Review: Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman

Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman

Gatchaman was a groundbreaking Japanese cartoon back in the early '70s. Sandy Frank thought it could play in the US with a little tweaking so he bought the rights. A MASSIVE amount of reworking later he released Battle of the Planets.

The biggest obstacle to showing Gatchaman on American TV was the level of violence and death. Giant mecha rampage through the city sweeping commuter trains off their tracks, stepping on cars, and demolishing tall buildings. In return the good guys, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, strangle, drown, incinerate, and otherwise mow through the enemy agents responsible. Their language while doing so isn't very pure either. Airing a children's program like that would have caused a bigger stink than Janet Jackson's nipple ring.

So, Frank had editors cut out the visual stuff that standards and practices would go postal over, then hired a team of writers to watch what was left, untranslated, and write English scripts. In order to cover the lost footage, sometimes nearly a third of a half hour show, he got some new animation done at Hanna-Barara of a new pair of characters a robot who monitored the team and his robot dog sidekick.

7-Zark-7, the robot narrated the episodes and helpfully reassured us that those fighter jets that just got burned out of the sky were robot plains, and that no one was harmed when downtown was destroyed because everyone had been evacuated. Which was strange since you can still see cars moving around and other signs of life. He also had really silly vignettes in which he flirted with the computer on Pluto and took oil showers. Anything to fill the time.

His design was pretty basic and footage could be used over and over again with different dialogue since he didn't have a mouth. Unfortunately someone got the idea to have some of the human characters visit him from time to time and the animation of those scenes was truly awful. It looked nothing like the animation of the rest of the show which was pretty high quality for TV animation at the time.

To Americanize the show the characters were renamed. Originally the team were Ken, Joe (half Italian/half Japanese), Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu. So, you'd think they'd keep Ken & Joe change Jun to June and only have to come up with two more names, say, Jim or Pete for jinpei and Roy for Ryu, instead the characters became Mark, Jason, Princess, Keyop, and Tiny. No idea whatsoever where the heck "Keyop" cam from or how it was easier for American kids than Jinpei.

I was a little above the target audience at 14 but it was still a blast. I had never heard of Gatchaman, had no idea what had been changed, and even with the occasional bit of bad new animation Battle of the Planets was probably the best animated show on at the time. It had actual character development and continuity from episode to episode. It had a female character who could fight as well as the men. It had hunky guys. Maybe I wasn't too old for it. Heh.

When I read an article about it in a magazine that mentioned the original it got me curious about Japanese animation and from the first time I got to go to a Con with an anime room I've been pretty hooked ever since. There is direct line between sitting in front of the TV after school that year and shelf full of manga I'm looking at right now.

I'd never got to see the original though and when I found out that there were DVDs coming out that paired the Gatchaman episodes with the Battle of the Planets remakes I put off seeking them out. What if Battle of the Planets didn't hold up to my memories? What if I didn't like Gatchaman?

A friend bought vol. 2 of the box set and loaned it to me last week and my fears were groundless. As an adult I can see more of the seams in the BotP episodes but they are still watchable thanks to the great animation and excellent voice acting. The Gatchaman episodes are outstanding though. There is even more character development and the lack the obvious holes that some episodes of BotP ended up with. I can watch both versions of the same episode in one sitting without getting bored and enjoy each on it's own merits.

I'd recommend this as something adults could watch with their kids and both enjoy. For all the death in Gatchaman there is very little blood and none of the 12 episodes I watched had nudity so if a kid can deal with the the subtitles it could be a good way to introduce him or her to anime once you've shown them the BotP episodes. The occasional curse words aren't that bad by our current TV standards and nothing the kid hasn't heard already.

Editing Darkness & Light

So, I recently decided to post Darkness and Light to Media Miner so I could possibly get some fresh comments and figure out what it is that is not working about it other than the fact that it wants to be a novel instead of a short story. I opened the file for version 1 - the Mariko POV version - and started to read. I found four technical errors in the first two paragraphs. Despite having been read by 5 or 6 people who have all given me feedback, all of us missed those errors that are now so glaringly obvious. What a difference three years makes.

Other problems also stand out much more clearly now and I don't think it's just the old trick of putting something away for a while and coming back to it. I set myself a task three or four years ago. If I found myself thinking that something worked particularly well, or was particularly bad, in a story I was to stop and ask myself why. If it was something that didn't work, how could it be fixed?

