17 posts tagged “rant”
lazily cross posted from crystalking.com
I wish that I could say it was a writing sickness of some sort, but no, it’s just plain sickness. Second time in less than a month, which makes me quite unhappy indeed. My husband finds my pitiful forlorn-ness rather cute but I’m just not good being miserable.
Being sick also forces me to do something else that I’m not terribly good at. Taking naps.
Ever since I was a little kid taking naps was something I hated. I was always afraid I was going to miss something. I would pretend to nap when I heard my mother coming up the stairs to check on me and as soon as she would leave I’d pull my book out from under my pillow and start reading. There wasn’t enough time for books, in my opinion.
I still feel that way. Being sick means that I have a hard time staying awake. Even sitting here blogging a bit has me starting to feel weak and womply. I imagine I’ll start and finish this over a long period…a bit here and there because sitting here is tough. I just have so little energy and barely any focus.
For the entire weekend I’ve spent the majority of my time on the couch, feverish, wracked with coughing, with my husband so graciously bringing me juice and ginger ale. He makes me food I can’t taste and runs to the store to buy me kleenex when I run out. This luckiness in finding the nicest guy is a two edged sword. I’d rather be spending the day doing something fun with him, not relegated to the couch, half asleep while he cooks me chicken soup.
I try to read but sadly, reading requires a bit more brainpower and energy than TV does. I rarely watch TV except for a few specifically Tivo’d shows and when I’m sick. Reading puts me to sleep nearly right away but I can manage TV for a little longer. Possibly because it’s actionable and movable and can arrest my visual senses in a way that black words on a white page tend to blur together for me when I feel like this.
So I watch TV and bad free movies on Comcast, feeling miserable, but even worse, feeling guilty.
Yeah. Guilty for being sick. Guilty because I had to cancel the
writing workshop that I was supposed to teach yesterday. Guilty because
I sleep instead of reading (oh my I have a book pile so high right now
that I’m dying to go through). Guilty because I watch TV instead of
writing on my novel (although I did manage to write a freelance article
this weekend…the editor will most likely cringe at my codeine cough
syrup coated words but I did spit it out over the course of yesterday).
And even though tomorrow isn’t here yet, I already feel guilty because
I’m going to have to call in sick (actually call in to say I’m working
from home) for the second time in less than a month (was out for a week
with the flu just three weeks ago).
This is where my husband lovingly tells me that I’m crazy. I wasn’t
even born Catholic! I shouldn’t feel guilty for not reading or writing
or working. I should just be sick and do my best to sleep it off.
But oh, that pillow…it doesn’t really call my name. Heaven forbid if
I miss something! Oh wait, some things, like the 98 minutes I spent
today watching The Covenant
are probably worth missing…
That's what the RIAA is saying in its latest round of lawsuits. According to this Washington Post article:
in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.
The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.
This is pretty damn shocking all around. Essentially it means that the only music that is legal to have on your iPod or other mp3 player is music that you bought online. Which is ridiculous. It means that pretty much every single mp3 player owner is in violation according to what the RIAA is now trying to push forth.
The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.
But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.
The article goes on to talk about how the recording industry is refusing to move out of the dinosaur age and into the digital world. Instead of being innovative and changing their business model, they are spending craploads of money on lawyers to charge teenagers and college kids hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines that they cannot afford to pay.
I have been thinking this for such a long time--how stuck in the past the RIAA is. I used to work in the record industry and for the most part, it's run by a bunch of old stodgy men who wouldn't know a creative money making idea if it bit them in the ass. In this day and age, you don't own the consumer. They are smarter, better informed and you can no longer walk all over them by charging an 80% markup on your products. They just don't go for that. What they want is collaboration, integration, discussion and ways to feed the obsession that they have with the artists they admire. There are ways to make money...but the old way is increasingly not going to be one of those ways.
