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January 6th, 2010
savagelove
| 12:00 am - Features: Savage Love:January 6, 2010
http://www.avclub.com/articles/january-6-2010,36740/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=type_savage-love I am a queer lady in my 20s. My boyfriend and I recently discovered that we are both into BDSM. We started with some light bondage and spanking, added some role-play, and are moving toward some heavier stuff. I’ve spent some time reading online BDSM erotica, and here’s what’s stressing me out: I tend to gravitate toward stories that include age play (underage girls with older men). I think pedophilia is wrong and disgusting, yet I get off on the stories. I can’t stop feeling like I’m a huge pervert. Also, what is a good ...
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officialgaiman
| 12:17 am - Home Again, with Additional Dog pictures.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/01/home-again-with-additional-dog-pictures.html posted by Neil
I'm home.
This is the weather the dog likes: crisp, cold, weather that puts him in mind of wolfish ancestors hunting on the steppes.
Me, I put on long underwear and dozens of layers over that, and top it off with the sheepskin Uigur hat I haggled for in Xinjiang, and trudge in the snow behind him. It's frozen on top, so you crunch and rock and hunt for ruts that already exist as you walk, or you teeter-totter across the surface, half-falling at every second step. While Cabal is happy in a world filled with sharp smells and frozen rivers, and he bounces over the ice and snow with joy.
***
Many years ago I discovered (via the currently hiatus-bound Fabulist) Jason Webley. I posted this a link to this song, Eleven Saints, a song Jason Webley wrote and performed with Jay Thompson...
Jason was pleased, and wrote to me to say thanks, and then, a couple of years ago, introduced me in email to his friend Amanda Palmer, with whom he was working on a project, as they worked to bring the music of two conjoined twin sisters they had discovered on the internet to the world. There were two songs out on the internet by the mysterious pair for a long time, but a new song, " A Campaign of Shock and Awe", crept out today: you can hear it at http://www.myspace.com/evelynevelyn. Highly recommended, and not just because of the, y'know, family connections.
...
Right. I do not want to be disturbed tonight. Maddy and I will be beginning our New Year's catch-up by watching the first part of Doctor Who 'The End of Time'.
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January 5th, 2010
docbrite
 | 01:45 pm - Language Has Power
Going to get my crazy pills adjusted today. I've actually tried to stop using the word "crazy" on Twitter because I know there are people on my tweetstream who feel it is an "ableist" word and are hurt by it. I may or may not agree -- I consider myself fairly crazy at this point, and the word doesn't particularly hurt or offend me; nor does the word "lame," though it undeniably applies to me. Twitter, though, is more or less a conversation or series of conversations. In conversation, I think it is reasonable to avoid language that you know hurts people. So what if I'm not hurt by "crazy" or "lame"? That doesn't negate Jane Deaux's pain, and I'm tired of seeing people blow off genuine pain as "insistence on political correctness." I retweeted a good quote once, and I can't remember it exactly, but the gist was Why should I have to explain precisely how the knife you stuck in my back is hurting me before I can convince you to take it out?
There's no need to hurt people if you can easily avoid it. So many people online seem to ignore or gleefully defy that. But this journal is my place, my online living room if you will, and here I'll call myself crazy and lame if I like.
Current Music: "Crazy" by Patsy Cline (no, not really)
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cbreakr
 | 01:26 am - Of Dolphins and Deadwood
In what will perhaps expand our limited sense of the value of empathy, the consensus is that dolphins are intelligent individuals. I solidified that position after seeing their spontaneous social behavior. I doubt that this will affect most people out there beyond boosting some sales to sea world and a bit of publicity for The Cove, but I'm hopeful that we're opening the door to somewhat less lonely and arbitrary world. Personally, I'd like even more to go swimming with dolphins.
In something a little more meaningless (well reflective and a continuation of the vast majority of my 2009 void), I've started off the year getting myself stuck hard on the sadly curtailed HBO series Deadwood. Vicious, deeply entangled, yet often meaningless relationships spin in a constant storm hovering over the eponymous gold-miner settlement, producing as much a thesis on human nature as an accurate portrayal of the "Wild West". Yeah, those words are a little too much on the side of hyperbole, but I can't recommend the shlife ow enough.
Here's hoping that 2010 finds me with a backbone and a little more self-control. Here's also hoping I can just chill the fuck out a little bit for once in my life and just let the flow of life push me where it will. Really, so long as I don't waste another year wallowing, I'll be happy as hell.