Basically, I wanted to figure out the anatomy and physiology of writing. Why did Picture Me, an Inuyasha fanfic by Midoriko-Sama, grab me so hard that I've re-read it at least 6 times since I found it last year even though it has many uncorrected typos, some bad transitions, and uneven pacing? What is so very right about it that I don't care about those things at all, even though they might be enough for me to dismiss another story without a second thought?

What is it about some fictons that keep people from all walks of life returning to them again and again even when the stories set in them are by different authors?

Why don't other stories work for me at all despite being absolutely technically correct? What do they lack? Is is just me? Do others feel this lack?

There are several sites on the 'net devoted to picking apart bad stories and I've become addicted to them since I discovered them a few months ago. It really helps to watch someone dissect a story and explain what is wrong and why. Apparently at least some of that is sticking with me and it's time to apply it to my own work.

Google's Secret Revealed

http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

And here I thought it was an infinite number of monkeys.

Bad Fanfic Review #1 As Death Gives Life

This is the review I started to started to write April 9th and gave up as the pain of reading the story that I was reviewing grew to be too much. I started to just delete this after I wrote the post about how I'm going to try to do more general articles instead, but then I reread it and liked what I had said too much to just toss it, so here is the unfinished review.

Here is a link to Wiki's article giving the background on Inuyasha but you shouldn't really need it.

I was going to give a link to a fanfiction dictionary as promised earlier but I can't find one I really like. Either they are specialized for their particular fandom, or they leave important stuff out, or there is at least one outright error. So, if there is a word you don't understand then either ask me what it means or Google it yourself. Just put in "word definition" or "word wiki", replacing "word" with the actual word, and you should find something in the first few hits.

As Death Gives Life by Rinseternalsoul
Series: Inuyasha
Rated X so if you are under legal age, scat! If you are over legal age don't get your hopes up that reading this will give you a thrill unless you are really easy to excite.

http://kagsess.pixelled.com/fanficread.php?fid=2865&cid=1

There will be spoilers for the story in this review but not much for the source series since the writer blithely ignores most of the events in the last two years + of the series. It may be that it has taken her that long to write it even though the final chapter was posted in February so I won't pick on it too much even though she states that her work is supposed to be canon not AU.

We've been talking a lot about Mary Sue and her brother Marty Stu over at WASIF. If you don't know what a Mary Sue is here is our discussion on it:

http://forums.delphiforums.com/canwrite/messages/?msg=633.1

And here is the author's own introduction of her main character:
I present to you all, my latest creation, staring Lord Anubis, the sexy Egyptian God of the Dead! Enjoy!

Okay so that's not enough to mark him as an MS but it gets better (or worse depending on your POV).

This story is an epic 41 chapters long but fortunately the chapters are short. The review however will be long. If you are still with me get comfortable.

The premise is original; the Egyptian god Anubis is bored and decides that he needs a vacation from gathering the souls of the dead. He has wanted to sire a child for some time as an antidote to dealing with death all the time and he gets permission to leave his post and search the Earth for the perfect woman to "bare" it.

It's obvious that the author relied on spell check alone to proof her story since misused homonyms abound. These days I guess I have to give her points for using spell check at all and I'm hardly one to cast rocks about how someone spells since I can't do it myself but this is where having a good beta reader comes in.

A problem with the writing process is that the author is too close to things to see omissions and errors that someone else will see easily. Even if you don't have a problem like dyslexia it's always a good idea to get someone who will be honest to read over your work. I wish I had someone to do that for this blog but that would take away the spontaneity of it wouldn't it?

Anyway, I don't usually pick on errors like this but it's really hard not to with this story since often they create unintentionally humorous images in my mind. Especially when Sess takes Inuyasha insulting him as his "queue" to begin a fight. I immediately imagine this line of people ready to take on my favorite hanyou. Would Sess wait patiently in line behind Kouga, or would he rudely skip ahead?

Back to Anubis. He searches the entire planet and just as he is about to give up hope he finds Kagome. Beautiful? Check? Virginal? Yep. Good heart? Double check. Power enough to deal with bearing (or baring) a demigod? Apparently.

Now that he has found his perfect woman he materializes before her in the form of an incredibly sexy dog demon and introduces himself. It doesn't hurt that he is possessed of an aura that acts on Kagome like a drug. They are interrupted by Inuyasha before too long but that's okay. Anubis needs to do some research to make sure that she IS the one.

