Archive for: April, 2006

Neighborhood Dirty Word Watch

Apr 30 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Never Off the Record, Speechifying

I failed to take a picture of a fried prawn head while eating dinner Friday night with Batonga and the weekend just went downhill from there. And while I got off a couple good shots in World of Warcraft:

“Buffing someone with Arcane Intellect is a nice way of saying, ‘No hard feelings, jackass.’”

Someone through a brick through one of the windows in Christopher’s car. That’s three broken car windows in 10 months. I’m beginning to think someone’s trying to tell us something. Possibly, “Get the hell out of here, whitey.” But I would never say that. I live in a fine, historic, developing neighborhood. I would never, ever call it the ghetto. But I might start. Anybody know a good realtor? I’m thinking that with my new salary, it’ll take us six months to get some work done that would let us put the house on the market and a couple months after that to get a down payment together for a new one, maybe less if I go crawling to my parents. Not that I really want to do that, you know? I like my house. It’s my first house. I planted flowers and we had a Christmas tree and we chose to live here because if things go according to plan, hoodlums will stop vandalizing things and this will be a nice neighborhood and somebody will give us oodles of money for our little expanded shotgun house, built in 1925, with its 14 foot ceilings and original fixtures and its real hardwood floors that don’t creak. And it will be because we’ve decided to have kids and are moving to Helena.

Then I posted the story that took so much work and so much betaing from Honu Girl and the Poptart (who got to IM with me when I said, “Somebody broke into our car. Again!”) and so far there’s just been one comment and it’s more than 10 times the length I said it would be and full of dirty words and smut and now I’m just mortified because it was written for someone and what if she hates it?!

I have to go iron, in an optimistic way. I’m going to think of it as the beginning of more control. First, my pants don’t have wrinkles. Then we hire a contractor to do something about the backyard, including high-wattage floodlights. Then I write some better stories without using the word “cock” so much.

7 responses so far

When Geek Becomes A Way of Life

Apr 27 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom

This one goes out to M@, who had vocabulary questions. I apologize up front for any pedantry, but my enthusiasm frequently gets the better of me.

I often find myself in the position of revealing what exactly fandom is. I wish there were a very simple yet thorough way to do that, too, but there’s not. My first explanation is usually, “Fandom is community.” People seem to understand and appreciate that. I also like it because it has an aura of not scaring the straights. There’s a recent popular manifesto that begins, “Fandom is focus. Fandom is obsession. Fandom is insatiable consumption.” And that’s very, very close, but what heychasm doesn’t capture is the sense of reach that fandom has. There is nothing quite like discovering a person who you know is a fan– a real fan, not a dilletante– of something you are a fan of. It’s like suddenly existing in 13 dimensions, 7 of which are dedicated to mainlining pleasure.

Fandom is a subculture. It is the connection that you can only really make with a few other people and unfortunately, they live almost 3000 miles away in Seattle, or Toronto, or Atlanta, to name but three; but that doesn’t stop you from loving them with all your heart. And because fandom must communicate largely via text, it has developed its own vocabulary and grammar to help streamline the fannish process. Fandom is above all reading or seeing exactly, down to the last detail, what you want– not what some Hollywood producer thinks is the most lucrative.

The heart of fandom is shipping. Like Spark said, it’s short for “relationship” and it means pairing two characters together in a significant way. That could be anything from the most agape friendship to the most depraved and improbable sexual acts. It depends on your characters and on your verse. Verse is short for “universe” or the entire world of the source material. That Firefly used the word as part of its glossary is a metafictitious bonus. Shipping is the characters you expect to be together, like Jin and Sun and the characters you never expect to be together, like Luke and Chewbacca.

When someone claims to be a shipper, that means they support a particular pairing, or coupling, of characters. Some ships are canon, meaning obviously recognizable and supported by source material and some are not. They’re denoted by the use of a “/” mark. When I say my favorite ship is Wash/Zoe, that means that as far as I’m concerned, the romantic pairing of Serenity’s pilot and first officer is the greatest pairing of all time and I want to know anything and everything about it. That ship is my OTP, meaning “one true pairing.” It means I read or write other things, but never find anything quite as satisfying as that. Every member of a fandom has a OTP whether he or she admits it or not. Some even have a OT3, meaning “one true threesome.”

