Reileen van Kaile

Common mistakes made in fiction about guns.

At Fandom Wank, we have an epic wank revolving around an AU Twilight fic in which Edward and Bella are both human and in which the word "orgasm" was massacred by the search-and-replace function, being instead substituted by the word "unicorn". This has to be one of the funniest things I've seen out of Twilight fandom so far! "CHAAAAARLIE! CHAAAARLIE! WE'RE HAVING SEX, CHARLIIIEEEEE!" The mental image of which is made worse considering that Bella's dad is named "Charlie". Man, I love wanks involving BNFs!

Remember this entry, where I asked whether cloaking technology would ever go mainstream? Well, here's my answer - apparently cloaking material can be used to kill static on cell phones and improve the overall quality of cell phone reception. I'm so down with that! Now I want to see invisibility bras and undies, to be used by strippers and poledancers to completely boggle everyone's minds as their clients wonder where their happy parts went.

The Smart Bitches ask their readers whether the Insta-Sex trope in fiction turns them off from a story. I'm going to echo a bunch of the comments over there and say that Insta-Sex (in which two romantic leads meet each other for the first time and then OMG HAVE TEH HAWT SEXXORZ) can be good or bad, depending on the situation. I judge it within the context of the story: if the rest of the story is well-written, I'll forgive the Insta-Sex. Also, is there any significance to the Insta-Sex, besides showing that the romantic leads are Totally Made For Each Other? If there is, that bumps it up a notch in my book.

What bothers me far more is Insta-Love. I'm not saying that Insta-Love doesn't happen in real life, but I'm personally far too cynical to give the trope much credit in my mind, especially if the relationship that spins out of the Insta-Love thing doesn't explore both the good sides and the bad sides of the relationship, or the wonder (...or possibly horror) of discovering something new about this person that you instantly fell in love with.

Check out this Obama action figure from Japan. It's awesome enough that he's got, like, interchangeable hands and all these awesome accesories like a stool, a microphone, and an American flag. But then! You get to the bottom of this web page and you see Obama doing his best James Bond impersonation, wielding dual katanas, napping under a kotatsu...and fighting Darth Vader

Also, apparently all of his clothes are removable, according to vyctori (who is the one who sent me this thing of beauty, thanks!).

vyctori: ...You know, all of Obama's clothes come off, apparently.
reileen: ...THIS CAN ONLY END IN TEARS.
reileen: OF LAUGHTER.
vyctori: Imagine what someone good at sewing could do!
reileen: And everyone knows that the best cosplay comes from Japan!
reileen: *is now imagining Obama in Jade's uniform and is dying of roffles*
vyctori: asldjhsaljdahjl!!
reileen: Actually, fuck that - OBAMA IS THE NEXT DOCTOR.
vyctori: FUCK YEAH.
reileen: THAT WOULD MEAN HE COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND FIX ALL OF OUR MISTAKES!
vyctori: SWEET
reileen: AND, LIKE, USE A SONIC SCREWDRIVER AND STUFF.
vyctori: THAT WOULD BE INSANE.
vyctori: BRITAIN GETS THE MASTER AS A PRIME MINISTER AND YOU GUYS GET THE DOCTOR.
reileen: XD!

ilu Vyc.

Here's a post about the idea of creating a universal attribution symbol, to be represented for the moment as (i). I love the idea, but have heard some concerns that the "i" looks too much like a Roman numeral to some people, and thus they expect to see (ii), (iii), and so forth. Still, this is something worth thinking about. (Thanks, Eridanus!)

A list of America's most mysterious places. WE'RE ROADTRIPPING, BABY!

John Scalzi features an article from the NYT on "easily misinterpreted place names in the UK." Gee, with names like "Crotch Crescent", "Titty Ho", and "Spanker Lane", I can't possibly see what the problem is, no, sir!

What wishful thinking - If Movie Posters Were Honest.

***

Finished my ART200 paper, but that wasn't so hard to do in the first place - it's the HON301 paper that'll kill me. Today, I'll probably quickly read through some assigned ART200 articles before watching Gattaca, reading one article for the group presentation on Tuesday, and taking preliminary notes for my HON301 paper.

Also, neither my A&D advisor nor the coordinator for the Japan CDM trip has gotten back to me, so it's time for me to bug the backups!

-Reileen
and I pick myself up like a champion

I was gonna post these yesterday, but I got my ass out of bed way late (4:00pm, natch) because I'd stayed up late talking to kiirobon about Gintama, Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, and the joys of crotchbleeding (it was for something he was writing - that poor soul). Not long after waking up, I soon had to be dragged off to my cousin's graduation party. We stayed until 3:00am, which effed up a daily sleep schedule that was, for a few precious moments, looking to be a little less vampiric. I mean, I was getting up before noon, before ten o' clock for the love of Mihaele! Yeah, I ended up falling asleep about an hour after technically waking up and waking up in the afternoon, but you gotta start with baby steps.

Anyway, here we go. There's going to be another link-o-llection soon after this one, themed on Barack Obama's veeper, Joe Biden, and related things. I can't promise intelligent or well-informed commentary on my part, but I can link to where such things are taking place.

***

lwood writes about a potential security flaw in Gmail accounts and how to fix it. If you've got a Gmail account, you might want to look at this.