Meanwhile Inuyasha brings Kagome back to camp where she stares into space with a goofy expression on her face and is admittedly intoxicated from being in Anubis' presence. If the author didn't already give away the fact that Anubis eventually succeeds in getting her knocked up in the description of the story on her profile page, then awake readers will pretty much figure it's already inevitable unless her companions do something more than be vaguely concerned. But then according to Inuyasha if "That Bastard thinks that he’s gonna take you from us, he’s got another thing coming!"

Unfortunately that wasn't a typo, I've seen it before from other young writers more than once and it's driving me up the wall. IT'S THINK!!! He has another THINK coming. The saying makes no sense at all if it's another "thing". Yes, it's grammatically incorrect, that's part of the joke. *ahem* /rant mode.

After doing his research Anubis finds that there is a threat to Kagome so he needs to find her a protector since he's a charter member of the 4F club and is really only interested in Kagome for a couple of rolls in the hay and as an incubator. He has no plans to stick around for dreary things like pregnancy, birth, actually raising his child, or a relationship. He'll find someone else to do that so he can get back to work. In 16 years or so he'll seek out his offspring who will be oh so thrilled at meeting dear old dad finally. Asshole.

So we have an original character (sort of), who is more powerful than anyone else in the canon universe, showing up in a moment of deus ex machina and sweeping one of the main characters off her feet and into bed despite a strong relationship with another canon character. He is unusually good looking, and has a special background (being a god). Not Sue enough for you? It gets better, just wait.

Anubis reasons that Kagome won't want to leave Japan and a human wouldn't be powerful enough to protect her so he checks out the rulers of the 4 youkai kingdoms for their suitability. Never mind that this is supposed to be a canon fic and the 4 kingdoms are fanon. Or that Kouga somehow becomes a great daiyoukai lord and ruler of the East instead of prince of a scattered collection of wolf clans, it's not AU. Really.

Anubis finally visits Sesshoumaru's fortress. That Sess has a fortress is another bit of fanon. Rumiko Takahashi has stated in interviews that he does not have a real home and is a wanderer but how boring is that? Someone like Sess should live in a palace so even the best fanfic writers have given in to the temptation to give him one. I can't really blame this writer for following the herd, just for doing so but still trying to hold on to the idea that this is even remotely canon.

Despite his research Anubis doesn't seem to know that Sess is Inuyasha's older brother. He has observed Sess being all fatherly with Rin though and thinks that he will be the perfect sucker, er foster father, for his own as yet unconceived child. This even though the interaction observed was Sess giving Rin an awkward pat on the head in his usual emotionally constipated way. I like Sesshoumaru, I really do, but he has all the warmth of a full blooded Vulcan and he has leather bound volumes when it comes to relationships with others.

Did I mention that the author proclaims her obsession with Sess on her profile page? Did you know that this is ultimately supposed to be a Kagome/Sesshoumaru story? It's really the only way to make sense of Anubis' picking him so keep both facts in mind.

He bribes Sess into being his baby sitter by promising to restore his missing arm and telling him that his sources say that a great threat is scheduled to destroy "The House of the Moon" in 16 years time but that the yet to be concieved child will have come into his power by then and will save them all.

"The House of the Moon" as the name of Sesshoumaru's clan/kingdom/whatever isn't canon. It was created by Resmiranda in her story Tales from the House of the Moon. When I asked Resmiranda what she thought about her idea being used without attribution she said that it's being used by several writers now and she's accepted that it's become fanon. That's very gracious of her but it doesn't excuse any of the writers for not taking 10 seconds to put something in their author's note acknowledging her.

At this point remember that nobody has consulted Kagome about any of this.

Anubis generously decides to let Kagome get to know him for a few days before seducing her. He has no doubts that he will succeed because according to him gods are known for their skill in bed and no human will be able to resist him. Just being a Mary Sue would normally suffice but it's good to know he's got that extra god thing going for him.

According to the story it's been four years since the search for the jewel began, which conveniently makes Kagome at least 19 and therefore the story will not break the rules at FF.Net which say that they will not accept stories with underage sex.

Despite how long it's been, somehow her relationship with Inuyasha has not progressed at all. The development in the manga has seemed glacier because the series has been running for 9 years, but within the story it's been less than a year for the characters. When you look at it that way there has been a lot of progress. Even though Inuyasha seems to feel he isn't free to make any kind of direct declarations of love he did tell her that "You'll always have me" and even Kagome's friends are starting to think he's decent boyfriend material.

