Labor Day 2016: Writing fail.

{ Draft written 5-Sept-2016, primarily. }

Ooooh, let's discuss Idiot Ball, shall we?

One of the things making me crazy watching The Flash season 2... was the idiot ball plot breakdowns.  Sometimes it was so bad they were idiot plots too.  8(

Character acts out of character, i.e., irredeemably stupid?  Guess who's got the idiot ball tonight!

Worst is when said character had said in a past ep why s/he wouldn't do that thing, only to decide to do it in this ep.

Specifics follow.  Also SPOILERS.  

Skip this if you have not seen the The Flash s2.

Car news: good!

Good news from the body shop on my car!  When I spoke to a gentleman there Monday, he said the repair estimate was a few dollars shy of $1700.00.

This is great as I have owned my poor abus'd PT Cruiser not even a whole month.  Having the repairs be considerably less than its list price of $2995, huzzah.  FYI:  its low miles make my car worth rather more than that.  8)

Keep your fingers crossed, I pray you!

Helping you when depressed...

Really GOOD post about how to help yourself cope with depression:  21 Tips to Keep Your Shit Together When You’re Depressed.

And how to cope with people's attempts to help you.

I highly recommend it.  I found it a great post.

Plot devices (and coupons).

There was a discussion about plot devices over at Daily Kos.  It's also stocked with many many handy links for writers and readers alike.

And if you haven't heard of plot devices, or plot coupons, then you need to read The Well-Tempered Plot Device.  Which is brilliant, clever, useful, and hilarious.  I shall never have any other nickname for LOTR than Nick's...

I think every sf/f reader should know about plot coupons.  And hey, the laughs help too. :D

November links. :)

Interesting things I found while researching.  Most of these are death, destruction, weapons, and guns.  I found some of them more fun than others, but hey, I like learning things, including weird things that are theoretical.


A shot to the head.  This is about death, yes; don't think it's something else, because it really isn't.  (Yes, I was looking up injuries and deaths, not planning on killing anyone; sorry!)  The internal links are brilliant!

Two angles, one on choosing handguns and the other about large caliber handguns and women.

How does it feel to receive a bullet?  Authors at the Absolute Write Watercooler.

And because Cracked.com should have the last word whenever possible -- okay, maybe not!  5 Weapon Myths You Probably Believe (Thanks to Movies).

Pretty sure I found that last link when I was searching submarines, but I could be wrong.  :D

Bonus link:  Confusing Words.  It hasn't got them all, certainly, but there are some that this is invaluable for.

How CAN they...

How can legislators attack the teachers? Where would Abe Lincoln have been had he not learned to read? Heck, where would WE be?

I've always loved Lincoln. What would he have thought of his party now??

How can they attack the post office? Yes, the good ol' USPS. Congress forced the post office to pay 75 years worth of pensions -- yes, seventy-five! -- in ten years' time. Thus reducing their finances even further.

Ben Franklin was our first postmaster general. He also [says Wiki] set up our first lending library. I wouldn't be me without the library -- all of them. What about you?

It's all about the money. I bet you can feel where this is all going.

Yep. Shut down every institution that is for the common good -- the education, the postal service, the libraries, the health systems, everything. Because if you cannot pay, say the conservatives, then these should be sold at the highest price to the profit of someone else.

Privatize.


This so feels like a very frightening book instead of real life. I wouldn't read Animal Farm in my teens. I hated Brave New World, but had to read it twice. [Funny, I love apocalyptic fiction, though.] I managed to squeak out of reading 1984.

How can we stop this? Speak out. Don't hide. Spread the word about the laws you can't stand, about the things happening where you live. Tell people all over what you think.

The world is changing, everywhere. I'm advocating speech, so don't be shy.

The greedy bastards doing all this act like they have no shame. Maybe they don't. Doesn't matter. Society has a lot of tools for social change, and shame is not the least of them.

But pressure, now, pressure is a lovely tool.

And for the ones now in office who pretend that it's time to push their personal moral beliefs into law -- time to fire their misbegotten selves. This ain't what they were hired for.

