miércoles, 29 de noviembre de 2006

How to spot a Reptilian Humanoid in casual conversation

Reptilian Humanoids are bad. They don't care about anything mammals care about, but they pretend they do so that they can pass as mammals on conquer the Known Universe.
This is a snipped of conversation that gave this particular Reptilian Humanoid away. I'm offering it as a warning to other humans having trouble with RH.

Reptilian Humanoid: "I used to have a very cool cat who could beat up all the neighbourhood dogs" (notice the RH trying to appear mammalian by spouting whoppers so big they'd make Krusty Burger ashamed of itself)
Human: "Wow, your cat had some balls" (notice the oblivious Human randomly agreeing to anything previously said.)
RH: "not really, he was castrated."
Human: "Oh, no, what I meant is that your cat had well placed balls." Human holds his hands into fists around imaginary testicles and holds them over his own genitals to emphasize the point.
RH: "impossible, my cats balls are probably pickled in formol somewhere."
Humans together: "eeew".
RH: "what? What did I say?"

She looked bewildered and didn't really understand what she did wrong until we killed her. She said she was a writer exploring the naivete of one of her characters. She even claimed she was reinventing cringe humour with a literary bent and she went as far as to say that all that weird stuff on her skin was only psoriasis, not reptilian scales.
Yeah right, like any human would know what that means. What really bothers me about this little episode is that I still haven't managed to get all that green goo out of my hair. Bludgeoning is dirty business. Those Reptilian Humanoids are clingy even after they're dead.

domingo, 26 de noviembre de 2006

Acceptance

My poem "I Loved Ophelia" has been accepted by The Lorelei Signal. Hurray!

miércoles, 22 de noviembre de 2006

Truth by Consensus

Excuse my lag, I just discovered the term wikiality, defined as truth by consensus. I realize this was probably big a few weeks ago, but again living in the wrong continent has its disadvantages. You only get inside US news when the LAPD beats someone up.
The press is specially prone to creating wikiality. In Spain they have recently discovered that teachers get beaten by their students, that "bullying" (impossible to pronounce in Spanish) is an established form of suicide-inducing behaviour between school students and that "mobbing" should be used to refer to its equivalent in the adult world. This brings me to another topic: get yer English off my Spanish! or at least, please, please when introducing English words into Spanish, please make sure you spell and pronounce them correctly. I realize I'm not the best example of this, but do what I say, not what I do, OK? What's wrong with the good-old fashioned Spanish word "matón" (bully)? Why, oh why do we need to pump up the news with artificial terminology?
Well, thank God Colbert is there to show us the truth: if not enough people clap, a fairy will die, and if enough people say "mobbing" is a Spanish word, then so be it.

martes, 21 de noviembre de 2006

These Romans are crazy

Wikipedia is a wonderful thing. In spite of recent criticism of the veracity of the articles, it's still a formidable tool. It was never meant to be taken as seriously as the Encyclopedia Britannica, but to provide as much info as possible in a wide range of topics and fast. News hit wikipedia faster than any other encyclopedia. It was obvious from the beginning that wikipedia's advantages (faster articles, wide variety, popular contribution) would also be it's downfalls. So why are we suddenly reacting with all this fake outrage? Any dimwit already knew that wikipedia facts needed to be double-checked. That doesn't mean that I'm against rectifying these mistakes. The people who have been slandered by these pranks should be able to make corrections. But, hey! what's the fuss? We all knew this from the minute we started to use wikipedia.
What am I getting at? Ah, yes, wikipedia. Today I discovered many things which are probably obvious to anyone who doesn't get their anglo culture from the Daily Show. Bear with me: I'm culturally challenged.
a) I discovered that homosexuality was a crime in Texas in the US of A until the Supreme Court ruled against that law in Lawrence v. Texas . I thought that law had been chucked much earlier than that. Jeez, those guys were pushing twenty-first century. Maybe that was the point: they didn't want those retrograde laws inching into the new century. Our children would probably be baffled by most of them.
b) I discovered that there is such a thing as the Homosexual Agenda. I know quite a few homosexuals and all this time they were keeping their agenda from me. I'm running off to the phone to shout at all my gay friends. Can't believe they never told me.
c) Got an idea! I'm gonna get myself a "Spanish Writer Agenda" and I will not share it. I might be bribed with greens deposited in my paypal address, but I can't guaranty anything... never thought about being bribed before.
d) quoting wikipedia:
Alan E. Sears and Craig Osten, president and vice-president of the Alliance Defense Fund, offer another characterization of the homosexual agenda:

