Dude really has to work on his language and typing. I mean, really. But, he's just about right. Except the bits where he just whines about not getting laid. Not in a position to critique him there, though. And yes, being an Intellectual Whore sucks ["...because she doesn't and it's not gonna suck itself", I would have said if I were writing in the style of that site].

With all due respect to my all-time favorite OFC and her author, editor(s), fans etc., this worries me more. Seems like Cassie is going to kill Ginny. And then maybe Hermione. And the last chapter will be 250K of H/D smut. Thank God I'm leaving the fandom before that happens.

Read the entire thing.

I once read some complaints that there wasn't enough femmeslash in the fandom. So today I was bored and ran a google search. Hah. Padma/Parvati twincest, anyone?

Today I have learned something very important. I have learned it a few years too late, but as the saying goes: better late than never. Nobody cares.

Elizabeth. She somehow made the same mistake. Yes, that mistake. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. And I know it is her greatest fear. I'm marking this day as the day I officially stop talking with my family about stuff. They are so receiving their wedding invitations by mail. Poor dad, if she shares her intelligent ideas with him. Definitely laughing now. I needed that.

The fandom sometimes amazes me. You know Ali_Wildgoose, webmistress of Diagon Alley, the ultra-exclusive fanfic archive for slightly older (and weirder) folk? She's part of The Inner Circle (bitching about it is passé, but hey ;) ), and she draws these funny DV comic strips and shares a basement (aka Headquarters of The Bad Place, depicted here. I guess Lori's leaky Columbus apartment shouldn't be called "BPHQ" because it never hosted meetings) with Cassandra Claire, where these Evil Breeder Women do horrible things to innocent British boys? Well, she's a SugarQuill Professor now.

The Tech Talk scares you people off, huh? Too bad. Those things are important.

Wolf550e's rules recommendations of web publishing

• Anything published on the web must at least be 100% HTML 4.01 Strict and encoded in the ISO-8859-1 charset. XHTML and UTF-8 is even better.
• Validate using industrial strength tools until 100% compliant. No exceptions.
• Do not publish files in "Macintosh" or "windows-1252" charsets.
• Use paragraph tags, not line breaks.
• Do not use <font> tags.
• Always specify a generic font family and widely adopted alternative fonts. Do not use proprietary symbol fonts ([Wingdings] "J")
• Define formatting in global CSS. Do not use <span> or <div> tags in every paragraph.
• There is no need for Netscape 2.0 backwards compatibility. Version 4 browsers are dinosaurs whose time is come to pass. CSS1 support is expected. No need for "align" properties, <center> tags or any such means.
• Indent sections should be included in a <div> so a single style can be applied to all indent'd paragraphs (e.g. italics or a cursive font).
• Make sure your formatting will not look too horrible if CSS is omitted. This means no casual use of <H1> paragraphs.
• Use tables and frames sparsely.
• Use a consistent, sortable, file naming convention (this means leading zeros and a single file extension).
• Links to next/previous chapters should be relative to current directory while links to review boards should be full.

Buses are a major part of my life. I took a bus to school and back everyday for six years. I still use them frequently. I will be using them a lot in the next three years (unless I'll only be home for the weekends). Taking a gun with me will be of very little use, except for providing more potentially lethal shrapnel. I hold very liberal views on many subjects, but being afraid makes me angry. In the February elections I will vote for those who will let me shoot first and ask questions later.

HP Fandom - CoS movie

Good:
Kenneth Branagh
Jason Isaacs
Christian Coulson
The R/H non-hug, though awkward.
Quidditch

Bad:
The applause for Hagrid at the end (*WTF?!*)
John Williams
Wuss!Ron
Criminal loss of detail, feels like everything is coincidental and cartoon-ish, not alive like in the books.
Richard Harris
Chris Columbus
I think I miss some of the Burrow scenes they cut out.

Notes:
Emma Watson is so ickle. And she overacts. And everyone's facial expressions were fake. Looked more theater-like than RL.
Dan is ok. Rupert is very much Ron, but in canon I see him as more of an equal to Harry. In the movie, he's very much the sidekick.
The Slytherins were good. Myrtle was weird. Dobby was excellent.

I must see it two or three more times at least, so I can discern what details they cut and what I just missed. Unfortunately, a movie ticket goes for about two hours minimal wage here, and I have no one to go with me, so I think I'll wait for the DVD rip to surface (Note MPAA: I paid for my copy of PS, so shush).

