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Saturday, January 30, 2010 11:56 PM: Open Letter to Amazon.Com I just e-mailed this to Amazon: I'm a fan of Amazon.Com. A very *vocal* fan of Amazon.Com. I've been buying books through your service for the past decade, and I have defended Amazon in any number of arguments. I have loudly declared that, given the choice of Amazon failing, or every brick-and-mortal bookstore in the land closing, I would rather keep Amazon. Most specifically, I have said that the reason Amazon's increasing dominance is NOT a problem in the way that the dominance of chain bookstore has been is that Amazon sells EVERYTHING. Barnes and Noble, Borders, and so on are limited by the physical space available in shops, and necessarily have too much influence on whether books succeed or fail; Amazon, by making everything available, avoids that trap. And as I could envision no set of circumstances in which Amazon would fail to offer any legitimate book, I had no trouble heaping all of my eggs into its basket. In fact, I have bought at Amazon INSTEAD of offline retailers when possible specifically in order to support what I've thought of as my local bookstore. I'm having second thoughts now. While I could easily understand not carrying copies of Macmillan's books for the Kindle if you were unable to reach an equitable agreement with them, removing the PHYSICAL copies of the books is another matter entirely. You've knocked the support out from my major reason to support you. I don't think I can trust you anymore. And this saddens me more than I can say. Wednesday, January 06, 2010 Well, I never did get to my post on Twitter spam, nor did I come close to posting every day of Holidailies... but I am beating last year's total by one post. And it's better than nothing, which is what I managed the rest of the year, and it's been nice being back in touch with people over here. So I'm scoring this as a win. And now I need to go collapse, for such is the way my internal clock is currently functioning. Thanks once again to Jette and Chip for running Holidailies every year! I know I'm not the only one who greatly appreciates it, both as a writer and as a reader. Sunday, January 03, 2010 8:20 AM: Holidailies Triolet VIII Thanks to Jette and Lisa for their comments on my previous entry... they've successfully convinced me to stay on the wagon. I'm still up for the occasional cup of tea, but I'm sticking with seltzer in general. Diet Pepsi, I abjure thee! Seltzer's good enough for me. Although I may consent to tea, Diet Pepsi, I abjure thee! Henceforth I will ever flee Your caffeinated tyranny. Diet Pepsi, I abjure thee! Seltzer's good enough for me. I think the larger problem for my productivity may simply be that I'm working at home. I think an office would help... but I'm not really sure what to do about that. Otherwise, I'd planned on a decade-end roundup, but I've been preoccupied by this for the past few days. (I've started working up an essay of my own on the subject of that link, but it hasn't quite jelled yet.) But perhaps I can sum it up in a triolet: A tiny basement studio, And no idea of what's to come. That's where I was ten years ago: A tiny basement studio. And ten years on, I'm back below. My prospects suck. I'm feeling glum. A tiny basement studio, And no idea of what's to come. (Last year's Holidailies triolets.) Monday, December 28, 2009 Back in my last post, I was tending toward taking up Diet Pepsi again. There are two reasons why I opted for Diet Pepsi in the first place. The first is that I liked the taste better than that of any other caffeinated, carbonated diet soft drink. The second is that it's historically been the only caffeinated, carbonated diet soft drink that didn't leave me with a horrible aspertame aftertaste even when downing two liters of it daily. One thing I hadn't considered was that in addition to being almost caffeine-free for over a month, I've also been almost aspertame-free for the same period. Turns out that once having crossed that bridge, even half a cup of Diet Pepsi is enough to leave me with a cloying aftertaste. I think I need a new plan. I'm not sure what that new plan ought to consist of. I switched to diet soft drinks in the first place in an attempt to do one thing right for my teeth, and I'd just as soon not go full circle... Thursday, December 24, 2009 5:30 AM: Airing of Grievances: Decaf Edition Strictly speaking, Festivus has been over since midnight, but as far as I'm concerned, the day doesn't end till I go to bed. So. My grievance is directed at caffeine. Or perhaps at my inability to function properly without it. I don't drink coffee. Back in my teens, when I might have been expected to acquire a taste for it, I refused to try the stuff, on the reasonable grounds that I didn't want to become addicted to caffeine. Years later, when that was a moot point, I sampled it on two occasions, both times getting a sip or two in before pouring the rest down the sink. It's too late for me and my taste buds. What I got into instead was soft drinks. Which soft drink has varied over the years... Coca-Cola, C&C Cola (not as good, but much cheaper), Dr Pepper, Barq's root beer, eventually stopping at Diet Pepsi. I had a two-liter-a-day Diet Pepsi habit for years. Along the way, I discovered that this was no longer a choice, and that I was well and truly caffeine-dependent. I disliked that as a matter of principle, but largely failed to do anything