For those few of you who aren't familiar, the absurdly popular blogging site LiveJournal (owned by Six Apart) recently made the questionable decision to rather spontaneously conform to the demands of a web-censorship group, Warriors for Innocence. Their first action was to suspend hundreds of journals that contained any references - including in the profile - to incest and paedophilia. Among them were no doubt some of the anonymous journals dedicated to exactly those things, but also a variety of fandom slashfic communities and journals belonging to survivors or support groups.
Two days later, Six Apart finally explained what happened, essentially admitting they handled the situation very poorly, and apologizing. What I find interesting, however, is that the two day delay is blamed on the majority of the administration staff being 'on the road' or on vacation. There's no explanation of who made this sudden decision to censor all these journals, however - was the decision made by an executive between flights, and implemented by underlings back home? Or perhaps the decision was made while the executives were out of the office? In the case of the first I'd like to know how and why that happened, and what's going to be done in the future to prevent this sort of thing from being done in the future. In the case of the latter, I'd really like to know if they're going to sack the person or persons responsible.
A big question - which I am not alone in asking - is how come they had time to talk to C-Net about it during this two days of scrambling backpedaling and travel, but they couldn't spare a moment to say something to LiveJournal in person? With thirteen million accounts, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect your news blog to be the first media outlet updated, rather than the last, does it? It saddens me that this question is likely to never be addressed.
Finally, I have this to say: I have some pretty extreme viewpoints, including among other things a firmly held belief that crimes such as rape and child molestation belong in the category of things punishable by death. However, I also have a pretty strong opinion of free speech. To wit, speech is either free, or it isn't. If we don't have it, let's not pretend we do - if we do, that means we have to grit our teeth and bear it when people say things that we feel no right-thinking human could possibly agree with. I can't abide censorship, and I'm pretty disgusted by this whole mess. I cannot communicate how glad I am that I never bought a permanent LiveJournal account when I wanted to, and I urge anyone with a paid account on LiveJournal to consider letting it expire.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Trudeau
Last weekend I went off on a bit of an impromptu adventure. My sister had indicated to me previously that Gary Trudeau (of Doonesbury fame) would be giving the commencement address at her old alma mater, Muhlenberg College, in Allentown PA. For those who weren't aware, I've been a fan of Trudeau since I could read, and that's not an exaggeration - my mother started me on her Doonesbury compilations when I was still in single digits. (I come by my political cynicism honestly, by God.) Since Allentown is only five hours away, and Trudeau appears in public roughly once a never, I decided I'd be a fool to pass up this opportunity.
I had no recording equipment to take with me, unfortunately, and I can't seem to find the text (or video) of the speech online, so I can't report it for you here. However I found it eloquent and inspirational, as a good commencement speech should be, and dryly humorous, as one would demand from a cartoonist of Trudeau's stature. One thing that stuck with me, as I listened to my hero's voice for the first time, is that he sounded kind of ... goofy. He just had one of those voices that doesn't quite stay in tune all the time, and the result is odd. Not anything important, certainly, but an interesting tidbit for the file.
The trip itself was also a blast. Erin and I spent the night outside of Jim Thorpe PA at a small place called the Country Place Motel, which was pleasant, but very strange. The office was in a separate building, across a gravel driveway, from the two buildings that housed the actual rooms, and at night with a storm blowing in there was a definite slasher movie vibe. The rooms were quite pleasant and incredibly spacious, although the decorations reminded me of something you would find at a colorblind grandmother's house. The comforter on the bed in particular was amazingly hideous; I wanted to take it home with me very badly.
Something we noted about the various restaurants we stopped in is the influx of what I can only describe as fusion cuisine in to the strangest places. The burger joint in which we had dinner, which billed itself as an Irish pub (complete with shamrocks on the logo), featured a heavy amount of seafood, including various dishes with a clear (if perverted) Japanese influence, all of which looked very disturbing. Even closer to civilization (if New York can indeed be classified thus) we found oddities on the menus of simple diners, all making me wonder if the various objects in the melting pot aren't finally starting liquefy and run together, instead of just sitting next to each other in lumps.
Last but not least I wish to inform you all that the fireworks stores at the edge of the PA/NY border fill me with glee. I've always meant to stop in to one, pretty much every time I've come back in to the state, but I've always put it off for next time. This visit, however, we decided the time was now, and spent close to an hour wandering around a refrigerated warehouse giggling with glee at the various things stacked higher than our heads. Our purchases showed mighty restraint, in my opinion, but nevertheless our July 4th party should prove quite memorable.