But this is a Sess/Kag story so ignore that, Kagome has to be able to drop the man she's been devoted to for entire run of the manga like a hot rock as soon as Sess deigns to pay attention to her. Therefore also ignore Sessy having tried to kill Kagome a couple of times in the past, Sess' disdain for any human who isn't Rin, and his iron control over his emotions to the point that he barely raised an eyebrow when he had a long talk with a topless Kagura, a mature and very well endowed woman.

In Chapter 6 you will need to forget that Sess has increasingly found excuses not to fight his brother dispite still claiming he intends to kill him one day. There is a lot of fan speculation as to why this is but the trend is obvious.

In this chapter Sess seeks out Inu with fratricidal intentions just to try out his new arm. He grabs Kagome and licks her and feels her up in order to goad Inu into not holding back in the fight. Usually just taunting Inu with the fact that he will never measure up to a real demon because of his tainted blood, is soft for humans, and has no manners is good enough but for some reason in this story Sess has to taunt him with not having gotten around to bedding Kagome and threatens to do the job himself. It's a bluff but he finds that he is so captivated by her taste and smell that he almost gets distracted from the fight because he's getting turned on.

She's especially arousing because being roughly held and groped a bit by Sesshoumaru, a man who is threatening to rape, or kill her, or both, in order to strike out at the man that she loves and hurt him, gets HER excited and Sess can smell it. We are told that her excitement is due to being a virgin and unused to being handled like that. Yeah, getting sexually harassed and physically abused turns all the young girls on. Ask any fratboy.

So following this logic, when Miroku stroked her butt for the first time way back when, and she jumped away and grabbed onto Inuyasha for protection, she wasn't offended she was just trying to drag Inu off for a quick lay? To bad it didn't work.

We are soon treated to the first lemon in this X rated story, Sess having a date with his hand after waking up from a dream about Kagome. This scene raises several questions, primarily how does one get semen stains out of silk in the 16th century?

Here endeth the part I wrote months ago. I only read another chapter of the story and skimmed around a bit. Enough to find yet another original character, this one female, who is another obvious MS and to decide that if I read any more I'd loose brain cells that I couldn't spare.

LSH

Well, rats! The Legion of Superheroes series mentioned in the list I got from XT is brand new. So brand new that the very first episode aired TODAY. That means it will be at least a year before I get to see it unless Mike decides to tape a few sample episodes for me. NOT a hint really.

Unless it turns out to be unbelievably good.

I found a couple of articles about it and I've got reservations about how good it will be. The art style is similar to that on Tean Titans which took some getting used to. They are apparently using the early '80s versions of the characters for the most part which is a relief. LSH suffered more than most from the horror that was the reboot after Crisis.

Mike is supposed to watch it and report back to me on it.

I'm Such A Lemming This Week

From XT's blog:

The instructions are simple:
bold the shows you've watched at least three complete episodes of (but not the entire series),
italicize a show if you're certain you've seen every episode of it,
strike through if you've never even heard of it,
underline if you'd rather be boiled in lead than ever watch another second of it,
asterisk (*) if you have some particular fondness for it.

You can add shows to the list, but keep them in alphabetical order.