about it until recently. Over about a month and a half, starting in October, I gradually tapered my Diet Pepsi intake down to zero, replacing it with seltzer. While this was a lovely and really rather surprising achievement, it turns out that my productivity — not to mention the degree to which I'm been awake — has plummeted since. It's almost as if caffeine were a stimulant of some sort... I'm not sure what to do about this. Faced with a deadline at the end of November, I decided that I couldn't afford to stick with this entirely, and settled on a compromise: for the duration of the crisis, I'd brew myself some tea. This would give me some caffeine, but would also limit the amount I consumed. Unlike Diet Pepsi — or seltzer, a bottle of which is at my side as I type this — tea requires premeditation and effort. This is especially true if one works at home, lives alone, and lacks a samovar. One must fill the kettle, boil the water, steep the teabag, mix in the milk and sugar, and sip the results. I'm not likely to go through all that more than a couple of times a day. It was a reasonable compromise, and it worked, insofar as I got everything done in time. I then went back to seltzer. I haven't been getting much done. Tentative conclusions after a month or so with very little caffeine: while my internal clock remains about as screwed up as ever, I do find it easier to fall asleep when I'm not caffeinated. And I'm less wired, and less jittery. On the other hand, I find it much harder to stay awake and get anything accomplished when I'm supposed to be up. Which is rather a problem. I've been trying to ride this out on the theory that once I finish detoxing and my body adjusts to the new regime I might find myself with more energy, but I'm rapidly heading toward the conclusion that I'm not going to, and that it's not worth it. Caffeine works; that's why it's so popular. It's possible that shoving the crayon back up my nose is the most logical course of action. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Tuesday, December 22, 2009 I was surfing the Web and happened on Why Obama Has to Worry About Polls from TIME Magazine. This turned out to include a really amazing example of either spin taken too far, or -- more likely -- a reporter who has trouble with basic math: Something has gone wrong on the long trail to historic health reform. For one thing, Americans no longer support what is going on. The recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 44% of the country believe it would be better not to pass any plan at all, while 41% said it would be better to pass the plan. As recently as October, the same poll showed those numbers practically reversed.So... what he's saying here is that currently the number of Americans who would prefer not to pass any plan is essentially equal to the number of Americans who want it passed, almost certainly within the poll's margin of error... which is a tidal shift from October, when the number of Americans who wanted it passed was essentially equal to the number of Americans who would prefer not to pass any plan, almost certainly within the poll's margin of error. Umm, hello? I'm no fan of the way this administration has been going so far, but let's try to at least get the facts right, shall we? Saturday, December 19, 2009 10:02 PM: A nut by any other name... In my idiolect, "almond" was always pronounced /aminned/, rhyming with "Hammond." That is, the "a" had the vowel sound found in "man," "plan," and "Spam," and the "l" was silent. This is the way I pronounced "almond," and I consider it to be the normative pronunciation of "almond," for the simple reason that my mother pronounces it that way. If it's good enough for my mother, it ought to be good enough for anybody. And this state of affairs was just fine as long as I never had much call to use the word in talking to others. Then, almost six years ago, I was introduced to my favorite mixed drink, the Toasted Almond. (Amaretto + Kahlua + either milk, cream, or Bailey's; essentially a White Russian with amaretto and no vodka. [Add vodka, and you get a Roasted Toasted Almond. (Seriously. It helps to keep in mind that the people who name these things tend to be toasted themselves.)]) It turns out that even in the best of circumstances, asking for a /tohstid aminned/ will get you a blank stare. Add a harried bartender and a noisy bar, and there really isn't any change of getting your drink unless you sigh inwardly and amend your order to a /tohstid ahlminned/. Which is what I've done. I discovered last week, when considering a box of almond cookies that were on sale at the supermarket, that I now use the /ahlminned/ pronunciation in the privacy of my own head. I don't have any deep philosophical point to make here, but I find this disconcerting. Thursday, December 17, 2009 11:30 PM: Not the best argument for virtual worlds Oh, Sis. You think Facebook games are a massive timesuck? Try Second Life. Better yet, don't. Second Life is a virtual world. Unlike, say, World of Warcraft or City of Heroes, there are no goals, except for those you set for yourself. There are no points. Like real life, or "First Life," it is what you make of it. The major difference is that, unlike First Life, the sky is the limit. If you can imagine it, you can do it. In fact, if you can imagine it, somebody probably has done it. Want to tour a walk-through model of the Serenity spacecraft from Firefly? Multiple copies exist in-world. Would