I'm being late for CoS!!!

Ok, this is "weird square" or in short form: weird². There I was, reading bad fic (on an ever worse site), and I had a "moment". Now, I can't explain this exactly, so I'll give an example. A scene from Mallrats (If you haven't seen the movie, you should not be reading this blog): On the 42nd minute, the main heroes talk about sleeping beside people (as opposed to sleeping with people), and Brodie (the guy whose girlfriend is played by Shannon Doherty (-"Brenda!" -"Prick!")) shows on TS how when he and his girlfriend where "spooning" he had nowhere to put his right hand and it was a metaphor for their whole relationship. So TS and Gwen (the girl they're with) look at him kind of bewildered, but the girl working at the store in which they were standing starts crying, says she was very sorry but she knows exactly how he feels and runs off. Well, today I had this "I know exactly how he feels" moment. In Chapter 5 of this fic (a smiley to whomever locates the exact sentence). You artsy types should also tell me what "-ism" this fic is, because it's weird. But the author used a number of long words I liked. And the shipping was correct. And umlauts, up to a point, are fun. So it's passable. Especially because it's quite short.

Here's a shocker - I'm listening to reggae and liking it! Must compare with original.

Nothing. Still hurts. More shopping to do tomorrow. Shamelessly procrastinating.

Two and a half hours one way, two and a half hours back (already in pain) and he wouldn't even give me a status report. And, of course, my next appointment can't be scheduled because I don't know when I'll be free next month. Joy.

Incredible. Who else noticed the files are named "Burrows##"? ;)

Nice. Edit: Very Nice.

Lies, damn lies and ...

This is not your usual LoTR crossover.

Mandrake Linux 9.0 supports pptp during setup

I just fell off my chair. There I was, installing Mandrake 9.0, switching CDs (damn that was fast), when all of a sudden it asks for registration. So I gingerly typed up me email, thinking "yeah, right". And then… it sent that info. Through the internet. Yeah. I was @#$%^&* online. All I did was checked "pptp" and provided it with my login and password. And I was online. During setup! I could actually download and update packages while installing, because it was already online. It takes winXP a minute to feed it all the data to get it online. VPN and DSL dial, DNS, all that crap.

I'm in Mozilla, I'm online, I have a fuzzy clock in my task bar and I can safely format my NTFS partition. I have died and gone to heaven.

This is one of the few things I can actually retell from ATOT without people thinking bad things about me.

Don't ask me how I got there, but I discovered A/T is not Archer/T'Pol but... Archer/Trip. Now I can't go to sleep. Note to self - browsing referrers' search results in close proximity to bedtime is never a Good Idea.

I'm going barking mad. Here I sit, reading the Cryptonomicon, giggling helplessly at every mention of sex, in a most embarrassing imitation of Hermione's dorm-mates. I think I need professional help. Not sure which profession though, yet. That's it for today I think. Must go gift shopping tomorrow. Think oral contraceptives is too blunt?

Reading and re-writing half of my code from a month ago is a pain. More so because it isn't the first and (I'm quite sure) isn't the last time. Have reached the phase where six-month-old stories from school are childish, old and irrelevant but not yet constitute "the good old times" so talking about them is a no-no. Am afraid will have nothing in common with own friends in the next year or so. Am cuddling in winter feather blanket and howling in great t00by sorrow.

Imogen is back from maternity leave. Yay!

