flemmings | Sub speciem aeternitatis-- sub speciem aeternitatis, damn it

EBear gets so many things wrong, it really doesn't matter that today she's off happily echoing her conviction that my generation never appreciated Leonard Cohen properly and hers does because *her* generation recognizes genius when they hear it. Which proves only that EBear can be smug, gratuitously condescending, culture bound,* and wrong wrong wrong in the small areas as well as the important ones. Which is no surprise.

(*I suspect her familiarity with 60s and 70s Canadian fans of Cohen is literally non-existent. No, lady, you did not discover him. No, madam, 30-somes are not the only fans of his later albums. Really.)

So I shall return to that smug gratuitously condescending man, Zhuge Liang. Whose author stole Zhou Yu's idea and best line ('Thanks for the arrows, Premier!') and gave them to him because he wants to show how kewl Zhuge Liang is and Zhou Yu isn't. Twits we have always with us.

As a counteractant, I shall count my numberless blessings one by one.

1. The gov't refunded me another $300. Yay for accountants who err on the side of caution, I suppose.

1. This is a long weekend and I don't have to work till 11:30 on Tuesday.

1. Yesterday my humane mouse trap was closed. House tremors or whatever tend to tip the trap these days. I picked it up and there was nothing in it so I opened it up again. A mouse fell out and dived into the stove. Today the trap was tipped again and there was nothing in it. This time I went outside and crossed the street and opened it on Judith's uhh front yard because she no more has a lawn than I do. She does have a cat. And a mouse fell out and quivered under the ground cover. Thank heaven for dumb mice, because the trap wasn't even baited. (Of course Judith's cat sits on my next door's steps, but anyway.)

1. Someone put out a useful footstool for Tuesday's garbage collection. I have always wanted a useful footstool for the downstairs couch and now I have one. It even matches the rug.

Unblessing:

The new Spock has a fat face and a beetle-browed thuggish look to him. I shall not be seeing the new Star Trek. Spock was, if not my first love (that was Julius Caesar) at least my first here and now live body one. No. Just no. Spock is Nimoy, end discussion.

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Milage varying (http://juliansinger.livejournal.com/524752.html?style=mine) and all that. The entry sums up all the stuff I'd heard about Trek that was... off-putting me.

WOw! Who *IS* that person. No worries I wouldn't search her out, just curious is all!

in equally small voice uhmm new Spock doesn't do too badly, and the thuggish look might be more due to make up? *she offers hopefully/helpfully?* But I do understand that the new cast might still be hard to take in, for those who loved the original characters dearly!

Elizabeth Bear is a writer of SF and fantasy who has umm more than one attitide problem. (See mike's comment below.) She wrote a post last winter about how to write chracters of colour. Someone said 'For someone who freely hands out advice on the subject you don't do it all that well yourself' and cited one of her works. Bear was all gracious 'I'm so sorry the book didn't work for you.' Her friends were not gracious in the least, and responded with a barrage of hysteria, gratuitous insults and four letter words. Bear's last word was 'In my initial response I was trying to present an example of how an author deals with criticism from POC but forget that, I've had it, being nice gets you nowhere.'

The whole thing is now famous as Racefail and the dryest account (recommended for blood pressure) is here (http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=RaceFail_09). Let us say that the reputations of several Big Names in SFF were undone by their behaviour during this.

hhmmm ohhhkay! Noted and uhmm won't go there then! But uhmm Wow really!?

I am kind of thinking that my very ordinary life is kind of I dunno ... would it be wrong to say wonderfully ordinary and I love it and glad I am ignorant of these things!!! Even is a little teeny tiny part of me feels that maybe I should know or something. If none of that made sense I blame it on eminently quaffable cheap red wine Valpolli-something or other and it being 1 am!

*smiles* -You have a nice weekend my dear and think of us because it is waaaaayyy too hot and in-laws have confirmed their regular 6 week visit for the Nov-Dec. holidays! augh!! *dies* - uhhmm I mean *goes to sleep*

eminently quaffable it was ... and please do not be reminding me of strange comment tomorrow! wvwn it if it si already tomorrow! ^______^ *hugs*

I envy you your Valpolicella, given that I can no longer drink wine at all and must confine myself to gin. I envy your in-laws that kind of stamina at their age. Enh- relax and don't worry about having a spotless house, I say.

Someone at work is preparing to go to LRD on a six month nanny contract *in July.* 'Oh, Iran is hot too.' Mh no. Not swampland muggy hot, fom all I hear.

Ehhh. Why take her seriously? EBear tends to be smug, righteous, self-absorbed, and unthinkingly hypocritical. If you don't carry that in mind when reading her thoughts on any given topic that actually matters to you, you're bound to be disappointed.

Maybe Q might remember when this was (I really don't), but in past years she used to rail against fanfiction for . . . god, I don't even remember what the hell her issues with it were, just that she had the issues. Then I read her serial-numbers-filed-off Man from Uncle slash fic that she published for payment, and that was it for her credibility, imho.

smug, righteous, self-absorbed, and unthinkingly hypocritical

And everyone has her friended so she crops up a lot.

I admit, the Cohen thing jabs me in a sore spot I didn't know I had. Cohen was my adolescence (screw you, Bear, I read his poetry before he ever even cut an album.) She's saying he wasn't and he couldn't have been, because *her* parents only listen to Suzanne. Dismissive. Add dismissive to that list.

I had her friended for a fair while because she used to post interesting links (y'know, back before she started daily posts detailing her every trip to the can). That is how I twigged onto The Terrible Trend. Y'know, first she'll go dramatic and announce that, from now on, she'll Read No More Reviews Forever. (Because they just don't get it! See also Rice, Anne.) She will win lots of stokes and petting and agreement that, So True, They Don't Understand. Then, two weeks later, she'll go right back to linking to her reviews again. Rinse, wring, reuse. She never appears to notice The Terrible Trend, which makes her either highly entertaining or irritating, depending on your tolerance level. Then the other stuff also.

So I was going to drop, but a number of years back she became biffie with

truepenny, whose books I do happen to read, and the two eventually wrote a novel together. As a result, when shit goes down on the intarwebs, you have no chance of understanding what Monette's gotten herself dragged into lately unless you're also subbed to EBear. Racefail being a case in point.

WOW am I catty today. This too will pass.

Re: Cohen. You are totally having a fangirl moment! "But I liked [fandom] before all these nooby poseurs did!" Yay! We all have those . . .

Why I keep saying authors should not blog their feelings or their lives unless they're pleasant unexceptional people like Ellen Kushner. And then their blogs lack interest. Gaiman manages the Scylla and Carybdis thing, but then he's Gaiman.

Grump. I only take exception when the nooby poseurs insist *they're* the ones who discovered [fandom] and aren't they cool for discovering the neglected masterpiece the rest of us have been reading for decades. Othewise-- it's the year of the cat, no two ways about it.

I wasn't taken all that much with the chubby cheeked Spock, but the movie wasn't all that bad. Really! Mostly, it goes to space opera and abandons all attempts as science fiction or any kind of intellectual level.

We saw it as part of older child's birthday. It was good entertainment and we liked it enough we'll take world traveler to see it later this week.

Loud booms and blowing things up. Is why I shall avoid it. American films are far too concerned with blowing things up, she says disapprovingly. Bad enough on a small screen; unbearable in full sensaround. Hollywood never thinks about my poor poor nerves.

And why does nobody have Red Cliff with subtitles and full screen glory? I'd see that in a heartbeat.

Sub speciem aeternitatis-- sub speciem aeternitatis, damn it

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