Holy Serious Business, Batman!

Why do people keep engaging pathology_doc in UFB when it's obvious that s/h/it's just posting whatever they know will start a fight? YOU'RE BEING TROLLED, YOU GUYS.

I've been thinking more about the problem of non-funny stuff on F_W, and a comment on the latest installment about how "GLBT stuff" is almost never funny gave me pause. See, it seems to me the problem isn't so much that certain subjects cannot be humorous as that certain subjects require high levels of absurdity to override their inherent non-humorous nature.

For instance, I remember someone went onto some fanfic-mocking comm on LJ back when I was over there still and tried to get people upset about a K/S fic. Why? Because Vulcans would never be gay/bi, it wouldn't be logical, and because the story summary referenced Iowa, which she held to not exist in Trekverse. The latter point was much more prominent in her post, and so patently absurd that it trumped the unfunniness of her anti-gay attitude.

A good report also helps. For instance, it is possible that the most recent wank, featuring people comparing straight people being denied a specific award for GLBT-themed fiction to segregated drinking fountains and Fred Phelps, could've been saved by highlighting the ridiculousness of those comparisons, although the fact that it's still a serious debate about identity issues in which both sides have some good points makes that improbable.

Basically, humor is more complicated than one might think, in this context, and I'm wondering if there should be a discussion of it somewhere....

WTF is unfunnybusiness for if F_W still isn't funny? >:-(

Married male "family values" Republican Assemblyman from Orange County brags, in committee, in graphic detail about having sex with two different female lobbyists, and fails to realize his microphone's on. The (Republican) Assemblyman he was talking to, who's on the Assembly Ethics Committee (!!!), claims to not have been paying attention.

Excuse me while I roll on the floor laughing.

Just when I'm about to try to promote my Star Trek-inspired equality activism website on JF, we get this wank. Coincidence? Conspiracy? Act of God?

(Mine's really supposed to be an activist site, though....)

Is it rant season on JF all of a sudden?

"If gay marriage was good enough for Dumbledore, it's good enough for California."

I have uploaded my entire Claudia Christian screencap collection. It took me all day to get in order, but it is now ONLINE. I can... do something with it.

Hm.

I should maybe have thought through my evil "defeat the Urbanites with Claudia Christian pictures" scheme a little more carefully....

down_with_urban down_with_urban down_with_urban down_with_urban down_with_urban

I thought Unfunnybusiness was a good idea at first, but I'm starting to question that. It seems like, now that people have a place to put the really seriously disturbing stuff they want to wank about in and wank about it without fear, they're opting overwhelmingly to do that. Whether because it's what they really wanted all along or because, now we have a place for unfunny, they're concerned that anything not side-splittingly hilarious will be booed off the wank comms, I don't know. But I was thinking, and it went sort of like this:

1) This (related to racism), this (bestiality), this (okay, maybe not the funniest, but a classic) this (rape/child molestation), and this (incest/child molestation) would all be classified as unfunny if they were posted to wank comms now.

2) But they actually were funny. Even the hurricane-outwalking thing, because we (general) got some good jokes/memes out of it.

Therefore, 3) it seems probable that our current classification system for wank is perhaps overkill. That, or there was a lot less funny out there than there seemed to be.

I remember why UFB started -- too much racism/sexism, too little funny. Because racism and sexism aren't funny, generally, with exceptions for truly ridiculous claims related to them ("vandalism" is an ethnic slur against an extinct tribe!) But right now we've got hardly any funny, and the unfunny's far unfunnier than any of the wank comms' unfunny used to be, and I just think -- maybe this isn't working. Maybe we need to just take breaks from things when we get sick of them, instead of shoving them into a cornfield for all time? What do you think?

Not posted to any relevant discussion comm because I'm a coward.

EDIT: Meep, showed up fine in preview. Fixing HTML...

Dear Heroes:

¿Qué joder?

P. S. also what's with the sudden Bruce Boxleitner?

Dear Heroes fandom:

I can has moar Elle/Claire fic nao?

hot_daily needs YOU to go here and VOTE FOR HOT WOMEN OF SCI-FI.

Need convincing? Read the comments. And don't forget: Nichelle Nichols >>>>> Karl Urban.

After I talked about the possibility of making one's own website last time, and then finally upgraded my George Takei site, it hit me: boy, would it be fun to make a new site. Only thing, of course, is that I don't know what I'd make a site about.

So, I'm taking suggestions. Ideas, anyone?

Happy Towel Day, barely, everyone!

(The below also on my IJ)

It's funny -- I used to be a great reader. The dining room table would be stacked with books I had been reading and hadn't gotten around to putting away because I wasn't tired yet of picking them up and rereading my favorite scenes. I would read during meals, as a result of which multiple Redwall books and some Tamora Pierce ones were significantly stained as well as being worn out. I devoured the books without, metaphorically speaking, chewing, then went over them again and again to absorb the details I had missed in my first greedy skimming.

I think the internet, combined perhaps with adolescence (does it seem to anyone else that time starts going faster sometime during puberty?) changed reading for me. I look at a book as a commitment now, more time than I am now accustomed to reading any one thing, and as I read in a way that is not conducive to putting the book down and picking it up again later, I can't break them into manageable chunks. I hardly read new books now. I feel guilty about it, but it's hard to get back into just picking them up and letting myself go when I'm so out of the habit.

