Pixel Scroll 10/10/16 You Know How To Pixel, Don’t You? You Just Put Your Lips Together And Scroll

(1) COMICS PORTRAYALS. Peter David has changed his tune — “Final Thoughts on the Romani”.

So now that the dust of the convention has settled, I’ve had a good deal of time to assess my behavior regarding the Romani and my conduct during the convention. I’ve read many of the links that were sent my way and really thought about what I witnessed two decades ago back in Bucharest. And I’ve been assessing my actions during the panel that lead to all this.

After all that, I have to conclude that I’m ashamed of myself.

I want you to understand: when the Romani rep tried to shift the focus of the panel from gays and lesbians to the Romani, suddenly I was twenty years younger and the trauma of what I saw and what I was told slammed back through me. What screamed through my mind was, “Why should I give a damn about the Romani considering that the Bucharest Romani are crippling their children?” And I unleashed that anger upon the questioner, for no reason. None. There is no excuse.

But the more I’ve read, the more convinced I’ve become that what I saw was indeed examples, not of children crippled by parents, but children suffering from a genetic disorder. The pictures are simply too identical. I cannot come to any other reasonable conclusion.

(2) ALIENIST. The BBC profiles H. R. Giger, “The man who created the ultimate alien”:

At that time, HR Giger was already a successful painter whose bleak visions in a style that he termed biomechanics were widely distributed: in the form of popular poster editions that appeared in the late 1960s; in the large-format illustrated book Necronomicon, which he designed himself; and on album covers such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s 1973 release Brain Salad Surgery. But the project he was now working on would make him both a worldwide cult figure and an Oscar winner. Director Ridley Scott had hired Giger to create the monster in the movie Alien. So the artist went to the Shepperton Film Studios near London to realize his designs for the world of the alien with his own hand.

One painting had immediately convinced Scott to get Giger involved in shaping the alien creature: Necronom IV (1976). It shows in profile the upper body of a being with only remotely humanoid traits. Its skull is extremely elongated, and its face is almost exclusively reduced to bared teeth and huge insect-like eyes. Hoses extend from its neck and its back is dominated by tubular extensions and reptilian tails. In order to turn this painted creature into a monster for a movie, the artist had to submit it to a complex transformation. Giger developed a complete “natural history” of the alien based on the screenplay, which ultimately produced the final monster of the film. The process results in a unique mixture of fascination and disgust. Giger’s monster represents a turning point in science fiction and horror movies, to which Alien brought a deadly lifeform from space that had never been seen before.

(3) VOICES IN HIS HEAD. Andrew Liptak discusses “How writing an audio-first novella changed John Scalzi’s writing process” at The Verge.

The Dispatcher is firmly urban fantasy, which had its own particular challenges for Scalzi. Science fiction comes out of a tradition of realism, where everything is explained. “To sit there and write something and know that I’m not going to assign it a rational basis made me itchy,” he says. “Part of my brain went ‘you should try and explain this!’ It goes against everything I believe.”

Writing an audio-first story also had its challenges. “It makes you pay attention to things like dialogue where you really do want to make sure [it sounds] reasonably like humans speaking,” Scalzi says. One of the changes he made was in how he used dialogue tags such as “he said / she said,” which work in written books but aren’t necessarily useful for a listener. “It sounds like a small thing, but when someone is speaking what you’re writing, those small things add up.”

Scalzi also focused on making sure each character had their own distinctive voice.

(4) IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME. The Traveler at Galactic Journey is smack in the middle of the Silver Age of Comics — “[Oct. 7, 1971] That’s Super! (Marvel Comics’ The Fantastic Four)”.

The other day at the local newsstand, a new comic book caught my eye.  It was a brand new one from Marvel Comics, the spiritual successors of Atlas Comics, which went under late last decade.  Called The Fantastic Four, and brought to us by the creator of Captain America (Jack Kirby), it features the first superheroes I’ve seen in a long time – four, in fact!  We are introduced to the quartet in media res on their way to answer a call to assembly: Sue Storm, who can turn invisible at will; her brother, Johnny Storm, who bursts into flame and can fly; Ben Grimm, a hulking, orange rocky beast; and Dr. Reed Richards, who possesses the power of extreme elasticity.