These abbreviations mostly exist for the purpose of writing, archiving and reading fanfiction. IT is no secret that much of fanfiction is given to stories with overtly sexual content. Fans are geeks and geeks are not known for their social sauvity. Anyone who tells you that he or she doesn’t read fanfiction to get off is either lying or reading from some piss poor archives. There are two major divisions of fanfiction: gen and smut. Gen is “genfic” or general fiction. A story told in the style of the original that doesn’t try to alter canon. Smut is exactly what it sounds like. Smut is subdivided into two more categories: het and slash. Het is heterosexual fic, meaning a male and female character having a sexual relationship, with or without tender feelings or the bonds of matrimony or whatever. Slash fic has homosexual content, either male or female, though hot girl-on-girl action is general referred to as “femmeslash.” The first fanfic was slash and it was… wait for it… Kirk/Spock. Which came first, the geek or the fic? So long as we have fic to read, it will never really matter.

Past that, there are endless abbreviations about the content of fic. In commentary on the previous entry, I used SS/HG, AU, Anal, BDSM, Non-con as an example of a story warning. In some cases, headers like that (and fanfiction is always posted with headers because again, it’s about always reading or seeing exactly what you want) are used as much for telling readers what they can expect, as lures, as they are as warnings of possibly objectionable content. In this case, is a story sexual pairing Severus Snape and Hermione Granger is an Alternate Universe (AU; shorthand for ‘I will not be following canon, but I will stay in character), engaging in sexual acts involving anal sex, bondage, dominance and sado-masochism and non-consensual intercourse. Which, by the way, is different than rape. Let me also stress that pretty much every single SS/HG there ever was is AU because you must fast forward Hermione to the age of consent (17 in her canon, 18 in the USA, where we are reading these works). Most reputable archives will not host work that does not make explicitly clear the story is about adults.

There are hundreds of these abbreviations. If someone out there is turned on by something, someone has written a piece of fanfiction with that kink. The story I just sent to Pop and Honu-Girl for beta will have the header W/Z, AU, UST, CSI, and most likely be categorized and both romance and angst. It’s a romantic fic, with a good about of hand-wringing, primarily about the relationship between Wash and Zoe, completely disregarding the fact that Wash is dead, trades on unresolved sexual tension, and contains incest. “CSI” is a verse-specific label. In Firefly fandom it stands for “Crazy Space Incest.” If you’re into the late, lamented Carnivale, you’d have seen it called CDI– Crazy Dustbowl/Depression Incest. But there was enough weirdity on that show that incest was the least of our kinks.

So that’s shipping. And the romantic pairing of the Colonial Viper and the Vast Expanse of Infinite, Beautiful Space is moving closer and closer to my number one spot. Nothing will every replace Wash and Zoe, the greatest married couple in the history of television, but it’s up there. Fandom– Try it. You’ll like it. Buttsex not required. Just be sure to check the headers.

13 responses so far

Can’t Blog. Writing.

Apr 25 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom

I signed up for a ficathon. It’s a sort of story exchange where a bunch of people say, “I want to read this sort of story. And I can write this other sort of story.” And then a really kind, industrius person matches up the wants with the cans and gives you a deadline. That deadline is April 30th. The minimum word count is 800. I said I would write a minimum of 1000 words. I’ve so far written 10,246 and I’ve still got at least two pages before I’m done. I’m afraid the poor person for whom I’m writing is going to read it and say, “Well. It was nice there near the beginning, but the utter lack of plot was bad and you lost me completely somewhere around page 14.” And then I will cry. And apologize and simper and feel bad about myself and make you all read about it.

That said, doing a ficathon makes me feel all manner of fannish and I think it’s time for a list. We’ve started watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD and wow, do I ever dig that show. And I dig it in a pure sci-fi way. If I start shipping, I’m going to start with Colonial Viper/Vast Beautiful Expanse of Stars. It’s wonderful.

And I feel listy. Do you all feel listy? Let’s make lists.

My Favorite Genre Characters of Ever

  1. Hoban Washburn
  2. Professor Severus Snape
  3. Dr. Bevery Crusher
  4. Roland Deschain, son of Steven, of Gilead
  5. Ernst Lodz
  6. Zoe Alleyne Washburn
  7. Wesley Windham-Price
  8. Lyra Belacqua
  9. Willow Rosenberg
  10. Dr. Gaius Baltar

My Favorite Ships of Ever

  1. Wash/Zoe
  2. Wash/Kaylee
  3. Snape/Granger
  4. Lodz/Lila
  5. Picard/Crusher
  6. Roland/Susan
  7. Mal/Zoe
  8. Lodz/Apollonia
  9. Lucius/Narcissa
  10. Harry/Draco

Back to the fic mine. It’s Wash/Zoe, of course. O T fucking P. And now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’ll try to keep the crazed fangirling to an unobtrusive minimum for a little while longer.

