Category: *heh*

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Self-Made Morons: Giving the Gift of Laughter

UPDATE:

I’m really late to this thing, and I don’t really have anything to add, but that’s never stopped me before, so why now, eh? 😉

The book that’s the subject of the kerffuffle mentioned below has won the 2014 Compton Crook Award, arguably one of the awards most insulated from influence by the agenda-driven GHH crowd. It’s a reader-driven award for best sci-f/fantasy first novel by an individual author

http://www.bsfs.org/bsfsccw.htm

So, some guy wrote a (pretty good, IMO) space opera/first, et al, contact novel and someone else obviously trying to influence some upcoming awards (one of which the novel had been nominated for) wrote a “review” wherein she openly admitted she hadn’t really read the book, just cherry-picked things that offended her. (Apparently she wrote another that was even more over-the-top, but it seems to have disappeared from all the places links point to. Wonder why. Not.)

The review’s here: Fire with Fire: The Most Interesting Man in ALL TEH WORLDS (The book’s here or here, in case you want to make your own comparison to what the reviewer who DIDN’T read the book has to say about it.)

Here, perhaps this will push your curiosity button. One of the things that sends the “reviewer” around the bend was this cherry-picked sentence (quoted in more context at the “review”):

Downing shook Corcoran’s wide, strong hand.

Yeh, that’d give me the willies too. I would greatly prefer to shake a “narrow, weak, limp-wristed” pussy metrosexual paw. Yep. Oh, wait. That’s not me; that’s the po’ widdle baby who cherry-picked things to be offended at and who refused to read the whole thing before “reviewing” it. Might run into another scary “wide, strong hand”!

*feh*

To the po’ widdle baby who apparently “thinks” she has a glittery hoohah, but who obviously has simply spent too many hours playing with her autolobotomy kit, I have only this to offer: life won’t get any better until you put down the autolobotomy kit and stop sniffing the unicorn farts, buttercup. (Yeh, yeh, I’d offer this at the offending post, but I’m not wasting even a throwaway email address on obtaining a login there.)

As to Gannon’s book, well, below the fold, mmmK?

Continue reading “Self-Made Morons: Giving the Gift of Laughter”

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A Reader’s Lament. . . OK, Gripe

Yeh, yeh: I read far too many books. Blah-blah-blah.

Sadly, I had competent instruction in English when I was a lad. Occasionally I even choose to write as though I paid attention during class, even though I do not ask folks to pay me for what I write. But folks who expect me to pay them for their writing really ought to pay attention to proper grammar (I allow some leeway for dialog, since one can’t expect all the characters in a piece of fiction to be literate *heh*), spelling and word usage.

A couple of examples from today’s readings illustrate my lament/gripe:

From a “real” publisher comes a book sprinkled with loads of grammar, usage, spelling and punctuation errors. One sample: “The McCarthy’s [sic] did not comment. . . ” Apostrophe Abuse is prevalent and shows up in many ways, but I really hate it that more and more writers (and proofreaders and editors) have NO idea how to form plurals from proper nouns.

From the preface material in a self-pub (although I understand “Indie Published” is the preferred term nowadays) book, I gathered the author was tickled pink with his wife’s “proofreading” and his editor’s “professionalism”. *shudder* Not often a good sign. Sure enough, the thing’s littered with errors most commonly found in works written by hormone-lobotomized seventh-graders. *argh!*

Read two more by another author yesterday. Were it not for the *cough* “indifferent” *cough* editing/proofreading, I might have given the books as many as four out of five stars on Amazon for books of the genre. As it was, I was generous to give the books three stars. I would prefer to have the author, any proofreaders and editors at hand to personally dope slap. *sigh* Of course, the author was another of those who thanked his proofreader(s)/editor(s). (As I said earlier, usually a bad sign.)

Yeh, yeh, on top of my other reading (*sigh* mostly background to “news” and other fictional non-fiction), five novels in the past two days. One of them was competently written/proofread/edited. One. So far. . .