(5) TODAY IN HISTORY

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born October 10, 1924 — Ed Wood (Plan 9 from Outer Space)
  • Born October 10, 1959 — Bradley Whitford (The Cabin in the Woods)

(7) ED WOOD FICTION. Incidentally, O/R Books has published Blood Splatters Quickly, the collected short stories of Edward D. Wood Jr.

Even if you think you don’t know him, you know him. Few in the Hollywood orbit have had greater influence; few have experienced more humiliating failure in their lifetime. Thanks in part to the biopic directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp and bearing his name, Ed Wood has become an icon of Americana.

Perhaps the purest expression of Wood’s théma—pink angora sweaters, over-the-top violence and the fraught relationships between the sexes—can be found in his unadulterated short stories, many of which (including “Blood Splatters Quickly”) appeared in short-lived “girly” magazines published throughout the 1970s. The 32 stories included here, replete with original typos, lovingly preserved, have been verified by Bob Blackburn, a trusted associate of Kathy Wood, Ed’s widow. In the forty years or more since those initial appearances in adult magazines, none of these stories has been available to the public.

ed-wood-birthday

(8) SMOFCON SOUTH. Conrunners of the Antipodes, you are summoned to SmofCon South, to be held in Wellington. New Zealand December 3-4, 2016.

Announcing SmofCon South!

Come one, come all! We will be running SmofCon South in Wellington. New Zealand from December 3rd to 4th, 2016. This is run at this time to try to hook into the resources and people of SmofCon 34, taking place the same weekend in Chicago, USA. A Smofcon is a convention about running conventions. It’s an excellent opportunity to meet other con runners, and to learn from them. SmofCon South will be primarily focused on running Worldcons or other large events. This event will be very valuable for people who have volunteered to help run a New Zealand Worldcon. We want to encourage you to come along and meet other people you may be working with, and gain insights and knowledge about how Worldcons work.

Details

Smofcon South will be held 3-4 December (with a meetup dinner for those who arrive on Friday).

Venue is the same as Aucontraire 3, the CQ Hotel complex, 223 Cuba St, Te Aro,  Wellington.

We are skyping in with Smofcon 34, being held in Chicago, for a few sessions. Breaking News: Also a hook up with Japan.

(9) MORE RADCHAAI LOOT. This charm bracelet is perfect for the Ancillary fan in your life. Bring the Fleet Captain, Translator, First Lieutenant, and themes of the series, like tea, magic bullets, spaceships, and music into your daily life with this charm bracelet.

(10) BETTER USE OF TIME. Steven H Silver writes, “Last night, instead of watching the debate, Elaine and I watched the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor movie See No Evil, Hear No Evil. A couple of early scenes are set at a newstand run by Wilder’s character. In the background I could make out Frederik Pohl’s The Coming of the Quantum Cats, Greg Bear’s The Forge of God, and Piers Anthony’s Faith of Tarot.”

Also recognizable:

A.A. Attanasio’s Radix, Jack Chalker’s Dance Band on the Titanic, and Cllifford D. Simak’s Highway to Eternity.

wilder-newsstand-min

(11) HE PEEKED. One of Satchel Paige’s rules to live by was, “Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.” Dave Langford didn’t follow Satchel’s advice when he had a strange feeling he was being followed….

For a moment, when I saw the part-obscured back of a coffee-vending van in Reading town centre, I felt F770 was following me around. But it was all a quaint illusion.

vanf770-1

vanf770-2

[Thanks to Dave Langford, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Steven H Silver, Jeffrey Smith, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

92 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/10/16 You Know How To Pixel, Don’t You? You Just Put Your Lips Together And Scroll

  1. When y’all find someone whose heart is pure enough that they deserve charity, let us know who that is.

  2. Bill: When y’all find someone whose heart is pure enough that they deserve charity, let us know who that is.

    That’s not really the question, is it? The question is, when I give a little bit of money out of my paycheck every two weeks, do I give it to a flawed human being who’s just trying to survive, or do I give it to a flawed human being who’s been actively working to make it harder for others to survive?

