Tag: Random acts of Ranting
Works in Progress

A grumpy, crabby kind of blog post

Yesterday… Well, yesterday I did not run away and join the circus, but it was probably one of those days where I would have if I had viable circus-type skills and access to a travelling circus to run away with. I did not turn into the Incredible Hulk and smash things in a frenzy of anger. I did not resign from my dayjob to take up a position that would be more useful to the world at large, such as hunting werewolves or wrangling wild unicorns or, you know, going into politics. But, oh,  I was sorely tempted. Especially by the werewolf thing, which, really, goes to show how much I disliked certain aspects of yesterday, because I’m actually quite fond of werewolves. # We actually had a full cohort at write-club last night, which is the first time all four write-clubbers have been in the same place since other people started joining the inimitable Angela Slatter and I on a regular

PeterMBall 09/03/2011
Big Thoughts

Actually, fuck it, I’m ranting

Every now and then publishers I respect a lot go and do something stupid, and this makes me a little sad. This weeks’ case-in-point comes courtesy of the writer’s guidelines for Ticonderoga’s latest anthology, which I read through and had a complete WTF kind of moment when I stumbled across this. A masculine tone will be favoured but not sought exclusively (i.e. avoid becoming bogged down with intricate descriptions and fancy window dressing in your world building; save your word count for a solid scene – or 2 or 3 – of conflict, action, aggression, etc). (see the addendum below) I mean, yeah, seriously, what the fuck? Setting aside the fact that anyone’s daft enough to phrase their preferences like this in an online world where x-fail has become part of the dialogue and there’s a new generation of readers (and writers) sensitive to gender issues, I actually found this kind of disappointing because it runs up against one of

PeterMBall 24/01/2011
Journal

Apathy versus Anger

Today I spent my free time at work engaging in what is quickly becoming my favorite procrastination activity: daydreaming about ways I can quit my job to write and making lists about the things I need to do in order to make that happen. On one hand this makes for a nice change – this time last last year I was unemployed and dreaming of ways to pay rent – but after three months in the new day job things have evolved to the point where it’s a hindrance rather than a help. You see, somewhere along the line I ceased being the office assistant and became the unofficial web-guy for the company. My day’s went from data-entry to content production and putting together a plan for the company to revise the website and engage with social media. I’m far from an expert on this kind of stuff – I got the job by virtue of being the sole person

PeterMBall 20/01/2011
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

They had me at “Horse Mounted Gatling Guns”, they lost me at “Megan Fox”

So I sat down and watched the Jonah Hex movie over Christmas. This was a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I really wanted to like this movie. I mean, it has a bounty hunter who can speak to the dead and horse-mounted gatling guns in the first ten minutes, and that kind of absurdity is the kind of wrongness that I’m willing to roll with. And for the first first half-hour or so, things were looking pretty good – it wasn’t a great movie, but it was zany and weird and it had undead fucking cowboys and that kind of shit is awesome. Then Megan Fox showed up. A few years ago I had a friend who worked off the theory that Kate Beckinsale was the kiss of death for a film. As soon as she appeared on screen you were pretty much doomed to a cinematic experience that sucked. At best you’d get a film that achieved a kind

PeterMBall 05/01/2011
Big Thoughts

This post contains swearing

So this is something of an addendumto yesterday’s post, and it’s written because every now and then I see people I really like get in trouble because they don’t yet grasp the realities of white male privilege until it’s too late. I had this conversation with a friend the last time this issue raised its head, but I don’t think I ever put it together as a complete post, so I figured I may as well have it handy. Be warned that I’m going to swear a lot. Be warned that you’re probably not going to like hearing it, especially because it flies in the face of the way we wish the internet could be. Call it the two-word rule you need to wrap your head around before you launch into a discussion of feminsim online as a white male. It goes a little something like this: Fuck civility. I say this as someone who’s a fan of civility, who

PeterMBall 21/10/2010
Big Thoughts

I would rage, but I no longer have the energy

I hate it when things I usually enjoy go and do something daft. This week that space has largely been taken up by the Apex Blog, in which one of the regular bloggers has trotted out the argument that feminists complaining about all-male TOC are arguing in favour of political correctness over quality. Which, yeah, way to be a few years behind the debate and all, dude. Thumbs fucking up. I planned on getting irate, but lets face it, I’ve been irate about this before (and Apex has already announced that there’s someone posting a response on their site). Instead, I’m just going reblog the response I had last time this shit came up: Gender and SF (Originally posted in February of 2009) There’s been a bunch of debates about Gender and SF of late, all of which seem to end up with someone defending themselves with a variation of “I filled all the spots on project X with men because