I subscribe to eMusic, which I think is one of the coolest music services out there, especially if you are into indie music. I've found more interesting artists through that service than I ever dreamed. I've stocked up on lots of music from indie bands that I would never have heard about from some record company promotion. Instead I relied on suggestions from other members, recommends based on reviews of music I know and by being able to listen to snippets of the music before I purchased. I can buy whole albums or just songs. I often will choose 2-3 songs from an album to see if I like it, then will go back the next month and get the remainder of the songs. I pay $25 a month for 100 songs...which is about 6-8 CDs...which would cost you at least $60 on iTunes. The thing is, I'm more likely to buy more music over time because I have greater value. And in turn I'm discovering more music, and may go to shows and buy merchandise of the bands that I discover. If I had to rely on hard CDs or iTunes, I wouldn't buy as much. I imagine that those costs are what drive teens to the free download sites.
Record companies need to pay attention to these new types of patterns and learn to diversify their product offerings. Services is where it is at. Because of eMusic I have been slowly stocking up on as much of the Labrador catalog as I can...I've found that I really love the music that those crazy Swedes distribute. If it weren't for a service like eMusic I would never have discovered them nor would they have been likely to get money from me each and every month as a result. I'm a steady customer now...looking for more tunes by the same company vs. just buying one offs like I typically do from other labels.
The RIAA should hire me to help the labels revamp their marketing strategy. It's not really rocket science--you just need to have an understanding of the audience, the new technologies and be willing to take a leap forward and create the next hot revenue stream for today's generations of music lovers. Sigh. Instead, I shake my head, my mind absolutely boggled by their scare-tactic, doomed-to-fail campaign against people who just plain don't know that what they are doing is so wrong in the first place. Instead of spending money to keep money, spend a little money to develop ideas to make more...
Methinks that the lawyers are running the show. Lots and lots of dollar signs to be had for those guys!
Most disturbing though is how close the house is to ours. This picture does not show the closest part of the house. In one place the house is maybe 10-12 feet away. If there is a fire in either house it would most definitely jump quickly to the one next door. I do NOT understand how she isn't in violation of fire codes. I think that law is that you have to be ten feet from the property line...and the problem is that our house was built 60 years ago, nearly on the property line...not a few feet back. So while she may be ten feet from the property line she's massively close to our house.
We don't own the place or we would have raised a stink. And our landlords are in their 80s and 90s and are just happy not to have the falling apart garage next door. Well I guess it fuels our desire to save more money so we can buy our own place.
I could understand a contractor building the condos and not caring if we view into each other's windows, but she is going to live in one! WHY ON EARTH would she want to live so close to someone and position windows that give neither party any measure of privacy? Don't get it.
Until I was twenty years old, I think I had only met one or two other Crystals in my life (btw, 90% of us spell it just the way it should be...the Ch, Kry varieties are few and far between). Now they seem to be everywhere. There are three in my company...two of them in my department. They're all over the Internet, as I'm sure you know. And they are on TV a LOT...but here's my beef:
Why are all the Crystals you see on the Net or on TV trashy girls?
A friend of mine from England always used to tease me when he first knew me...about how Crystal is a trailer trash name there. I never believed him but now I am beginning to wonder all around. Springer always has a Crystal on the show (a recent one I caught had a fat Crystal in a kiddie pool full of mud with a pig), as does Dr. Phil. If you ever see a Crystal being quoted in a news story they're usually toothless hillbillies or they have such terrible grammar skills that you can barely understand what they are saying.
Granted, I'm older than most of them, so one would think that my name came about on the early side of the naming trend. There is a theory about how names come about, starting with affluent parents and then trickling down to the masses until the affluent parents move on to other names. But my parents were never overly affluent. Just your typical middle-class family. I think it was a result of my father liking unusual names more than anything. They weren't even hippies.
I have always loved my name because it was different and fairly unique. Now though, I find that whenever I see another Crystal on tv or see a picture on the Net, I just want to cringe. My god you Crystals, can't you brush your hair, cover up just a little (there is a HUGE difference between sexy and trashy, sigh), lose some weight, stop smoking dope, walk out on the abusive boyfriends and quit making me want to cover my ears (lots of overly freaky religious Crystals) and eyes?
Sigh.
If you ever saw the show Dead Like Me, there was a fat ugly Crystal who worked in reception. Stranger still, one of her coworkers was a sweet pretty thing named Misty. My sister's name is Misty...very strange to see two characters with those names on TV!
want to be a tiny bit open-minded about feedback you receive on your work.