  3. Bill on October 11, 2016 at 3:14 pm said:
    When y’all find someone whose heart is pure enough that they deserve charity, let us know who that is.

    You know, I know nothing about the purity of heart of the folks I support through Patreon and YouFundMe.
    I’m just going by their work.
    If I want more of it, if I’m grateful for things they’ve done, then I’m likely to be responsive if I hear they are in need.
    But if purity of heart were an issue, I tend to find wrath and hate and vengeance don’t thrive in a pure heart.

    If I had my druthers there’d be a strong social safety net to insure that no family had to worry about the basic things like having enough to eat or keeping a roof over their heads.
    But that’s just my silly liberal political leanings: I’d prefer that kind of security to be a matter of right, rather than relying on random charity.

    In any case, where I live there is a robust system of food banks.
    I don’t know what is available in Virginia, but they might look into it.
    Also, I’m not being snide when I suggest that he look to his religious community for help.
    “Charity” is not really my thing, but presumably he is hanging out with people who profess to be Christian.

  4. lauowolf said:

    In any case, where I live there is a robust system of food banks.
    I don’t know what is available in Virginia, but they might look into it.

    I was just looking that up myself. If one is moved by the Wrights’ plight but concerned about facing the whole question of picking and choosing which specific people get one’s charity, the Federation of Virginia Food Banks has a page for online donations. Or send money to the equivalent in your state/country.

    Or one could try to boost an organization working for the implementation of universal basic income, if there is one that takes public donations. A quick search for one operating in the US found me a bunch of specific people advocating on the issue but no political organization focused on it.

  5. Sorry, does it turn out that calling your publishers Christ hating soldiers for Sodam means that they don’t work as hard to sell your books? Who’d thought it?

  6. File 770 Dance Party! All kinds of dancing, all kinds of music!

    @Chip: One surmises that the teenagers were already pretty well-acquainted by the time they went to the station. Interesting article, well explained.

    @clif: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”, as the book which he claims to run his life by says. The free market (and the lack of social services in the US) has spoken. But church people are charitable to their own — I’ve never known a congregation of any denomination (incl. non-Christian) who wouldn’t make a grocery run or produce an endless supply of casseroles and gift cards to local stores. My parents’ church was tremendously supportive in their bad times, and we ate every casserole or cafeteria meal with gratitude, and returned the charity when we could. Food banks are stretched, but they exist, and I give to them even on my extremely limited income.

    But, you know, what @lauowolf said. Why would I support someone who uses his (literal) bully pulpit to spread messages I so abhor, when he still has more resources and social capital than I do? Borrow money from his best pal TB and ask Puppies of all kinds for help. I’m not enabling bigotry and prejudice.

    In a perfect world, we’d have some sort of basic income for everyone, the whole post-scarcity “Star Trek” kind of thing. In a better world, we’d have a decent safety net in this country (though you might be able to squeak by in blue states with welfare, Medicare, the extra Medicare funding for Obamacare, etc.) This world is imperfect, so we must choose. With my limited money, I choose inclusivity.

    But then I’m part of the wretched hive of Christ-hating sodomites too.

  7. Charity – my mind always turns to one of those hip new SJW types and something he wrote no so long back:

    I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene. The sight of the misery, and the unpleasant sensations it suggests, which, though they may be suffocated cannot be extinguished, are a greater drawback upon the felicity of affluence than the proposed ten per cent upon property is worth. He that would not give the one to get rid of the other has no charity, even for himself.

    There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.

