Archive for Offbeat News

The end of fantasy?

Went shopping for books a few nights ago, and noticed the real depth of an issue I feared would happen. Out of all the books in the fantasy section, hardly any of the good ones weren’t supernatural. An odd complaint coming from a vampire worshiper, I know, but….there just isn’t much true fantasy left out there. None that I actually like, anyway. Well over half of all the new books at B&N had something to do with vamps, werewolves, witches, slayers, strange sado-masochistic femmes, and people that are in love with one of the above. What happened to all the dragons and wizards and elves? Did the vampires eat them or something?

Seeing this trend concerns me. It makes me wonder if I’m doing the right thing by writing a pure fantasy book as opposed to a supernatural wonder. Should I abandon my main ms. forever, or just until vampire fever wears off? And believe me, it WILL wear off. Vampires had their reign waaay back when an angsty fellow named Barnabas Collins was the primary neck biter we girls swooned over, and that was in the 60’s and 70’s. Now, 40 years later, vampires have made an incredible comeback. But…it took 40 years. That’s longer than it takes for fashion trends to come back into style.

I love vampires. I really do. I want them to stay forever. But do we have to sacrifice the meaning and mysticism of true fantasy to keep them?

If the original idea for buying a house…

…was to live in it forever, why in the name of all things holy are people complaining about their property losing value? So the house is only worth $500,000 as opposed to $575,000–what’s the big deal?

People have become so caught up in obsessing over how much their homes are worth that they all seem to have forgotten the reason why people bought homes in the first place. It was to live to live in them, and generally, until you died. It was to pick that perfect house, make it into a home, and pass it down to your children. Now, in the age of house flipping and in an economy even more screwed than it was during the first depression, those who should be happy they can even afford to own a home are complaining that its value has gone down. What, was everyone planning on selling their homes this year or something? Did I miss that memo?

Call me old fashioned, but I see no point in purchasing a house if you only plan to live in it for a short period of time–that is what apartments and rental properties are for. A house you’re purchased should be your permanent dwelling, not just a bump in the road. In the beginning, people bought their homes to stay in, and couldn’t wait until they were done paying the last of their note so they could finally say, “this house is mine.” No one could take it from them, and all they’d ever need to pay would be the taxes. Why is that not still the goal of growing up and settling down?

It seems that now, to possess anything for more than two years is a faux-pas. My computers would probably be considered trash by many; my desktop ancient at one and a half years, my laptop at an archaic three. To me, these are perfectly fine machines. They have Windows XP, they do their work in a hurry, and they have so many gigabytes of space open that I’ve barely scratched their surfaces. My cellphone was top of the line, but now the RAZR has had so many upgrades since its debut, my little guy just seems silly. But it still does its job, and since all they’re doing is perfecting the wheel anyway, I have no plans of abandoning my first-gen RAZR anytime soon.   

Houses get about two to five years before their owners want nothing more to do with them, and sell. Why do they want nothing more to do with them? Because they settled. Because instead of waiting until they had the money to buy the home of their dreams right from the start, they settledon one in a poor location, too far from their places of employ, ten feet away from the highway, right next door to guy with the chickens and rooster in his backyard, and all for the sake of saying they owned that little chunk of dirt. Forgive me, but if living next to the chickens wasn’t your first choice, why in the hell didn’t you wait until you found it? You only get to be a virgin home buyer once–is it so hard to make it count?

 

SaSu chapter seven will be delayed until Wednesday.

Only two weeks left

Two weeks–ten days–I don’t care you hash it, I only have ten days left of class. With any luck, not having to study drugs every night and day will give me more time to write and edit.

The main ms. hasn’t seen nor heard a blip from me in weeks. Nothing has been edited in over a month, and since this is its first major revision since I initially submitted it earlier this year and late last, they really need to be worked on at the same time, not with months between chapter reviews. Looks like I’ll be missing my June re-submission date after all.

SaSu is coming along nicely, but this last update might as well be skipped over. Friday is already here, and there’s no way I’ll have two chapters ready by Sunday. Wednesday maybe, but not Sunday. Since our teacher will be gone all next week, we have nothing to do, so I should also be able to finish those reports with time to spare. The only downside is that he seems to think I won’t mind playing teacher to my classmates. Since they all seem to have a thousand questions, you can bet your ass I mind.

You know what else I miss doing? Reading. God, I miss reading. I miss coming home from class or work and being able to sit in my bed and read for an hour. I haven’t done that in months, either. I can scarcely remember the name of the main character! Okay, that’s a lie, but still…

You’d think that with it being a holiday…

…I would perhaps have had time to finish chapter six without delay. Alas! I have failed. It isn’t even written yet. But life goes on, right? Since we are going to have a bit of traffic in the house today, I’ll take the time to disappear as I always do and work on the chapter. The first step to getting it done and posted is actually writing it after all.

I’m somewhat disappointed that Moonlightgot cancelled after this long. I had expected it to be done for before its third week, but after it received the People’s Choice Award, I thought that for once, a vampire show would actually survive to see a second season on mainstream television. It just wasn’t meant to be. Though for the life of me, I have no idea why these shows don’t go straight to SciFi. At least over there they might see a second season or three.

The problem I have seen with all the vampire shows I have been around to watch fail is this: they all come on horrible nights. Anybody remember Kindred: The Embraced? Didn’t that one come on during a Friday or Saturday night? What about Wolf’s Lake? As I can recall, that was also a Friday night show. Will it ever occur to the creators of these shows that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, are the only safe nights for shows that would otherwise drown?

Didn’t think of this before now

I only just realized that Deviant Art also has the ability to publish literary arts. It might very well be a worthwhile idea to expand SaSu to there as well.  Who knows, it might be fun!