I’m part of a novel in progress workshop right now and apparently while I was last week out, I missed a bit of subtle drama that took place. One of the workshop members read a chunk of her work in the class for the first time and feedback was given–except that she didn’t want any of it. She even said that she wasn’t going to change anything despite the 20 minutes of constructive criticism she received. She didn’t agree with anyone and refused to consider modifying her piece. Now keep in mind, this workshop consists of smart, kind people who have reasonable feedback--seriously, not a mean group, not nit-picky, just intelligent ideas and helpful comments presented in a way that doesn’t tear apart the writing negatively, but instead offers suggestions on clarifying, strengthening, building.
I don’t understand.
Now personally, the reason I take part in a workshop is precisely because I WANT someone to shred my work and tell me where the holes are, tell me where things don’t make sense and help me figure out how to make my book better. I don’t always agree and I may not change everything that is mentioned, but having 20 minutes of feedback from other writers in progress, to me, is invaluable. If I want an ego boost I’ll give it to my friends and family or hell, even Friday Snippet it on my writing blog because those are appropriate forums where I can share and get some Ra! Ra! Ra! time. But to really find out how to improve what I’m writing, I have to bare my soul a little and let people give me their true impressions, positive and negative, and be willing to at least consider new ideas and directions.
Maybe
that was the problem. Perhaps the only people who had read her writing
before were friends and family, people who lauded and applauded. Maybe
she was shocked when people had feedback to the contrary. I don’t know
what she read, as I wasn’t there, but it’s amazing to me that she
wouldn’t even consider revising. Every writer, regardless of their
expertise, can take advantage of constructive criticism. Gaining
perspective on your own work can help you make it stronger, figure out
where it is weak and in many cases, may just validate that you have
achieved what you were attempting.
Why take a workshop if you don’t want feedback on your writing????
It’s hard to hear people say things about your writing that you might not want to hear. However, if you want to be a writer you better figure out where to find a thick, sturdy tortoiseshell to cover up with. You need to be able to withstand the slings and arrows, the needle-thin comments that might slice you open if you aren’t careful, the hammering of a negative review or the rejection from publishers. Few writers get a free pass into stardom. A very precious few and if you plan on writing it’s safer to believe that you might not get that free pass. Protect yourself and arm yourself. Find ways to hold back the onslaught but to learn from the challenge and improve so next time you have to break through you have the tools to do so.
I understand though, that some writing groups may not gel well. There might be people you don’t get along with or can’t relate to. That’s when you should employ a bit of critical thinking and consider what else you can get out of the situation. Maybe they can’t quite figure out your own writing but what can you learn from the writing of the others in the group? There is a lot to be said for listening to how other people present their characters, their plots, settings, etc. Can you see what has been done well and find ways to employ the same craft ideas in your own writing? Or can you see things that just plain don’t work and realize that you want to avoid, at all costs, including that sort of failed strategy in your own book? If you can do that, then regardless of the writing group (well, if it’s annoying v.s. toxic and volatile), you might still be able to salvage some good learning.
But really, if you think your writing is a bed of fragrant roses, don’t join a writing workshop. You’ll get fertilizer that is bound to be wrong for your flowers.
Scored tickets to Psychedelic Furs, The Alarm and The Fixx on July 10! I'm a huge Alarm fan--they were the positive anthem to my teen angst (contrasting with the Smiths). The Furs and The Fixx are just gravy on what will be a super show already, in my opinion. Of course, it's not the same Alarm of old but Mike Peters can still belt them out, so I'm happy.
And for those of you joining Vox just to put your two cents in about Morrissey and tell me that apparently I have terrible hearing (actually I think you just scored better seats than me), it will please you to note that he appeared to me last night in my dreams, in a hospital bed, hand to his neck gesturing at how sick he actually is. Then when some other person in my dream came up alongside the bed, he jumped out and strangled her with the cord from the telephone on the bedside stand, a maniacal look in his eye.
Guess he told me off for being skeptical. I'm sorry Morrissey. I love you dearly but it's not like this is the first time you have walked off stage at a show. When you cry wolf so many times and you actually DO end up with a throat infection, what's a very sad girl who only wanted to see her most favorite mournful hero supposed to think? I just hope to god you reschedule your show or my husband is going to ban me from letting me spend money on you ever again...
