Moved!

Ego! Ego! Ego! has moved! Please point your RSS aggregators to the new location!

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Posted at 11:34 AM | Permalink

Ow

As you've probably noticed, I haven't posted more of my The Last Failbender rantings. I haven't been able to concentrate enough to write them because my fibromyalgia is pitching a fit.

"Hey, Ealasaid," I hear you ask, "what exactly does 'pitching a fit' mean? And why's it being so pissy?"

Continued...

File under: Fibromyalgia
Posted at 3:09 PM | Permalink

Failbender: Rant the First! Characters and Characterization

Failbender Rant, Part The First

So, if you saw my review, you know I hated, hated, HATED "The Last Airbender" (aka "The Last Failbender"). I hated it for a lot of reasons, but they pretty much boil down into two categories:

• Things that would suck in any movie (like racism)
• Things that got changed from the source material

Since the source material is largely devoid of the first category of stuff (because "Avatar: The Last Airbender" is awesome), there’s a lot of overlap. See, in order to get things like racism in the film, M. Night Shyamalan (aka Man-was-that-a-bad-movie Night Twistalan) had to change the source material. He had to go out of his way to ADD shittiness when he could have just done his job and adapted the existing stuff.

In this series of rants about why The Last Failbender is shit on shitty toast, I won’t really be separating the two categories.

Onward! Let’s start with the characters, who are hamstrung by a shitty script.

Continued...

File under: Rantings
Posted at 1:30 PM | Permalink

Pondering

I've been reading Havi's Blog a lot lately, and from there I got linked to a blog where I got linked to a blog where I saw a class on how to find Your Thing.

I didn't sign up for the class because I'm having enough trouble keeping up with the classes I'm already a part of, but it did get me thinking. What might My Thing (tm) be? You know, something I could make a living at and would love. I was noodling on the subject in the elevator on my way down to lunch and it struck me thati would really, really love to do something involved with books. Not ebooks, actual physical books. I've written before about my love affair with the physical book.

I've daydreamed about becoming a book binder/repairer (there's one in Santa Cruz!). I've muttered about how there really ought to be a service that specializes in moving books (and can actually pack them without DAMAGING THEM GOD WTF IS WRONG WITH MOVERS SERIOUSLY). And I love the activity of organizing books. I'm actually looking forward to taking a couple weekends this fall and reorganizing my library, complete with using a little labelmaker to do library-style labels on the spines.

And it struck me, as I stood in the elevator today: I wonder if people would actually pay me to be a library-organizer-type-person for them? I'd probably be even faster at organizing someone else's library because I wouldn't see a book and find myself standing there remembering how Mom gave it to me, or thinking about some other piece of personal history. I probably would have trouble with wanting to stand and flip through books (a common issue with me in other people's libraries) but I bet I could work around that.

I would absolutely love to have it be my job to organize people's book collections, complete with labels on the spines and a LibraryThing (or something similar) account so they could look up the location of a book easily. Hell, I'm tempted to set up to do it freelance and see if there's a market.

What do y'all think, my three faithful readers? Would you pay someone to organize your books?

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 2:29 PM | Permalink

Posters up for grabs!

Here's a list of posters I have available! I culled my collection over the weekend. Interested in one? Just gotta swing by and grab it. If you're not a local, maybe we can work something out. :)

Continued...

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 9:22 PM | Permalink

Ephiphany!

I love having epiphanies.

Even when they're about unpleasant things. In this case, abortion.

Abortion has always been a knee-jerk subject for me, and I like poking at knee-jerk subjects. I used to say, "of course it's a touchy subject for me, anybody who thinks abortion should be illegal is saying I should be forced to carry to term a pregnancy I don't want if my birth control fails, and that is FUCKED UP."

But that doesn't quite explain the white-hot rage I get. I become borderline incoherent when I talk about abortion with someone who disagrees with me. I once frightened a dear cousin of mine so much when he stuck his foot in his mouth on the subject that he backed away from me. My incandescent rage made him retreat from me and made my then-husband leave the room, and this was before I even said a word.