24
3rd Rock from the Sun
The 4400
7th Heaven
Adam-12
*The Addams Family
The Adventures of Brisco County, Junior
Aeon Flux
Airwolf
A.L.F
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alias
*Alien Nation
Alice
All in the Family
Allo Allo
American Dad
American Idol/Pop Idol/Canadian Idol/Australian Idol
America's Next Top Model/Germany's Next Top Model
The Andy Griffith Show
*Angel
Are You Being Served?
Arrested Development
As Time Goes By
The A-Team
The Avengers
Babylon 5
Babylon 5: CrusadeBattlestar
Batman: the Animated Series
*Battlestar Galactica (the old one)
Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
Baywatch
*Beauty & the Beast
Beavis & Butthead
The Ben Stiller Show
The Beverly Hillbillies
Beverly Hills 90210
Bewitched
*The Bionic Woman
Black Books
Bonanza
Bones
The Book of Daniel
Bosom Buddies
Boston Legal
Boy Meets World
Brady Bunch
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Bug Juice
Cagney & Lacey
Chappelle's Show
Charlie's Angels
Charmed
Cheers
China Beach
The Colbert Report
Columbo
Commander in Chief
The Cosby Show
Coupling (UK)
Coupling (US)
*Cowboy Bebop
Criminal Minds
Crossing Jordan
CSI
CSI: Miami
CSI: NY
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The Daily Show
Dallas
Dancing with the Stars
Danger Mouse
Danny Phantom
Dark Angel
Dark Skies
Darkwing Duck
Davinci's Inquest
Dawson's Creek
Dead Like Me
Deadliest Catch
Deadwood
The Dead Zone
Degrassi: The Next Generation
Designing Women
Desperate Housewives
Dharma & Greg
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Diff'rent Strokes
*Doctor Who (Almost nobody has seen EVERY episode since the idiots at the BBC destroyed a bunch of tapes of early episodes.)
Dragnet
Due South
The Dukes of Hazzard
*Dungeons and Dragons
Dynasty
Earth 2
Emergency!
Entourage
ER
Everwood
Everybody Loves Raymond
Facts of Life
Falcon Crest
Family Guy
Family Ties
Fantasy Island
Farscape
Fawlty Towers
Felicity
Firefly
Flamingo Road
The Flintstones
Frasier
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Friends
Full House
Futurama
Get Smart
Gilligan's Island
Gilmore Girls
Godzilla (animated)
The Golden Girls
Good Eats
Good vs. Evil ("G vs. E")
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
The Greatest American Hero
Green Wing
Grey's Anatomy
Growing Pains
*Gunsmoke
Happy Days
Head of the Class
Hercules
*Highlander
Hill Street Blues
Hogan's Heroes
Home Improvement
Homicide: Life on the Street
Honeymooners
House
How I Met Your Mother
Hustle
I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
Invader Zim
Invasion
Iron Chef (Japan)
Iron Chef (USA) (SO much better when Shatner hosted...)
Ironside
I Spy
JAG
Jackass
*Jana of the Jungle
Jeopardy
The Jetsons
Joey
John Doe
Jonny Quest
Kath and Kim
Keen Eddie
Knight Rider
Knots Landing
Kojak
The L Word
La Femme Nikita
LA Law
Laugh-In
Laverne and Shirley
Law & Order
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Law & Order: SVU
Legion of Superheroes (THERE IS A SERIES???? Must go to Netflix NOW)
Little House on the Prairie
Lizzie McGuire
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Supermann
Lost
Lost in Space
Love, American Style
The Love Boat
*M*A*S*H
*MacGyver
Magnum P.I.
Malcolm in the Middle
The Man from U.N.C.L.E
Manimal
Married…With Children
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Melrose Place
Miami Vice
The Mighty Boosh
Mighty Mouse
Mission: Impossible
Monk
The Monkees
Moonlighting
*Mork & Mindy
*The Munsters
*The Muppet Show
Mystery!
Mythbusters
Murphy Brown
My Family
My Favorite Martian
My Life as a Dog
My Mother the Car
My So-Called Life
My Three Sons
My Two Dads
Mysterious Cities of Gold
NCIS
Night Court
Nip/Tuck
*Northern Exposure
Numbers
The O.C.
The Office (UK)
The Office (US)
One Tree Hill
Oz
Parker Lewis Can't Lose
Perfect Strangers
Perry Mason
Picket Fences
*Pirates of Darkwater
Pokemon
Power Rangers
The Pretender
Prison Break
The Prisoner
Profiler
Project Runway
Psych
*Quantum Leap
Queer As Folk (US)
Queer as Folk (British)
Queer Eye For The Straight Guy
The Real World
*Red Dwarf
ReGenesis
Remington Steele
Rescue Me
Road Rules
ROME
The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show
Roseanne
Roswell
Samurai Jack
Sanford & Son
Sapphire & Steel
Saturday Night Live
Saved by the Bell
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scooby-Doo Where Are You?
Scrubs
Seinfeld
Sex and the City
The Shield
The Simpsons
Six Feet Under
The Six Million Dollar Man
Sliders
Slings and Arrows
Smallville
Small Wonder
Soap
The Sopranos
So Weird
South Park
Spaced
Spongebob Squarepants
Spooks (MI-5)
Sports Night
Square Pegs
St. Elsewhere
*Star Trek
*Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
*Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate SG-1
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
Supernatural
Surface
The Surreal Life
Survivor
Taxi
Teen Titans
Teletubbies
That Girl
That 70's Show
That's So Raven
Third Watch
Thirtysomething
Three's Company
Thundarr the Barbarian
*The Tick (animated)
*The Tick (live action)
Top Gear
The Tribe
The Twilight Zone
Twin Peaks
Twitch City
Two and a Half Men
Underdog
Upstairs, Downstairs
Ugly Betty
V
Veronica Mars
Vicar of Dibley
The Waltons
The West Wing
The Wild Wild West
Wings
What Not To Wear (US)
What Not To Wear (UK)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (US)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK)
Witchblade
Will & Grace
*WKRP in Cincinnati
The Wonder Years
Wonderfalls
*Wonder Woman
The X-Files
*Xena: Warrior Princess
Young Hercules