Last night, in the 90 degree heat, Morrissey complained a bit about how it was too cold in the David Letterman Theater the day before. In such a large venue, it's sometimes hard to hear the things that entertainers say but apparently he was complaining that the cold messed up his voice a bit. After the next song, "Let Me Kiss You," which, by the way, sounded perfectly fine, he ripped off what was probably a $200 baby blue cotton shirt and threw it out into the audience.
Nearly 50 year old Morrissey shirtless. Who'd have thunk it? I'm not sure it was a good thing.
But maybe I'm bitter. Because he went back to, presumably, put on another shirt as he did multiple times when we saw him at the Orpheum in 2004 (omg was it that long ago?). But he just didn't come back. Finally one of his little stooges came out and said that Morrissey had lost his voice. No one wanted to believe it...people thought it was a joke and continued to stand around. Next thing you know, the lights went up and people began to shuffle out, VERY unhappy.
I just don't believe the voice bit...there was no sign of any struggling voice in the six songs that we did hear. It was drippingly, repressingly hot in the audience, and I imagine it was 20+ degrees hotter under those lights. Personally, I think Morrissey estimated how many long-sleeved shirts he was going to have to go through and how miserable he would be through the next 65 minutes and called it quits.
We milled around for a bit, and the only saving grace to the night is that I ran into old friends from my long ago high-tech startup days and we managed to catch up and make plans to meet for drinks in the next few weeks. Good friends that I had always wished I hadn't lost touch with, but now that connection has been reforged again. So thanks Morrissey, for cancelling your concert so I could hook up with them.
Otherwise I am waiting for my refund or the date of the rescheduled show. They told us to check the LiveNation site at some point today to find out what will happen. They supposedly want to reschedule, if so, Morrissey might redeem himself a little bit. Otherwise, I think Joe is never going to let me give that man money again.
Sigh. Morrissey, why did we get the dramatics last night???
In researching Apicius, I've found that some of the books I'd like to have are quite expensive!
First
off, Pliny's Natural History, which I realize can be found online, but
there is something quite nice about having a book in front of you chock
full of bookmarks. Besides, this is proving to be one of the books that I will probably refer to often--being able to comb the Histories to find out information such as that cucumbers were Tiberius' most favorite food--that's priceless.
Well, no, it's $125. At 233 pages, that's $1.80 a page!!!! Ouch. I can buy the individual volumes but I don't see that happening any time soon considering that would be even more for all of them considering they run around $21 a piece for the Loeb Classical editions. I've dug around all over and just can't find a full volume for less.
I suppose that since these are very niche books and will only sell in smaller numbers that the publishers jack them up knowing that serious scholars will fork over the cash. I think I'll be sticking to the online Pliny, despite how much of a pain in the ass it is to go through hundreds of web pages with no easy search feature. But the Apicius one -- well, I'll probably buy it at some point over the course of the next year. I'm already feeling the pain of forking over so much $ for a cookbook...
writing. me. getting my mind off of personal crap. obsessing about things that are good for me instead. not twittering my life away on things that I shouldn't be.
the reincarnation of my other blog.
and no, vox, I love you too much to go from here!
But he can't have any because it might kill him.
And apparently, what ever it is in the food is more deadly to cats than dogs. Even worse, the deaths started happening back in February and it's only this week that the big recall came out. They haven't pinpointed what is happening. They only did the recall after they fed the food in tests to 40 to 50 more animals and found it deadly (!!!).
But what is really disturbing is that this pet food company, Menu Foods, seems to make every pet food brand on the planet. It's not like I can easily turn to another brand (unless it's kitty junk food like Friskies) to fill Romeo's craving. Instead, I have to worry about feeding him any type of wet pet food. It also makes me wonder--are the high-end pet foods worth the price if they are made by the same people that are producing the cheap grocery store white-label brands? Clearly some of the same ingredients are in both.
I feel really frustrated, stressed and angry about this. Last night I dreamt that Romeo was sick and throwing up all over the place. I was so freaked out in my dream. I just can't imagine anything happening to him, much less as a result of the hand that feeds him.
To find out if your pet food is on the recall list, go here.