We have come to two conclusions: We need to take more road trips, and we need to crash more commencement addresses.
I had no recording equipment to take with me, unfortunately, and I can't seem to find the text (or video) of the speech online, so I can't report it for you here. However I found it eloquent and inspirational, as a good commencement speech should be, and dryly humorous, as one would demand from a cartoonist of Trudeau's stature. One thing that stuck with me, as I listened to my hero's voice for the first time, is that he sounded kind of ... goofy. He just had one of those voices that doesn't quite stay in tune all the time, and the result is odd. Not anything important, certainly, but an interesting tidbit for the file.
The trip itself was also a blast. Erin and I spent the night outside of Jim Thorpe PA at a small place called the Country Place Motel, which was pleasant, but very strange. The office was in a separate building, across a gravel driveway, from the two buildings that housed the actual rooms, and at night with a storm blowing in there was a definite slasher movie vibe. The rooms were quite pleasant and incredibly spacious, although the decorations reminded me of something you would find at a colorblind grandmother's house. The comforter on the bed in particular was amazingly hideous; I wanted to take it home with me very badly.
Something we noted about the various restaurants we stopped in is the influx of what I can only describe as fusion cuisine in to the strangest places. The burger joint in which we had dinner, which billed itself as an Irish pub (complete with shamrocks on the logo), featured a heavy amount of seafood, including various dishes with a clear (if perverted) Japanese influence, all of which looked very disturbing. Even closer to civilization (if New York can indeed be classified thus) we found oddities on the menus of simple diners, all making me wonder if the various objects in the melting pot aren't finally starting liquefy and run together, instead of just sitting next to each other in lumps.
Last but not least I wish to inform you all that the fireworks stores at the edge of the PA/NY border fill me with glee. I've always meant to stop in to one, pretty much every time I've come back in to the state, but I've always put it off for next time. This visit, however, we decided the time was now, and spent close to an hour wandering around a refrigerated warehouse giggling with glee at the various things stacked higher than our heads. Our purchases showed mighty restraint, in my opinion, but nevertheless our July 4th party should prove quite memorable.
We have come to two conclusions: We need to take more road trips, and we need to crash more commencement addresses.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
4 books
As previously mentioned, I've been on a library kick lately, and I wanted to note a few things about some books I've encountered lately.
First, Storm Front by Jim Butcher, first book of The Dresden Files. I stumbled across this series in a bookstore and noted it for later perusal. At some point recently it was optioned for a television show on SciFi which I tried very hard to ignore, on account of how terribly cheesy it looked, but I wound up catching a few episode and to tell the truth they weren't terrible. So I dug up the first book. It was a good pulpy sort of read, hard to put down, and complex without being hard to track. I'm always a little turned off by the 'good guy gets beaten and humiliated' shtick that's such a staple of noir, but it was fairly well handled in this case, and even legitimized a bit by the character's history. I see on the cover some comparisons to the gibberish produced by Laurell K. Hamilton, and thankfully I found no similarities to that filth aside from the basic concept of supernatural investigations. To summarize, the book was quality, and I'm looking forward to the arrival of the next one at my branch of the library. Definitely recommended.
Second, Necklace of Kisses, by Francesca Lia Block, the latest Weetzie Bat book. I'd previously read the first five books, compiled in Dangerous Angels, and I was quite looking forward to this one. Each book tends to come with a vastly different feeling, ranging from lighthearted wonder to despair so thick it clogs the lungs, and while this one contained Block's trademark lilting prose and emotionally evocative wording, it lacked that cohesion. The themes of flight and confusion were omnipresent, but they didn't generate any particular response in and of themselves, which I found disappointing. If you've read the Weetzie Bat books, you should of course read this one, because hey, new Weetzie, right? If not, you should certainly not start here - pick up a copy of the first one instead.
Third, The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks, which is exactly what it sounds like: a thorough guidebook of how to survive a zombie uprising. The noteworthy thing about this book is not the book itself, which is in truth rather dry, but the concept of the book. It is filed as humor, and reviewed as tongue-in-cheek genius, but the book itself contains no single indication that the author is anything but utterly sincere. I can't help but idly wonder if Brooks isn't completely serious, and chose to publish it as humor only for the sake of getting it out there for what he sees as the inevitable worldwide outbreak? Hopefully, time won't tell.
