wickedqueen.net

So all this past semester, everyone in my comm arts class (”Rhetoric and the Intarwebs”–okay, the official title was slightly different) kept raving about hulu.com, where you can stream all kinds of random television with the usual intermittent ads from Visa and shit. There’s some current stuff–The Daily Show, for instance–but also a lot of OLD stuff, like Knight Rider and McHale’s Navy. I kept telling myself that I was too busy to go near such a colossally perfect timesuck, but then it was summer, and I finished the IRB application for my research and I have no official job,* and so I started nosing around the site.

I have no recollection of how I first stumbled upon Cleopatra 2525. I have vague memories of having heard of it in the past, but I had assumed it was some kind of Ancient Egyptian steampunk deal. It is not. “Cleopatra” is the title character, a cryogenically frozen 21st century exotic dancer who awakens in the 26th century when Earth has been conquered by the machines and is taken in by two scantily clad resistance fighters, one of whom is played by Gina Torres, who I had no idea had come up quite THAT much in the world when she got on Firefly.

The show appears to have been produced in someone’s basement with costumes by the Frederick’s of Hollywood clearance grab bag.** It is mostly bare midriffs and laser blasts. As my friend Leanna commented, I cannot believe it is not still on the air, with millions of dollars’ worth of merchandise and some kind of theme park. Consider this theme song:

(Spoken)
Five hundred years into the future
She will enter a world where machines rule the Earth
Mankind has been driven underground
And Cleopatra is about to discover
There’s no place like home!

(Sung, with awesome drama)
In the year 2525
There are women with the will to survive
Fighting for a brand new day
Nothing’s gonna get in their way
In the year 2525
Three women keep hope alive
Joining forces to reclaim the Earth
Looking ahead to humankind’s rebirth!

Dude. Hot girls with lasers in the post-apocalypse. If this had been around when I was a kid, it might partially explain how I turned out this way.

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*I’m enrolled in three credits of “directed reading” in order to continue to live off the government. It’s not the solution I would have preferred, but it does free up my time to work on my dissertation proposal. Assuming I can stop watching hulu at some point.

**This is a real thing, or it used to be. You tell them your size, you get a random dress and pair of shoes. My dad got a Halloween costume out of it once.

And not the good kind, either, where someone gets caught being wanton in the conservatory and has to get married by special license.*

I got an email a few days ago from Rikhei asking if I’d heard about the possibility that Cassie Edwards was a plagiarist. At first I thought she was talking about well-known fanfic rip-off artist Cassandra Claire, which was confusing since that happened a long time ago, although I am STILL kind of appalled that someone would rip off Zelazny’s Amber for HP slash.** (This reminds me, I keep meaning to write a post about Zelazny and Amber. Later.)

Anyway, then I clicked the link to Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books, which I have actually read in the past and I don’t know why I stopped keeping up with it, and realized that no, she was talking about Cassie EDWARDS, well-known horrifying American Indian culture appropriater, unparalleled in her use of the Noble Savage Standing in for Sensitive New Age Guys Who Would Actually Be Too Anachronistic To Stand, Even for Zebra.*** Indian romances are pretty common–generally featuring an Indian or mixed race hero and a feisty white heroine. I actually did a project on constructions of American Indian masculinity in these books for a sociology of gender course I took as an undergrad,**** in which I concluded basically that they were stand-ins for Sensitive New Age Guys Who… you get the picture.

Well, apparently, the Smart Bitches tried plugging some of her more wooden and weirdly out-of-place passages into Google, and they discovered that the reason they were out of place is that they were TOTALLY FREAKING PLAGIARIZED. In at least one case from a 1928 ethnography, which I take special note of as a social scientist. Perhaps someday chunks of my dissertation will appear, uncredited, in a lusty tale of Facebook intrigue.

I thought this was sort of half entertaining, half infuriating, given how pissed off I get about plagiarism in general–I was, after all, raised by academics–and then I was browsing my usual infotainment sources today and discovered that the story had broken in the popular press: Nora Roberts says peer lifted material

(In case you are not particularly romance-aware, Nora Roberts is a Big Deal.)

The AP article actually pulls its best punch by using one of the less egregious passages from Edwards’s work; you should definitely review the SB series to see some really incredibly obvious theft. Confronted with it, Edwards response was not particularly surprising:

Edwards, interviewed earlier this week by the AP, acknowledged that she sometimes “takes” her material “from reference books,” but added that she didn’t know she was supposed to credit her sources.

“When you write historical romances, you’re not asked to do that,” Edwards said, speaking from her home in Mattoon, Ill. She then asked her husband to get on the phone. He told the AP that his wife simply gets “ideas” from reference books.

“She doesn’t lift passages,” Charles Edwards said, adding that “you would have to draw your own conclusions” on how closely his wife’s work resembles other sources.