***

Smart Bitches Trashy Books: Go Topless:

Got plans today? Kathryn gave me a heads up (or something) that today is Go Topless’s protest day around the US, where women will gather without shirts to protest the ridiculous standards which make it socially acceptable for men to go topless, but not women. The New York City gathering place is the Merchant’s Gate of Central Park, aka the Columbus Circle entrance across from the Time Warner center. Other cities hosting topless rallies include Bloomington, Chicago, Miami and Omaha. The Denver rally will be on the 26th to coincide with the start of the DNC (Welcome to Denver! Here are our boobs!)

I think that this "Go Topless" day is probably a better idea of trying to promote the de-mystification of women's breasts than that one fiasco a while back about the "Open Source Boob Project." OSBP took place at a Michigan con (the name of which I can't remember at the moment) where some woefully misguided SF fans attempted to enable public groping (through handing out buttons that said "Yes, you may" to any woman who decided that she was A-OK with getting groped by total strangers) under the excuse of "empowering women".

There was, of course, no male equivalent to this. For reasons ranging from trying to point out the idiocy of the idea to sincerely trying to make this an equal-opportunity situation, various females tried to suggest a similar place on the male body that they could perform the badtouch on, such as the ass or the balls. But the leader of the project, theferrett, basically said OMG NO GROSSS AND SKEEVY. No irony there, no, sir!

(For the rundown - and be warned, there is a <>lot to run down, I didn't even check out most of it - check this post over at Unfunny Business on JournalFen.)

***

So we all know by now that Republican presidential candidate John McCain has no fucking clue how many houses he owns. Man, I wish I were so rich that I'd forget how many houses and condos I owned. Oh, no, wait, I don't. Mainly because I already have problems with never remembering where my mechanical pencils or pen erasers went, even though I'm holding the damn things in my hand. It's a nightmare to contemplate how I'd handle remembering houses, which the last time I checked were worth helluva a lot more than a Papermate mechanical pencil.

In situations like these, I prefer to laugh because otherwise I will cry hysterically, so have a list of "John McCain's Got a Lot of Houses" jokes:

Don't blame McCain.  He couldn't resist that "buy six mansions, get one free" sale at Countrywide.

Hey, didja hear?  John McCain has so many houses they're giving him his own monopoly board!

Seven houses?  That's one for every day of the week!  What a coincidence! I've got a 'Friday' house, too. That's because Friday's payday ... and it takes my whole check just to keep it.

Check the comments for some other gems.

***

Hallmark assimilates gay marriage into the Jingleborg! Good on them.

On the flip side, this has caused Assholes For America...I mean, American Family Association...to boycott Hallmark. Of course. Because the Gods forbid they taint themselves with TEH GHEY. ysabetwordsmith nailed the hypocrisy of this move here:

Hmm, let's see, a big company is putting out a product that allows more people to celebrate the precise type of family they are forming; and a "family association" is trying to stomp on both the families and the company. "Family-friendly" means promoting all types of families.

I'd bet my entire Bomberman manga collection that the AFA folk are also the same kind of people who can't see the logical disconnect that results from essentially whining how they don't have the freedom to suppress other folks' freedoms. ("HELPS! I IS BEING OPRESSEDED BY EXISTENCE OF GODLESS HEATHENS, O NOES!") It's like that one Gospel parable where the king pardons the servant of his debts, only to have that same servant whirl on a fellow servant and demand repayment of his debts or else. There's something distinctly ungrateful and misanthropic about the attitudes of people like these.

***

Moving onto less serious business, try catching a couple of humanified Pokemon. The humanified forms of originally non-human characters is generally referred to in anime/manga fandom as "gijinka", but here they're called "Moemon", combining the Otakunese term for describing anything that's cute or endearing and the "mon" from "Pokemon". The site I linked to is in Japanese, but you can pull up the list of Pokemon on Wikipedia and use their Pokedex numbers to look them up in the sidebar on the site. Myself, I was too lazy to do that when I was sent this site last night by a friend, so I just randomly clicked around and amused myself that way. (The Pidgeot chick is bordering on sexy badass, what. So's Mewtwo. No, seriously.)

***

There's a new Bomberman game being developed for the Nintendo DS. It is currently called "Bomberman II" and looks to be as creative and imaginative as its title. I'm starting to give up hope on Hudson Soft ever developing a single-player platforming mode along the same lines and caliber as the N64 games, but I suppose that's business, and there's more business to be had by focusing more on Bomberman's multiplayer possibilities at the expense of his single-player adventures. I might still get this game, though, because it looks to be more on the lines of the SNES gameplay than the original Bomberman game for NES, which uses a formula that bores me to death. At this rate, I'll take what I can get, although I still haven't played any of the Bomberman Land Touch sequels.

***

Not links, per se, but I've been getting a lot of spam mail lately with interesting titles, such as:

"Paris Hilton's Vagina Bites Penguin"
"Paris Hilton Sold Her Soul to the Devil, Admits It on Larry King"
"Britney Spears has Fanny Magnets Grafted In to Attract Paparazzi"
"Britney Spears' New Hair Extention are Lindsay Lohan's Pubes"
"Brad Pitt and Angelina Are Adopting Britney Spears"

I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. I'm giggling at the thought of Paris Hilton having a set of vagina dentata, and the idea of using pubic hair in hair extensions is hilariously wrong.

-Reileen
it's all right to come undone