Archive for: March, 2008

Insert Incoherent Noise of Joy Here*

Mar 31 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom, Geekery, Recovering English Major

Neal Stephenson will release a new novel in September. Called Anathem, it’s more like Snowcrash than The Baroque Cycle:

Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians—sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.

How hard is that going to rule? Doc and I are currently IMing back and forth at one another like crazy people. He says, “I’m planning my vacation around it.” I may too! September 9!! OMG!!! Now the question that most preys on my mind: will we see some Enoch Root? Is Enoch Root the higher power?!

See also FUCK YES. Because really– a new Neal Stephenson novel: Fuck yes!

Here is a picture of a Neal Stephenson book! That belongs to me! And Doc’s thumb! Doc and I have TOUCHED A BOOK NEAL STEPHENSON TOUCHED!

The System of the World, autographed first edition

*Oh, this is so beyond squee.

3 responses so far

There Are Doctor Who Porn Websites Interrobang

Mar 31 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom

Not quite two minutes long, and the punchline is so worth it!

If Honu Girl and I had a talk show, this is exactly what it would be like, all the time. “The women! Write the porn! And put it on the internets!”

6 responses so far

From Acronym to Verb, with Bonus Squee

Mar 28 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom, Lexpionage

I spent most of yesterday evening chatting with Shrew, which is always a good time. She throws all sorts of info at me. Really, I don’t think I’ve had a single conversation with her where I haven’t learned something. Last night it was the word gafiated.

Gafiated is not by any means a new word, but I had never heard nor seen it. It’s the verbified form of GAFIA, getting away from it all, a term that started out sometime pre-1960 as short hand for escaping life into science fiction fandom, then reversed and became shorthand for escaping science fiction fandom. It’s interesting to note that the SF Citations for the OED link lists a use in 1975 referencing FIAWOL: fandom is a way of life. I was particularly pleased to see it, because even though I occasionally have the urge to gafiate, I always pull up short by trying to plot what would happen next. Nothing. Fandom is my way of life. I’ll be interested to see if I notice this in use any more, or see it used by people who don’t necessarily do fandom (or fandom as I understand it).

For ongoing fun, check out the rest of the fandom citations. Ask yourself whether or not “fanboy” and “fangirl” are derogatory designations any longer, regardless of whether or not you wear them like a badge.

And because people have been asking for a while, let’s take it from there and talk about squee. If it’s not a character by Jhonen Vasquez, it’s onomatopoeia. Merely a way of writing down the noise a fan makes when excited, with the caveat that that’s usually a female fan. I wish there were a long and storied history, but there doesn’t seem to be one, just the notation of a curious expression of joy. Equally joyful, the way it can act as any part of speech, if you allow it a few suffixes.

  • “Squee!”
  • “We’re going to squee over The Doctor and Rose.”
  • “The Half-Blood Prince teaser trailer will be out May 16 and I am full of squee.”
  • “The Torchwood spoilers about Tosh and Owen have totally harshed my squee.”

And lately I’ve seen some commentary against using the shorthand diaf: die in a fire. I like the idea behind ceasing use, cos really, the level of contempt it takes to wish someone that manner of death can’t be good for anybody’s blood pressure—yours, mine, random strangers reading the ranty entries that end this way. Looking at some of the examples of usage on Urban Dictionary, it seems to be a phrase that’s losing meaning, whether through overuse or generally being inured to that level of contempt. Furthermore, it seems to be a relatively young term, possibly beginning with World of Warcraft, used for n00bs who can’t run Molten Core. If it’s still around in 50 or 60 years, do you think it will have formed its own verb, like gafiate?

2 responses so far

From Farce to Fantasy

Mar 27 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Recovering English Major

Last night we watched Death at a Funeral. I’d heard good things and bad things, mostly of the it’s-a-farce-for-reals variety, so I was prepared to be uncomfortable, but willing to endure it for love of Alan Tudyk (and naked Alan Tudyk at that!). It turned out to be well-done, mostly very funny in the it’s a farce for reals way, with a few seriously uncomfortable sections. As much as I wanted it to be nonstop staring at hot guys called Alan, I got very distracted early on by Peter Dinklage.

His character spends a chunk of time near the beginning of the movie not saying much of anything, but giving different characters different expressions. Then, when he finally does start speaking, there’s one scene where it’s just him and Matthew Macfayden going back and forth with different facial expressions– conversations without words. I had seen a small icon of Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister earlier this week and his caginess and manipulation in that scene threw me for a loop. And since then I’ve been mentally casting A Song of Ice and Fire.

