The Witching Well

Saw X3 last night with friends from the MoS, and I have to say that it’s better than X2 was. (Of course, this is the hardcore Nightcrawler fangirl talking, so I had automatic issues with X2 that I doubt I’ll ever get past.) I still have problems with Storm. Let’s face it, the movie Storm isn’t anywhere near as well-drawn a character as the one in the comics — hell, she’s a different woman entirely, and one who’s a lot less interesting. Kelsey Grammar’s Hank McCoy wasn’t half bad. And we got a couple of glimpses of Jamie Madrox/Multiple Man, which is nice. I also liked it that we see more of Peter and Kitty, though they didn’t do enough with either and they had plot reasons for it, yes, but they kept putting them in the same room and having them basically not even acknowledge one another’s existence. And Warren? He was really there just to have pretty wings and be sad. Which is a shame.

So, basically: The special effects were great. Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen, and Hugh Jackman all nailed their characters (as they always have). The story could have used some tweaking, but was generally a fun romp. It could have been more, but what it was wasn’t half bad.

And if you see it, stay til the end of the credits. There’s a whole scene there. One of potential import. So, stay and watch it.

I’ve added a new link: They Must Need Bears, which is the Livejournal of Elizabeth Bear. You have to love a writer who blogs like this:

Someday, I am going to publish a chapbook of all the sex scenes I’ve cut out of things. It will be nothing but pages and pages of in-character smut.

Teresa caught it before I did, because I usually hang out on the Absolute Write forums only on the weekends, but my favorite writers’ board is gone .

I’ve been a member of AW for over a year now. Gods, the Learn Writing with Uncle Jim thread (led by Jim Macdonald) in the Novels forum was a mainstay of keeping my enthusiasm going for working on my book. I’m shocked, and angry, and quite frankly just a little heartbroken.

And all of this is because AW has, for ages, been a resource for finding information about the scum who prey on people who dream of publishing a book. One of the “agents” on Victoria Strauss’s list of the 20 worst literary agents list (reproduced here on Making Light and here on the SFWA site) got their host to pull them. This is Barbara Bauer, the fourth on the list. SHe also tried to get Teresa fired for posting the list to Making Light.

To show my support, I’m posting it, too, now:

Below is a list of the 20 literary agencies about which Writer Beware has received the greatest number of advisories/complaints over the past several years.

None of these agencies has a significant track record of sales to commercial (advance-paying) publishers, and most have virtually no documented and verified sales at all (book placements claimed by some of these agencies turn out to be “sales” to vanity publishers). All charge clients before a sale is made–whether directly, by levying fees such as reading or administrative fees, or indirectly, for editing or other adjunct services.

Writer Beware recommends that writers avoid questionable literary agencies, and instead query agencies that have verifiable track records of sales to commercial publishing houses.

Note that while the 20 agencies listed here account for the bulk of the complaints we receive, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Writer Beware has files on nearly 400 questionable agencies, and we learn about a new one every few weeks.

The 20 Worst Literary Agents

* The Abacus Group Literary Agency
* Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to “book doctor” Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
* Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
* Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
* Benedict & Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
* Sherwood Broome, Inc.
* Desert Rose Literary Agency
* Arthur Fleming Associates
* Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
* Brock Gannon Literary Agency
* Harris Literary Agency
* The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:
Children’s Literary Agency
Christian Literary Agency
New York Literary Agency
Poets Literary Agency
The Screenplay Agency
Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency)
Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)
* Martin-McLean Literary Associates
* Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
* B.K. Nelson, Inc.
* The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
* Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency and Simply Nonfiction)
* Southeast Literary Agency
* Mark Sullivan Associates
* West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

AW is looking for a new host. I hope they find one that will actually stand by them this time.

This is appalling. Since when is it school administrators’ business what kids do with their time outside of school?

This is wrong on so many levels. The first, of course, is that it foists off on schools what should be the responsibility of parents. Then, it takes away the parents’ right to set their own kids’ boundaries.

And, what, exactly is “inappropriate” defined as? Has anyone got the actual text of these “pledges”? I’m willing to bet it’s as vague as it sounds. So, the kid who writes horror stories online may be in big trouble. How about the one who rights fanfiction — is possible copyright infringement “inappropriate” enough for disciplinary action? Will they be suspended if they admit to being gay but are enrolled in a conservative school? If they use the internet to voice political opinions their principals don’t like?