    Thomas Paine – Agrarian Justice 1797 https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/paine/thomas/agrarian-justice/

  8. @ Bill: This has nothing to do with “purity of the heart” and everything to do with actions. I’m voting with my wallet here.

    OTOH, have you ever heard the term “wingnut welfare”? He shouldn’t have any trouble finding plenty of people who will give him money to continue actively trying to hurt people who aren’t like him.

  9. @Hampus Eckerman: Thanks for linking to Worldcon 75’s statement; that’s very good. And surprisingly good.

    @Petréa Mitchell: “For the Godzilla fans, the latest movie is having a limited theatrical run with subtitles right now in the US and Canada.”

    Trigger warning for OMG LOUD NOISE WHEN PAGE LOADS. 😉 Heh, I wasn’t expecting that, but once I picked myself off the floor, I LOL’d.

  10. Kendall: Trigger warning for OMG LOUD NOISE WHEN PAGE LOADS. Heh, I wasn’t expecting that, but once I picked myself off the floor, I LOL’d.

    I hit a website with an auto-play audio file the other day. Surprised the hell out of me; I thought that webmasters had known better than to do that since, oh, the demise of Geocities.

  11. I don’t want to seem crabby and harsh, but when Wright says he can’t afford the mortgage and groceries, so he’s asking people for money, and someone asks about him putting up drawings online, so his wife pipes up to say they’re planning to get him a new tablet computer for his birthday…

    …my crabby, harsh reaction is, “Don’t. Buy groceries instead. Get a new tablet when you’ve dug out.”

  12. Obviously, one can take into account the actions of a potential recipient when choosing where to donate one’s limited resources. You (and I) only have so much we can do, and we have to pick and choose. When it came out how the Red Cross had mismanaged responses to the victims of the 2010 Haitian earthquake, and later Hurricane Sandy, my wife and I re-prioritized the Salvation Army upwards and the Red Cross downwards in our giving.

    What’s wrong here is the idea that Wright doesn’t deserve charity. Well, none of us do. The flawed person that JJ will give to is flawed nonetheless — how does he deserve help? You don’t give because someone deserves it, you give because they need it. And because it improves yourself to do so. The feeling that one gets from giving shouldn’t be a sense of satisfaction because it didn’t go to the “wrong” person.

    I think most people would agree it is unseemly to go on about how much and to whom one gives. It seems even worse to go on about who one is not giving to. You want to give to someone other than JCW, fine. Just don’t brag about it.

  13. Bill: What’s wrong here is the idea that Wright doesn’t deserve charity.

    That’s not what I said at all — and I’d appreciate it if you did not attempt to put words in my mouth. Nor did I say that I got “a sense of satisfaction because [I didn’t give] to the “wrong” person.” Nor did I say that I give based on who is “deserving”. What I said was, what little I can give, I choose to give to people who aren’t actively trying to hurt others.

    You don’t get to tell me what my reasons should, or should not, be for deciding who to give to.

    Nor was I bragging about anything. I was responding to clif’s post, not announcing something out of the blue, and I was explaining my personal philosophy of giving. Not yours.

    There is very little which is more hypocritical than someone who presumes to tell someone else how to do charitable giving. Please stop.

  14. @Bill – What’s wrong here is the idea that Wright doesn’t deserve charity. Well, none of us do.

    I don’t see a lot of responses suggesting Wright doesn’t deserve charity. What I see is people explaining why they don’t feel he deserves their charity, which is an entirely different thing. I don’t know everyone’s reason for doing so, but I was troubled enough by my own lack of compassion that untangling it occupied part of my brain for several hours. It would have been more efficient if I’d .been one of those who posted a response.

  15. @Kurt Busiek: REALLY? Then I have even less sympathy. Tablet computers aren’t a necessity like food and mortgage, or even like cell phones have become. I’ve got a 15 year old TV, for crying out loud.

    He definitely doesn’t deserve my charity. Presumably his fans, friends, and church think he deserves theirs, and they can chip in for his new computer. I’ll give to people who don’t have any computers, the food banks, the shelter for abused women and children, and my tax dollars at work (which go to people I don’t like, too, but taxes are the price we pay for civilization).