RJA's talk about the ill-effects of a movie on a fandom inspired this rant-on-a-rant. Admittedly, this topic is old. Practically everyone I know who has ever read a good book talks about whether introducing the story to new audiences by porting it to a more popular media is worth the grief of losing the original author's intent in all the "fixing" and "editing" that must be done in order to make it more profitable. It was said just about everything. I myself have ranted for months about the Dune TV miniseries. The HP fandom discussed whether the movies are a Good or a Bad Thing, and there are many more examples. I'm afraid it sounds snobbish and elitist, but it must be said: the reading public and the movie going public are not exactly the same, and some books were not written for the benefit of the population that fits in the highest section of the bell curve. When it's too long, too slow and requires too much imagination to follow, even some of those brave souls who were not afraid to lift the hefty thing will not get to the second volume. So, in order for the ends to meet and populations to overlap, you must either educate the bell curve or simplify and air-brush the work-of-art. We know which way is more profitable. One of the dangers of capitalism, I guess. Of course, sacrifices must be made in the process. While moving the target audience to the left of the curve to get more people, you lose the rightmost tip. Commercially speaking - it pays off, even if they sometimes trace your Orcish ancestry (I shouldn't talk though, as I myself was ready to claim that John Harrison is a predecessor of the Harkonnens). LoTR is a very costly production. They had to make the movie sell well. So they adapted it to fit the audience better. Some of that new audience are bound to be the swooning fangirls. They could've used less hunky actors, emphasized and explained Tolkien's Victorian ideas about male bonding and the role of women in society, even preserved the language. They could have made it an utterly geeky movie, one that no fangirl-ish type would ever pay to see, so TVSDs' reader-base would shrink beyond the point of self-containment and no one would print out PHF t-shirts. We have an example of what those movies look like. Have you seen any of the nine Star Trek films listed in IMDb's top 250? I personally think the solution is encouraging people to read instead of filming every book. Filming should be left for cases where the original is in danger of being forgotten by non-scholars. I'm sure Zeffirelli is the one to thank for a whole generation's acquaintance (minimal as it may be) with the long-dead playwright's work, but 20th century literature? We should read the original.

A birthday present for poor Wolf550e, my preciousss... I can just picture young John Ronald poring over a book much like the one I now hold, referencing grammars and scribbling notes. Alas, I do believe I do not have what it takes to repeat such a feat. Older I may be, but, no matter how fascinating the subject is in my eyes, linguistics is not my forte (I happen to not share the professor's francophobia as well as his talents). Thank you darling, you've made my week.

I wonder why I never watched BtVS. From what I see of it projected through HP fanfic, I would've liked it. Oh well, I guess there's always the net. I'll download some episodes, see what it was like. Oh yeah - my quest for an entertaining H/G epic has finally yielded results. It's OOC, not edited and barbarian, but I like it. Now I'm content. :-)

I've seen people talk about really bad excuses for fanfic and I never understood them. True, I've read some not-so-great fics, but generally, whatever I've read was, if not good, at least decent. Today it hit me - I only read recommended fics. And now, in my random browsing through GT (looking for that elusive H/G epic I've missed the last time) I saw it. Not the general lack of proofreading or OOC main characters. I can live with those (separately, though) - oh no. This was plain bad. I mean really bad. Complete with lack of grammar, lyrics of bad songs and general stupidity of the entire cast. Not to mention there was not a single original sentence in the two chapters I've read. I had to clear my browser's cache after reading it because I felt my computer became somehow dirty. That's what you get for procrastinating, (there are no) boys and girls.

Arabella's A Very Secret Diary (as opposed to The Very Secret Diaries). Check out the Thank You note. Who elso would be able to "canon thump" the SugarQuill Headmistress, huh?

Since the recent Friday Five is so popular, I decided to jump on the bandwagon. 1. Were you raised in a particular religious faith? Nope. I was raised an atheist. My mother believes in the one God but can't/won't abide with the laws, and my father is a silent communist (of the utopical kind). 2. Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not? I dislike organized religion because it invariably gets involved with politics and economics, thus becoming powerful and corrupt. I believe people should have something to guide them. If they choose "it" to be a belief in a higher power, afterlife, creationism or whatever - it's their choice, as long as their beliefs don't make them hurt people (including themselves). I also believe that whatever it is - it should be practiced in private. 3. What do you think happens after death? If all goes well - you get buried and rot. 4. What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)? Zazen sounds cool. 5. Do you believe people are basically good? I do not believe in absolute good and evil. I do believe in evolution. People who survive are those who fight to survive. This means that the population becomes increasingly greedy, which is the single most powerful common human trait. Some are willing to be nice and share, thus enriching themselves and others, while the less enlightened want to keep it all to themselves. Us nice people must be able to not only relax, talk and think, but also kick butt when the other party is not yet ready for communication.

Check out the No.1 Googlism for "Harry Potter". Also, you can use that thing to discover again that FA is better than SQ. But we already know that FA (and Schnoogle) continually beats SQ at GoogleFight. We must admit defeat. No one stands against the Inner Circle. Heidi/Lori/Cassie/Alex/Monika rule. And I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight."

Emma is too pretty. Bonnie is not pretty enough. That's the H/G shipper talking, of course. Ah well, they have a few more years till the GoF and OoTP movies. And there's always makeup. And for the record, I have noticed the Tom Felton/Eminem thing a long time ago.