and you're sure

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/11/sunday-secrets_29.html

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.








HopeLine Fundraiser on twitter this Thursday. Tell
your friends & follow @postsecret for more details.



















-----Email Message-----

Dear Frank,

Sunday I was with my boyfriend (we are both young Christians). I grabbed his laptop to go to the postsecret website. As I typed in the postsecret address the computer filled in the url with a pornography website.

I used my boyfriend's laptop again to look up postsecret and the computer filled in the url with recently visited sites about pre and post nuptial agreements.

In my attempts to read other people's secrets, I discovered his.

















Order Your Copy Today

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/11/postsecret-events-incomplete.html

11-30-90
DeNaples Center
Scranton, PA
--Sold-Out--

12-4-09
Michigan Theater
Ann Arbor, MI
RSVP on Facebook | Buy Tickets Online

1-10-10
New World Stage
Manhattan, NY
RSVP on Facebook | Buy Tickets Online


Become a PostSecret "Fan" on Facebook
for PostSecret Event updates (dates & schools).

Tweaks and enhancements

1. In order to improve site security, we've temporarily suspended the ability to change passwords for old email addresses that haven't been used for over six months. For further information and support, please visit our customer care page.
2. We've launched a new mobile site with an enhanced UI at m.livejournal.com. View spotlights, post to your journal, read and post to friends pages, and more, no matter where you roam! Please let us know what you think, since this will eventually replace our existing mobile interface. You can update your mobile preferences on your account page.
3. We've upgraded from Beacon to Facebook Connect to improve dual posting. If you've already signed up for Facebook Beacon, you're good to go. If you wish to update your Facebook Connect setting, visit Account Privacy settings and scroll down to the option labeled: "Send information about my updates to Facebook." You can choose Always or Ask each time. Remember to save (on the bottom left corner of the page). To learn more, check out FAQ 249. While we're on the subject, if you happen to be visiting that side of town, please join our Facebook fan page for a touch of home away from home.
4. You'll now receive the Writer's Block Question of the Day in the body of email notifications. To sign up for Writer's Block notifications, visit writersblock and choose the Watch Community option. Next, update your Writer's Block notification settings by checking the box to the right of "Someone posts a new entry to writersblock."
5. Paid and permanent users can now view, add, and edit Notes of commenters. Notes will appear beside the username of comment posters (instead of stars) on S1-themed comment pages.

Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!

Photos of the week

We're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.

Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you!

Light is Truth

Fear grows in the dark of concealment

And dies when it is exposed to light

We’re only as sick as your secrets.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

True confessions time: I love hard SF. My ideal, in this arena, is the kind of story where each page contains either an equation or a paragraph of dense scientific explanation (usually in stilted dialog, spoken by the story's Resident Explanatory Genius).

So I was pleased to get a copy of Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time for free. It contains almost as much sciency verbiage as I want from my SF, and it's fun and entertaining. There are even female characters who get a lot of screen time - it may even be 50:50 male:female, although the book hasn't passed the Bechdel test anywhere yet. (I'm not quite finished.)

Over the years, I've become very used to the problems of hard SF. (Like, I am totally willing to celebrate Manifold: Time's amazing quantity of girl characters: two! Of course, neither of them understands the science at all, but I know better than to ask for miracles.) One of the big ones is that a lot of the people who write it - well, they understand the science. They understand the math. Actual people are harder.

Like, there's a scene in the book where the Resident Explanatory Genius goes on television to tell the world about the Carter catastrophe (in a highly condensed version, this is a statistical argument that predicts the probability of the end of the human race in the relatively near future), which the book uses in a modified form that says we, as a species, probably only have about 200 years left. The REG does not go for the simplified, sound-bite version I just gave you; he goes on for a while, explaining Why the Human Race Is (Probably) Doomed, in his usual sciency verbiage style. And the world goes into a panic and depression.