Although the part where she put her husband on the phone to handle it was kind of shocking. I realize that the woman is like 70, but one assumes that she’s handled the majority of her business contacts, etc., at least in communication with an agent. And really, what more is there to say after “she didn’t know she was supposed to credit her sources”? It’s like she’s an undergraduate or something! A plagiarizing culture-appropriating bosom-heaving undergraduate. I am totally putting some of the examples from SB on my next “What is plagiarism and how terrible will the vengeance of my TA be if I commit it” hand-out.

In fact, the AP article actually quotes the developer of TurnItIn, UW’s preferred plagiarism detection software: “Ms. Edwards’ unattributed use of other peoples’ work as her own definitely constitutes plagiarism.”

I wonder if she’ll be stripped of her RWA (Romance Writers of America) lifetime achievement award.

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*Ask me about the peerage some time. I should also note that I use the term “bodice ripper” with love. Before 11-year-olds could find porn on the internet, there were other people’s mothers’ stashes of romance novels.

****It was the only sociology course I took as an undergrad, actually. And now I have a masters degree!

That’s me and some other kid in 1984. I’ve always loved that photo. Whenever I look at it, I think, If only I could get back into a wheelbarrow FULL OF GRAPEFRUITS. Everything would be okay if I was sitting on top of a wheelbarrow full of grapefruits.

My dad’s been scanning and uploading old family photos to his Flickr account. There was piece on CNN recently about the new trend in obsessive digital documentation of one’s children; as something of a compulsive photographer, however, I personally am not too worried about “fail[ing] to enjoy living in the moment.” I like to take pictures; it’s part of my enjoyment of some moments. I do get annoyed when I’m not IN any of the pictures, which is why it’s good that in my family, both my father and I take a lot of photos. It’s always a danger, when you have one documentary photo taker in a group, that they disappear almost entirely from the photographic record.

The article also panics over the possibility that photo formats could change; formats are always an issue with digital media, but I doubt we’re going to wake up one morning to discover that all of a sudden, .jpgs no longer work. Batch conversion is a pretty simple job these days. And while it may be true that “some parents buy additional disk drives to archive photos, burn them on CDs or keep copies online — not always mindful that photo sites often make it difficult to retrieve the original, high-resolution versions necessary for quality prints,” it costs $25 a year for a FlickrPro account that WILL retain the original high-res versions, and you can also order prints of photos you upload to Flickr, either for pick-up at Target or to have shipped directly to you. A lot of the problems that the tech news people like to focus on are really “less advanced user” problems, which you know, they could actually address with helpful tips.

It may, however, be worth considering that publicly available photos on Flickr and other photo-sharing sites really are available to “the entire world.” One of the photos my father put up featured my sister and me in the bathtub in 1984. It got 11 views in about a third of a day. It did apparently have “bath” in the title, and I’m pretty sure that the pedophiles are a heavily networked community, so I guess only one of them has to stumble on a particular photo to start it on the rounds. Dad set it to friends only.

Yes, I have always had freaky hair.

Thanks to wicked anomie, who posted about it first:

I am feeling a strong inclination to find one of Frontalot’s shows and throw my underwear at him. Although I suppose my dice collection might be more appropriate, as well as more likely to put out someone’s eye. Blinding someone with a d20 is nerdcore, right?

You can get the high-res version of the video at the official site, which also offers assorted merch. I am leaning toward the purple ladies t-shirt.

In case you did not play Zork and require some explanation: Grue (monster)

Greatest video ever:*

I’ve been playing a lot of turn-by-email Scrabble lately via Scrabulous, which also has a Facebook app so you can play through the Facebook interface if you prefer (which I do, mainly because I check Facebook a lot).

And if you really don’t feel like working, Name 50 states in 10 minutes. I missed four, but I’m not going to give you an edge by telling you what they were.

Not the best video in the world, certainly lacking the broad appeal of the first, but if you like a) Highlander (and/or, you know, bad TV/movies) and b) the post-apocalypse,** you cannot help but be intrigued by this totally unauthorized mystery trailer for Highlander: The Source:

The voice-over totally sounds like they slowed some tape in an attempt to mimic Ian McKellan, doesn’t it?

Thanks to Keely and j00j for the video links.

I’m going to see the Simpsons movie tonight on Travis’s recommendation. Spider-Pig better not be the funniest part.

Oh, and as I was alerted by another friend, e.l.f. (Eyes Lips Face), a make-up line, has been bought out by Nordstrom’s and is clearing out their inventory. Virtually everything is $1. The website is a little wonky, but if you get a weird message box just hit “cancel” and hit whatever link you wanted again. Let me know if you want an “All Over Color Stick” in Pink Lemonade, as I accidentally ordered two.

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*I know I say that a lot, but this time it’s REALLY TRUE, srsly. And it doesn’t even make crude insinuations about anyone from Harry Potter.

**This could be wishful thinking on my part, but it sure LOOKS kind of post-apocalyptic.

Yesterday, even though I was tired** and the weather was so crappy that if it weren’t California in July I’d have thought it was going to rain, I finally rode my bike out to the Mountain View Kwik-E-Mart, which I’ve been meaning to see since the locations were announced.