Finally (for the moment), Storm Constantine's The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, which is the first of the Wraeththu novels, another series that I found sitting on the shelves of Borders. The series appears to be from the late eighties, and I've seen some vague references to it here and there, including some mention of an RPG, but frankly I don't see what all the fuss is about. The author is clearly in love with the concept, but both it and the prose remind me of nothing so much as rotting lace - delicate, musty, and utterly lacking in substance. The whole thing feels entirely too much like a yaoi version of The Book of the New Sun, with a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a complicated society we get only glimpses of, a self-absorbed protagonist who is an admitted slave to the pull of fate, and in this case, a dominant species of fey hermaphrodites (that still all think of themselves as, and come off as, male). I suspect the whole thing is terribly interesting (if not arousing) to the author, but I found myself bored. Sadly, I'm enough of a SF geek that I might read the next book just to see if there's any hint of an explanation of how the world works, but somehow I strongly doubt any will present themselves.
First, Storm Front by Jim Butcher, first book of The Dresden Files. I stumbled across this series in a bookstore and noted it for later perusal. At some point recently it was optioned for a television show on SciFi which I tried very hard to ignore, on account of how terribly cheesy it looked, but I wound up catching a few episode and to tell the truth they weren't terrible. So I dug up the first book. It was a good pulpy sort of read, hard to put down, and complex without being hard to track. I'm always a little turned off by the 'good guy gets beaten and humiliated' shtick that's such a staple of noir, but it was fairly well handled in this case, and even legitimized a bit by the character's history. I see on the cover some comparisons to the gibberish produced by Laurell K. Hamilton, and thankfully I found no similarities to that filth aside from the basic concept of supernatural investigations. To summarize, the book was quality, and I'm looking forward to the arrival of the next one at my branch of the library. Definitely recommended.
Second, Necklace of Kisses, by Francesca Lia Block, the latest Weetzie Bat book. I'd previously read the first five books, compiled in Dangerous Angels, and I was quite looking forward to this one. Each book tends to come with a vastly different feeling, ranging from lighthearted wonder to despair so thick it clogs the lungs, and while this one contained Block's trademark lilting prose and emotionally evocative wording, it lacked that cohesion. The themes of flight and confusion were omnipresent, but they didn't generate any particular response in and of themselves, which I found disappointing. If you've read the Weetzie Bat books, you should of course read this one, because hey, new Weetzie, right? If not, you should certainly not start here - pick up a copy of the first one instead.
Third, The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks, which is exactly what it sounds like: a thorough guidebook of how to survive a zombie uprising. The noteworthy thing about this book is not the book itself, which is in truth rather dry, but the concept of the book. It is filed as humor, and reviewed as tongue-in-cheek genius, but the book itself contains no single indication that the author is anything but utterly sincere. I can't help but idly wonder if Brooks isn't completely serious, and chose to publish it as humor only for the sake of getting it out there for what he sees as the inevitable worldwide outbreak? Hopefully, time won't tell.
Finally (for the moment), Storm Constantine's The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, which is the first of the Wraeththu novels, another series that I found sitting on the shelves of Borders. The series appears to be from the late eighties, and I've seen some vague references to it here and there, including some mention of an RPG, but frankly I don't see what all the fuss is about. The author is clearly in love with the concept, but both it and the prose remind me of nothing so much as rotting lace - delicate, musty, and utterly lacking in substance. The whole thing feels entirely too much like a yaoi version of The Book of the New Sun, with a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a complicated society we get only glimpses of, a self-absorbed protagonist who is an admitted slave to the pull of fate, and in this case, a dominant species of fey hermaphrodites (that still all think of themselves as, and come off as, male). I suspect the whole thing is terribly interesting (if not arousing) to the author, but I found myself bored. Sadly, I'm enough of a SF geek that I might read the next book just to see if there's any hint of an explanation of how the world works, but somehow I strongly doubt any will present themselves.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Star Magazine
Lesbian gangs! Group showers! Strip searches! Filthy bedding! ... Is it just me or does Hollywood news read a little bit more like a porn site every day?
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Overclocked
I was recently loaned a copy of Cory Doctorow's book Overclocked by a friend who I trade good SF with. I've resisted reading any Doctorow to date, but this friend has very similar taste to my own, so I decided to give it a whirl.
See, you have to understand. Cory Doctorow drives me nuts. There isn't really a rational explanation for this; he's just always bugged me. I've read Boing Boing for ages, and nine times out of ten, if the tone of a post annoys me, it was Cory's. His copyfighting successful-writer web-celebrity expat status irks me beyond all endurance, because goddammit I wish my business card read that way! To top it off he's so smug about it all (as any sane human being would be). It just makes me bonkers.