you rather walk along a quiet beach and watch the sun's light glisten off the waves? Plenty of options for that. Would you like to inhabit the body of a giant robot and dance the night away? Not a problem. Some people like building things there, some people like running events there, some people like making clothes there, and some people like getting dressed up in clothes other people have made to attend events in places built by still other people. There's room for all sorts. You can be as social as you want. You can use all the skills and creativity you have, or just enjoy those of others. And it's hard to describe how immersive an experience it is... perhaps the one thing Second Life does best is that it conveys a sense of real presence. Your avatar feels like you, and you feel like you're walking around areas that actually exist. Why am I there? There are any number of good reasons one might have for that, but in my case it comes down to escapism. Which is particularly alluring on two counts. The first count is that my First Life sucks. Less so right at this moment; I actually have employment for a change, which ought to last me the rest of this month. For most of this year, I didn't. From January through August, I was largely holed up in my apartment, sending resumes spinning into the void. To say it was demoralizing would be something of an understatement. Even now, I'm back to being holed up in my apartment. My social life consists almost entirely of hanging out with My Sister the Graphic Designer on Thursdays. (Mind you, I'm glad I have that or I'd be totally off the rails by this point.) The second count is that in Second Life, I get to be a girl. (This may be a subset of "my First Life sucks," but it seems significant enough to single out.) As escapism goes, Second Life is hard to beat. You can be and do whatever you can only wish you could do in your First Life... and then you get to figure out what to do next. My Second Life avatar is pretty much my First Life avatar, just cuter, in better shape, and lacking a Y chromosome. She's also more outgoing and more patient than I am. In short, she's as close as I can get to my ideal me. In Second Life, I have favorite designers, and can recognize their work on sight. In Second Life, I've had my favorite designer ask for my opinion on a new outfit before releasing it. In Second Life, I have an infinite closet with hundreds of outfits, many of which I don't even remember owning until I stumble across them. (In Second Life, I look good in them.) In Second Life, I can have girl talk. In Second Life, I've had a small army of suitors from all the major genders. (I don't quite know how to get rid of them. This is not a problem I've had to deal with in First Life.) In Second Life, I can fly. This counts for more than one would expect. In Second Life, I've been around substantially longer than most residents. I know how the place works. Acting as my Second Life avatar, I have another rarely updated blog and frequently updated Twitter account. In that persona, I hang out elsewhere in the blogosphere, comment in online forums, sometimes work on other Web-based projects... and that just covers things I do outside of Second Life proper. In Second Life... well, to protect my avatar's identity I can't get into detail, but let's just say that I have way too many projects and activities on my agenda. (Which leads to many of them being attended to only sporadically. That much isn't so different from my First Life.) In Second Life, I can't get seriously hurt. I don't need to eat, or sleep, or do anything else, really. And my rent amounts to about twenty bucks a month. It's almost a wonder I bother with First Life at all. I wish I had a more compelling argument on the other side, is all. Wednesday, December 16, 2009 7:41 PM: Wait, where are they from? Shortly after Michael Jackson's passing, I was looking around for covers of his work. There are many. In keeping with Sturgeon's Law, most aren't very good. But then I hit paydirt, the track that made the entire search worthwhile: Texas Lightning's country cover of my favorite MJ song, "Man in the Mirror." This turned out to be one track from an entire album of covers, most of which were country covers of non-country originals. Any project like that runs the risk of wearing out its welcome. Any given Me First and the Gimme Gimmes cover is fine, but I find that I lose interest after a few tracks. They all run together after awhile. The same goes for Richard Cheese. If you're into covers at all, you can probably think of any number of other examples. When the whole point of the cover is changing the genre for novelty value, the novelty quickly wears off. But Texas Lightning's Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...[1] avoids this trap. It's a solid, hugely enjoyable country album, which works as a country album. It just so happens that until they came along, nobody knew that "Like a Virgin," "Dancing Queen," and "Walk on the Wild Side" were country songs. If you hadn't heard the originals, these versions would leave you with no reason to think they'd been in any other genre. The arrangements aren't repetitive, and are never forced. It's inventive, and brilliant, and I really can't praise it enough. Based on the name, I assumed they were from Texas. The music certainly gave me no reason to assume otherwise. Turns out this isn't the case: they're German. (Born and bred, except the female lead singer, who's from Australia.) In fact, they represented Germany in the 2006 Eurovision song contest with an original song. I'm now even more impressed than I already was. (Apparently, I'm not alone. According to Wikipedia, they were made honorary citizens of Texas in 2006.) [Footnote 1: the album was rereleased with additional tracks as Meanwhile, Back at the Golden Ranch... There's also Meanwhile, Back at the Platinum Ranch... with even more tracks, but that seems to be available only on sites of questionable legality.