Reading several posts over at Fugitivus has helped me finally express why, I think.

In short: If you are someone who thinks I should not be able to get an abortion when I want one, you are saying I have no right to control my own body. Other people who say (or whose actions say) such things: abusers, rapists, murderers.

Continued...

File under: Childfree, Feminism, Rantings
Posted at 8:34 AM | Permalink

A Follow-up To Yesterday's Privacy Post

I thought I'd post these for folks who don't want to go back through Harriet's archive to see what I was talking about yesterday.

Short version: Harriet uses Google Reader and Gmail. She declined Google Buzz, but it set itself up automatically anyway... and shared a bunch of her Reader comments, which included things like info about where she lives/works, with her most frequent contacts... including her horrible, abusive, scary ex. Turns out that one-sided communication (ie, him sending her loads of creepy ass emails) counts as "frequent contact."

In short, Buzz gave her abusive, horrible ex-husband the means he needed to find her again.

Continued...

File under: Linkage
Posted at 1:16 PM | Permalink

A little rant about Facebook and privacy

I've had a handful of conversations in the past few weeks about the whole Facebook privacy kerfluffle. (A link, in case you've been living under a rock.)

My reaction boils down to this:

If you don't want something to be public knowledge, don't put it on the internet.

(ranting below the cut)

Continued...

File under: Geekiness, Rantings
Posted at 1:05 PM | Permalink

The World-Changing Writing Workshop

OMG y'all:

YOU CAN SIGN UP NOW!

Kyeli and Pace are the brains behind this awesomeness. They're the folks who started the Freak Revolution, and they are awesome. Check it out!

File under: Linkage
Posted at 10:21 AM | Permalink

Meme: I'm a Chaotic Good Human Ranger!

I Am A: Chaotic Good Human Ranger (5th Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-13

Dexterity-12

Constitution-14

Intelligence-15

Wisdom-15

Charisma-15


Alignment:
Chaotic Good A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit. However, chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment because it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Class:
Rangers are skilled stalkers and hunters who make their home in the woods. Their martial skill is nearly the equal of the fighter, but they lack the latter's dedication to the craft of fighting. Instead, the ranger focuses his skills and training on a specific enemy a type of creature he bears a vengeful grudge against and hunts above all others. Rangers often accept the role of protector, aiding those who live in or travel through the woods. His skills allow him to move quietly and stick to the shadows, especially in natural settings, and he also has special knowledge of certain types of creatures. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw on natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does, and like a druid he is often accompanied by animal companions. A ranger's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

File under: Memes
Posted at 9:21 PM | Permalink

Powell's

I recently vacationed in Portland, OR. Portland, as you may know, is the home of Powell's Books, which is sort of like Mecca for bibliophiles. It's a bookstore that takes up an entire block, and has several satellite shops.

Let me repeat that: it's a bookstore that takes up an entire city block.

You can see a layout here.

As you may imagine, I bought a few books.

Continued...

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 6:06 PM | Permalink

Some Thinking out Loud

I am used to having diametrically opposed impulses. I'm a pack rat! But I love order and cleanliness and organization! I'm lazy! But I want to do everything in the world! Etc.

As occasionally happens for me, now I'm having diametrically opposed impulses around my website. On the one hand, I hate it when sites I like go away, and so I want to have every page I ever built, ever stay online. On the other hand, I want my website to actually, yanno, reflect me as I am now. I've tried to halfass it by leaving sites up in archives or whatever, but I still get email about them from time to time (mostly the Lorre Library of Sound) and then I feel guilty for not keeping them updated. I want to take 'em down rather than halfass it. I want to do an enormous redesign of ealasaid.com and have it be awesome and coherent and cohesive.

But then I think, what about the people who like those sites?

ARGH.

I am currently dithering over a handful of options.