This is my world too. I'm proud of all of the people in it. It doesn't matter if we never meet, if we don't eat the same things or speak the same languages. A lot doesn't matter. But this matters; to make things change, we all have to step up and speak.

I feel no need to return to the pre-industrial era, thanks. What about you?


But if you heard me cuss half the time lately, you'd think I wished I was violent like certain relatives... two of my favorite board games in the 80s were Family Business and Tom Wham's Gangsters.

I was good at those games. :D

I miss ELM.

I must be the only person in the universe who does. Or so it feels. :C

Tonight Gmail decided that y'know, panel email clients weren't bad enough. I've been happily avoiding email served up via panel for a long time. Eudora, Outlook, Pegasus, and Thunderbird are all that style. Gmail implements some of their worst features in a new way.

So now Gmail compresses the screen when you move down the email-list or open emails -- even though their top and bottom menu bars are clones, and don't need to BE compressed -- thus shrinking what you can see. How futile is that?

Gmail and Yahoo used to be like ELM -- you had a list of your emails, you selected the message, you read it. Panel readers break up your screen into compartments: the folder menu, the email-list, and the email you're reading.

I absolutely hate the panel format. Without reservation. Whoever invented panel-style email clients ought to be in a special place in hell (and I am not kidding).

The old way -- the list format -- was more like having an uncrumpled page. I can move up and down on that freely. I get the whole piece of paper as my screen when I open my message...

Well, mostly, but Gmail and Yahoo et al have been putting stuff in the sidebars, shrinking the screen where you read your email. Still, it was far better than the alternative:

Using panels is like having a scroll; my viewing options are limited, I have to do a lot of clicking and sliding to get anywhere, and each choice gets me a smaller area. [Gotta pin that thing open, but it keeps slipping!] It doesn't matter if I'm scanning the email-list or trying to read a message, I've gone from a full piece of flat paper to a 3x5 card.

I've used Outlook, and T-Bird, so this isn't guessing; I know what they're like, and I loathe them all.

What possessed Gmail? I don't know. I'd think that a bunch of clever geeks wouldn't do this.

After using Web email since 2000, of course I don't want 300 baud back. But why would I want a scroll flapping closed every time I read email??!!?!? Fighting email to read it -> counterproductive!


SquirrelMail, bless 'em, looks like the only email client who didn't go with panels, so... if I'm still frothing tomorrow, I may have a viable option. Thanks, folks!

Style curiosity?

I've been reading through Ngaio Marsh's mysteries steadily.

Last Ditch has a style variation that appears to be the author's; I don't think it was a house style choice, but I could be wrong, of course. :]

On pages 206-207, there are two styles used:

• "Doctor Carey" when beginning a paragraph of narrative;
• but "Dr. Carey" when otherwise used in narrative

I don't have any examples marked from my own reading for dialog.

Why does this matter? Well, I didn't notice it myself until it was in two pages facing each other. This may have been a house style choice, it may not have, it's hard to say.

But I wonder. If this had been a job, I would have queried this.

Style choices matter. They'll be invisible to some readers, and not to others. Certainly this style question didn't wreck my interest in the mystery, but when confronted by the difference, I marked it. :D


In case you're curious, I read the hardcover edition from Little, Brown (1977).

November links.

These are a mixed bag, but that's okay -- sort of like Halloween candy. The art show yesterday was giving out small bags of candy, and that candy saved us all on the mad drive home. :>


From Marco at Angry Robot: The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People.

Maurice has pix from WFC. Bonus points if you know everyone (I surely don't).

Want a one-way ticket to Mars? Aw, c'mon! It's for science -- and humanity. :D No, really.


And something different: J.F. Lewis has been serializing a piece of his Void City universe. Halloween was the last installment. Find them all on his blog. Enjoy!

The serialized Halloween story is frickin' fantastic. <3

Jeremy's Void City series is exactly how I like my urban fantasy -- excellent, unusual, and witty -- and Staked was my favorite debut novel.