7 responses so far

Six Together

Apr 24 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Memes and Assorted Nonsense

Here it is Confederate Memorial Day, and I’ve been tagged for a meme. Actually, I was tagged last week, but I was saving this for a special occasion. Honu-Girl needs for me to tell y’all six things about myself and then tag six of you. Or else.

I find this difficult, as what could I say that would be interesting, but that you all don’t already know? I am an open, dull book. So here goes nothing:

  1. I hate “fake peach” smell.
  2. I never wear blush.
  3. I had to have some moles removed in graduate school because a doctor thought I had melanoma. But I didn’t. Now I have a faint scar on my neck that nobody notices but if they did, I’d try to convince them I’d been bitten by a vampire.
  4. Sometimes I daydream about what it would be like to move back to Iowa and I’m almost tempted to, as I assume I’d be the most sophisticated person on the block. Then I realize that being the most sophisticated person in Iowa is like… nothing, so I stop.
  5. I have read Moby Dick four times and hated it each and every time. It’s not the greatest American novel there ever was. Moby Dick does not represent a mountain or the American Dream or penis envy or any thing other than a big white whale in a story of such suckitude that those who have read it force others to read it just so they won’t be alone in bearing the burder of having put time and effort into something so massively awful. I walked out of a class in graduate school because the professor said, “I’ve heard some people want to read Moby Dick instead of [A Book That Would Have Been Better, Perhaps The Owner's Manual to a TRS-80]. ” I got up and left his book and his stupid elbow patches behind. Also, nobody in that class spoke conversational English, so I wouldn’t have had anyone to talk to. The boat is the world? What is a whale? How is a whale? All this does not equal a whale. No, it just equals a suckwad. And I don’t give one little fig about how it moved you or what you think or who said what. Go read Snow Crash. You’ll feel much better after that.
  6. When I think about having the bypass surgery this summer, my biggest fear isn’t that I’ll die, either during the operation or after. It’s that I’ll get a joint stomach-removal and personality transplant and eventually have no husband and no friends.

I tag Spark, Kayt, Nicole, Elizabeth, HD, and Batonga.

4 responses so far

Sick and Wrong

Apr 22 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

Zero calories and the taste of fresh iced sinThere are some things that should never happen. There are some things that are just so contrary to nature, so perverse, so obscene, that they should by all rights, cease to exist as soon as they are comprehended, from sheer offense to the architect of our right and beautiful universe. Today, I both saw and tasted one of these things.

So help me Gawd, it was a gallon jug of Milo’s Sweet Tea, sweetened with Splenda.

I understand if you need to take a moment. I find peppermint to be the best homeopathic remedy for unrelieved nausea.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You want to take a tall glass of iced tea and stir in a packet or two of Splenda? Be my guest; I have no problem with that. In fact, that’s how you can tell I wasn’t born in the South. When we first moved back down here, my brother-in-law would sneer and smirk at me for putting Equal in my tea. Now I realize that sweet tea, especially Milo’s sweet tea, is an acquired taste. If it’s not given to you in a bottle as an infant, you have to work your way up to it. The human pancreas isn’t made for that sort of shock.

But once you know what it really tastes like, and how good it can be, I don’t see how anything could be a substitute. The real secret, if you can’t take the strong stuff, is to mix it half and half with unsweet tea. You can actually order this in restaurants. When they ask you what you’d like to drink, you say, “Tea, half and half.” It’s still sweet tea, just without the diabetic coma.

But this Splenda thing, this has got to stop. I tried it with the same impulse I think we all have for pouring salt on slugs. You know it’s going to be gross and you don’t necessarily want to, but it’s going to be SO GROSS that you have to. There really isn’t a choice. So I tried a sample of Milo’s Sweet Tea with Splenda.

It tastes like evil.

10 responses so far

My Kingdom for a Twinset

Apr 20 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

The hardest part of my new job so far is choosing what to wear. I knew I’d need clothes and have to work on that a little while, but I didn’t realize that I’d have no concept of how to dress myself. Four years in a uniform messes with the head. But I’ve done okay– even worn earrings three days out of four.

The really hard part is that it’s already into the upper 80s and 90s here. But the office is 70 degres and I sit right under and air conditioning vent. So dressing for the outside makes me freezing inside, but dressing for the inside makes me roast on the drive home.

