It has been brought to my attention that I never update anymore.

So, um. Hi, you guys! *waaaaves* Nothing really to report. The bunnies have a big cardboard box to play in, and Sunbear has decided it is his real home forever and ever. Plants are growing in a container-garden on our balcony. Squirrels have been burying pieces of bread in my larger potted plants. My dad got remarried, my sister bought a house, my grandparents bought a new vacation house, I bought a bottle of Smoky Moon. (loves on worldof_wonders)

Books I have recently liked:

Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series (Melusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, and the fourth one Corambis is out but I am not buying the hardcover. Can wait for mmp or until the library buys it.)

Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. I AM ADDICTED. Have torn through The First Man in Rome, The Grass Crown, Fortune's Favorites, and am currently working on Caesar's Women. (Wow, that sounded wrong.) There are three more books still waiting after I finish this one! I'm not sure whether I should try to stretch them out, or give in to the urge to read them all right away.

Book I did not like as much as I expected to like:

Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest. Could've done with more nifty dreamlike worldbuilding.

Book I have yet to read why?

China Miéville's The City and the City. I've been looking forward to this one forever, and now that it's out, I still haven't gotten my hands on a copy. Have been immersed in the aforementioned Masters of Rome books, and am confident the Miéville will be waiting when I'm done. Still and all, I was so excited about this book coming out, I'm a bit surprised at my own lack of motivation to hunt it down.

I happen to like Twitter. I find the weird anti-Twitter rage cropping up here and there (on LJ, in the media, on YouTube) to be rather odd and to miss the point.

One thing I don't like about Twitter is getting random 'friend' requests from entities I don't know.

I say 'entities' because by and large I'm open to adding people I don't know, or don't know well, on Twitter just as I do on LJ. My Twitter feed is locked (mainly to discourage the floods of spammer add-requests that my friends who have public feeds tend to get -- you mention some company or concept in a tweet, and next thing you know, you're getting 'followed' by corporate flacks). Therefore I am all the more put off when entities that are not friends-of-friends request to add me -- why are they making this request? My (paltry and mundane) tweets aren't publically viewable or searchable, so I shouldn't be showing up on the public timeline. Friends-of-friends can see my friends' replies to me, and might get intrigued by the conversation. In those cases I am fine with adding the people, because they are people who are known to my friends, who are interested in entering into conversation, not in selling me something. But I have no idea how the spammers/shills are even finding my account for these friend requests.

MFZARMonday, I'm lookin' at you. What the hell is this thing? Some kind of nonsense about zombies, apparently. Guess what? The pop-culture fascination with zombies has long since ceased to bore me, and has become actively irritating. I have less than zero interest in this crap. I am not your target audience, bitches! And I cannot tell what on earth gave you the impression that I might be. There's very little that is visible to the general public on my Twitter account. My 'bio' is a lyric from "Hey Ya" (favorite song of zombie enthusiasts? MAYBE?) and a link to a clip from "The Office" (favorite TV show of zombie enthusiasts? Andy Bernard = Cornell alum zombie?) Is it because I follow Neil Gaiman's Twitter feed ... like hundreds of thousands of other Twitter users?

While I'm at it, let me say that totally independent of the Twitter context, I am so tired of hearing about zombies. I am even more tired of zombies than I am of vampires. I would seriously rather hear about Twilight than another word about fucking World War Z at this point.

Something light and fun I thought would be light and fun, but wound up taking days to complete! -- a book meme I stole from bardsong. (NB: This meme appears to require one to state, at the outset, "Hello, my name is [name] and I am a bookaholic." If there were such a substance as bookahol, I might be more inclined to claim addiction thereto, provided it tasted agreeable.)

( A looooong book meme )

is to link to this: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011173.html

and this http://fictioncircus.com/news.php?id=347&mode=one


And to add, as a postscript, that I am beyond sick and tired of seeing the word 'fail' used as a noun rather than a verb.

Check out the Interactive Bun at MakeMineChocolate.org.

The "Accessorize your bun!" feature is about a rabbit named Watson, which tickles me because I have a Dutch rabbit named Dr. Watson! (I don't have an icon of him though, so here, have an icon of Boom Boom the Flemish giant.)

( pictures of my Dr. Watson behind the lj-cut )

What he said.