Big Brother is watching, kids. Until you’re out of school, you have no rights. Remember that.

Some fanfics are bad, and some are so bad that there are no words to describe their badness. And some of the best fanfics are actually parodies of all that badness. Trust me. Put down that drink before you read this Doctor Who piece: Notes From A Bed of Rose’s. (No real spoilers, but if you haven’t met Captain Jack Harkness yet, some of the gags might go slightly over your head.)

Wicca may have made it into the Army Chaplains’ Handbook ages ago, but the VA is still dragging its feet in recognizing that Wiccans deserve to be honored with a symbol of their own.

Currently the National Cemetery Administration has 38 permitted religious symbols for headstones and plaques, but none for pagans or Wiccans.

How the hell can anyone — anyone — justify this disrespect for someone who has lost his or her life in this country’s military service? How can they rationalize putting families through this crap? It’s been EIGHT MONTHS since Roberta Stewart lost her husband, Patrick, in Afghanistan, and his memorial is still blank!

I’ve just used the VA’s contact form to complain about this. I hope everyone else will, too.

Via Non Fluffy Wicca.

We finally got fed up with Comcast and decided to switch to satellite TV. Andy set up the appointment for the install for Monday, which I happened to be taking off, and they said that the installer would be here between 1 and 5.

We all know that that meant that they would probably show up at 5:30, unless I was foolish enough to leave the house for ten minutes at any point during the afternoon, in which case that’s when they would pull up. Yes?

Well, yes and no. Silly us, we didn’t realize that our appointment would conflict with the Great New England Deluge of 2006. Very understandably, the installers got backed up. I imagine that hanging satellite dishes off of people’s houses is no small challenge in a blinding downpour. So, when I got a call from the company at a few minutes after 5, saying that they were running a little behind, I wasn’t really surprised. They said to expect them in about an hour.

Now, I had plans to take my mother out to dinner, but she wasn’t home yet from her knitting group (jeez, she’s only been retired 2 weeks and she already has a knitting group!), so I figured I could work with this.

6:15. No installer. 6:45 Mom came home, checked in with me, and we decided that I should wait just a bit longer, ’cause, you know, these appointments are a bitch to get. By 7:15, I was starving, and since I hadn’t heard from the satellite company I was ready to assume that we’d fallen off the end of their roster.

Mom and I had a nice, quiet dinner, interrupted only by a cellphone conversation with my husband about when we could get a reschedule on the install, who could take a day off when, etc.

Half an hour after I got home, just as I was deciding that maybe 9pm really wasn’t too early to go to bed, there was a knock on my door.

You guessed it: the installer. He was slogging through his job list right to the end, and I was the last one on it. He even managed to be friendly and cheerful about it.

My mother had a dish already from his company, so he could hook us up through that and save making another hole in the siding (and save them a dish, too, of course). It would also mean he’d be done sooner, so it sounded good to me. We chatted while he laid out the equipment for our 2 TVs, and I found out he hadn’t had a dinner break. Or a lunch break. So I offered him a frozen pizza.

Yeah, I’m a soft touch. It goes back to my days as a door-to-door GreenPeace canvasser, when the kindness of strangers was often my only hope of a bathroom break. You remember shit like that.

So, my new friend Victor got our satellite up and running, and I was a zombie at work yesterday because I didn’t get to bed until nearly midnight. But now I can watch Doctor Who on Friday night in the comfort of my own livingroom. So, you know, worth it.

This almost made me spew tea all over my laptop’s keyboard!

Found on Dark Roast, the livejournal of Emma Bull. Who is SO going into my links bar!

I’ve been watching the hullabaloo over the singing of the US national anthem in Spanish, and, honestly, I’m appalled. The main complaint seems to stem from some stupid notion that real Americans speak only English. Well, wake up, boys and girls, because the United States is already and continues to become even more polyglot with every passing day. You can’t hold back the earth’s rotation, and you can’t prevent our society from becoming multilingual. Attempts to prevent it just make you look like bigots.

I understand that change is scary. It is also inevitable. Deal with it.