WASIF? Wuhs That?

I keep mentioning WASIF as if (heh) everyone who might stumble accross this blog would know what it is, or even notice the link over there on the left under the list of old posts. We could use some traffic so here is a PSA on WASIF.

A while back on AS IF*, The Association Specifically for Imaginary Friends, a lovely forum ran by HTML goddess Bethany, some of us got to talking about our writing. One of us, I think it was me, but it could have been somebody else and I just agreed and ran with it, expressed an interest in a place where we could get help with our writing. Specifically, where we could get input from people like XT, and Treebear, and Gine, regulars at AS IF who all have RL writing credentials. A place where we could expect unvarnished honesty about our work but no flames.

And so the concept for Writing AS IF We're Good At It, was born. Mandy volunteered to run it; DCK and I joined the team and we were off. My friend Katje referred to it as WASIF in an email to me and I have infected the others.

DCK has since left and been replaced by Spelunker; XT, Treebear, and Gine never did become regulars, but we have what we wanted -- a place to get naked intellectually and instead of having someone laugh at the celulite and the love handles get real help and real support.

WASIF has several functions but the two most important are as a safe place to learn the craft of writing, and as a place to celebrate the joy of words and creativity. Topic drift is an art form, umbrellas are suggested in case of sudden brainstorms, and any form of writing is accepted from stories for children to hard core porn. We do keep the porn and erotica in an access limited folder, but anybody over 18 can get into it with a request (with age statement) sent to a moderator.

What we are not: We are not an archive for fiction, posts over 6 months old can be hard to find and are not likely to be searched for by new visitors. We are not the place to go for an ego boost. If you post something it will be gently taken apart to help you put it together again better than before. On the other hand, if you post something and it is met with nothing but admiring sighs you can be pretty sure we mean it and aren't just being nice.

Come and play with us, even if you don't write your opinion is welcome.



*This post brought to you by the ASFTOOA, the American Society for the overuse of accronyms.

I'm Awake! ZZZZZZZZ

I've been meaning to post an update on the health stuff. Overall it's been better the last couple of weeks thanks indirectly to Elayne.

She wrote about a doctor suggesting that she try eliminating wheat from her diet for a couple of weeks to see if it helped her; it didn't unfortunately. I've been pretty sure for several months that something I was eating was contributing to my problems though because I'd often feel worse soon after eating. I'd tried eliminating several things without any result though.

I looked up the symptoms of wheat sensitivity and it seemed to match a good many of my symptoms. Fatigue, joint pain, increased severity of migraines, bloating, and mental fog. So I gave it a shot and the first week didn't really see any difference but day 10 the fog cleared. Day 11 and I started having the energy to do stuff again. Then day 12 I ate a hotdog. I left off the bun but I forgot about fillers. Less then 20 mins later the fog decended.

Once that cleared out of my system the next week was great. I've ran errands after work without feeling like I was slogging though an endurance course. I did more stuff around the house. This weekend I not only put away all the clean laundry but I ironed the stuff that needed it too. Wee!

So of course here comes a vicious migraine that caused me to call in sick today and lay here like a slug too stoned on pain meds to do anything. I opened this window 4 hours ago and I've fallen asleep 3 times between then and now.

The King is Dead

His Majesty King Taufa'Ahau Tupou IV of Tonga, who died recently, sounds like a really cool person and a lot better than just about anybody we've had in charge. Okay, I'll admit to certain monarcist sympathies but a guy who introduced surfing to his homeland already is ahead on cool points.