1. Find someone to take over The Lorre Library and A Special Kind of Person and the others so they're still out there, just not my job and not on ealasaid.com.
2. Just delete the sites I don't want to deal with and remake ealasaid.com. If they want to see the old sites, they can look on Archive.org
3. Delete some of the stuff and make a concerted effort to update the rest of it as part of the new, improved ealasaid.com

I'm leaning toward the last one. Since I started learning Joomla for Californiabats.com, I've kind of fallen in love with the simplicity of using a content management system. I like how easy it is to add menu items and move things around and so on! It's awesome! It'd be pretty straightforward, I think, to use Joomla or MovableType or something similar for ealasaid.com in its entirety. It'd sure make updating stuff easier. Hell, I could use Joomla for the static stuff like my fiction and columns and reviews and keep using MovableType for my blogs. Even easier!

I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of my readers on this stuff. How do you decide what to keep and what to get rid of on content collections you maintain?

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 3:09 PM | Permalink

Formspring Roundup

What is your favorite vampire movie that does not directly involve Dracula?

At first, I thought this would be a difficult one to answer, but it's not. My fave non-Dracula vampire movie is "Shadow of the Vampire," starring Willem Dafoe. It's about the making of F.W. Murnau's silent classic, "Nosferatu" (which is an awesome movie too, if you like silent flicks).

The premise is that Murnau was such a stickler for realism that he hired a real vampire (Dafoe) to be in his movie. Of course, having a real vampire on set leads to some problems.

It's a really fun horror/comedy sort of flick.

What's your favorite Dracula movie?

This is almost impossible to answer. There are so many different sorts of Dracula movies, ones I like (or dislike) for different reasons, that it's really hard to pick just one.

- take Stoker's brilliant book, seduce it with promises, and then murder it and chop it into tiny bits, most of which are lost (Francis Ford Coppola, I'm looking at you)
- star him but don't even mention Stoker's book (Hammer Horror ftw!)
- aren't based on the book, but include references to it, usually reinterpreting it (Dracula 2000)

And so on.

For pure cheesy enjoyment, I love Dracula 2000. It's silly and stupid, but Dracula is properly seductive, there are lots of hilarious one-liners ("Never, EVER fuck with an antiques dealer!"), and it doesn't take itself too seriously.

My favorite loosely-based-on-the-book-but-not-pretending-otherwise one is probably Bela Lugosi's. Lugosi is marvelous.

For artistry, give me Coppola's. If I remember that it is, in fact, NOT (as it calls itself) "Bram Stoker's Dracula," but is, in fact, "Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula," it's actually rather enjoyable. And oh, god, it's gorgeous. The costumes! The sets! The actors! It takes the main points of Stoker's book and reverses a lot of them (Mina did not love Dracula, okay? She was terrified of him. She was a virtuous Victorian woman, and was not all "Take me away from all of this!" kthxbai), but if I take lots of deep breaths, I don't mind too much.

One of these days I should do a huge writeup on all the ways Coppola got Stoker's story completely wrong. It would be epic.

And someone asked me about Square One Television and whether I watched it, but Formspring seems to have eaten the question and my answer. Fail.

I did watch Square One, and loved it. I was a big fan of Mathnet, but can't remember much beyond that. I can, however, still sing most of the theme song.

File under: Memes
Posted at 10:28 AM | Permalink

Formspring Sheepage

As you can probably tell from the lack of updates, I have been redonkulously busy the last few months. Not exactly news, of course. I'm always busy. But between some personal stuff sapping my mental mojo and recovering from surgery, I haven't had the energy to post here.

I've been doing PT twice a week since mid-December, and holy crap is that exhausting. And then I moved, which is also exhausting. Sheesh.

I do want to get back into posting, though, and since everybody else is doing it (and since I'm feeling kind of uninspired and short on topics for this poor, neglected blog), I set up a Formspring account. You can ask me anything here! High excitement! So, if you're reading this and wondering something or interested in hearing me blather about a particular topic, fire away!

Here, I'll even put a widget for you to use:

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 12:54 PM | Permalink

Book Meme

The BBC thinks most people will have only read 6 of these 100 books.

Put an X next to the ones you've read.

Count them up at the end.

Continued...

File under: Memes
Posted at 1:28 PM | Permalink