In preparation for the descent of the Tea Party on DC, a Maine Tea Party site reposted a blog about the places in DC to go and avoid.

News of this reposting hit dcist.com, where a number of readers learned that they're living in sections that are "worse than Baghdad"--or that certain sections of the city need avoided because of t3h Gay.

In case you were curious, the parts of DC that are Reaver territory so terribly unsafe are . . . Most of them.


Comments on the dcist post are equal parts grouchiness and snark . . . until the original blog poster, a semi-professional troll, turns up. Then it goes straight to trollbaiting.

Lj's deleting full journals if the poster has posted something that portrays characters potentially under the age of eighteen in sexual or just plain naked situations.

innocence_jihad reports here: At least two HP fanartists have been booted without warning for not-age-specific artwork posted to pornish_pixies. One of these posts was f_locked. Journalfen has a bigger breakdown here.

Some people recommend charging off to greatestjournal. Some are recommending insanejournal. the_pouncer recommends taking matters past the internet and calling the company. GJ and IJ both have ads I don't want . . . Guess we all know what option that leaves.

I'm wondering if these half-assed back-and-forths are an attempt to get us to not pay as much attention, because it's hard to get as worked up the third or sixth or tenth time around as it was that first.

But even so, the mess at news and lj_biz is impressive.

ETA: synecdochic tries to explain lj's reasoning here.


(Fucking hell, lj. I'd intended to get some yard work done today.)

J.A. Konrath’s book Dirty Martini is the sloppiest thing I’ve read since Clare’s City of Bones.

( Spoilers, crankiness. Is this what a 'beach read' is supposed to be like? )

If you like fast-paced storylines enough that you can take the story without feeling the need to question anything, then go for it. If you can’t, then avoid this book.

I found this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few days ago, about a new ebook store catering specifically to women. No big deal, sure--until I got to the point where the CEO of the company started talking about why she likes romance novels.

The exact quote, bolding mine:

"For many women, it's a kind of guilty pleasure," she says with a chuckle. "If you're like me, every once in a while I want to have a romance [novel] because I can't stand my life.

Multiple bystanders videotape the fatal gang-beating of a young Arab woman rather than step in to save her, a full-length movie focusing on the kidnapping and torture of another woman--already being labeled a shameless Saw ripoff--is supposed to hit the theaters this summer . . . and Joss Whedon gets fucking pissed off and throws down.

I've never paid much attention to the man before, but now I think I need to send him cookies.

PS: I hate humanity.


All of this begs the question: What is the correlation between violence and sex, where sex stands as the concept of gender as well as the act? Something for me to come back to, perhaps.

A few days ago, dublin___sky posted in petbulls to inform the community that littlehounddog, the community's creator, had been de-modded and banned.

Things she's done in the past and just recently have made a lot of people question her integrity as a pet owner and a rescuer.
Her own behavior was questioned by several members recently when she posted here asking for donations adding up to $3000. When her rescue's status was questioned, she immediately screened all comments and has not answered important questions that people have the right to know about if they're going to be donating to her rescue.

She was been speculated as a backyard breeder of rescue sugar gliders and rescue rats in the past, using the excuse that lines have to start somewhere, and apparently violating "no breeding" contracts. We feel this reflects badly on actual reputable rescues and is unethical.

The amount of animals she's taking in has been questioned. She is a person with minimal space, constantly taking in multiple animals along with her own animals. How much can one person handle? Some of her dogs have been rehomed, but she is often adding even more animals to her pack. Many of us find this highly suspicious.
In reference to her most recent post concerning donations to pay her property taxes, many more members questioned the intention, since other homeowners understand property taxes and the amount of time they must go unpaid to get to a total of $3000. By allowing a debt of that size, we worry about her ability to properly care for her own animals, as well as the ones she is rescuing, breeding, and adopting. We feel it is unfair to members of the community to ask them for money, evade questions concerning her status as a rescue, and screening comments.

littlehounddog

littlehounddog

littlehounddog

I'd rather have a somewhat flawed individual who is simply human and like most humans requires guidance and more education - than a person who is perversely treacherous, back stabbing, and somehow thinks it's appropriate to be that way.

People who are misguided are not worse that people who are intentionally malicious with eachother.

I truly hope that this mutiny backfires. That would be very satisfying.

littlehounddog

dublin___sky

littlehounddog

I started Patricia Briggs's Moon Called a couple days ago and got about halfway through it before (belatedly) realizing that I am absofuckinglutely sick of vampires and werewolves. I guess if you like vampires and werewolves it might be fun. The MFC, Mercy, is a little hard on herself though she has her reasons—I just got into some heavy-duty eye-rolling when two of the super-studly wereguys started bickering and angsting over not being/wanting to be/claiming her as their mate.