I read that and realized Baxter has no clue what people are actually like, or he'd know that the normal human response to a speech like that, on television, is not panic and depression; it's changing the channel. Very few people would listen long enough, or pay enough attention, to understand what the REG is saying. And even those who did wouldn't buy it. Statistics? That are predicated on the idea that there is nothing special about us? No one is going to believe it or even give a shit, frankly, except people who already know what the Carter catastrophe is.

But, fine, hard SF writers are allowed to write about slightly AU versions of our reality. I'm comfortable with that.

I was a little more impressed (horrified, whatever) with a very special piece of characterization. The main character is named Malenfant (yes, really), and late in the book (spoilers!), it is revealed that - wait. Let's do this as a poll.

Say that you discover that you have a treatable but not curable disease - you'll live a normal life, but you'll have to take medication regularly. This means you can't be an astronaut and will have to fall back on your plan B, which is being a maverick billionaire industrialist. (It's always good to have a safety career!)

Also, you are married. Your wife, Emma, doesn't want children, but nonetheless, this disease means you won't be able to have any.

You decide that the obvious way to handle this is not to tell her, and then have an affair, so that you can divorce Emma, so that you don't ruin her life, because you love her SO MUCH and this treatable illness makes you unworthy. Of course, she is intimately involved in your corporation, and indeed keeps it running, so you will still see her every day and she will still be closely involved in your life; you have explicitly told her that, sure, you're getting divorced, but you don't want her to quit. Decades go past with her wondering what the fuck happened and you maintaining your noble silence.

Poll #1489604 Manifold: Morons
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 454

What can be said about this?

Do you want to hear more about books from me? Including ones I actually like?

1986 Vice Lane, Birmingham, MI

I Drifted down the road, searching for my peace

Merchandised my soul a long time ago

Yeah, I sold it with ease

Thought I was flying high above my sorrows

Like an eagle over the sea

But when I woke up in a broken tomorrow

I saw I was standing on my knee’s

Yeah, standing on my knees

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/11/hopeline.html

-----Email Message-----
Subject: thank you

Frank,

This past Friday night I found myself in a black hole of depression and I didn't know how I was going to make it through the night. Not knowing where to turn and feeling like I couldn't stop. I remembered seeing the Hopeline phone number in the front of your book. I talked with someone there for 2 and a half hours and I truly feel that they saved my life.

Thank you for the book, thank Hopeline for being there, and thank the people that send in their postcards so that others know they are not alone with their secrets.


-Casie (with permission)

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/11/sunday-secrets_22.html

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.



-----Email Message-----

The real reason I do want to have kids is that if I do get divorced or my future husband dies, I won't be lonely and I can meet new people through them.










(Secret posted last week) The morning after you hit our 10-year old daughter, we all stood there and watched as a fan asked for your autograph.

















-----Email Message-----
I've been clean for years but can't listen to Lou Reed's Heroin because it makes me feel like I've relapsed.







See More Secrets. Follow PostSecret on Twitter.












-----Email Message-----

I actually enjoy sitting in the middle seat on an airplane because I'm so starved for any kind of touch/contact.












The new book is available from bookstores and online.

The new book is available from bookstores and online.

Dear People Out There,

I am hoping you can help me with something.

See, our beloved Philips plays-anything DVD player experienced serious trauma in the move. (Well, we all did.) Now it just sits there with its power light blinking red, and nothing we can do will make it open or play. We've given it time to heal, largely because I hate hate hate replacing things, but it hasn't gotten better, so - what is the current fannish DVD player? The one that plays the most formats, and so on? What do you folks have and love? (That can currently be purchased, I mean.)

Now, onto the recs. Once again, it's long stories. (Parenthood and breastfeeding have really changed the way I'm reading; since I only managed to read fan fiction on the Kindle, and I tend to Kindle mostly longer things, that's what I end up reading. Someday, presumably, there will be more variety here, but you'll have to take that up with the earthling.)