He’d make a great Tyrion, don’t you think? He’d have to wear a pile of makeup and cope with a wig or some hair dye or something, plus contacts, but those tricky, ingratiating, double-edged looks just do it for me. I really can’t actually stop thinking about it.

And all that thinking led me to wondering Alan Tudyk as Jaime Lannister? Probably not. Probably it’s more of a Jude Law choice, but I can still dream. And then that leads to casting the rest of the movie. Which makes me want to know what you all think. For those of you who have read it, who are you seeing? Who do you see playing Jon Snow? Or Margaery Tyrell? Or Stannis Baratheon?

I know. I’ve gone one-track again.

9 responses so far

Pretty, Pretty Books

Mar 26 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Recovering English Major

Here’s an interesting post on book cover art, which I found via Scalzi: Judging Books by Covers. It’s an interesting read, if only because it’s from an insider’s point of view– someone who makes book covers, and is continually in the process of trying to ferret out what makes a book popular and/or sellable. The most interesting point, is that first the covers have to appeal to the book buyers. Consumers are secondary to chain buyers and merchandisers, which is something I never thought much about. But it can’t get into my hands until someone at a store has said, “Okay, I’ll buy 100 of those.”

I think that that might be the root of the disgusting proliferation of books by and about women with shoes on their covers. You know the ones I’m talking about. At this point, if I see a book cover with a pair of shoes on it, I think, “Chick lit. Pass.”

I am a big judger-by-cover. I have no problems passing on a book because I don’t like the cover. Robert Jordan, for instance. Y’all tell me he’s great and that the Wheel of Time stuff is wonderful, but I cannot get past the artwork. Thees and thous and dragons! Not in a good way! And the sorry thing is, if the GRRM had had those covers, I never would’ve picked them up, and lookit what a spaz I’ve become for Westeros– with all its thees and thous and dragons, even!

I bought Jeff Vandermeer’s City of Saints and Madmen based on the cover, read 100 pages, broke it and put it down.

I had a hard time buying the copy of Cryptonomicon that I have. The artwork is the foil-embossed alchemical symbol for gold on a matte black background. Between the “nomicon” in the title and the alchemy on the cover, I thought I was wading into some deep occult territory. Very glad to be wrong, in that case. Same with Quicksilver, though by that time I was a little more comfortable with the natural philosophy symbology.

I like black and white covers as well: my copies of Lolita and On the Road are both black and white photographs (knees, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady). One of the Penguin imprints did them both and I like them for the plainness. My copy of Desolation Angels also has a black and white photo on it, but I don’t like it as well, because it has too many words. Title and author only, please.

Obviously I’m very much attracted to minimalism. I’m far more likely to pick up a book to examine if it’s plain and/or simple. If I have a choice between two covers, I’ll almost always pick the one that’s simpler. Further, I don’t like too many colors. Black, white and something semi-neutral from there–yellow, blue, or green. Simple doesn’t seem to be a big trend right now, but I hope it comes back soon.

9 responses so far

Things I’ve Started Blogging This Morning Only To Abruptly Quit

Mar 25 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

  • Dreaming I was in a protracted Photoshop War with Alan Rickman
  • How I feel like a failure as a woman and as a conservative because I don’t have children
  • How I sliced my nail open with a chef’s knife last night and have been grossed out ever since
  • Speaking of gross, how the giant isopods on I Can Haz Cheezburger made the skin crawl off my body
  • Wondering if it would be worth the risk of life and limb for the gas savings of biking to work
  • How I can’t write a damn thing lately and how much it bothers me and how much I miss Wash and how lame it is to miss a fictional character but I don’t care
  • How my weight is now Fuckload -107 and how I was all ready to get myself a really nice reward for passing 100, but now that it’s come and gone I don’t feel like I deserve a reward anymore, even a lipgloss
  • How I’ve started deliberately slowing and stopping my reading of A Storm of Swords because I’m getting so into it and I really don’t want it to end, even though there’s another 1000 page book after this one and the 5th book will be out in September

6 responses so far

And It Was All Yellow

Mar 24 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Decontextualized

Yellow chucks-- it's time to save the universe.

So small, so cut down by the mower

Pansies!

5 responses so far

AWSUM FANFIC IZ AWSUM

Mar 20 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom, Geekery

I know many of you around these parts are not voracious consumers of fanfiction. Nothing wrong with that, takes all kinds. And some of you read the occasional piece. And some of you maybe read it only alone, late at night, under the covers with a flashflight. Y’all I feel sorry for. But we must all get together on one thing:

Just Trying to Communicate by Sam the Storyteller is one of the greatest examples of user-transformed content that exists on the whole of the interweb.