    I’m sure Bill will come by later to shame us all with the huge amount he’s giving JCW, since he’s such a big supporter.

  16. @Bill: giving to an author’s patreon isn’t really like giving to charity though. I dislike JCW’s work so I don’t see why I should fund his failing career as an author with my hard-earned cash, for a reward which I’m almost guaranteed not to enjoy.

  17. Slightly worrying for the state of science fiction when JCW is struggling, given that he’s a winner of the populist Dragon Award and he’s the leading genre author at Castalia House (soon to be the number 1 publisher in science fiction and fantasy).

  18. Kurt Busiek said:

    so his wife pipes up to say they’re planning to get him a new tablet computer for his birthday…

    Well, the actual comment says:

    If all goes as planned, John is going to get a pad that allows him to draw on the computer for his birthday. If this works out, one possible incentive would be pictures of favorite characters that could be emailed, printed and mailed, or put onto shirts and mugs in The Wright Stuff Zazzle store.

  19. @Petréa Mitchell

    That sounds like a digitizer tablet rather than a tablet PC (or iPad or android). They range from around $80 to $500+. Even the cheap end is still a fair chunk for a struggling family.

  20. andyl said:

    That sounds like a digitizer tablet rather than a tablet PC (or iPad or android).

    Right. It also sounds like a thing intended to enable further paid work rather than a frivolous luxury.

  21. Petrea Mitchell: Right. It also sounds like a thing intended to enable further paid work rather than a frivolous luxury.

    I was having that same thought.

  22. Can I just say how uncomfortable it makes me when people police the purchases of those with economic struggles. Since none of us know what might actually be necessary or why, it’s an uncomfortable boundary to see crossed.

  23. Cheryl S: Can I just say how uncomfortable it makes me when people police the purchases of those with economic struggles.

    Yes, I’m glad you spoke up.

  24. I don’t particularly care what JCW is planning on buying with his money. I’m just noting that he made a conscious choice to alienate his mainstream publisher, spew vitriol and bile on large swathes of people, and hitch his wagon to an internet con man whose vile ideology matched his own. Those choices have consequences, and I’m not inclined to save him from them. He put himself in this position through his own choices. If he’s short of money, he can do what many authors do when their writing doesn’t pay the bills: Get a day job.

  25. We have all been critical of Mr. Wright for a number of reasons. These reasons are just. Given Wright’s mercilessness, I can understand some scheudenfraude, at him needing aid when he is so remarkably pitiless about others needing it. But let’s not be him. And let’s not police the way people in desperate circumstances might bring some color into their lives. Life is about more than just subsisting, and that does not change if you are poor.

    I am able to give some; I might do it through a third party so I’m not sending my IP his way. I plan to add “from a Filer”; I can have it be “from some Filers”, but I don’t want to presume in the face of some very real and justified emotions about Mr. Wright.

  26. “Can I just say how uncomfortable it makes me when people police the purchases of those with economic struggles. Since none of us know what might actually be necessary or why, it’s an uncomfortable boundary to see crossed.”

    Thank you for this comment. The whole discussion has made me uncomfortable.

  27. Can I just say how uncomfortable it makes me when people police the purchases of those with economic struggles.

    Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Apologies.

  28. I didn’t want to make anyone feel like they did anything wrong, but I have done anti-poverty outreach for years and one of the barriers to empathy is policing what those in economic straits spend their money on. If you haven’t been there, it can be hard to understand why a cellphone or a tablet might be a necessity.

    In terms of Wright, TYP is a much better person than me. JCW is comprehensively hateful and there’s no way in hell I could help even minimally without feeling I was colluding with him in that hatefulness. In other words, the quality of my mercy is strained.

