Enemy of Entropy

If you’re a gamer, you’ve probably heard the hoorah by now. Michael Goldfarb, a blogger on McCain’s official campaign site added a lame anti-gamer slur to his rinse-and-repeat “but he was a POW!” bullshit. Sam (and many others) responded to the twit (who keeps comments disabled on his blog–afraid of a little commentary, Goldfarb?). This isn’t the first time McCain’s people have attacked their opponents with comments about D&D, either, as some of the folks on Boing Boing have pointed out.

Goldfarb was responding to a post on the Daily Kos that called McCain on his plagiarism during a media event this weekend. The DK blogger has a nice response.

Goldfarb has supposedly apologized, but oddly enough, his “apology” isn’t posted on his blog, or anywhere else on McCain’s site as far as I can tell. If he isn’t man enough to make the apology in the same venue in which he posted the attack, that says a lot about him and the entire McCain campaign.¹

Whoops! What have I done to myself?

I was frustrated that there were a fair number of books on my “shelves” at Good Reads that had no associated cover image. I collected all but, I think, two of the cover images for the books I had listed in Now Reading, but couldn’t find a way to make use of them at GR. I also found a lot of inconsistencies in the way titles were represented, and some misspelled author’s names.

Then I noticed a link about applying to be a librarian. They’re the people who can edit author and book information. Cool! I applied, figuring they’d tell me I haven’t been active long enough or something, but noting that this is one endeavor in which OCD is an asset.

Oddly enough, they approved me.

This may not be a power I should have. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of my awake time today normalizing data their data. And enjoying it.

That was not painless at all. The import feature is tetchy, at best. I had to go through the entire list of 1300+ books and fix their “bookshelf” assignments, and add some that just didn’t import at all. I had over 1400 books in Now Reading, and I haven’t quite figured out why there are fewer books in Good Reads. Oh well. It’s pretty much done!

The dates I’d read books, my ratings, and my reviews did NOT transfer to Good Reads, which is highly annoying.

I was able to go through and update a bunch of books that I’ve read since NR stopped working, and use the to-read category to request books from the library. As a result, there are 33 books awaiting pickup now, and another 61 pending (mostly books that are really new or not yet available). That doesn’t include the inter-library loan items I requested.¹

Sam and I had bonus gaming time tonight. He’s storing up brownie points before Dragon*Con. Katie, unfortunately, couldn’t sleep last night, then slept all day until about 11:30. Now she’s re-hydrating and getting some food now. I hope she can go back to sleep. She’s definitely having a fibro flare.

Well, I think I’m about done waiting for an update of Now Reading. I’m about 1/3 of the way through fixing the 158 broken links on this site caused by the plugin not working with the latest versions of WordPress, and I found a plugin that exports the books entered into NR to a .csv file for import to another site. Since most of my friends seem to be using Good Reads, I suppose that’s where I’ll go.

I’m more and more tempted to write some fiction again. It’s been years since I did that. I’m good with characters and environment, but not so good with plot. I don’t like to write about negative things, or nasty people, which is rather problematic when you need to have conflict.

I know part of it is reading books and thinking, “Damn, I could do better than that.” But to be realistic, anybody who has finished a book is doing better than I actually have done.

One thing that’s really getting to me is the number of anti-fat statements that get thrown in to so many stories. They have nothing to do with the story–they just happen because of the authors’ prejudice. Describing a minor character as fat is a cheap shortcut, because most readers will assume the person is lazy, sloppy, and not terribly intelligent (or a hyperfocused geek with no social skills if he is smart).

I know that starting out with a “message” is a crappy way to write fiction, though. Messages are better expressed in essays, not stories.

Still, I have this itch. Bah.