. At least it's not in the winter this time.
4) The uncertainty in the Brewers' rotation is making it difficult for me to set my DVR for my trip. Relatedly, my recording space is 93% full and I really shouldn't have saved every one of Seth McClung's starts.
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05:57 pm
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on infodumping and book product lines
I just attempted to read Nimuar's Loss by Camille Gabor (iirc, that's a pen name for an established author, but I cannot remember who) and it has the worst instances of fantasy infodumping I've seen. This includes David Weber novels.
I have about 4 more books from the Juno imprint that I've picked up via paperbackswap.com; I'm going to attempt to read all of them but I'm not sure if I'll pursue picking up anything else from that imprint. I don't think the editor's tastes coincide with mine.
I was thinking that Harlequin/Silhouette books are kind of like Linus Van Pelt and a box of Whitman's Sampler--it's not that the chocolate in the Sampler box is bad, but it's kind of standard and it will serve you if you want chocolate, but there's always the chance that you're going to end up with coconut (especially if Lucy removes the piece guide.)
Juno books are kind of like this, except it's more the 2005 Tampa Bay Devil Rays rotation: it's sort of entertaining to watch, and the redhead's kind of cute, but the staff ERA is over 5 and there's no consistent direction.
Tags: books, fantasy
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07:40 pm
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no Twilight for me, boss, because I'm not as messed up as I'd like to be
I am not going to read the Twilight series. I cannot. I know many of you on my flist have read it and possibly have enjoyed it. However, I've just read a bit of kadath's sporks of it and...oh, seriously not my thing.
I've learned my lesson from HP fandom. Getting into fandoms for something you're not quite fond of is a mistake. I didn't get into Tenipuri because I didn't like it even though a lot of my friends were into it.
If I have to be a fan of something that sucks so badly and has a rabid anti-fandom, I'll start following the Seattle Mariners instead.
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07:04 pm
[Link] | Craig Counsell is bored again. apparently he's trying to out-serious J.D. Drew this season or something. I really hope nothing's wrong with the dude...
In other news, still stuck on that last bit of ficmeme over on the LJ. I haven't forgotten, I just didn't have any time to write during the week. I'll have to save it for the weekend.
I also need to post the book list for April.
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01:47 pm
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gloom, doom, and no rain
Seth McClung pitched horribly today (all right, the intentional walks didn't help, and neither did Mark Teixeira knocking him down.) He is now out of the game, probably out of the rotation (sob!) and I am in serious need of things to Cheer Me Up so I don't keep dwelling on the awful.
Help?
ETA: there apparently is crying in baseball. or at the very least, trying very hard not to cry
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09:05 pm
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wank I'd report if anyone could possibly understand it
when baseball and gaming fandoms combine to produce giant entitlement wank -- with bonus PTB asshattery. At least that's what it looks like to me.
When people say that fanboys don't produce good quality stupidity these days, point to this. XD
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06:01 pm
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LJ advisory: wankstorm warning
Does anyone know if Facebook or Myspace have any such user advisory board thingies?
I can imagine the election of a wordpress.com one. It would probably end up tied between Curt Schilling and the lolcats blog guy. (it's not exactly full of interwebs celebs over there)
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06:16 pm
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bwee, ambiguous news
Seth McClung starting on Saturday?
...
.....
.............
WTF
It's a 6:05 start. I hope it isn't subject to the Evil Fox Blackout, as I'll probably be chillin' at my uncle's farm on Saturday and will be unable to listen to the game on WEVR as per my usual Saturday routine.
But, hey, I bought Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney today so at least I can play that on my way up north?
Tags: baseball, gaming, shameless fangirling
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