I know. I should shut up until I have some real problems. But looking like a hobo who got in on a lane bryant dumpster sale is very upsetting!

2 responses so far

We Won!

Apr 19 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Never Off the Record

And it was because those guys are smart! I refuse to acknowledge that Space Pen was anything other than our mascot. And we won, as the only team with 10 points left at the end of the game. Everybody else had zero. Final jeopardy, as it were, was a trick Dale Earnhardt question. We squeaked it with good betting.

When I talk about going to Hooters Trivia with friends, lots of people give me really strange looks. And then they mostly ask outright, “Aren’t you offended?” Meaning: am I not bothered by the women in skimpy clothes, showing off their asses and breasts, flirting openly and doing the hula hoop? No, I’m not. I’m really not. They’re women, they’re making good money. Most precisely, they have a choice. No one is forcing them to waitress there, or even to waitress at all. And I don’t want to hear a lot of nonsense about “sometimes that’s the only thing they’re qualified for.” So? I’m a big believer in self-determination. So no. Not offended, never will be. In fact, I think the word “offended” is greatly over-used, but that’s a blog for another time.

Meanwhile, here’s how it went down:

HD: I can do it both hands without looking. I’ve been doing it since I was fifteen.
Batonga: Masturbating?!
HD: Well, I do need two hands to masturbate.
Batonga: I am on fire tonight! I want eveyrbody to know. Get that damn book out!

I keep track of quotes lately in a little pink blank book. Now known as That Damn Book(tm). And Mr. Flutter can spin some pens. It’s a thing of beauty. Batonga, however, will put your eye out. So much so that later, Mr. Flutter shouted, “I am not giving you a projectile!”

Skillzy: Yet another thing that HD used to perv to so he knows the answer.

Batonga: Here’s a man who knows everything there is to know about shoving things up your ass.

Google bomb away, friends.

HD: I’m here to watch Skillzy walk back and forth. That’s a great ass. No, don’t write that down! Okay, you can write that down.

That Damn Book strikes again!

Skillzy: No more tea for you! You’re cut off!

Batonga got just a touch out of control with some splenda packets. They went everywhere. HD and I practically had to duck and cover.

HD: That’s it! I’m taking Batonga off Combloggerator. When you click it, it’s going to Notes from the Cave or something.

Batonga: Welcome to Skillzy’s biscuits and enemas!

Skillzy: Look, there’s Snape! No, it’s just [Alan] Colmes.
Sarah: You make me want to use the F word.
Skillzy: Why? Cos I compared him to Colmes or because you got a woody and he wasn’t on?
Sarah: Both.

5 responses so far

Dan Brown is a Clown Puncher

Apr 18 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

A couple days ago I was reading something (probably Dairy of a Madman, but I could be wrong. Kenn can update, yo.) and it made me write down, “Are we educated only so that we may manifest opinions?” And I started to worry.

I started to worry that for all my education, both formal and informal, I am little more than the breadth of my opinions. And if those opinions are not expressed, does that mean I am not maximizing the value of my education? Then that thought practically makes me hyperventilate with displeasure, because what the hell kind of notion is maximizing the value of one’s education? Seems to me that that’s something those without imagination sit around doing while the rest of us are eating cheetos and playing computer games. Is it possible to really understand someone without understanding their education and its effect on their opinions and the process of forming those opinions? Must an opinion be expressed to achieve completeness as a person interacting with another person? Is it possible to interact without expression opinions? Of course, but in the practical sense, it’s nigh on impossible when you consider that every statement is loaded with implict and explicit opinions.

I want to admit, too, that I’m ashamed at the way I’m surprised when someone who is much differently educated that I am has similar opinion or set of beliefs. And I’m ashamed when I realize that someone who has a similar education to mine is very different from me. It’s human nature to seek similarity, but I wish I could more readily notice and embrace diversity.

Part of this stems from the fact that I’m a natural contrarian. If it’s popular, I don’t really want to be a part of it. If it’s common or well-known, I’d prefer not to do it. This causes me to miss out or get in late on very good things (c.f., Harry Potter, Battlestar Galactica). At the same time, it keeps me from becoming overwhelmed by what I consider detestable, subliterate cultural phenomena (c.f. American Idol, The DaVinci Code).

