It is your patriotic duty to...

...lock up the pessimistic economists.

I wasn't even aware of this:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/a-novel-way-to-prevent-financial-crises/



For some reason I'm strangely flattered. Economists now have suddenly become so important that they are competing with the likes of Benjalina, Spears, and NFL for screen time, the new administration's (yay!) appointments to the economic advisers have received much more attention than any of their predecessors, and everyone is suddenly eager to learn more about Keynes and macroeconomics (sadly, not so much about monetary theories, which is my domain).

The possibility of us actually becoming a national threat just makes it all the better.

This is America.

I just voted today! Whoever correctly guesses whom I voted for, more power to them!

(It took me just a little over an hour to vote - with free food [!] and colorful stickers that you don't need to hide [!!!] everywhere. It was awesome.)

On Flames (Part I)

I'm trying to avoid writing my essay, which is due Monday and constitues 20% of my grade. Since I don't know what to write (or I do, but don't know how to put it in words), I've decided to finish up a blog post I've been meaning to write, to see if I could stimulate some thoughts. So here goes.

My recent thoughts on flames generated from the quoted reviews. When I was again mindlessly browsing around FanFiction.net I encountered a horribly written story. Out of some weird human instinct to fit in I went to read what the reviewers were saying, to see whether the revieweres shared the same views as I did. As expected, most reviews were negative, but one of such review caught my eyes. Note: since I didn't ask for permission to post her review (in the same way that people did not ask for permission to post and mock other people's stories. See various live journals specifically dedicated to bash Mary-Sue fics), I deleted all the words that might indicate the fandom, fic, and reviewer (although in contrast, the live journals did not obscure these things...).

believe it or not, i was trying very, VERY hard to be nice in my last review. now, i'm not gonna be nice. so listen up, bitch, because i'm going to be very very blunt and very very cruel. THIS FIC- SUCKS. it NEEDS to be deleted! at the very, very least, fix the goddam GRAMMAR! did you learn nothing from all those reviews people sent you saying you need to get rid of this shit? no, they were not jealous of how *wonderful* you are, they were RIGHT. I SERIOUSLY DOUBT THAT ANY DESCRIPTION OF THIS [character name] CHARACTER HAS ANY TRUTH THAT IS REPRESENTED IN YOU! SO DELETE THE GODDAM STORY!

oh, and by the way, chapter [number] looked suspiciously, exactly IDENTICAL to chapter [number]. ?

and one more thing.

[silly name 1]?

[silly name 2]? (and it's [correct form of silly name 2], not [silly name 2], moron)

[silly name 3]?

[silly name 4]?

[silly name 5]?

[silly name 6]?

[silly name 7]?

[silly name 8]?

[silly name 6]?!


[Aayla's note: In actual story, the bashed original character suggested some silly names for her daughter, and those names apparently made the reviewer want to strangle herself. Don't worry; I'm sure she wouldn't.]

okay, i realize that some bad things just happened here, but i can't help it that you can only get some in a mentally challenged fanfic. and i shouldn't blame the fic, because, well, a wise person once said

"DELETE IT, BITCH!"

feel free to respond angrily to this review, and prove me right that you are a dumbass mind-slut bitch.

ta

~[reviewer name]



Intrigued, I decided to follow the thread and see what the reviewer regarded as "trying very, VERY hard to be nice". This is what I found:


wow...i mean, like WOW. okay, i made a list of all the reasons why this fanfic ROCKS:

...

and here's the list of why it SUCKS:

1. here in the modern world, we've got lots of cool inventions. like the quotation marks. you know, these things->" you put them around dialogue, and it magically makes it understandable. a gift from me to you. USE IT.

2. keep the characters IN. FRIKIN. CHARACTER. [canon character name] just does it on the first date? no. that's sick and wrong and just not [canon character name].

3. and then [canon character name] gets pregnant and he's HAPPY about it?! NOT IN CHARACTER!

4. that attempted rape scene in chapter [number] was sO STUPID! i truly and completely WANT my computer to get a virus right now, because it has been tainted with the retardedness of chapter [number].

5. you are obviously using your friends in real life as characters in the story. DON'T, RETARD. it's dumb. if you write the story right, then having a live-acting model for your character helps, but if you don't, then it just sucks.

6. Me: Captain Obvious, what do you think?
Captain Obvious: [character name] is the character version of the author, and she's using this story to make her moronic fangirl fantasies become fanfic realty. and she's either: (a) got very low self-esteem, (b) is really ugly, or (c) fishing for compliments from friends who read this, because the way she describes [character name] makes her perfect and gorgeous and popular and, of course, A MARY SUE.

7. i don't know about the chemically-altered town YOU live in, but where I come from, people don't walk around saying "LOL", "LMAO", "fetch". and they definitely don't in hogwarts.

8. and lastly, here in the modern world, we've got lots of cool inventions. like the "delete" button. you know, the thing you click on to delete a story, and it magically makes it go away. a gift from me to you. USE IT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, USE IT!!

~[reviewer name]



Wow. If she tried "very, VERY hard to be nice" and the review still ended up like this, I can only say that double-standards were at work. The insultingly patronizing language (repeated "a gift from me to you", "lots of cool inventions"), the name-calling ("RETARD"), the overwhelmingly sarcastic tone...all those things made the review not something what a normal person would regard even "polite", let alone "nice". This made me (again) think on the whole concept of "constructive criticism" and "flame". I will post more things when I have more time to think about it.

Lord of the Rings Musical Frodo & Sam

This is absolutely beautiful. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (the book!) has always been one of my favorite stories, precisely because it advocates, plainly and simply, the intrinsic moral good. I also love the relationships between characters in this book, and especially the one between Frodo and Sam. This clip has moved me more than I want to admit.

The Baby Jesus Weeps For The Souls Of The Unsaved

While mindlessly surfing through the internet I came across this:


The actual animation is here.

Something about this kid has creeped me out...I don't know. Something is wrong...throughout the animation I kept waiting for something horrible to happen, like the kid suddenly shoots laser or eats the screen. Spooky. I feel sorry for Christians, if THIS is what they have to worship and love with all their heart.

Weird Symbols

Has any of the bloggers noticed that weird thing Blogger is doing to the tile space whenever you try to post a new post? Anyway, I'm currently facing a dillemma: Nietzsche's stake or Adam Smith's chopping. The philosophy paper is due Friday afternoon, it weighs 30%, it's 25% done, and I need an A for this paper to get an A for this course; Economics Theory test is tomorrow morning, it weighs 25&, it's 0.00000001% prepared, and I don't need an A for this test to get an A for this course. I've tried using a decision tree to see what to do, and it turned out decision tree was a lousy tool for solving this problem, because it was simply too time consuming to map all the possible decisions and the related consequences. Well, I'm going to do what my ancestors have been doing for billions of years -- I will go with my instinct. Adam Smith's chopping.

Edit: Oh, it was the new Hindi character translation thing. Silly me.

Info Page Updates!

I've updated "About This Person" page and added the list of my favorite games! Hooooraahhh!