It is an agenda that they basically set in the late 1980s, in a book called 'After the Ball,' where they laid out a six-point plan for how they could transform the beliefs of ordinary Americans with regard to homosexual behavior — in a decade-long time frame.... They admit it privately, but they will not say that publicly. In their private publications, homosexual activists make it very clear that there is an agenda. The six-point agenda that they laid out in 1989 was explicit: Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible... Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers... Give homosexual protectors a just cause... Make gays look good... Make the victimizers look bad... Get funds from corporate America.[6]

What is a "private publication"? I want my next book to be publicly published! Should I worry about it being privately published instead? Do they mean vanity press, POD? That's the only kind of publishing I can think of that would never have any public repercussion whatsoever.

So all I ever got from wikipedia is the distinct impression as Asterix (or Obelix) said, that "These Romans are crazy" or modernized, "These Americans are crazy". I'm starting to think that the Evil Robot Monkeys are a artificial cleansing force of nature.

lunes, 20 de noviembre de 2006

Postage and no-boots

I mailed a story to SF&F today and the postage was almost five euros--not dollars, euros (evil grin). So I've done the math and decided I can't afford to mail subs; it's either email or nothing. I'll allow myself one postal sub every couple months but with my current success rate I really can't start flinging euros around. The story wasn't even that long, imagine if I had to mail out 5000 and 7000 word stories on a regular basis.
Today I met my dream boots. They went up almost to the knee, flat-heels so I don't fall off, pretty but comfortable. The leather was soft as if an esquimo grandma had spent hours chewing it for some baby. Idillic until I looked at the price. What's with being a poor student today? Ok, a student supported by her parents, but still...
I could start a Christmas "get out the gifts" campaign, but it's only November and I'm not good at weedling for gifts. That's a family gene I didn't get.

jueves, 16 de noviembre de 2006

The rain in Spain falls mostly... x2

Everywhere!
Not to bitch: I know that there's a drought. I'm not complaining... Ok, I am complaining, but not about of the rain per se, but about the per idiot capita. People in Spain react all kinds of ways to bad weather, and most of them just do the wrong thing.
The highway is packed right up to my doorstep, balerina ambulances skid in the drizzle and there are cars perched up on the sidewalk, warning lights glaring. All in all, Independance Day without Will Smith or sexy substitute to save the day and it's not even pouring, just raining a little. This is all plain hard to understand: I mean, every single car on the street has windshield wipes, it's illegal not to. We are all wearing jeans and waterproof coats. More than 50% of people out there today are wearing waterproof shoes (Spanish shoes are just not designed for this, and the crappy Chineese ones I wear are even worst). So what's the big deal! Button up and go take the bus.
No. It doesn't happen. Everyone takes the car. The road is crammed, everyone arrives late to work and there's no parking, so the car drivers get wet anyway walking the 2 miles from where they managed to park the car to their office. They even get to play poke-the-eye with other street-walkers with umbrellas (I'm short and I don't carry an umbrella so I'm an easy victim... but you don't see me driving a car). They get to the office miserable and wet, but at least they suffered inside their contaminating private properties.
I huddle in the back of the bus, clutching my issue of Shimmer magazine (the e-version which I've printed off the computer) trying not to get it wet. It's not easy: my coat is wet, my pants are wet, my hair is wet and I'm sweaty everywhere else. The margins start getting grey smudgy fingerprints. I try to get my paws off the letters. Then I start reading, and...
joy.

lunes, 13 de noviembre de 2006

It's up!

I'd been debating for a while whether I wanted to have a blog. I kept one for a while in Spanish when I went to Paris to keep friends updated without having to send humongous emails. But soon, it happened: I started posting less and less and then forgot the password altogether.
This blog will be dedicated to two things:
a) Writerly stuff
b) How much I suffer when I study.
Let's hope, for all our sakes that it will be more of a than b

And since you clicked and there's not much to see here, check out Trabuco Road, launched today
http://www.trabucoroad.com/
I've only read "The Word of God" by Nir Yaniv, but if that's an example of what we're going to get in this new e-zine, we're in for some good writing. Let's hope it lasts.