So it is with great reluctance that I am forced to say this book was really fantastic. I was a little turned off by some of the abuses of the English language, but no more so than in any book where an accent is written out in the spelling, and even while having a negative reaction to that I was in awe of the stories. I think the most impressive part is how fresh it all seems. Considering his unapologetic borrowing of titles and concepts from previous authors, his work manages to be incredibly non-derivative, which is a quality sadly lacking in most SF these days.
So I recommend reading the book. You can read it for free on his website, along with his other books, but it was good enough to be worth buying to show your support, which I'm probably going to be doing soon.
... Dammit.
See, you have to understand. Cory Doctorow drives me nuts. There isn't really a rational explanation for this; he's just always bugged me. I've read Boing Boing for ages, and nine times out of ten, if the tone of a post annoys me, it was Cory's. His copyfighting successful-writer web-celebrity expat status irks me beyond all endurance, because goddammit I wish my business card read that way! To top it off he's so smug about it all (as any sane human being would be). It just makes me bonkers.
So it is with great reluctance that I am forced to say this book was really fantastic. I was a little turned off by some of the abuses of the English language, but no more so than in any book where an accent is written out in the spelling, and even while having a negative reaction to that I was in awe of the stories. I think the most impressive part is how fresh it all seems. Considering his unapologetic borrowing of titles and concepts from previous authors, his work manages to be incredibly non-derivative, which is a quality sadly lacking in most SF these days.
So I recommend reading the book. You can read it for free on his website, along with his other books, but it was good enough to be worth buying to show your support, which I'm probably going to be doing soon.
... Dammit.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Find Habeas
I just signed a petition to restore habeas corpus. Should I disappear in the middle of the night, that might be why. You should sign up with me - I hear Cuba is very pretty this time of year.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
updates & excuses
I've been even less posty than usual on account of coming down with some vicious respiratory infection that's been making the rounds in this part of the world lately. It's now been eleven days since the original onset of symptoms and I'm still slightly under the weather - in that time I've done very little other than work or sleep. What time I do spend doing other things has involved a cold-drug-haze that has prevented me from being particularly coherent. You understand.
I am pleased to report that just before I got sick I successfully ran a game for the very first time. A game, no less, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I am a giant dork.) The game was a wonderful success, and all of my players seemed to enjoy themselves, and further claim that they can't wait for it to resume next Thursday (after a nice two week break to build up enthusiasm). I will, of course, be posting plot summaries here, so if that's too much geek for you, feel free to ignore any posts with the title "Steffy the Vampire Slayer". (Believe me, the name could have been worse - that was Daniel's third attempt at picking one.)
I've also re-entered that "plow through library books at an absurd rate" stage I seem to enter every summer; hopefully soon I'll have the time and inclination to write out some reviews of the ones I've read recently. I want to take a moment to nod to Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, which I don't have enough to say about to justify giving it an entry of its own. It was very funny. If you enjoy dark humor, life comics, or need some perspective on cancer, I would recommend reading this book.
That's all I have to say right now, really. I'm headed out of town in the morning for a few days relaxation on the water. Hopefully I'll recover the rest of the way and even have some free time for writing. Or maybe I'll just slack off; that's certainly a possibility.
I am pleased to report that just before I got sick I successfully ran a game for the very first time. A game, no less, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I am a giant dork.) The game was a wonderful success, and all of my players seemed to enjoy themselves, and further claim that they can't wait for it to resume next Thursday (after a nice two week break to build up enthusiasm). I will, of course, be posting plot summaries here, so if that's too much geek for you, feel free to ignore any posts with the title "Steffy the Vampire Slayer". (Believe me, the name could have been worse - that was Daniel's third attempt at picking one.)
I've also re-entered that "plow through library books at an absurd rate" stage I seem to enter every summer; hopefully soon I'll have the time and inclination to write out some reviews of the ones I've read recently. I want to take a moment to nod to Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, which I don't have enough to say about to justify giving it an entry of its own. It was very funny. If you enjoy dark humor, life comics, or need some perspective on cancer, I would recommend reading this book.
That's all I have to say right now, really. I'm headed out of town in the morning for a few days relaxation on the water. Hopefully I'll recover the rest of the way and even have some free time for writing. Or maybe I'll just slack off; that's certainly a possibility.
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