[2]) [Footnote 2: I, of course, got my copy from a site of questionable legality. Were it not for such sites, I wouldn't have known the band existed, as their albums aren't readily available in the States. In fact, I tried to buy the MP3s of their latest album from a mainstream site, but they won't let you do that if you're not in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland. I would happily PayPal them ten bucks if there were a way of doing so...] Sunday, December 13, 2009 1:54 AM: A Tale of Two Fanfics I recently read two book-length fanfics, both of which were printed by major publishers and billed as the latest installments of the series they were based on. In both cases, they had to overcome the fact that the series in question had very definite endings. One of them is okay, even if it lacks the magic of the original. The other crashed and burned completely. They are: Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benedictus, with decorations by Mark Burgess, a sequel to the Winnie the Pooh books by A.A. Milne. And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, a sequel to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams. (Note: massive spoilers for the original books follow. But only very minor spoilers for the sequels, such as are unavoidable in a book review.) As mentioned above, both authors had to contend with the end of their respective series. The House at Pooh Corner ends with Christopher Robin outgrowing his stuffed animals; Mostly Harmless ends with the total obliteration of every possible Earth and of our protagonists. In both cases, I would contend, the original ending was satisfying, and undoing it would only weaken the original tale. In the case of Pooh, one solution might have been to set the new tales during the period covered by the first two books. Instead, Benedictus opts for a stay of execution: the original ending is redefined as Christopher Robin going away to boarding school, but he comes back at the end of the term. Once this is gotten out of the way in the first story, he's free to get on with a collection of new tales. And they're not bad. I don't think they're quite up to Milne's standard, but few things are. The characters generally behave as we'd expect them to, and the new character, Lottie the Otter, fits organically into the Hundred Acre Wood. This is a respectable effort from somebody who honors the integrity of the original books, and I don't really have any problems with its inclusion in the canon. (To the extent that it is. And the disarming introduction, in which Eeyore predicts that the new writer will get everything wrong, helps in that regard.) Then there's Colfer's book. I should grant at the outset that there are people who didn't like the final Hitchhiker's book, Mostly Harmless, and especially its ending. Colfer was one of those people. I was not. The avowed mission of this book is to undo the previous one, which is a book I wholeheartedly love. This was never going to be an easy sell. Still, I was willing to put that aside and see where he went from there. It's a mess. If Adams had written a sixth book in the trilogy before his untimely passing, I think it's safe to say that he would have disposed of the previous ending in a few pages flat, if he'd bothered to address it at all before getting on with the story. (He did just that in book 5, neatly ridding himself of Book 4's baggage by having Fenchurch suddenly disappear.) Colfer doesn't. Colfer spends the entire book writing his way out of the previous ending, except for a few bits meant to set up the sequels. Furthermore, everybody is out of character. Arthur, Trillian, Random, Zaphod, Ford, Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, and even the bloody Vogons. None of them act remotely like the versions Douglas Adams wrote. I'm actually looking for something nice to say about this, but I'm coming up blank. It's not even as if he has a intricate plot set up in which everything dovetails elegantly at the end, like, say, that of Mostly Harmless itself; instead, it lurches along haphazardly, like, say, the first couple of books in the series, just (a) without the charm and wit that carried those, and (b) with the burden of having a specific problem that needed to be solved, which those largely didn't have. And to compound the issue, did I mention the bit where he's clearly angling for sequels? I suppose the one good thing I can note is that the introduction does characterize this book as a lesser work with poorer production values, which one might like if one liked the original. In keeping with that, if this had to be printed at all -- which I would, of course, contest -- it should have been billed as the first book in a new trilogy of indeterminate length, rather than the "part six of three" proudly proclaimed on the cover. At least set the bad fanfic apart from the real books. Comments by HaloScan. |
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