Today I read Frederik Pohl's Gateway. It was interesting to my eyes, now attuned to pick out diversity and lack thereof in a way they never used to be: the universe Pohl created is a future in which the major powers are the US, Russia, China, Venus (?), and Brazil. I liked that, especially since the Brazilians actually did appear in prominent roles. Then there were a bunch of gay/bi guys (and a brief mention of polygamous gay women) in it, which I wasn't expecting, and it took a pretty sex-positive view with both gay and straight relations, not just for men either, though the male main character has most of the sex in the story. It was also well-written, with a cool premise/setting I won't give the details on, so overall I liked it. Major cons were that it was a downer, that it was a bit dull at points (the formula "Bob sees woman, description of the particular ways she's attractive, then they probably have sex offstage at least once" gets old by the end,) and that one of the guys-who-liked-guys was "explained" by some Freud-based thing about his relationship with his mother -- though I think that was the official view in 1977, when the book was written, and to Pohl's credit there was no indication that being gay/bi was a problem despite the alleged cause.

Overall: good book; not as cool as the computer game; I fully intend to read the sequels.

This icon has nothing to do with anything; I just didn't want to wait for an excuse to use it.

Guys?

I don't think homeschooling wank is funny. Maybe I'm taking it too personally, because whenever people start debating education choices I hear BUT WHAT ABOUT SOCIALIZATION?!?!?!?!?! echoing through my head, with all the attached implications that my parents deprived me of something vital by giving me what I honestly believe was the perfect upbringing for me. Or the assumptions that my parents are fundies. When people are actually talking to me, they tend not to say things about the intelligence or social skills of homeschooled children, but online I expect that too.

My education's a part of who I am and the culture I'm from. It was also a major undertaking of my parents, especially my mother, and I love them and don't like to see their beliefs and choices and work swept into a little generalized heap. And it's easy for public school graduates to complain about homeschoolers' attitudes, but when there are so few of us and so many of you, it gets really old and unpleasant and formulaic from our side. For me -- this is my whole life.

YES, I'M WANKING. But at least I'm not doing it on F_W, right? (Speaking of which, isn't homeschooling OTF even if it's in Fanficrants? It's not exactly fannish....)

I evidently depend too much on IJ. Tonight, for want of it, I have:

-Written to StumbleUpon complaining about implicit discrimination in their categorization system.
-Checked up on the status of all the social networking sites I joined at some point and decided I didn't like the blinginess of.
-Visited Claudia Christian's official forum about a million times, even though I know it doesn't get that much traffic, to see if anyone's responded to my suggestion that she make a time-traveling sci-fi thing in which she has a fistfight with Tracy Scoggins. (Hey, she asked for ideas.)
-Hunted down many hot pictures of Celia Freijeiro. Hey, people with boobie icons: is it worth having NSFW ones? 'Cause I've only got ten icon slots, but there's a picture....
-Played dress-up. Well, that wasn't because of IJ, it's something I've been doing lately....

Stupid internet and its stupid addictive sites.

u guyz u guyz u guyz I have this idea for the FUNNIEST WANK EVER! Homophobic misogynist vs. racist animal abuser! Guaranteed LULZ for all!

I think I've figured it out -- c/p'd from my IJ:

Real-life Serious Bad Things that people are likely to have strong feelings about are not likely to be funny. People comparing, say, negative fic reviews to one of those Really Bad Things is usually fine -- as long as we're not told that we should agree with them.

What do you think? Does it need more explication, or might people actually get it if I put it like that?

Dear internet:

I find the recent lack of funny distinctly distressing. As a serious individual, I rely upon internet stupidity to provide me with rest from the difficult life a serious person lives; that Israeli politicians are filling this need instead is tragic. Please cease and desist from failing at humor immediately.

On another topic, I screencapped invested a great deal of time and energy in making a Babylon 5 macro, but know I'll never get into a situation where it's appropriate, so I post it here.

Laws of Fair and Balanced Entertainment

-Roddenberry's Law of Infinite Diversity: For every one representative of an ethnic minority, there must be at least two white characters.
-Lucas's Law of This Is Totally Feminist U Guyz: For every one strong female character, there must be at least two male ones.
-Really Just About Anyone's Law of Gender-Race Relations: Characters of African descent are usually male, while characters of Asian descent are usually female.
-Straczynski's Law of Ultimate Fail: Representation of sexual minorities shall be occasionally attempted, but somehow prevented from being made explicit by circumstances beyond the Creators' control.

Yet To Be Determined: How does gender relate to place on the Kinsey scale where applicable? How about race? Should Straczynski's Law be named Kring's Law instead? Who should the third law be named for? Am I wrong?

The internet is being unfunny -- what's wrong? Do I have to troll somewhere? 'Cause I have a really good idea I've been wanting to do, but trolling is naughty and I know I shouldn't....

(No, not posting on an ongoing wank -- shit-stirring. Geez, what kind of monster do you think I am?)

Buggeration. I am not having fun right now.