The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Adam L.:

So how do you suggest fighting, then? You've offered nothing much besides bleak landscapes of political death and destruction.

My guess is, for the great majority of us, resource-wise, a vote (or, as Patrick [I think] suggested, a small donation) is the only way to fight back. We don't have the time or money to "sue until we're blue in the face."

Lis-- There are now enzyme-based cleaners specifically designed to break down animal urine stains from fabric and upholstery.

Science is amazing.

Does that include rabbit urine? 'Cause I've got this carpet...

Erik sez, among other things: You cannot beat a foe who will play outside the system if you insist on playing within the system.

You can, if you overwhelm it. A slim margin, sure, maybe they can sneak some tactic in, but the more the scales are stacked against them, the more obvious their attempt to veto or violate the election will be, and the more ready people (I hope) will be to speak up against it. That's how a vote will magically fix that.

Also, shouldn't at least one side insist on abiding by the system? High ground, and so on.

I got the impression after a while that the whole laundry list wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It seemed too nuttily over-the-top. Am I wrong?

If it was sincere, then, well, sorry....

Book buyers...who buy books according to price instead of content

If there's anywhere where someone would buy a book according to price rather than content, wouldn't it be in a used book store like this one? I know I've done that at the Strand numerous times.

Well, for comic architecture, you can't beat Unseen University. Or anything built by B. S. Johnson.

Seriously though; "Grave Architecture" is the name of a song by Pavement, and I'd used it in a short story in a college class as a section heading (all the headings were song titles). And one girl in the class said that it's a cliche. I responded "No it isn't," having never heard the phrase outside of the song, to which she responded, "Yes it is." I challenged her to prove it's cliche status, which she didn't at all. Ever since I've wondered what she could possibly have been referring to or thinking of by mistake.

Seth E.: Identifont-- awesome. Thanks.

Apropos of nothing, would anyone think that the phrase "grave architecture" is a cliche?

The people who say "it has to get worse before it gets better" are very rarely the people who it'll get worse for.

It's somewhat similar to saying that the only way some people will learn how to do a thing is if they screw it up enough times. Well, perhaps, but another way they'll learn is if you teach them to do it properly after (or before, for preference) the first screwup.

Both things are just ways of ducking responsibility.

Feel better, TNH and PNH.

Re FranW and John M. Ford's comments...

Two editors here had visa problems. One was coming from London (from the London office, but she's British) to work from this office, and was denied at first, and it took 3 months to sort it all out. The other is Australian by citizenship, and had gone up to Montreal to renew his visa-- something about British commonwealth allowed it-- and then wasn't let back in to the country for 8 weeks while a background check was done (turns out that Malaysia-- his birth nation-- is on some watch list or other).

The upshot is, a lot of work in a lot of forms is going to be either delayed, denied, or destroyed. Which will result in less scientists coming to work in the US, either at universities or research institutes, which will mean less money from patents etc., which will mean less revenue, less prestige, less grant money available, less of everything. It's already starting, with regard to stem cell research.

This will affect scientific publishing (especially your corporate cousin Nature, Teresa) somewhat more than fiction, I would imagine. Not that it's any more sensible with regards to science, but there you go.

I can see it-- "That paper with the massive breakthrough on how to stop HIV progression, where's it from? Iran? Into the trash with it!"

People are posting while I'm previewing and saying what I want to say better. Gerrh. Anyway.

Leonard's #8 rule (don't describe your characters) strikes me as being not such a bad idea, though I sometimes think there should be something to give an idea of what they look like, if not necessarily a straight physical description or a characteristic. That becomes a list, and who needs that? [YMMV, of course.] Maybe just something at the character's introduction, to give the idea, and then not give it again, at least not for a long time (unlike Robert Jordan, who mentions Warders' hard faces and tense stances every chance he gets).

My favorite character description ever is from So Long And Thanks For All The Fish:

"If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn’t exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar."

Utterly, totally absurd and brilliant.

Bugger, it posted twice. Sorry 'bout that.

ASCII art-- awesome.

Puts me in mind (the article does) of Terry Pratchett's hermit elephants. From the Discworld Companion:

"These poor creatures lack the thick skins of normal Elephants, and use abandoned mud huts to provide camoflage and protection instead. They have no problem obtaining abandoned mud huts since the previous occupants move out very rapidly when a hermit Elephant moves in."

ASCII art-- awesome.

Puts me in mind (the article does) of Terry Pratchett's hermit elephants. From the Discworld Companion:

"These poor creatures lack the thick skins of normal Elephants, and use abandoned mud huts to provide camoflage and protection instead. They have not problem obtaining abandoned mud huts since the previous occupants move out very rapidly when a hermit Elephant moves in."

David-- by gum, it is. And it worked. Thanks. It pays to read, don't it.

Frank-- I use Opera a lot (right now, for example), but I tried Netscape first because Opera still has trouble sometimes with nontraditional html. But it's working fine. IE still truncates though. Maybe I have a setting wrong all of a sudden. Ah well.

The rest of the profile is pretty appalling also (and just strange in some places. I mean, really, what's wrong with calico cats?). And then what does it say about W., who thought Ashcroft was a good choice for the post?


Also, off-topic, but in MSIE6, the text stops at the bottom of the ads (but if you view the source code it's all there). I'm doing this from Netscape.

So it is available already, then, or is it coming in the near future? I'd like to schedule my rushing out and buying it.

And I too was momentarily foreboded by the title, but it did work as an attention-grabber, so more power to it. And to you Teresa.

Rhiannon: I think I remember that article-- moody, near-black-and-white photos of forests and large men with long hair and pointed goatees making serious faces at the camera, with various symbols of whatnot about their person. It was also in (what sounds like) the vein of the book, some sort of exposé type of article, an "ooh, they're serious" thing. I was on the edge of interested in it, back then, until I realized that the music was the least important part of the act and that the act itself was fairly ridiculous.

But it reminds me of a quote from Homer Simpson: "Ooh, pro wrestling from Mexico. You know, down there it's a real sport!"

Ilona: The only cure from rejection is the realization that one's identity is separate from one's product. Unfortunately, easier said than done.

Especially when people keep getting told to write what they know.

154 comments, too many to read without glazing over, but I've gone paralytic with anxiety about being rejected. Which may be why I haven't submitted anything anywhere (or, er, written enough to choose from to submit...). Like a cross between rejection fear and the impostor syndrome.

I see a lot of rejections though, at work (a science journal; I'm the editorial assistant), and the author's responses if they appeal it are remarkably well-mannered and rational. There's only been a very few instances of frothing rage and the decision. But probably this area of publishing is different, being somewhat specialized (Jonathan v. P. might know, from what I remember of his CV).

At the same time, this post has made something go click. If something I start writing today ends up published, I'll have Teresa (and the commenters) to thank, I think.

May have been said already up there (it's pages and pages, I haven't read it all), but if nothing else a rejection letter is proof that you've tried. ('course, now I have to try.)

The periodic table of comic books. Found through my company's intranet's useless links section, even though it's been extraordinarily useful, just not they way they expected.

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