PeterMBall 20/10/2010
Journal

Withdrawal

Please let it be known that I’ve been good this week. I mean, there was no writing worth speaking of, but I made it through the various things required of me without blowing people up with my INVISIBLE MIND LASERS, even though parts of the week were frustrating enough that I only endured the passage of time by pretending I truly did have said mind lasers and slipped into a mental debate about the ethics of using them to eliminate pesky annoyances. The next time I’m locked in the room with disciples of positive thinking for three days, there will be no internal debate. I’m just going to channel my inner Ming the Merciless and destroy the goddamn world. This may be an overreaction, but I’m like that, really. Hyperbole and overreaction are my default state, and the next time I won’t be polite when I point out that it takes 21 days to form a habit shit is fucking

PeterMBall 24/09/2010
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

What I’m Watching: Xena, Warrior Princess

So I’ve been watching the first seasons of Xena for the last couple of days. Largely I blame Tansy Rayner Roberts for this, since I borrowed the DVDs from a friend after reading the Xena Rewatch Notes on her blog. I can recommend going and checking those out, should you want to follow an in-depth discussion of the first season, for although I’m enjoying the show I’m primarily going to note the three things that are really, really bugging me. Surprisingly, it’s not the casual relationship to history – I’m totally down with the mix-and-match approach to myth and historical reference points. It’s not the dodgy CGI monsters either (although I’m struggling to figure out where the hell the bat-winged, skeletal dryads came from in one of the early Season 2 DVDs). It’s not even Gabrielle, who is irritating for the first half of the season *with a damn purpose*. It’s not even the complete disregard of the laws of physics

PeterMBall 20/09/2010
Journal

12 Days ’til Worldcon

Or as we in Australia like to call it – the day we head out and vote. I did my civic duty a few hours back, so now I’m waiting things it in tentative fear about the possible result. Elections are always a time of fear for me. I’m a fairly moderate lefty whose spent most of my adult life enduring the seemingly endless reign of the Howard Years when the country routinely decided they preferred a very different ideology at work running the country. And I’ll be honest here – in most of those years I could at least respect the country’s choice on some level. One of the things that always struck about Howard was that he was the kind of idealist that people seem to think of as the exclusive domain of the left; he just idealised a very conservative viewpoint. Even when I railed against him for being an evil fucking bastard, there was at least the

PeterMBall 21/08/2010
Journal

A Post in Four Parts

1) There’s is nothing quite so pleasant as heading out to one of your favorite bookstores on a rainy night and having someone read to you, but it’s doubly awesome when the topic du-jour is the Art of the Reading. The irony is that this totally wasn’t my idea – my sister e-mailed a few days back and asked if I’d be interested, and I was all “sick now, whatever, yeah? Put me down as a yes and leave me alone.” And so I was put down for a yes and Tuesday night rolled around and after I remembered I needed to be somewhere at somewhen there was much confused flailing and wondering what the hell I’d gotten into and then…then…then there was a pleasant night of awesomeness. And Nando’s chicken for afters, ’cause nothing says “pleasant night of literary discussion” like following things up with fast food. 2) I’m finally starting to find my routine again after nearly two

PeterMBall 11/08/2010
Journal

People Must Die For This

Over the weekend I spotted a billboard that delivered some very bad news: Hey, Hey It’s Saturday is coming back. Online research reveals they’ve been given a run of twenty episode based on the strength of last year’s revival shows, and that they’ll be aired on Wednesday nights in an act of true cognitive dissonance. Darryl Summers is still going to be at the helm, although there’s no news as to which female co-host he’s planning on denigrating this time around. I’ve only got three words in response to this: What. The. Fuck? I’m not entirely sure there’s a good way to explain the lurking evil of Hey, Hey It’s Saturday to non-Australians, but suffice to say that it’s got a fine history of being hosted by a malignant, misogynist gnome who simply refuses to die no matter how many fucking gaffs he makes over the course of his career. It’s a show that routinely built its humor out of the

PeterMBall 29/03/2010
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

What *is* the appeal of Avatar?

Possibly a dangerous question to ask, given that I am the energizer bunny of Avatar-hate, but the movie came up at one of the regular games last week and everyone else at the table seemed to like the film (except the one person yet to see it, who isn’t likely too) and I realised that where I see stunted story that doesn’t do anything after the set-up* a bunch of other folks are seeing unmitigated awesome. And I continue to not get it, just as I never got the appeal of the Transformers film and the Matrix and a bunch of other things, and while I’m normally okay with that given that everyone reads a film differently it’s starting to bug me a little this time around. I find myself wondering whether the expectations of films have shifted so far into the boundary of spectacle that story ceases to be important, or if there’s been some kind of fundamental shift

PeterMBall 18/01/2010

Book Information?

Please send us an email at support@laautor.tld

Need Help?

Please call us at +6221.1000.1212

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

About Laautor
Support
Newsletter

Signup our newsletter to get update information, promotions and insight.

Copyright © 2021 Laautor, All rights reserved. Powered by MoxCreative.
Facebook Twitter Youtube