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Diskage:
Books Lying
Open
Soul-Devouring
Worry
Life's
Too Short For:
Curse of the Day:
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Tuesday February 25, 2003 | |||||||||||
| Quote
of the Day
I will try to follow the advice that a university president once gave a prospective commencement speaker. "Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake" he said. "They need you in order to have the party, but no one expects you to say very much." -- Anon |
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Daily Blog Progress was made on the supposedly D2 novel today, at least in terms of quality rewriting going on. Chapter One is reworked and improved, I think. Malaya read it and liked it a lot, and did her usual (helpful and well-meaning) "This is too good to be on the Internet for free, Flux." routine. Not that it's a routine; she is sincere and I think a good and objective judge of writing quality. (Though I would say that.) But she says it often when she reads something of mine that is 1) free, and 2) on the Internet. My problem has never been the writing, (well maybe a little, in terms of procrastination), my problem is always the marketing and self-promotion and business aspects. Which is why I write this stuff every day for my own amusement and the amusement of some hundreds of readers, rather than pushing to get a column in a newspaper somewhere, or at least on an internet literary journal type site. Not that this specific writing would be suitable for publication elsewhere, but I could (I think) do an article or two a week that would be, on whatever topic was required. And I've been told that there's even money to be paid for that sort of work! My concept of "fiction fiction fiction" is holding me back, when so many of my readers (that's you) say they like the fiction, but actually prefer the non-fiction stuff. Ideally non-fiction that's better than the five paragraphs so far here today, anyway. I worked on my fiction for years, got a lot done, made no effort to publish it, and just when I was getting to the put up or shut up stage, I got into doing web work, and spent most of the next 3 years writing features for the D2 site, where due to the policies of the site ownership (which is not me) almost everything I did there was very dry and um... journalistic, I guess you could say. Not lively or joking or with the sort of voice I think I do pretty well when given the opportunity. And therefore nothing I wrote stood out or seemed especially interesting, though a lot of it was quality work and very informative about the game. Then about a year ago I finally got around to making up my own site (you are here) where I could write whatever I wanted, however I wanted. And people started to read it and say that they liked it a lot. Furthermore, the last 4 months I've been doing a regular column on the D2 site which has tens of thousands of people reading it, and it's been very popular, though too much of a niche market to have any broader publication hopes. And readers keep saying I should get some stuff published, do a newspaper column, etc, both here and on the D2 site... Which might explain why I'm now trying to get more back into writing fiction regularly, and working on a totally unpublishable Diablo-inspired novel. I seem to flee from a field just as success is looming. Which explains a lot about my sex life as well, come to think of it.
I surfed a bit today, but haven't found a damn thing worth posting about. I'll take another quick look, resorting to the circus of unimportance that is Fark, for the first time in about three months. Well it's not going well, nothing there that's grabbing my ass and giving a good pinch. This story about tooth whitening being illegal in the UK is good for a quick laugh, since after all, everyone knows that the Limeys have brown, yellow, and/or green teeth, right? Yes, nothing funnier than ancient national stereotypes. Why I'm laughing already. And I suppose I must link to this BBC article about an enormously fat pussy cat in Russia, if only because it gives me a chance to throw in a link to tub cat. Tub cat! All fear Tub Cat!
And just for variety, here's an interesting email. Got this one yesterday, from a guy in Russia:
I had n idea what he was talking about for a moment, but the "gravestone reproduction" rang a bell, since it's on the wall directly across from me, visible over the top of my monitor. I replied with the name of the shop my mom got it from (according to the card on the back of the engraving). But I was wondering how he came across that picture, and figured maybe he was a regular visitor who had been clicking through the old archived updates and found it that way. So I asked him. And I was wrong.
Check that day's update if you want more info about it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must see if I have another hour or two of work in me on Chapter Two. |
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 rammy
photos!