He also had a sense of humor about himself making jokes like this: "I'm a bit of a Pooh-bah, you know," said the Crown Prince in 1962, "except that I don't cut off any heads." In later life he joked about his weight problem, "My doctor's put me on a diet," the King said in 1999. "I'm only allowed to eat three yams a day. But a yam can be 6ft long."

And finally, there was his view on getting smart people into power: "He considered the monarch's right to appoint one third of the legislature as the only certain means of ensuring that the better-educated Tongans got into the government. "The intelligentsia," he said some years after ascending the throne, "are not the best campaigners. We have not had one person with a degree elected — they have all been appointed by me.""

I'd vote for him. Heck dead people have won elections in this country before. We'd have to do something about that whole native born citizen clause though.

Bethany Made Me Do It

Ok, so that's not true. But her's was sooooo cool and mine is...*sigh* I don't know if I should be depressed about looking like a bunch of guys or jazzed that one of them is Jimmy Page.

Yes!

Best quote of the month year:

Spelling and grammar are to the internet world as tooth-brushing and hair-washing are to the real world. No matter how nice of a person you are, people are still going to form a bad opinion of you based on your outward presentation and hygiene. -- Ficbitches

Another Trek Vid

And this one is all original footage shot by the creators. I laughed until I cried.

What If They Hadn't Made It To Vulcan In Time?

EDIT 2: I've pulled the video as I said I would but not posting the link. I never could get the video to play from their site so I'm not going to send you on a wild goose chase.

Fanfic Reviews Revisited

Some of you may recall that I said that I would start posting reviews of fanfic here in addition to the occasional movie and book reviews. That was back in April and I haven't done it yet so it's OK if you forgot about it

I actually did start writing about the very fic that had me so ready to stick a spork in the author but when I got to four pages of rant and I hadn't even covered half of what was wrong with the story or gotten past chapter two I realized two things. First, to continue on would mean reading the other 30 or so chapters and that may have caused permanent brain damage. Second, most of those who I know read this probably wouldn't bother to plow through that much verbiage about a genre they aren't interested in.

I saved what I had with every intention of going back and rewriting it and making it a short review instead of a detailed sporking but then I got busy with other stuff and I would have needed to re-read at least part of the story to remember where I was going with some of it and it was just too much effort for something that probably would just get skipped anyway.

I can enjoy reading the reviews at Ficbitches or Deleterius even when I'm not familiar with the original series the fanfic was based on because they are so good at what they do. I'm not so sure that my own attempts would be up to that standard.

Not that I'm giving up completely. I'll probably post something along those lines eventually. If I do then there is a third problem. Because most of you don't read fanfic you aren't familiar with the jargon and I don't want to have to stop every time to explain what sporking, lemon, slash, het, beta, etc. mean.

Plus, although I also read fanfics set in universes that should be familiar to you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Narnia, LotR, and Star Trek, a lot of what I read is based on anime and manga which most of you aren't into. It's just not possible to condense a lot of these series down to a paragraph or two of background information. One of the reasons that Japanese comics and series have become so popular is that they don't assume that the audience is stupid and everything has to be simple for them to get it.

So, here's what I plan to do. First I have in mind several articles on fanfic in general. Trends that tick me off, things that I like, and why I think reading it is a good learning experience for an author. Which would be much more universally interesting than picking on a single story.

Secondly, instead of trying to explain everything as I go I will post a link to one of the online vocabulary lists with the rest of the permanent links. It'll probably be this weekend before I get around to that. If I'm talking about a particular series I will post a link to it's Wikipedia entry in that post so you can get as much background as you care to without clogging up the post here.

I plan to cross post these planned articles to WASIF and maybe we can discuss them there since the blog comment format isn't really good for that. We really could use more participation there. Lately it's just been me, Spe, and Mandy talking to ourselves and I know from the visitor's list that we aren't the only people there.

How I Cope

Christina asked how it is that I'm holding things together despite the ups and downs of the last couple of months. Knee jerk answer would be “Hell if I know” but seriously I've got a lot of coping strategies that I use, some of which others might benefit from.

In no particular order these include:

* Reframing – How much something upsets us is often more a function of how we view it than anything else. By consciously making myself look for other ways to view something I can often find a way of looking at it that doesn't upset me as much. It's hard to do at first, especially in the heat of the moment, but with practice it becomes easier.