I know, the lighting is bad. You let me down, California.

“Color booster” lets you make it pretty cartoon-ish, though.

I don’t really like Bart and Milhous on the front facade; it defeats the point of making a “real” Kwik-E-Mart, dammit.

They refused to do Duff Beer, so I bought a donut instead. $.85, or $8.50 for a dozen.

Carbs are important when you’re cycling.

Simpsons donuts go with my hair.

Sadly, I did not get a photo of any of the employees in their special Kwik-E-Mart shirts, because it was pretty busy and I didn’t want to bother them. Maybe I’ll go back before the movie opens–I don’t know how long they’re running the promotion.

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*Normally I prefer the spelling “doughnut,” but when it’s prefaced by “Official Simpsons Movie,” I figure it has to be of the “donut” variety.

**I have mystery insomnia this week, except I think it might not be so much “mystery” as “getting super stressed about where the hell I’m going to live in Madison.”

Yes. The bottom right corner of this PS2 advertisement does actually say Because your girlfriend bores you shitless. How you managed to actually GET a girlfriend remains a mystery.

This is just another manifestation of how the general gaming culture, even as it is propagated by the people who ostensibly want to sell it to anyone who will buy, is extremely hostile to women. You hear these marketing people flapping their jaws about how they think women just don’t like SHOOTING ALIENS or something, and THAT’S why they don’t game (putting aside, for a moment, the many women who do–they’re still vastly outnumbered by men outside of casual gaming), and then they turn around and produce this shit. Gee, I wonder why women think they wouldn’t have a good time gaming. Could it be because half the market goes out of its way to suggest that all the OTHER gamers are witless misogynistic man-children?

You may recall NCSoft’s addition of female NPCs to City of Heroes–specifically, non-combatant air-headed gangster girlfriends. Do you notice a common theme here? Oh, those women! They’re boring! Because they’re stupid! Because all they talk about is clothes and stuff! Silly women! Can you believe they got the vote?

Well, to be fair, there’s a second PS2 ad suggesting that sometimes women are boring because they talk about other people’s interpersonal relationships. And in case you didn’t click through, here’s that CoH screenshot:

Pretty much the only women with whom you interact, apparently, are “girlfriends.” (Note the NPC’s designation in that screenshot.) Women exist in this world solely in relation to men (and not even in any other relationship other than “annoying pet”; what, gamers don’t have MOTHERS?), who apparently tolerate them for sex, since they’re so damn boring otherwise. All these women think about is their appearances, probably so that they can keep the poor bored guys enthralled for some more of that sex, which I’m sure is really awesome and satisfying. Naturally such boring and stupid creatures wouldn’t have any interest in the manly pursuit of GAMING.

Hey, Sony? Maybe what with getting your ass handed to you by Nintendo and all, you might want to consider some new tactics that don’t specifically alienate one of the major groups Nintendo is wooing. Or, you know, I guess witless misogynistic man-children ARE a niche.

Thanks to belleweather for the link.

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ETA: This is not to suggest that I think that clothes are stupid and/or boring. No one who has ever met me would credit it. This is, of course, the flip side of “women only talk about things that are frivolous and boring”; that is, “if women talk about something, it must therefore be frivolous and boring.” I find clothes vastly more interesting than cars or football, and you know, pretty much everyone HAS them. We won’t go into how extremely cute my outfit is today, even though this is my blog and anyone who doesn’t like it can take their PS2 and go jump in the lake.

You know, all those years of secondary school gym class, I thought I hated physical activity, but it turns out I just hated fascism.*

I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.

–Richard Brautigan, The Memoirs of Jesse James

(My other reflection on biking lately is that the older I get, the more like my father I seem to become. Biking, cooking,** and I’ve started contemplating camping, which was definitely not my thing as a child, at least not after age 8 or so.)

My hair is also getting really faded. I’m loathe to cover the highlights, which still look good (if faded), but probably I’ll dye it all back to Atomic Pink after I get back from visiting my cousin in LA. This does mean that Cyn and I will not be total twinsies if we get together for lunch, but that may well save the universe from implosion,*** so perhaps I should consider it a necessary sacrifice.

And speaking of the universe imploding, today’s Thursday PARC Forum is about dark matter. Maybe I should go.

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*I’ve remarked this to several people now, which is why I can’t remember who thought it should be on a t-shirt. I think it might be a little long.

***I’ve always been a big fan of parallel universes, such as Star Trek Dark Mirror and the Futurama Cowboy Universe. Maybe there’s one where everyone’s got pink hair EXCEPT Cyn and me. I’ll tell you one thing: I bet Evil Bizarro Cabell has really conservative hair. Lime green would be the photo-negative, but I’ve done that, too.

…and yet, every time I hear “You Oughta Know,” the Uncle Joey connection still pretty much weirds me the hell out.

If you’ve never seen the 20th anniversary Goonies actors’ commentary, I highly recommend it. You can tell everyone is pretty much amazed that Sean Astin showed up.