  29. TYP on October 12, 2016 at 12:18 pm said:

    We have all been critical of Mr. Wright for a number of reasons. These reasons are just. Given Wright’s mercilessness, I can understand some scheudenfraude, at him needing aid when he is so remarkably pitiless about others needing it. But let’s not be him. And let’s not police the way people in desperate circumstances might bring some color into their lives. Life is about more than just subsisting, and that does not change if you are poor.

    I’m not going to criticise Wright’s choices but, in defence of others, this is more than just schadenfreude. Amid the multiple groups of people who are routinely demonised and dehumanised by the ideology that Wright actively promotes are those who live in poverty. In many ways, it is at the heart of all the others in that all the other prejudices are exploited to ensure that poverty remains and is intractable and so that, in turn, poverty can be used a weapon against more overtly defined targets of hatred.

    Wright represents an ideology that claims that poverty is both a choice and a personal failing. He represents an ideology that claims that artistic pursuits should be judged primarily on financial success. He represents an ideology that regards charitable giving as the proper answer to poverty precisely because it allows those that give to have power over those who receive and that those that give can and should be partial to whom they give (i.e. those that deserve it).

    I honestly do not think that Wright should have to choose between food and a mortgage, nor should he feel that he should have to abandon his passion for writing to make a better living, nor should he depend on charity nor should how he spend his money on things that will make him and his family a bit happier be subject to scrutiny just because he is short of money, nor should the money he might receive to help him be subject to an ideological test (or a religious test, or any kind of test other than he needs it). BUT I think those things because I have political beliefs directly opposite to Wright’s – beliefs which he regards as evil and tyrannical and at odds with civilised behaviour.

    OK, we shouldn’t mock him because he has fallen on hard times but my sympathy is very limited.

  30. For a long time in my life, I tried to arrange all my charitable contributions to be as anonymous as possible–not because of any notion of modesty, but because I was uncomfortable finding myself in the position of justifying, either implicitly or explicitly, why I supported one cause and not another. That principle meant that I entirely avoided at-work fundraisers, whether GS cookies or walkathon type events. It meant that if someone was pressuring me to give to a particular cause, I could simply say that I preferred to make my donations in private but I appreciated them bringing the cause to my attention.

    I’ve backed off a bit on that absolute position with online giving, particularly as there’s a really fuzzy line between subscriptions and memberships and donations when you get into patreon/kickstarter/go-fund-me type things. And sometimes, I’ve found, I want to make the personal connection with a recipient.

    But in the end, there are a lot of causes and I’m going to be very selective about where my money goes simply because I must. It’s like the way that you can’t adopt all the homeless cats in the world, even if you can adopt one. And because of the impossibility of supporting even every worthy cause, much less the marginal ones, I still feel no impulse to justify what I do and don’t support, much less to make a fuss about it.

  31. @Camestros

    I agree completely with what you said. Aside from Wright’s gleeful delight in say terrible things in the abstract about some of the best people I’ve ever met, there’s also his Pontius Pilate-like hypocrisy where he will advocate awful things happen to people and then wash his hands of it with a facade of civility. You’re correct, its far more than schadenfreude – it’s righteous anger.

    But while I may like feeling good about acts of charity/patronage/whatever, there are times, frankly, I like it to seem futile, because it means that I’m not just going for the people I like.

    But there’s a good and damn solid case for me displaying extremely fuzzy thinking here, I completely acknowledge.

  32. Everyone deserves compassion, mercy, and dignity, merely by being human.

    The contents of my wallet, however, I am somewhat more selective about, because the world is vast and my resources are not. My charities these days are mostly related to endangered vegetables–they may not be grateful, but the world is better with the Sonoran chiltepin in it, and at least one’s never cut me off in traffic.