The Grammies were held Sunday night in NYC, and as usual, I paid them absolutely zero attention. A bunch of soft rock, pop and R&B acts won, and there was almost no sign of anything approaching actual rock and roll. But then you knew that already, if you've turned on Mtv within the last five years. I generally do these photo things on a sub page, but half the readers don't bother to click to it, and I don't really have a big essay percolating in me today, so I'll just put them here, since I'm not going to go over my bandwidth allotment for February, and the month is almost over. My captions and comments are above each shot, the official wire caption and photo credit is below them. And yes, I'm bitter and jealous and hate everyone. And yes again, pretty much the entire Band Names section is just like the rest of this page, but with fewer photos and more lies. Okay, Howard doesn't look all that bad here, though it's a bit too curly, I think. But how about Beth? I mean Jesus Christ, she's off the charts. Hair, body, face, etc. I don't like how her face and neck are sort of a beige, while her body is pink, and she needs better eye liner to get that Nicole Kidman electric eye thing going. And red lipstick isn't really her color. but still, damn. My question about her always, other than why isn't she more famous and what the hell is she doing dating Howard Stern, is why didn't she have a manager force her to change her name? I think half of her lack of supermodel success is the last name. "Ostrosky" is just about the worst hot chick name ever.
Wow. That's like every mink in Canada there.
She's really quite an attractive woman.
So you're thinking, "Lenny Kravitz's little brother?" And then you see the caption which is a nonsense name, and then you see, "her". And you think, "huh?" The flag football belt is a nice touch. Remember when female singers were hot? There must be a Britney picture around here somewhere.
In yet more evidence of how blissfully unaware I am of any current trends in pop music, I had never even heard of this woman before reading a news item about her Grammy wins. I'm sure she'll rapidly vanish into the same obscurity that claimed the other two women listed in the caption. She looks very sweet and small townish, more like an intern than a rock star. Her dad is some sort of famous sitar player, which might sound like an oxymoron, but is not in India. Yes, the sitar, the only thing to do more damage to the Beatles than Yoko.
Eh. I've had better. No woman has ever managed more than a 7 in cargo pants. And didn't Alicia used to be black? Also how can the market support so many dozens of basically identical soft rock/pop half-R&B female solo acts? The fad has got to buckle under its own low-rider bellbottomed weight in another 2 or 3 years. With any luck.
Wait wait, she is black. So WTF is that last picture? They Michael Jackson her between show and after show picture time? Then again, anyone next to Cyndi Lauper is going to look pretty damn tan.
In case you were wondering what happened to the Spice Girls. And yes, this was more than I needed to see also. Not one of them is sexy. Not one. Well, maybe the far left, who seems to be lacking the trowel-applied make up. I'm not even sure the two kneeling are women, to be perfectly honest. Especially not the one on the right.
Just in case you were wondering who was the worst-dressed of the entire show. Wasn't "Foxxy Brown" the name of one of those old Pam Grier Blacksploitation movies?
So I'm going through the pictures, wondering if there was a single rock band on the entire show? No, the perpetually-straining Bruce Springsteen doesn't count, and Coldplay sure as hell doesn't. And then I see this shot of the Foo Fighters winning for best hard rock performance. The Foo Fighters. They aren't horrible, and are a step above the really wimpy AAR crap like Dave Matthews... but um... hard rock performance? The last hard rock song any of these guys played had Kurt Cobain on vocals. So I went and looked up the full nominee listing for this category, and I've heard and sort of like every song but the Foo Fighters one, since the only radio I listen to is classical and rock, and they don't play the Foo Fighters on the rock station... since it's not hard rock! Do the Dave Grohl sympathy votes go on forever? And Courtney thought she was helping her career when she had Kurt killed.
There is an actual metal award, but you won't find a single photo of it on the entire 250 shot Yahoo slide show, other than a couple of pics of Korn arriving, and one of Fred Durst, who is a borderline inclusion. Here are the nominees.
Korn won. Anyway, here's the overdressed hard rocking Foo Fighters. Grunge fashion lives on, at least for that one blonde guy.
Yes, she was a refreshing change from the Britney's of the world, and she's got the eye shadow Beth Ostrosky is missing, but I think we're all about sick of her by now.
Gwen is never quite hot, but you've got to give her credit for trying hard, and for being so proudly flat as a board, in these days of monthly implant adjustments.
And that's it for another year's Grammys. At least the photos of it. I'll actually watch this pop, pop, and more pop awards show as soon as I'm nominated for an award on it. The scariest news is that with over 250 Grammy photos, there is not one of Britney falling out of her dress, or Christina Aguilera showing up without one on. In fact neither of them are represented at all. Yes, this is one of the signs of the apocalypse. And remember, the fact that I dislike the music that 98% of Americans buy doesn't make me right... It just makes them wrong. |
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