Welcome to the post-literate society, where published works must rise only to almost the literary quality of a Twitter or FarceBook post.

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Taming the Wild Loa

I may need to look for a dreadlock wig and chicken bone rattle to deal with a client’s connectivity issues tomorrow. Sorry. Prayer and fasting ain’t cuttin’ the mustard.

😉

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You Like?

Thinking of having the local print shop print something like one of these on heavy card stock and having them laminated. . .

no trespassing

A “fair warning” No Trespassing sign, because Woody Guthrie* doesn’t have any cachet here in America’s Third World County, except among the growing population of illiterates (and even worse, a-literates) one increasingly finds everywhere nowadays.

Continue reading “You Like?”

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Ah, Memories. . .

*heh* The video below reminds me of a kid who pulled a small caliber automatic on me some 35 years ago. Between my German Shepherd and me with a large wrench (already in hand; was working on car), he decided his lil .25 cal (what it looked like to me) Saturday night special. . . wasn’t so special. Saw him walking up the street a few hours later all torn up and bloody. Story came around someone took his lil ladygun away from him and fed it to him.

Typical “language” warning that accompanies such events. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DepefuRqwQ

A lesson in manners to a trash-talking wannabe tough guy.

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Got Game?

This coffee mug does. When I saw this, I told S&H, “Dude! Your coffee mug has its own game!”

*heh*

(Just clickety-click to size the graphic for your display, mmmK? :-))

Titanfall_Coffee

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Fun, Fun, Fun

So, the local “fell off the back of a truck” store had some 7″ Sylvania tablets (yeh, bad rep, low spec things) marked “defective” and w/o chargers for $5. “So,” methought, “five bucks for a non-functional piece of crap. Not bad!” *heh*

Bought two. Charged ’em up (well, yeh, I do have chargers/power bricks for just about everything. Why? Do you ask? *heh*).

One powers up but doesn’t boot at all, at all. Tore it down and didn’t find anything obvious at first glance. Set it aside.

Next: the other one, very slightly different model. Refused to power on. Tore it down. Hmmm, maybe it was trying to boot and I just couldn’t tell, because. . . THE RIBBON CABLE TO THE SCREEN WAS DISCONNECTED and looked like it never had been. *sigh*

Attached the ribbon cable and secured it. Reassembled the thing. Powered on and. . . stuck at the manufacturer’s logo. Powered off. Powered on with the “three finger salute” (which for this model means Power Button-Menu Button-Screen Tap) to bring up the screen to restore the system image. Quick re-touch of the Menu Button and. . . it attempted to restore the system image. Attempted only because the system image file is. . . missing (of course).

Now, since the device isn’t recognizable to any physical computers I have that can read the utility to flash the image via USB, I need to boot a virtual XP machine that will recognize it. Yes. That’s right. NO DRIVERS FOR WIN7 or WIN8. . . or even VISTA for this device. *sigh*

Well, at least it’s fun to play with. Heck, when I get it working, I don’t really have any use for it, anyway. The only real use I have for it is what I’ve been doing with it: tinkering around.

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Is It Too Much to Ask?

I’m sort of looking, in a casual, desultory fashion, for a lil place in the “piney woods” here in America’s Third World County. Not much, just 30 or so acres or more with a looooong drive into a cleared area with gardening/livestock area and room for a small dwelling and work/livestock buildings.

The looooong drive would be so I could ask the county to give my drive a “street” name and dwelling a 911 address. I’d like the following street name to go along with my “UNwelcome mat”.

Goa-Way

UNwelcome mat

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“It’s going to be fun!”

Bill Whittle on “President Social Proof’s” new clothes and the fun we can have running the naked socialistas into the river. . .

I’m going to operate this year focusing on saying to every Loony Left Moonbat I can, in effect or in fact *heh*, “Although I disagree with you, I will defend your right to say what you believe. . . and my right to mock you for being an idiot. But when you try to COMPEL me to agree with you, you’re in for a fight, mmmK?”