For instance, I know someone who is very sarcastic and often says things that offend those she interacts with. I've known her long enough to know that she gets into moods where she snaps at people for little reason. Some of that is due to not feeling well because of health problems. When she snaps at me I could view it as proof that she hates me (even though we tend to get along most of the time) but instead I usually dismiss it as her just being her and reply with a sarcastic comment of my own and then forget it.

Or I'll be getting upset about something and I'll intentionally blow it up until it becomes ridiculous and I have to laugh. I can't really come up with a good example of this right now. The next time it comes up I'll try to remember to post about it.

* Meditation techniques – I don't regularly meditate right now but I've done it in the past and I have done enough of it that I have gotten myself trained to be able to enter that mental state with long deep breaths held and then released and a mental repetition of a calming statement. It doesn't make the stress all go away but it goes a good way toward keeping off a panic attack. This takes time to set up since you have to actually have done full fledged meditation enough to know that state and condition yourself to reach it.

* Distraction – Call a friend, read a good story, take a walk, take a nap. Anything and everything that keeps me from brooding. Funny stuff works best for this.

* Avoidance – If I know something will contribute to my stress levels and it's something that I can put off or avoid entirely without adding to my stress later on then I chose not to deal with it. This includes trivial things like shopping in crowded stores as well as serious stuff like going through my mother's closet and disposing of her clothes.

Of course I can't put stuff off forever but I can at least try to put it off until I have more energy or emotional balance to deal with it.

* Thinking about key life lessons I have picked up from sources as diverse as Jesus, Buddha, and Spider Robinson - Stuff like most suffering is caused by an attachment to things and the importance of letting go. Shared sorrow is lessened. There is a life after this one and therefore hope.

* Reminding myself to revel in the good things instead of dismissing them immediately in favor of dwelling on the bad. - No, not some Polyanna think positive thing. I had/have a habit of not taking time to appreciate good things when they happen out of a fear that all good things will be paid for by equal or greater amounts of bad things and by fully enjoying the good I'm opening the way for the bad. Being able to feel good for more than a moment about a raise, a compliment, a surprise gift, etc is a big thing that I have to work at; as is being able to set aside brooding about bad things if the energy is better spent elsewhere.

* Just doing the next thing and trying to get through that instead of stressing about what might happen tomorrow.

* Working at taking care of myself physically. - Getting enough sleep is a big struggle so a year ago I instituted a set bed time of 9pm and a routine for meeting it. I'm often up past it but I'm getting better at coming close. I don't find myself still up and on the computer at 11:30 on a work night several times a week anymore and I do feel better for getting more sleep than I used to.

Part of that is being firm with other people about this. Since I live alone you'd think that wouldn't be a problem but you'd be surprised how often someone will call or IM me close to bedtime even after I've told them that I need to be in bed by 9pm on a work night. If they just want to chat I tell them that I have to be off in 20 minutes or whatever and stick to that. If they are having a problem and need to talk about it then of course I stay up as late as I need to and I don't mind that they called but that doesn't happen enough to be a big factor.

I also am working at getting more exercise. I joined Curves in December and even though my health issues have kept me from going as much as I should I enjoy it when I go and I'm getting better at setting up my life so that when I'm not in pain or sick I actually do make it by there.

* Cutting myself some slack – accepting that there are things I can't change and not beating myself up over the mistakes that come from that.

I'm dyslexic and I refuse to be embarrassed by that anymore. Not being able to spell well is not a sign that I'm stupid but a problem with the wiring in my brain. There are successful novelists with the same problem so I'm not doomed to failure by it. Spell check and copy editors are my friends.

I'm asthmatic and I'm not going to be able to just decide to go jogging every morning to get into shape. I need to plan my exercise program so that I can do it safely.

I have some minor problems with fine motor skills as well as poor peripheral vision so if I drop things and bump into things I will not repeat my father's lectures about being careless I will just remember why I do it and resolve to do the best I can in the future.

If I wouldn't hold something against a friend then I should not hold it against myself.

And finally, it's okay if I have bad day. In fact giving myself permission to cry or brood when I'm in a safe place to do that instead of pushing it all back behind a wall often means that I'll have a bad hour instead of a bad day and I'll be able to get on with things much better.

All in all I'm doing far better than I would have expected 10 years ago if someone had asked how I would deal with the sort of things that I have dealt with in the last few years. I'm still looking to improve but I'm not dead or curled up in bed wanting to die and that's a biggie.