The One with Extra Vulcan Goodness. So Wise We Grow, by captanddeastar. Star Trek Reboot, Jim T. Kirk/Spock.

Okay, I will admit it. I am unabashed lover of epic kidfic. But my standards for kidfic went way, way up during pregnancy. (True fact: at one point, in around my eighth month, I snarled at the screen, "That is NOT how it happens, and that is NOT medically accurate, and also -" and then I realized I was criticizing the medical realism of MPREG. People who tell you pregnancy makes you crazy probably aren't thinking of this moment, but they should be.) And then they skyrocketed again after I was living my own version of kidfic, complete with earthling. So I now approach kidfic with joy and trepidation, because either it's going to make me happy all day long or it's going to make me write yet another lengthy mental post entitled Pregnancy and Childrearing: Actual Facts, Because You Seem Not to Have Any Even Though the Internet Is Totally Full of Them.

This one fell squarely into the "happy all day long" category. And in a rather unusual way, too. See, okay - most kidfic starts from one of two places: either a new baby, via MPreg or alien/divine/future/magical intervention, or a (gasp!) woman, whatever, or a kid still firmly in what I think of as the Era of Cuteness. This story starts out with a kid in the Era of Snottiness, and I just love that. (Partly this is because I have a nephew who has just embarked on the Era of Snottiness, and I have so much enjoyed seeing him discover sarcasm and obstructive literalism and eye-rolling and various gestures behind my sister's back. I imagine I will love this age much less when the earthling gets there, but for right now, it's comedy gold.)

And I also love (we're back to the story again) Jim and Spock, getting it backwards as usual. (First comes baby, then comes marriage, then comes love: I am pretty sure that is not how it usually goes, guys! But then, being captain of the whole fucking ship doesn't usually come at the start of one's career, either, so I am guessing they're used to inverting these things. They'd probably be all shocked if they actually did something like other people for once.) And I love how they fuck up, and also get things right, and how they get it all figured out in the end.

Most of all, I just really, really love seeing Jim Kirk dealing with TWO snotty Vulcans. I cannot think of anything better than that.

The One Where Ray Totally Calls Fraser on His Bullshit. More People Need to Do That! A Moment of Insight, by cesperanza. Due South, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski.

Did I really not recommend this before? That hardly seems possible, and yet LJ Archive insists that it is so. In which case, I really have to wonder what the hell was wrong with me. Because this story is so very marvelous, and I re-read it regularly, and yet somehow I failed to mention that fact to you. Maybe I assumed you all knew about it, but if so, I am sure I assumed wrong. (If I've learned one thing on the internet - besides "never click without first seeing where the link goes, especially if the link text is something like HA HA HA" - it's that there is always someone who hasn't seen it, someone staring at the screen thinking, but what's a LOLcat? Often that person is me. Although I do know what LOLcats are, thank god.)

I can't take the risk that there is someone out there who is looking for a good, long story, or a good dS story, or just a story involving hotel rooms in middle America (and if you think there isn't someone looking for that last one, watch a few storyfinders communities - there is always someone looking for a story involving, like, eye infections, or learning to stand on your head, or French-Canadian pastries, things like that.)

So. What we have here is:

1. Ray and Fraser. (A good way to start! Years of happiness started that way for me.)
   
2. Trapped in a hotel room. (I think we can all agree that this is a fundamentally excellent plot development in virtually all fandoms, and before you argue, consider: Buffy and Ethan Rayne, trapped in a hotel room! Hercules and Iolaus, trapped in a hotel room! Reboot Kirk and Methos, trapped in a hotel room!)
   
3. Engaged in sex and case-solving, and, really, what could be better? (Fan fiction has changed my definition of "awesome procedural crime story" to the point where I always find myself vaguely disappointed in published if the heroes just catch the bad guys, and don't actually fuck or flirt or have a moment of relationship-defining staring or whatever. This is funny because I love gen fan fiction and almost never have that problem there, but then, fan fiction writers actually know when they're writing slash, most of the time; pro writers often don't.)

