New Writers (Please)

Or more stuff found by digging around in Neil Gaiman's archives
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/archive/2003_01_01_archive.html

"Have you ever noticed that your writers have changed? Semi-serious question. You'll spend six months in a romantic comedy, then you turn around one day and you're in a ghost story or a medical thriller, or you spend a year in a kitchen sink, grittily realistic drama and then, without warning, your life turns into a sitcom... It's always sudden. It often happens with a bang. Ah, I think, when that happens to me. New writers... "

This makes a scary amount of sense. In fact it is the one explanation I've found as to why life is so insane that fits all variables.

Now, I'd like to make a formal request to the Publisher that the angst obsessed wacko who has been scripting my life for the last few years be fired immediately and someone like Kat Martin be brought in to fill the position.

I Love You Guys

Travel exposes you to new people and new ways of doing things and when you return home it can give you a fresh perspective.

In this case the lesson learned is: There is no place like "home".

I've been visiting some forums lately that are totally unrelated to About or Delphi. The new About layout is simple and easy to navigate compared to what other sites have. After much searching I still can not find any way of setting a couple of them so that they only show unread messages. I plan to email or post a comment to the mod of the one I want to continue at, right now I'm getting by with book marks.

And the Live Journal sites that are quasi forums, is that thing where you have to open each sub thread and then go back out to the main discussion how they want it to be or do I just not know how to set it so it's more readable?

Beyond navigation issues the thing that makes me appreciate ULF, FOAF, and AS IF (and the personal forums spun off from them) the most is the culture. D-V-D and Bethany understand that intelligent conversation is not linear. Anybody trying to be a topic Nazi gets instantly ridiculed by the regulars.

They also understand that sometimes debate can be messy and passionate and only step in when there is real personal abuse. Nobody gets coddled. Telling someone to stop whining will not get you a formal warning for "Flaming". On the other hand the mods step in and stop it when it really does get nasty and it becomes more about the personal habits of the poster's ancestors than it does the issue under discussion.

In short, it's a lot like what I imagine an average night at Callahan's would be only you have to BYOB and there's no cigarette smoke to deal with.

Thank you D-V-D, Bethany, and everyone else for making such great places to hang out.

Are There No Editors at the AP?

From an AP story:

"A gunman opened fire inside a Denny’s restaurant during lunch hour Wednesday, killing two people" [several paragraphs cut] "Two of the dead were in their 50s or 60s, while the third was 40 or older."

No, reading it again won't help but go ahead I know you can't help it. Yes, two people died all three of whom were older than 40.

Then there were two more painful errors in this sentence:

“We are shocked and saddened by this tragic accident,” the restaurant chain said in a statement.

He didn't mean to do it, he just reached into his pocket and was so suprised that he pulled out a gun instead of his wallet that his finger spasmed and caused 4 rounds to go off. Dispondent over this unintentional carnage he rested his head in his hands forgetting that he was still holding the gun which accidentally discharged a fifth time shooting the man and putting him out of his misery. A spokesman for the restaurant chain being unavailable the restaurant and it's brothers across the country spoke up, moved by the horror they could no longer keep silent and pretend to be inarticuate collections of brick and concrete.

*sigh*

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11844451/

Please, Give Me Another Bad Horoscope

According to Katje today and tomorrow were supposed to be very bad for me. I really, really hope tomorrow is as bad as today was. While I did drop a carton of eggs and break 8 of them, and I did knock a stapler onto the floor and break it, just about everything else has gone right today. I managed to cross off several things on my to do list that have been causing me anxiety, I designed a pretty spiffy flyer for an upcoming employee lunch, I got a compliment on the outfit I was wearing, and I found a lost library book. Certain people at work who have been in snark mode due to massive stress were even back to being their usual selves.

Now, if only my horoscope is as accurate in the romance department.

True Words

"If you are required to do something that doesn't fit who you are and you resist, complain, react, or become depressed, anxious, clumsy, or indecisive, you are likely to be scolded, chastised, or further labeled because you've reacted. When you resist, you are likely to be called oppositional. When you complain, you may be called argumentative. When you cry or become depressed, you are called symptomatic. When you become anxious, you are given a pathological label and medication to deal with your anxiety.

But these secondary symptoms are only the result of being pressured or forced to do something that doesn't fit you in the first place -- something that is out of alignment with what is in the best interest of the true you."

From Attention Deficit Disorder in Adults A Different Way of thinking, Fourth Edition. Lynn Weiss, Ph.d

We Are Not Alone

I haven't been by in a couple of months but I recently heard on a mailing list that AdultFanFiction.Net is having a problem. AFF.Net is the home of the largest collection of X rated fan fiction on the planet as far as I know. There are beautiful love stories and exciting adventure stories there with erotic scenes as well as out and out PWP porn. If it was too racy for the other sites it's probably posted there. They have a bunch of R rated stuff too.

The problem is that in order to house this vast collection they recently needed to move to a new server and they are having problems getting back on line because they are taking an estimated 150,000 hits PER HOUR and it's overloading the server.

Think about it. In one hour's time one hundred and fifty thousand people all had the idea to go visit this one site and read some hentai fanfic. That's 3,600,000 hits per day. Woah.

Okay granted there have to be some repeats there, the same person will try several times throughout the day to get in, but still...

Wow

If anybody else reading this ever saw a mimeographed fanzine and felt a rush of joy that someone else liked speculating about other people's characters did you ever imagine that one day there would be enough fanfic writers and fans to generate 3,600,000 of anything? And the idea that it would be on a global computer network was pure SF. Something out of Legion of Superheros.

We've come a long way.

Oh, and if you were thinking about checking them out AFF.Net would appreciate it if you could hold your curiosity about them until things quiet down a bit. You won't get on right now anyway. 3,600,000 other people had the same idea.

Wow

Doing Unto Me

You might have noticed that I haven't blogged much about my personal life yet. That's because there hasn't been a lot of good stuff in my life and I find myself reluctant to post about the bad or even the mediocre even if I could figure out a way to channel Elayne and make it laugh 'til it hurts funny.

The problem is that when any of my friends post about their problems THEY are sharing. They are getting support, clearing the air, and any other psycho babble phrases you want to use. When I think about talking about my problems then the voice in my head immediately gives me hell for wanting to whine and dump on people. If I go ahead and do it anyway I feel guilty afterwards.

This is not the only area in my life where if the Golden Rule were worded a little differently and we were supposed to do unto other AS we do unto ourselves instead of as WE WISH they would treat us I would be immensely unpopular. I give just about everyone more slack than I give myself.

I need to work on that.

So, anybody want to hear about my week with the 175/105 blood pressure incident and so not having any caffeine in a week and the UTI and the PMS and the mammogram appointment and the dizziness that could be the BP or the fever or a side effect of the Cipro and being stuck in traffic for nearly an hour on my way home because the interstate was backed up from an accident, and people coming to me with projects that had to be done NOW because we are going to have an accreditation survey soon and the near constant headache that could be attributed to any and all of the above except for the wreck since it just happened?

Probably not.