But for real now. We need new and different monsters! There's tons of awesome and awful things from mythology—why fixate on just these two?

(Go ahead, say it: Because writing a supernatural romance starring a wendigo or a nuckelavee would be hella awful to pull off, Random, and would probably end messily and highly unromantically.)


~~~


It's a given that the nature of incompetence is such that it's not recognized by those caught up in being incompetent. It seems that the reverse of this is true as well: that, unless people are told that something is good, they'll not recognize it. Possible point in case is this: a man recently recognized as the best classical musician in America camped out at a Washington, DC metro station and played his heart out from behind an open violin case.

He was mostly ignored.

Is the nature of incompetence, then, to also not recognize competence? Or is it indicative of human nature that we must be told what is good and what isn't, that we must be introduced to a new way of looking at things?


I had a customer a while back who of her own volition started gushing about the wondrousness of Laurell Hamilton. I waited until she stopped, then threw my verbal two cents into the pile of small change she'd created: "I remember when she wrote plot."

Different metals striking produces a different tone, something that can be startling when one is used only to the melody of their own opinion's percussion.

She stopped; she blinked; she focused on the books in front of her again as if seeing them for the first time. "Yeah, I remember that, too. She hasn't done that much lately, has she?"

I think I sold her Moon Called instead.

angelhunter turned up a ton of Terry Goodkind sporkings and parodies. My night is good--especially since I saw the bad in that series and fled long, long ago.

I might have to take the Goodkind meets Bad Porn one to weepingcock to help piece people's brains back together after the Zombie Bukkake post.

~~

I read Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box a couple days ago and would definitely recommend it. Long summary short: an aging rock star buys a ghost on the internet, and upon its arrival all hell breaks loose.

My only picks with this book center around how the author makes a n00bly mistake when it comes to descriptions (he knows what the main character looks like, and thus doesn't tell the reader) and how two minor characters come off as stereotypical. We don't get a basic building block for the main character Jude's apperance until about seventy pages in and not even a full visual until almost the end, and don't know what kind of dogs Jude's been near-constantly interacting with until p. 126. But it's a fast read (about 4.5 hours), a substantial book that somehow seems shorter due to its flow, with a good grasp of tension and an easy, believable way of blending supernaturalism with reality. Add in realistically-acting, colorful (and sometimes downright creepy) main characters with fairly complex emotional subplots and interactions, and I'm on the bandwagon.

I might be persuaded to part with an ARC. Maybe.

~~

A twelve-year-old girl got a book published in Canada a little while back. Reactions to said book wavered between "WTF, Highlander ripoff" and "WTF, twelve-year-old writing murders and violence"--until French-speaking Highlander fen got a hold of it. Turns out that no, it wasn't quite a Highlander ripoff. It was someone's Highlander fanfic that this kid had copied and pasted offline, then sold.
The editor who published it is suing the kid's parents and swears they never read the book before printing it. I'm not sure who needs slapped more.

ETA: The kind folks over at journalfen have transcribed or loosely summarized the French articles in English. 1 2 3 4

kippurbird is embarking on a full-fledged sporking of Eragon in their lj. They make me really, really, exceptionally happy that I haven't tried to get through that book.

~~

I met Rebecca Drake yesterday. She's ascribed to the jakonrath school of self-promotion, which is that you as an author march about making sure bookstores are carrying your book, doing drop-in signings, basically making sure that your publisher doesn't lose any money on your book's printing, so on. Kinda like a do-it-yourself insurance policy. I think I like her narrative voice, she seems interesting and has some information and insight that I could use--now it's my job to corrupt her. I can't believe she hasn't seen LKH's wankstorm from a couple weeks back.

~~

A thread at lkh_lashouts brings up the possibility that the popularity of LKHamilton is due to the sexual hangups of her reader base--a lack of a proper sexual revolution leading to readers who think that real-fake BDSM, physically impossible positions, godawfully repetitive descriptions, and straight-up Victorian-type "I can't feel guilty because I have to have sex!" bullshit is the way to go. This may also explain the blind squee-ing of fanpeople for less than worthwhile fanfic--a sort of fantasy fulfilment as opposed to actual artistic value. I'm not sure what else the hook may be.

One of the (many) quirks to my personality is that though I tend to dislike people, I still like listening to them talk. You learn things from them that way: stories, random facts, new and interesting (or revolting) opinions--and in many cases, letting someone talk brings a better chance of them saying something incriminating.

Point in case:

A few days ago at Borders, I found myself talking to a mother with two young sons, the youngest of which was interested in the Naruto manga. The mother wasn't feeling it--she'd opened one of them and found what she considered to be questionable material.

Well, yeah. The kid's eight and the manga is understandably rated 13+. But the mom saw the anime on Cartoon Network and thought it was all ok. But when she bought one (at random, neither of them care about learning who the characters are or reading the storyline as it develops) and was reading it to her kid--

Wait, huh, what? Oh. Jackpot.

The kid is eight years old and his mother has to read his comics to him.


Someone obviously needs to get their kid away from the tv and into the read-to-me/read-to-myself section, but suggesting that requires more tact that I possess.

What happens when someone takes their yaoi relationship fantasy a little too seriously? Wank!

And I was really confused for the first three pages as to who was what gender from which point to when...but then someone popped up with proof-positive photos, and I went from "confused" to "scarred for life." OMG. Hug me.

Dear fanpeople who think "Romeo and Juliet" is the most remarkable and wonderfulest love story EVAR and that your SO IN LOVE characters (from any fandom) should act it out/quote it/be just like it,

I’d like to poop on your illusions.

( Reading Comp. 101, with chatspeak and capslock and one scary picture! )

So what do you get when a virgin moral streetfighting narcissistic mysogynistic possessed neck-less and non-masturbating saiyan-wannabe hits bullshido.net because he's anxious about relating to girls who've had martial arts training?

( Need I spell it out? )

Edit: ( Forty-eight pages and a community stompdown later... )

In response to this post @ fandom_wank, where the Harmonians are... still at it. Apparently God ships Harry/Hermione!

These people make me feel that much more sane.

1) 2)

One of the new co-worker underlings is quite young, and talks a lot while she's wound up. And guess what - today she was wound up.

"Yeah, this is kinda what our dog looks like, we have a boxer and we had a boxer that looks like this and a boxer that looks like this and this one looks kinda like that one and that one looks like this one and -"

In the meantime, I'm not paying too much attention. But then!

"We have one that looks like this now and not so much like that and my sister french-kisses it sometimes and-"

...

... ...

X___x

Yeah.

Some people from my f-list can attest that when something completely breaks my brain, I go straight past facepalming and headdesking. Instead, I very quietly put my head down on my arm, usually cover my ears with the other arm (or face with my hand), and commence shaking/hyperventilating.

This was one of those cases. It got worse as she described how her mom had caught the sister french-kissing the dog, and that she, who shares her room with the sister, has on multiple occasions asked the girl what she was doing with the dog under her covers.

Never a dull moment, though I may like to try one out some day.

F_w is my Shepherd; I shall not wank.
It maketh me aware of how not to argue:
It pointeth out to me the scary and plagiarism of Cassie Claire;
It storeth for me the batshit of Sailor Moon cosplayers;
It leadeth me away from the paths of righteous soapbox preaching and fanficcers that discover vanity presses in order to mock the horrors of my fandom.

Yea, though I click through the just-in section of ff.net,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy jokes and thy snark, they comfort me.
Thou bringeth me t3h cute or funny to send to everyone;
Thou teacheth me to leave my drink elsewhere, lest my beer meet my monitor.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow some people, just not me.
And I don't care, as long as fandom_love never returns, ever, ever again.
Amen.

I want to see a cage match between Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton. The splooge would fly! The world would never be the same!

Let's take a look at the contestants:

Anne Rice believes herself to be too good for an editor, has made a Marty Stu of Lestat, and likes to wank at her fans/critics.

L.K.Hamilton can't spell and doesn't care, has made a self-insert Mary Sue of Anita Blake, and likes to wank at her fans/critics.

Anne Rice writes about vampires and (sometimes squicky) bad porn.

L.K.Hamilton writes about vampires and (sometimes squicky) bad porn.

Anne Rice inserted her deceased child into her works as Claudia.

L.K.Hamilton inserted her (now) ex-husband as Richard, and then vilified his character while tacking in her current husband as Micah.

Rice writes wangst and urple. Hamilton writes wangst and so much smut that amazon.com's editorial review even snarks at her:

It would be an exaggeration to say that Laurell K. Hamilton's Incubus Dreams is just one sex scene after another. This twelth novel in her bestselling Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series presents a wedding, a murder, and a lot of relationship angst before getting down and dirty on page 89; and the sex scenes pause on page 377 to let the mystery plot resume.

"Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" will tell the story of Jesus' early years in his own words.

glenraven

To the world:
We're Sorry.

May have something else to say later. Eh.

http://www.fluffbunnytrad.com/

The uberparody site of the moment.( Not too huge, but eh. )
This thing is... Awesome.

Come on. Tell me you haven't met people like this.