The last time I was in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, a couple of weeks ago, I ended up cranky and wanting to leave. The two things I wanted were, of course, not on the shelves -- this did not come as a complete surprise, but one always hopes. What was taking up shelf space was ... nothing I'd want to read at all. This is not to say there is anything wrong with the Charlaine Harrises and the Kim Harrisons of the world, in and of themselves. It is just to say that I have zero interest in reading their work, and I do not consider the science-fiction-and-fantasy section of the bookstore to be the proper place for it. When I meander over to the new releases shelf of the sci-fi section, I do not want to see Mario Acevedo's The Undead Kama Sutra there displayed. Nor do I want to see cutesy theme anthologies about werewolves having Christmas and vampires having birthdays.*

* I swear I'm not making this up. In the new releases were: Wolfsbane and Mistletoe ("Fifteen writers wrap up Christmas gifts of werewolves in this holiday anthology") and Many Bloody Returns ("From cakes to stakes, a celebration of everyone's favorite bloodsucking subculture by a baker's dozen of favorite authors. Each of these thirteen original stories offers a fresh and unique take on what birthdays mean to the undead.")


What gives?

I've been trying to articulate my discontent with this trend, and mostly failing. I mean, I'm fine with the fact that my public library shelves the evangelical apocalyptic Left Behind series in the sci-fi/fantasy section. Actually, I think it's a good place for it! Never mind that I don't care for the work (okay, I admit to having read one or two of those books for the giggles and the trainwreck factor, but I am definitely not a Tim LaHaye fan). That I don't like it isn't the issue.

I can't really articulate what my issue is. Just that I'm tired of seeing 543780637480 books about sexy vampire witch detectives and the sexy werewolf cops/villains/whatevers who love them, and I'm even more tired of seeing them devour the limited shelf space that could otherwise be devoted to authors I actually care to read.

So. Yeah. Me = curmudgeon, or something. Anyway. The VanderMeer post to which I linked above (and shall link again here!) actually made me a little happy for a moment. I thought: At least they're calling it something more specific and less inaccurate! 'Dark fantasy' kind of works to describe that! But as I read, I realized: VanderMeer is (as usual) quite right. "Dark fantasy" is Caitlin R. Kiernan and Tanith Lee and Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link. "Dark fantasy" is not, well, paranormal romance. It might contain the paranormal, and it might contain romance of a sort, but there the generic similarity ends, and ends most palpably.


(eta: yes, I am aware I am not alone. I am also aware of arguments that paranormal-romancey-stuff is empowering feminist literature and that if you don't like it you're a sexist/elitist/jerk. None of that really helps me pinpoint what's going on. Also, fwiw, Lilith Saintcrow is welcome to think I'm betraying my gender for preferring a good solid Margaret Atwood novel to the stuff Saintcrow sells.)

Truly tragic: the loss of the Cologne archives.

See also http://archiv.twoday.net/ if you can read German.

(Those of you on my f-list who aren't Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume fans/collectors will want to skip this post as it will not make sense)

... OK, so. The person who was asking $200 for a bottle of Blue Moon '04?

Apparently she has finally realized she's asking more than the market will bear. (Ya think?) So she has lowered the price ...

... to a low, low $170.

This is in a comm (1) without price-caps, (2) that I don't mod. I'm not going to comment to it there, or kvetch in bpalanonymous, or some such thing. But I'm certainly entitled to boggle at her ... chutzpah? lack of clue? je ne sais quoi? ... in my own damn journal.

If she put it on eBay and folks bid it up to $200 (or $170), I'd say that's fine. Put something on eBay at a reasonable starting bid and if people want to get into a bidding war, that's up to them. But to just right-out ask that much money is ridiculous.* More, it preys on those who trust the BPAL fandom/community ethos to keep things honest -- many of us are dabblers; we don't have time to track what prices things have been going for; we just want to pick up a nice LE we missed, and we trust that sellers do know what the going price would be. BPAL fandom is very much about trust. You're sending paypal or mailing pricey perfume to someone you've never met; there is no mediating authority to make sure you don't get ripped off; oftentimes friendships form, little extra gifties get sent, a general camaraderie prevails. BPAL fandom is not a place where caveat emptor should have to apply.

But, human nature being what it is, I guess there are no exceptions to caveat emptor.



*Knowing that imps of Blue Moon '04 go for far less than what she was asking -- 5 ml at $200 would be a whopping $40 per imp! -- the seller had the cojones to justify her pricing thusly: "Very full, very fresh, has been opened only a couple of times. Smells glorious, and far better than imps that have been exposed to air and light."

This morning just turned awesome: a new episode of "Jordan, Jesse, GO!" podcast in my iTunes (Ep. 92, "Walking With Dinosaurs) and the official shirt! (Available 1 week only. I'm a sucker for anything limited-edition, and when it comes to the Interwebs, doubly so. I am still quite happy I had the foresight to purchase a Devil Doll hat, tee, and doll, back in the day.)

Any opinions on the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award? Any of y'all entering?