Still alive!
Figure I ought to start out with the good news. –G– As for the rest…well, the doctor didn’t say “recovered,” as he’s spent much of the week reminding me, only “recovering.” I spent the weekend now past and gone at a Celtic (Irish) music festival, and completely wiped myself out—though it was worth it, and not just for the men in kilts.
Although, you know, there were a few truly lovely kilt-wearing men around, some of them with arms full of bagpipe, some without… Oh, sorry. Am I drooling on the keyboard again?
So, not in much shape to post nor chat, but getting through the backlogged e-mail. Slowly. Relying on the Draft function so that I can make sure my messages actually say what I need them to say (for a change).
Hope you’re all celebrating Spring appropriately!
pxj
What? Details? Um.
Seriously eclectic music program, as always. It’s why we love NTIF! (Okay, that and all the men in kilts. Or out of them. If you ask politely, I might tell a tale or two…) Not sure what my favorite musical moment this time might have been, but probably from one of these three bands:
Matt and Shannon Heaton Band—with an incredible percussive dancer!
Brother—Men in pleather kilts. With didgeridoos.
Altan. What can one say?
Okay, back to e-mail. See you ’round!
Friday, March 7, 2008
The e-hermit checking in
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The Deas Wouldn’t Touch This With A Ten-Foot Pole
I have a new release this week, can’t think about anything else, I admit it. Well, unless you count a rather remarkably muscled bit of “inspiration” just across the coffeeshop right now... Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes, the new book, released just this week at Aspen Mountain Press. Reach is a strange sort of story to pitch—naturally, considering who wrote the thing—and the publisher seized on one small detail for much of the marketing: the business my heroine and her partner run.
Jackie and Carrie-Anne are “business facilitators,” which seems to mean that they’ll do whatever clients need in order to get their businesses up and running or to keep them that way. They call the business Deas ex Machina, and the outgoing message on the voice mail (when the system works!) informs clients that “the goddesses” are, no doubt, out answering someone else’s prayers.
If you’ve ever had to wade through the paperwork to incorporate, change a name, or clear the title to an estate, you’ll understand why my imagination generated that particular niche. I wouldn’t be too surprised, though, to learn that similar services exist. In a world where alibi services are now available in several countries...
Though my business goddesses are fictional, I felt the need, seeing this, to wince on their behalf. Jackie and Carrie-Anne would be appalled should a client ask them for something like this. Professionally intrigued (how on Earth would you advertise that service?), salivating over the fees, amused—but appalled, really!
I should know, I made them up.
...Ow! Jackie, control that walking tree of yours!
pxj
Friday, July 20, 2007
On View Right Now
Had sort of a mixed week, so here’s a mixed bag of a post—things I’ve seen that made me smile or think or go hmm. Call it a look inside what I use for a mind...which is as much of a warning as you’re going to get. Enjoy!
Everything Old is New Again
Advice from the CDC: Do It In Your Sleeve. (Sneeze, that is.) Of course, no one remembers that the reason men’s jackets have those useless buttons on the cuffs was to prevent this “uncivilized” behavior... Somehow, that thought led me to history and styles of men’s underwear—yes, well, do remember what I write!
And, hey, how’s this for a segue? Underwear between the covers: in the old days when people actually read paper books
The Light! It Blinds
That had to hurt The phrase “blinding flash of the obvious” comes to mind here: Networks admit that taking the show (Jericho) off the air might have hurt ratings! I thought this made a logical follow-up to old-and-new as these long-arc shows have a fair bit in common with the old radio plays and early television, but that mid-season hiatus is something Grandda et confreres would never, ever have pulled. Nor dear ol’ Boz and his ilk (just to bring things home to print). Ever feel like we’re on a treadmill, or is it just me?
Vocabulary-Building, Anyone?
Best new word I've seen in ages:
sapiosexual. N. One who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature.
Now and then, one does need a word Websters et al haven’t gotten around to indexing. This suggestion came with what might as well have been a love poem directed at Your Humble Hermit—
"I want an incisive, inquisitive, insightful, irreverent mind. I want someone for whom philosophical discussion is foreplay. I want someone who sometimes makes me go ouch due to their wit and evil sense of humor. I want someone that I can reach out and touch randomly. I want someone I can cuddle with.