To what extent is this a manifestation of misbegotten hispster posturing? Little, I hope, as being considered a hipster would ruin this geek image I cultivate so actively. My education informs and undergirds my opinions, but it does not exist solely to outline, support, and reify them. Practically, this means that I’ll be conscious of my own preconceived notions of education and culture. Further, I’ll try to be more cognizant of at least my tendency to reject the popular for merely being popular– things are popular for a reason. (Though you’ll never get me to recant about The DaVinci Code. That’s a piece of shit.) And I’ll keep ruminating on a concept of whole-personality epistemology, where education and experience are given equal validity in formation of opinion and the expression thereof.

In the end, I am more than the breadth of my opinions. But those opinions entertain people, so I’m going to keep having them, wildly misinformed or not.

3 responses so far

Fangirl Shmangirl

Apr 17 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom, Never Off the Record

I. Suck.

I can’t even believe it. That was really hard. And I sort of rushed through it and misspelled Hippogriff. I actually do know that Flobberworms eat lettuce. I swear. I just need to try harder! And read more! Hell, if you need me, I’ll be memorizing the Lexicon. I’ll be marinating in this hot, awful shame and memorizing the Lexicon.

No, please, ask me a Harry Potter question. I need to prove I’ve got cred. I need you to believe me!

Speaking of fandom, there was a poll last week about who, in the Potterverse, most needs to be whacked with a fish. Poll results clearly state that Dolores Umbridge is the number one character deserving of a good fishwhacking and I am hard pressed to disagree. When Christopher and I were discussing it, though, he decided that Harry isn’t near close enough to the top. In his opinion, nobody else should get whacked with fish until Harry has been thoroughly roughed up. To wit, “No, Harry needs the most fishwhacking. He needs to be beaten with a fish for two hours. They need to build a machine that spins fish and he has to stand next to it.”

4 responses so far

The Days That Opened Up Until My Whole Life Could Belong

Apr 16 2006 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

I had the sort of weekend where there was enough bad to make me feel so wonderful and so grateful about the good parts of my life.

The bad was panicking for large chunks of the day Friday. But everything came together about 12:30 Saturday morning when Batonga called me, having just driven away a few minutes earlier, to ask if I’d had a good time. I was inarticulate, I think, because I was too busy feeling and was trying to concentrate on walking, tired and sobering up, and concerned for the friend I was walking with who maybe shouldn’t have had that much to drink on top of a cold he was getting over. And more than all those things, I was happy. So I don’t quite remember what I told him when he asked if I’d had a good time, but what I think I wanted to say was, “Yes. I had a great time.”

We did a sort of pub crawl around 5 Points Friday night. We– Batonga, HD, and I and some other friends, started at Mellow Mushroom where we ate dinner and drank a bunch of beer. Then we went to Bailey’s to love on Elizabeth. Bailey’s was practically empty and very quiet and we played pool and drank more beer and had a damn fine time. There was none of the tension that seems to go with trying to merge two groups of friends. Or if there was, I was drunk enough not to care. But it seemed to me that conversation and life along with it, just kept getting better and better. I even ran into a guy I’d gone to college with and introduced myself and that was nice.

And then, because bands were about to start and the abercrombie crowd were on their way in, we left to go to the Upsidedown Plaza, meeting more friends along the way. Say what you will about that place– it’s a shit hole. But it’s an institution, so you go and you stay there until you just can’t take it anymore. We had crazy conversations and I don’t remember most of them. I do remember trying to use the bathroom and thinking that it was a good thing I was drunk, because sober I couldn’t have coped at all. I remember getting several ice cubes down my blouse– I have friends with great aim.

At that point, people started peeling away and eventually it was 11:30 and there were just four of us left and we repaired to Cosmo’s to pass the time until Sakura opened for midnight sushi. We never did make it. Eating bread and fruit at Cosmos took the last of our energy.

But walking back to my car after walking a friend back to her apartment, I could scarcely believe how happy I was. I had spent the entire day trying to move and go as much as possible so that I could avoid thinking about not working. And then I finally met up with friends and just let myself be for a few hours and it was good. I felt accepted and what’s more, I felt liked. I felt like I was contributing something and that it was valued. That feeling has receded even now, so writing about it takes courage, but I remember it and am trying not to second guess it.

I love living in Birmingham. I like the life I’ve made here. With the realization comes the anxiety that I could screw it up, but I’m trying to ignore that. I’m trying to live in the moment of it, and be grateful for it. So if I was inarticulate this weekend, forgive me. I was too happy to do much of anything but smile.

2 responses so far

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