  33. @Heather Rose Jones: I never gave to at-work charities either. Except one year I did buy some Girl Scout cookies when my boss had the sheet — not because he was my boss, but because I gots to have me some guaranteed Thin Mints. So it was with great glee that I heard a Vietnam vet Marine/turned SWAT team leader* bellow down the hall, “Type! You owe me 15 bucks! Get these damn cookies outta my office!” You bet, Sarge. 🙂

    I, too, am not as good a person as TYP. Camestros said it well: JCW has promoted “ideals” that I abhor, that hurt people. I know people who have much less social capital than he does (me, f’rinstance, and most of my friends), and they’ll get my money. I find WSFS a great thing; he does not. Worldcon 2018 is being chaired by a man who’s happily married to another man; he hates them on principle — I love them for being delightful, hard-working, patient, and scarily competent.

    But I don’t feel sorry for him, other than the minimum compassion I give to all human beings simply for being my own species. I got an old Win95/98 scanner he could have, but I don’t want to clutter up his house with not-very-good resolution hardware that he couldn’t run. But I’d send it if he really wanted it.

    But we’re all of us imperfect, and when a guy who espouses the “you’re only poor if you’re lazy or evil” ideology turns up asking for money — yeah. No matter how compassionate you are, you’re at least going to notice the heavy irony. And as @Aaron says, actions have consequences.

    @rob_matic: I’m sure it’s all the SJW cabal’s fault somehow. But if the Dragons represent the true voice of the people, then he should be wildly successful. Hmm. Doesn’t look good for the Dragon Awards, does it?

    *Also a motorcycle cop and a cowboy on weekends. I am not making any of this up. He’s what every Puppy would love to be/read about. Great guy.

  34. Given that the Dragon Awards’ “Science Fiction” Novel winner had a grand total of 83 reviews on Amazon, and the Horror Novel winner had a whopping 14 Reviews on Amazon, I don’t think there was ever much doubt that the first year of the Dragon Awards didn’t look good.

    But these are the Puppies — they think that if you are a Finalist or Winner of an Award, it means that you will get respect and lots of readers and sales, and don’t realize that they’ve got it backwards: if you get lots of readers and sales and respect, then you might get to be a Finalist or Winner of an Award.

    Hence I am sure that they are all mystified as to why libraries and bookstores are still not ordering their books in droves, and why their sales and readership numbers have not appreciably risen. 🙄

  35. @JJ: It’s all the shadowy SJW cabal’s fault. Nothing is ever the Puppies’ fault. Much like their chosen political candidate — nothing’s ever his fault, and it never happened even if it’s on video that millions of people saw.

  36. @Lurkertype

    I’ll disagree with me being a good person; this is more a case of lingering Catholicism rather than any real moral sentiment. As with every other reason not to donate to the man, offered, yours is pretty damn good too.

    And Thin Mints are always a sufficient reason to donate to something.

  37. TYP: And Thin Mints are always a sufficient reason to donate to something.

    Caramel Delites!

    I swear that they put crack in those things.

  38. We can extend our grace to most Girl Scout cookie types, I think.

    TYP: I read that as “lingering Camestros” at first and was greatly confused.

  39. @JJ: Eeee! Someone else who calls them Caramel Delites! That’s what they were when/where I was growing up and selling them, and I just can’t get used to calling them “Samoas.” The one name references an actual foodstuff involved, while the other sounds like an unearned attempt to associate them with a particular part of the world. See also “Peanut butter patties” (why yes they are) versus “Tagalongs” (they’re tasty enough to tag along with you, sure, ok, I get it, but…).

    (Apparently there are dual-named cookies because there are two bakers the Girl Scouts source their cookies from. I doubt I’d be able to tell them apart in a taste test though.)

  40. Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: Eeee! Someone else who calls them Caramel Delites! That’s what they were when/where I was growing up and selling them, and I just can’t get used to calling them “Samoas.”

    I grew up with Samoas, then much later as an adult moved to a different geographical area where they were called Caramel Delites. Having now acquired at least some semblance of cultural sensitivity, I resist the urge to call them the former, and force myself to call them the latter.

  41. lurkertype on October 14, 2016 at 9:45 pm said:

    TYP: I read that as “lingering Camestros” at first and was greatly confused.

    I do also have lingering Catholicism 🙂

Comments are closed.