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January 4th, 2010
cmpriest
 | 06:53 pm - January 4, 2010
Four days into the New Year, and so far, so good. I’m smack in the middle of a killer editorial deadline for Fort Freak, so I’m eyeballs-deep in THAT*; but I’ve stuck to my resolution to write some fiction every day, even if it’s only a few hundred words. At the moment, I’m writing on Hellbent, sequel to Bloodshot. It’s not due for awhile, but it’s nice to have a jump on it — and besides, I’m not quite ready to dedicate myself to a wholly new project yet (even in pitch or proposal form).**
Anyway! I now present unto you some bulleted points, because it’s easier than thinking of things like transitions. And I’m very tired, even though it’s only suppertime. I beg your indulgence on this matter.
- The Boneshaker channel: Station Identification … and a fabulous update! The first Monday of 2010 brought me most excellent news from Liz — who informs me that Boneshaker is going into a FIFTH PRINTING! [:: insert flailing Kermit dance here ::] Thank you so much to everyone who has taken a chance on it over the last three months. You all ROCK. I’m just sayin’.
- My little brother liked Boneshaker — So this is sort of an egregiously biased review, but that won’t stop me from linking it.
- In less nepotistic Boneshaker news — The Book Zone (for boys) declares it to be a good book for young dude readers, a sentiment with which I most heartily agree. Sample quote: “Boneshaker was written for the adult market, but there is little in it that makes it unsuitable for more advanced Young Adult readers. … [T]he fast pace of the narrative with its memorable battle scenes and snappy, clever dialogue will keep you hooked and not wanting to put the book down, and once you have finished it you will certainly be left wanting more.”
- Also, our kitty got a new tree. Her old one wore out in less than a year (she’s hard on them, I confess). We got this one from Petsmart for about $140, and she loves it so far — which frankly, does not bode well for its continued state of attractiveness. Ah, well. Merry Christmas, kitty. Happy shredding.
*My Fort Freak contribution, “Remember the Rathole,” has to go back by January 15, and for the moment I’m just viewing that date as a distant, dawning horizon. Mantra: “I only have to survive until January 15. I only have to survive until January 15.”
** Hellbent picks up pretty much where Bloodshot left off (more or less), so it feels like I’m working on the same story, even though it’s a different book.
[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]
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traykor
 | 06:38 pm - Hospital
So, the stomach got so bad today that I got dehydrated from the non-stop vomiting. Which landed me in the hospital with an IV and some serious anti-emetics. and morphine. Still no definitive diagnosis, though this time there was blood to be found which makes the original bleeding ulcer theory more likely. I am home now, but get to go have the scope test done soon.
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traykor
| 03:43 pm - Posted using TxtLJ
In hospital. Ivs suck.
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ecmyers
 | 04:22 pm - advice on writing
One of the drawbacks of Twitter is by the time I follow a link someone posted, I forget who linked it, and it's really hard to find again. So I'm just going to repost this educational and supportive video of twenty-eight young adult authors (a smart group of people!) doling out advice on writing. I hope it's helpful; I know some of my friends are working on their first novels, and even though it isn't November, I imagine a lot of other people have made New Year's resolutions to finally write something. It never hurts to hear this stuff again, even if you know it already, and I think I agree with pretty much all of this advice--except for the laser printer thing :) If you don't read or write YA, don't worry, the advice also applies to books for grups.
So here it is, "Everyone is Free (To Buy a Laser Printer):
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officialgaiman
| 06:45 pm - Argh
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/01/argh.html posted by Neil
I'm at a counter at logan airport trying to go to Minneapolis. The computer believes that British Airways gave me a paper ticket when I went from London to Boston last week. Just missed my flight home, and I may have to buy a new ticket. And I am blogging this because there is nothing else I can do, while a helpful lady works hard to try to get me home in the face of a ticket that now exists only in theory. It's my nightmare of paperless ticketing finally come true. Ah well. The ladies are funny and helpful and have Boston accents, and the worst that will happen is I buy a new ticket, get home too late to watch Dr Who with Maddy, and spend the rest of my life convinced that FlyBe and British Airways should not be allowed to run anything as difficult as an actual airline with tickets and people and planes.
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January 3rd, 2010
womzilla
 | 10:22 pm - One of the lanes of my memory
Shamus Young has a nice pictorial gallery of the progress in video games in the last 37 years.
I set out to gently chide him for starting with a videogame-come-lately like Pong (1972) instead of Spacewar! (1961) or Tennis for Two (1958) (though of course Pong was a home game, while the others were not).
In the process of doing research to remind myself of the name of "Tennis for Two", though, I discovered the 1947 game "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device". Holy crap, that sounds like something that T. Herman Zweibel would have financed to give the working-classes some way to distract themselves from their hellish existences of futility and early death. Work, you dogs!
Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: "Pac-Man Fever", Buckner & Garcia
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womzilla
| 10:04 pm - Breaking out of the jackpot economy
One of the things that most people don't understand about the computer gaming industry* is that the vast, overwhelming majority of games lose money. An A-list game--or, these days, even a B+-list game--costs millions of dollars to produce
That's hard to keep in mind when one runs across facts like this:
... vast numbers remain willing to pay top dollar for the latest games. This was made clear on 10th November 2009 with the release of the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which instantly wrested the coveted title of most valuable entertainment release in history from 2008's biggest videogame, Grand Theft Auto IV. Within five days of release, Modern Warfare 2 had grossed over half a billion dollars; in its first 24 hours on sale, one in 49 people in Britain bought a copy.
That release will subsidize an Appian Way of crucified flops.
This model--hundreds of expensive failures subsidized by occasional billion-dollar winners--encompass console games and standalone personal computer games, which have similar economics, but will not include web-based games, which are able to operate on different models. The bit I'm quoting is from an article about micropayment-driven "social networking" games like those Facebook apps (Who Has the Biggest Brain?, Farmville, et al.) which generate huge amounts of money in very small increments, from a wider range of people:
Modern Warfare 2 is a dazzling piece of programming, but it also presents a formidable challenge for anyone not acquainted with the intricacies of the FPS ("first person shooting") genre. . . Its audience is composed largely of males aged between 18 and 35. These are the kind of players who are guaranteed to pay up every time a major release comes along, and they are the ones the games industry has to thank for its current wealth. Compared to the wider world of those who use social networks, however--an audience that is more female than male, and that ranges in age from five to 100--they're merely a niche market.
And the games are much cheaper to develop:
"The budget for our titles ranges from $200,000 to $1m, but just 30 or 40 per cent of that is up front." . . . It's a model that was pioneered in Asia, where consumers don't tend to own computers and will not pay big money in advance for games.
All that is sold melts into the net.
This is a great article, overall. Another quote:
I began playing World of Warcraft soon after it was first released; and yet, five years and the best part of 1,000 hours of play later, there is an ever-expanding list of items, achievements and quests I have yet to master. And still I go on playing--questing for just one more item, one more steed to show off, one more duelling victory to add to my tally.
Give someone a number, and they'll want to make it go up.
But the money stuff fascinates me, because my company ended up lining the highway as a decorative corpse while Everquest rode by on its ten-million-denarius chariot. It's nice to see the incredibly stupid economics finally breaking up, only a decade too late to do me professionally any good.
Current Mood: not that I'm bitter or anything
Current Music: "Everything That Rises Must Converge", Shriekback
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womzilla
| 07:59 pm - Centuries and Decades and such
Just posted this to rasff:
My habit, which is completely idiosyncratic but makes good emotional sense to me, is that the Second Century is the years from 100-199 AD and the First Century is 1-99 AD. The First Century gets shorted a year as punishment for not thinking to pick up a year 0 before it rushed onto the scene.
So there.
Current Mood: decadent
Current Music: "I and Love and You", Avett Brothers
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feiran
 | 06:21 pm - 2009 in Review
2009 was mixed. Committing as a full-time student through June meant foregoing an income and living on my savings, which added a level of financial stress to an already intense schedule of classes, volunteering, freelancing, and MCAT prep. Medical school applications were also expensive, and jobs were hard to find come summer. But fall was delightful, and in spite of the economic uncertainty, this year was amazing for personal accomplishments.
( That's Numberwang! )
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womzilla
| 03:30 pm - We won't stop until we have underpants! Yum tum yummy tum tay!
Prompted to post this in response to Avram Grumer's brilliant "Maybe Next Year" on Making Light.
I spent years saying "It appears that Al Qaeda used up all its competent agents on September 11, 2001. I mean, in December 2001, their best agent couldn't blow off his own feet with a bomb in his shoes."
In that regard, their two most recent Al Qaeda in Arabia attackers have moved up the charts: one managed to blow up his own jock with a bomb in his jockeys, and another managed to blow off his entire lower half with a bomb hidden in his hind parts. But between them, these two men managed to kill precisely 0 people who were not part of Al Qaeda. These are pretty much the modern textbook exemplars of Pyrrhic victories, except without the victory part.
I also spent many years standing in line at airports joking that Americans everywhere should be thankful that Richard Reid was not The Underpants Bomber. Let's not hand victory to them.
Current Mood: pantsed
Current Music: "The Underpants Gnome Song", South Park
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traykor
| 12:47 pm - Yuletide!
I wrote one story this year, a Wizard of Oz books story. At first I'd been a little *doh*, as 14 books by Baum alone meant a lot of canon to wade back into, and the recipient hadn't picked any characters. Thankfully said person not only had a yuletide letter, but was using the name Hungry Tiger as their user name. So I knew I had to write a hungry tiger story. So far the comments have all mentioned I got the style right, so.
Fat Babies, or The Temptation of the Hungry Tiger
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January 2nd, 2010
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