I decided all that means that I am sapiosexual."
by Mr M. Ister May 26, 2004
Now tell me that isn’t perfect?! And, oh, "Reach Out and Touch Someone." Speaking of segues...but that can wait. Hope your weekends—and your lives generally—are filled with peace and x-rated joy
pxj
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A bonus link so that the DVD-watchers won’t miss it—
Wish fulfillment as advertising! Because everyone has that memory, of some parental unit dragging out some embarrassing family memory...
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Finding Sanctuary
Vanished again, I know. Sorry. No, I wasn’t hermitting—as some of you may know, I’m a freelance technical writer, and the latest gig involved many too many onsite hours. Lovely wifi they had there, but monitored. Yes, I know that still leaves the off-hours, but...I really wasn’t hermitting. Call it inspiration for future stories.
Tonight’s the first time in a while I’ve had some free time to just play online. So what did I do with it? Among other things, checked out Sanctuary.
What? I was curious! And it’s summer, season of popcorn flicks and bad faux-reality TV. Not to say I can’t live without television, or movies either, but...sometimes, I’d really a decent SF-nal something, y’know? And more than that, I’m always interested in new market models!
Not just in broadcast, of course; e-books, anyone?
So, Sanctuary. Direct-to-web short episodes. Monsters and gothic architecture and pretty people. Monsters! No ads. Did I mention monsters? I had to look. And after having seen the first two webisodes, I’d say Sanctuary seems like it has a chance. It’s visually stunning; they’re building on an established fan-base, what with all the ex-Stargate folks involved; SF fans are traditionally more open to innovative distribution models; and they’ve got the “social networking” thing going in overdrive. Want to know how effective that last is? Hey, I heard about it! And I’m a hermit.
Traditional broadcast television counts on word-of-mouth, too, but lately, networks don’t seem to feel they can afford to wait for that word to spread. Firefly is my favorite example: a show Fox didn’t keep around for an entire season, that had—that still has—a fan-base so strong it supports conventions and comic books and even a profitable movie. But the ultimate Space Western’s certainly not the only show nets cancel before they should: Jericho, canceled in May of this year, has just been resurrected for a short next season, as of yesterday, after a massive fan action. (I still want to know who thought up the nuts!) Seven more episodes, contingent upon yet more fan activity, with the dangled hope of more still. But if fans want the show to continue, says the network statement: "It [Jericho] needs to grow on the CBS Television Network, as well as on the many digital platforms where we make the show available."
Hmm. Viewer to CBS: I watched the show, I told people about the show, you canceled the show. I and my cohorts made a loud enough noise that you decided to bring it back, and now you want me to tell even more people, trusting that you won’t just pull the rug out from under us all again? You don’t know me very well, do you?
These days, a lot of shows find their best profits not in ad-supported broadcast, but in DVD sales, which don’t require a broadcast network’s fickle faith after the fans have found a show. Some items are now going straight to DVD, without even a stopover on the network circuit. New episodes of Babylon Five are due out soon! How long has that show been off the air? Straight-to-web isn’t all that unlikely, given the rise in broadband coverage and increasing customer willingness to pay for television programming. As with DVD sales, if you purchase the product, it’s yours, so you’re free of network schedules; no ads, so you’re free of those, too. And, hey, if you purchase a bundle, you know you’ll have all its contents! Much better than broadcast, these days.
Still... Am I—me, myself—willing to purchase episodes, to exchange actual cash for them? Well, why not? That’s all a DVD is, really. If you divide the cost of a DVD by the number of episodes... Hmm. Sanctuary’s an expensive proposition, by that scale, but not outside the bounds of possibility. I have to admit, I think part of the appeal, for me, is this idea of bypassing the networks. For the producer, it’s a way around a very limited distribution channel; for the customer, a real way to express a preference. Vote with your wallet! For me, it’s a way to thumb my nose at the folks who keep buying Tim Minear shows and then yanking them off the air again! With Sanctuary, I can buy the episodes just the way I’d buy e-books or songs. (And so can anyone else, naturally.) That’s a really, really nice idea.
And a gamble, counting on fans to shell out money instead of going the ad-supported route, but...I think it’s going to work. I hope it’s going to work. I might even defrost my very own credit card and shell out for a season. Or more. Not that I think it’s the best show ever or anything (that’d be something by Whedon), and I’m not sure the writers have really perfected that short-segment writing yet, going from forty-some-odd-minute episodes to fifteen, but it’s still pretty cool.
Don’t take my word for it, please! Low-res versions of the first four eps are (well, the first two are, and two more will be) available for viewing without charge; there’s a list at sanctuaryfans. Or go straight for the purchase option. Hey, four episodes cost about the same as an e-book...
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