Like a lot of people in the US of A, I am taking a long weekend. Posting may be a little light for a bit. So here’s an open thread for everyone else taking a long weekend. Or not. Use this thread for anything that’s not personal. Like misogyny, politics, kitties, you know the drill. (Though kitties are welcome in all threads, of course.)
I am hoping my long weekend turns out a bit better than that of the people in the Australian movie of that name from 1978, which I keep meaning to see. Apparently their little beach vacation doesn’t go so well, and they are attacked by … nature? At one point, I believe, they face off against an enraged dugong. (No, really.) The movie was recently remade, but apparently the remake wasn’t as good.
Stay tuned for more reviews of movies I haven’t seen and that I’m just giving vague impressions of based on things I’ve heard somewhere.
Yeah, my reaction was just “Someone published this????”
Ugh. It’s books like that that give self-publishing a bad name, I’m guessing. Someone willing to give em the cliff’s notes? I have a suspicion that trying to read the stuff myself will cause a frothing rage.
RE: Kittehserf
Yeah. While I CAN enjoy beef, I’m really not a fan of the exaggerated chiseled look, with the huge arms and teeny tiny waist and no body fat or hair whatsoever. It’s like the constant Barbie brigade in straight comics: BORING.
Seriously! I google the publisher, and found a) they’ve put warning labels on The Federalist Papers, and b) this (in somebody’s blog):
On the plus side, at least that means that no reputable publisher signed off on that piece of crap?
Actually, looking at the bio again, I’m guessing he’s one of those creepy white guys who loves Japan largely because of all the sexism.
That being said, if I ordered Cold Comfort Farm and got the for dummies who are extra dumb version I’d be pissed off.
There are a lot of publishers like Wilder who do stuff like that. I forget the name, but there’s one that advertises “academic” works on various hot topics, and if you’re gullible enough to order them what you get is an expensive, nicely bound copy of the Wikipedia entry on that topic. And I just looked it up, I think the publisher is VDM. DO NOT BUY.
There are also various publishers who reprint and sell copies of books that aren’t under copyright anymore.
Anywhoo, if anyone is interested in the love lives of peafowls, I have a new blog post.
Even more amusing (to me), is that some of those VDM books have been cataloged, and catalogers have expressed their frustration at being forced to catalog these things by adding summary notes as a warning to other libraries. My favorite is from the record for the “book” about Hank Jones:
Wow. Without context, this only sounds even MORE cracktastic.
Is it possible to sue them for misrepresenting what they were selling?
They’re actually pretty open about what they do, so it’s more of a caveat emptor kind of situation. But since they’re print-on-demand, they’re not returnable so a careless mistake can be pretty expensive. They’re based in Germany, and also seem to legally register some of their many imprint names in Mauritius, and libraries don’t have the money to file international lawsuits over things like this.
Okay, someone else included the complete contents of the VDM book supposedly about Hank Jones, and here are all the Wikipedia entries they included:
All the books have “editors” but on the back of the title pages there are notes helpfully explaining that “The editors (Ed.) of this book are no authors. They have not modified or extended the original texts.”
VDM, of course, has its own Wikipedia entry, but I don’t know if they’ve turned that one into a book. Yet.
@LBT: Yeah, I thought R. Crumb’s work was intentionally not classically aesthetically pleasing back in his underground comics days because he was part of the counterculture, but it hasn’t changed much since then.
Fuck the Comics Code, btw. When I picked up Amazing Spider-Man again after college, I was pleasantly surprised to see a complete lack of their smug little stamp on the cover. (I missed the whole Clone Saga, I checked out shortly after the Parker Parent Plot.)
Man, fuck the Comics Code sideways.
Now I’m conflicted.
Ooh, a stupid racist ebook? Download and mock!
RE: Falconer
Oh man, I’ve done a few library talks on comics, and I ALWAYS talk about the Comics Code. I even got a bunch of bored middle-schoolers into the proceedings by talking about that–they were FLOORED at how stupid the adults had behaved. (“What? That’s so stupid!”)
I’ve discovered that if you want kids to enjoy what you’re talking about, make sure adults look stupid. Not that it’s hard, with the Comics Code.
Did lead to an awkward segue though, because of course I talked about how the CCA fared with racism and homophobia, which led to one of the kids asking me if I was gay.
I was in a tiny town in Texas, mostly inhabited by cows and homeschoolers. I decided to say, “that’s not part of the discussion,” and kept talking about comics. Later, the kid afterward came to me and said, “My mom says gay people are [can’t remember, sinful/sick/bad/negative word].”
I can no longer remember what I said, but I basically tried to say, “she’s wrong,” without impugning the name of his good mother. The kid didn’t push it; I think he was mulling everything over. He’d seemed to like me, and I think he was trying to reconcile that with the probability of my gayness and what he’d been told about gayness.
And people say teaching kids is boring. (Not that I’d EVER want to be a teacher.)
Totally random, but someone sent me the album this comes from to review and it’s kind of amazing. Most of the great singers from the 80s have totally lost their chops, but she still sounds amazing. Best female voice of her era, imo.
She’s never really sung the kind of music I’m into, but I’ve always been drawn to Alison Moyet’s voice anyway. Her voice is amazing.
It really is.
For those who want just the voice without the dance/80s music.
Just watched Pacific Rim last night.
It’s AWESOME. All the super-fun, super-exciting fight scenes I was complaining don’t show up in Man of Steel? Turns out they couldn’t have them because del Toro stole them all. The sense of raw heroism, of actually trying to save people from large-scale destruction? Again, stolen.
He tried to make it less a boys-club atmosphere, according to interviews, but you still only end up with two women in action roles, and the camera never really focuses on them actioning it up the way it does the boys. I was dissappointed.
But after the utterly skippable Man of Steel movie and the utterly skippable Star Trek movie, it was wicked fun.
@LBT: Go you!
@Howard: I’m going to go see PR tomorrow with a friend who thinks mecha vs. kaiju is like the most awesome thing ever. He’s probably not going to assess it for problems because there’ll be a giant robot punching Godzilla and his brain will just start squeeing.
His birthday’s in September. I have that long to come up with a mecha vs. kaiju RPG scenario for him.
I saw PR too! I thought it was fun, imo it was very much a live-action anime film. Totally a modern Godzilla movie. And the fight scenes were coherent and watchable! Which is a bonus in this day and age of cinema. I was a little disappointed with the lack of characterization in the film, but was happy to see a much less Americentric view.
The Mary Sue loves it, Topless Robot doesn’t … io9 the tiebreaker?
@Falconer:
Try looking at DragonMech.