eruthros

1) Most hilarious typo in a pseudo-professional news story: "Only about 6 percent of dog owners and 4 percent of cat owners are bought from pet stores, according to the most recent statistics."

That's from a salon.com article about pet ownership in the recession. (I'm trying to avoid salon.com these days for various political reasons, but I read their magazine for years and I still sometimes accidentally load it in the morning. Changing habits is hard, but I guess this is a nice side benefit. Srsly, dog owners are bought from pet stores?)

2) Most ridiculous higher-education move of the week: Georgia Republicans attempt to ban (graduate) courses in queer theory. They claim that universities are supposed to "educate people in sciences, business, math," apparently taking a stand against all liberal arts ever! They are now claiming that their statements were blow out of proportion, and that when they tried to get rid of all classes with the word "queer" in the title they didn't really mean it, or something.

3) Most awesome news of the week: thingswithwings and I finally signed a lease for an apartment for next year and it is awesome. And cheap. And AWESOME. \o/

4) Most baffling javascript bookmarklet tool: Cornify, a bookmarklet that I SWEAR TO GOD covers web pages in unicorns and rainbows. Sparkly unicorns and rainbows. Like, I have a bookmarklet to zap colors to black and white -- this does the exact opposite. I am baffled and amazed.

At the BEA, there was this huge marketing push for Men of Bronze by Scot Oden, which is apparently Egyptian historical fiction with assassins and pharaohs and lots of drama. There were posters! There were banners! There were references in the show daily! There were ads in the show guide! They passed out pins and postcards! Even my mom, who has almost no interest in this sort of book, noticed the push -- I mentioned the title to her, and she said "oh, yes, I remember those signs."

So m_shell and I noticed that the line for an autographed copy was extremely short toward the end of his hour, and popped over into his line. We tried to get a second copy just signed, but, alas, he wouldn't do that. He needed to sign it to someone in particular. This is uncomplicated code -- it means that he, or his publicist, was worried that signed copies would be sold on EBay. As m_shell said afterward, "Dude, don't flatter yourself."

Anyway, later I was looking for a book to read on the train ride back to Philadelphia, and I pulled that out (it was on top). I opened it up and... winced mightily, for lo! the dustflap copy is printed in a display face, and is very difficult to read. I flipped the first few pages and counted seven faces: three display (one vaguely-ancient, one all-caps serif, and a second all-caps serif that looks a lot like the first until you look closer and realize that it's got calligraphic accents), two reading fonts (one for the text and one on the copyright page), and two Celtic-ish fonts on the maps. And that's not even counting the inexplicably bolded AND italicized version of the text font used in the table of contents.

And then I turned to the table of contents, and saw the following:

On Pronunciation and Spelling / 435
Bibliography / 437
Glossary / 440
Chronolgy / 465
Timeline of Egypt's Twenty-Sixth Dynasy and the Near East / 468

If this were pre-press I could forgive two typos in the ToC, even if they came after a section on pronunciation and spelling (though it would make me giggle). This isn't an ARC. This is the first edition, hardback. Yowch.

And then the first paragraph, which I have to quote here:

In the blue predawn twilight, a mist rose from the Nile's surface, flowing up the reed-choked banks and into the ruined streets of Leontopolis. Remnants of monumental architecture floated like islands of stone on a calm morning sea. Streamers of moisture swirled around statues of long-dead pharaohs, flowed past stumps of columns broken off like rotted teeth, and coursed down sandstone steps worn paper-thin by the passage of years. As the sky above grew translucent, streaked with amber and gold, a funerary shroud settled over the City of Lions, a mantle that disguised the approach of armed men.

Now, could I have entered that in the Bulwer-Lytton contest or what? (BTW, the wide spacing after the first sentence appears in the original, though you may not be able to see it here depending on the line breaks.)

I read it out loud when darthrami was here last week, and we laughed like mad. Even more hilarious? On amazon.com, this consistently gets FIVE STARS.

ETA: If anyone wants to glance at a copy of this fabulous book, we've got a second copy, if you don't mind it being signed to one of us.

Weird things found on the net:
Henry Kissinger/Deep Throat. There are no words.

Also, I was scanning down a list of stories looking for something when I hit a really, um, striking pseudonym -- "Dementia de Sade." So not kidding. Is it humanly possible for anyone named Dementia de Sade to write decent fanfiction? (Clearly, it's not possible for this particular Dementia de Sade: "So in the morning when I don't come to the bridge for my shift, they'll come in here and find me with a bullet in my head (or maybe the wall behind me, I'm not sure how that will pan out....) and blood and brain and skull spattering the walls and ceiling. My brain, the one thing that's allowed me to stay here for so long, will be total mush. No use to anyone anymore. I'm sick of being used.")

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Some selections from eruthros's Author's Notes Hall of Fame:

Since I have yet to see X2, this will be set somewhere before that. I am going to give Logan back his memory and make Xander his son.
(Ahh, the exposition starts BEFORE the story! How handy!)

I got bitten by the bug and it wouldn't let me go till this was written...was originally written as a VigOrli fic...have changed it to a HP/SS fic.
(Because they're *so much* alike.)
( More ridiculous disclaimers, protestations, explanations of male pregnancy, and blame-shifting behind the cut )

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And a meme. In theory, this meme tracks how many people click through your meme and all that. So it records the spread of the meme. Not, apparently, by lj user name or anything -- just by number, which is less cool. Still, interesting idea.



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Also, the lyrics to this song amuse me no end. (I love Crosspulse. But they're not touring anymore. Sniffle.) It features verses like "o / bein your woman / is a 24 hour - allnightstand - jukeboxmovie / I'm auditioning for the lead / but / everybody's tryin to get into the act" and "from Egypt to Asia / I longed for you / Miami drove me crazy / I horned for you / will you be my baby / will you be my man / I need you in my China / forget about Japan." So not kidding. It really needs the inflection to make the song, though. (That playlist meme for me ended up mostly foreign languages and lyrics like that, so I didn't post it. Maybe someday, when I really feel like transcribing Portuguese. I have one that's mostly rock, a'course, but it's nowhere near as interesting.)

Choice snippets from a variety of fandoms.

Voldemort: For your own sake I do hope you have come baring only good news.
(We leave bad news fully clothed. It's ugly, you know. But the good news -- take it off, baby!)

... and at the additional feel of Methos's breath against his mouth, Duncan erected.
(The bookshelf, having finally figured out how to put it together. Or maybe a nice monument for the Dalai Lama. Something like that.)

I couldn't seem to move them of my own violation, though I could feel my shoulders tensing sluggishly in response to my efforts.
(I worked out that this meant volition, but perhaps it was a Freudian slip...)

When he didn't want to nail [Blair's] ass through the mattress -- or vice versa.
(Sometimes he wanted to nail the mattress through Blair's ass?)

Here are the lessons you can take next year if you wish. Advanced DADA Advanced Charm's Transfiguration Defence therios.
(Therios -- theories that come conveniently packaged for breakfast? Not going into the punctuation at all. It'll just make me bitter.)

Bootstrap Bill: "Aww, that be a shame, but I suppose it be for the bette'," he responded as he resumed a straight standing position.
(You know, it being a PotC story, that almost makes sense. I mean, it might almost be contrasting Bootstrap's straight standing position with Jack's really gay standing position. Almost. Except not.)