It’s a tidy, short Torchwood story, rated PG. There are mild spoilers for s02e07, “Dead Man Walking” but they’re not glaring and it won’t dull the impact of seeing the episode later on, I shouldn’t think. It’s team-based genfic, hints of Jack/Ianto– very much sticking with canon. Most importantly, it is one of the funniest things you’ll ever read. If you do not laugh your ass off, I will give you a dollar or a frappucino, whichever you like better.

Go read right now and then come back and share the lulz. And also thank Shrew, whose copy of the interweb is better than mine.

p.s. This has been your weekly call to watch Torchwood.

2 responses so far

When History is Science Fiction

Mar 20 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Geekery

Yesterday, Honu Girl sent me a link to a great piece of flashfic (here defined as being less than 1000 words), Wikihistory. It’s an interesting take on the change-one-event modified history genre. I can pretty much promise you’ll laugh out loud and then be just a little bit tweaked by the ending.

In similar news, I was reading another blog recently that talked about having a “favorite” war and how weird that seemed on the surface. But you know, it’s really not. Study history for any amount of time and there’s always something that’s more interesting than anything else, even if it’s just a matter of what’s new is more interesting than what you did last month. And there was a little bit of discussion about historical films and changing perspectives on events everyone supposedly knows about.

And I got to thinking, yeah, World War II is my “favorite” war. And they make a lot of movies about it, but they’re pretty battle-centric. And that’s all well and good because those are important and exciting, but what if there were something like Project Paperclip: The Movie?

Camera starts out in a dank but dusty underground bunker, lots of frightened guys in lab coats, lots of machinery. They’re worried because there aren’t any explosions anymore but none of the apparatchiks of the Third Reich have come to get them. But they know someone will come and if it’s the Reich, they’ll most likely be executed. If it’s not, it’ll be the Americans or the Russians. The camera zooms in on Wernher von Braun, who is organizing schematics and notes. You can see parabolas sketched out, engine designs, the letters “V2.” He’s talking to someone who calls him “Doktor” or “Freiherr.” He insists, quietly, that they need to get to the Americans. Cut to Major Staver in Hannover, being given a damp (ewww!) Osenberg List, realizing what it would mean to the Jet Propulsion laboratory, and immediately mobilizing the troops to find the rocket scientists. Meanwhile, von Braun is trying to convince his colleagues to go west. The Russians are bearing down in the East, closing in on Peenemunde. von Braun insists that the Soviets will work them to death, just as the Nazi’s tried to. The Americans reach them first. Not everyone leaves. Their first stop is Obergammerau [insert Passion Play metaphor].

And after some tension, there’s a cross dissolve to von Braun and those he could convince to come with him arriving in Fort Bliss, Texas. The sun is shining, little dust devils whip up, and the scientists, mathematicians, physicists who’d been held against their will, made to develop devastating weapons, made to peel potatoes, are introduced to the first of the laboratories they’ll use. Some move to White Sands Proving Grounds. von Braun eventually moves to Huntsville, Alabama, and names the first rocket they finish there after the clay: The Redstone Rocket. Jupiter C. Explorer 1. A zoom to von Braun’s face as he hears Sputnik for the first time, torn between wonder and grief. And you remain unsure, because the movie ends with him beginning schematics for the Saturn series of rockets.

I get teary and tingly just imagining it.

3 responses so far

Everybody Sit Down and Shut the Goddamn Hell Up

Mar 19 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

Is anybody else in a really bad mood? I’m in a stonkingly bad mood. Like, just as soon kick you in the shins as listen to you bad. I don’t know if it’s hormones, or the weather, or not expressing myself, but I think it’s a combination of all three. Plus, you know, lingering frustration with George R. R. Martin for the narration style that keeps ending each chapter with big revelations and cliffhangers, then switches to another character so that there’s no resolution for like, 100 pages or something, and by then he’s like, “Were there saucy makeouts? Psh!”

You know those bad mood days? Where you just wake up growly and headachey and even though nothing is wrong, nothing is right either? I want to go stomp on something. And then holler. And then stomp some more while hollering. I’ve been trying to inculcate this mindset of kindness, where I assume the best of everybody and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I’m not very good at it, because, and you may have noticed this, most people are cretins. That’s unkind of me. I know. But for fuck’s sake!

You’re welcome to be in a bad mood with me.

*Title taken from Prisoner of Azkaban in 15 Minutes, which may be the funniest thing you read all week. It’s a Snape line, of course. It mitigates the black mood just a little bit.

6 responses so far

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