Basically, this story is everything I love about dS.

The One Where We Learn About the Persistence of Pizza. In the Memory, I Mean. Forget Me Not, by maisierita. Stargate: Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay.

I love amnesia. I just - I really do. (When it happens to fictional people, I mean.) Someone on my friends list was talking about her incredible folly of starting a story with everyone with amnesia and lost in the dark, and I was like: that is an awesome idea. I would love to read that! What's wrong with starting out with everyone amnesiac and lost in the dark?

(Answer: hard to write. Apparently. Whatever.)

I'm not sure what I love more about amnesia - that you get to see everyone without their internal history (who I am, where I hurt, what I've learned) or that you get to see folks interacting without their interpersonal history (who you are, what we fight about, why I like you). Fortunately, in this story, I don't have to choose. Because, okay, Rodney and John may not be lost in the dark, but they definitely both have amnesia. And they're in an unfamiliar world. And not only do they stay that way a good long time, but John gets extra amnesia, which is, obviously, extra awesome. (Also just like him - always taking the largest share of the pie, as long as the pie is made of pain, suffering, time on his knees, or emotional maladjustment!)

I love watching them renegotiate their relationships when they're missing most of the pieces of the puzzle, and figure out what the hell is going on, and deal with the circumstances of their capture. And, equally, I love watching them manage the little stuff - like, they have to reinvent pizza and ice cream and coffee. I think we can all agree that would be a major priority for anyone stuck on an unfamiliar world. (I'm only surprised they didn't reinvent Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Seems like every American who goes to a distant land sends back pathetic pleas for suitcases full of Kraft. Even when they did not eat it at all in the US.)

Basically, this story takes two classic fan fiction tropes (Imprisonment! Amnesia!) and does them up right, in an intensely satisfying story that I re-read at least four times a year.

(Note for readers who happen to be best_beloved: Yes, maisierita also wrote that one really sad story. This one is not sad. Authors are allowed to have many facets. READ THIS. You will like it, I swear.)

The One That Will Cause Anyone Who Routinely Drives in Los Angeles to Spend a Lot of Time Imagining the Commute and Sigalerts on This Day. Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round, by Annie D., aka scaramouche. Die Hard 4 x Speed, John McClane/Matt Farrell.

No, I am not recommending this one just because I spend a suspiciously large part of my life singing this song. That is just a bonus. (Although I am kind of sad that there won't be a sequel, because that so obviously would be titled Row Row Row Your Boat.)

Here's the thing: I have never seen Die Hard 4, although I am fairly sure I can fill in many of the blanks. (John McClane is manly and kicks some bad guy ass, for example.) And I actually have seen Speed, but I realized, while reading this story, that I don't really remember it. What I remember is, like, the movie trailer version of it. I remember the central plot device - the bus thing, of course - and a few snippets of dialog and some of the characters. (I think my brain has even set this memory to stirring instrumental music, and prefaced it with a ratings screen.) And I very clearly remember thinking at one point, wow, this movie really needed to end about 20 minutes ago. But I don't actually remember, like, who the bad guy was, or, um, the plot - things like that.

I do not regret this at all, because I am just going to pretend, for the rest of my life, that both Speed and Die Hard 4 went exactly like this story. It has everything I want from an action movie - ass-kicking! Wise-cracking! Manliness! Injuries! Inexplicably well-equipped bad guys who, in reality, would just make several billion dollars looting hedge funds and then buy a tropical island, which would in any case be easier than their nefarious plans! Kissing!

But this story is better than most action movies I can remember, and certainly better than all the ones I can't.

Also, the kissing is between the two main dudes, and I don't think I'm going to be seeing that in a big-budget action movie any time soon. Thank you, Annie D, for giving me everything I want in an action movie. Without even requiring me to hire a babysitter.

Postcard winners!

We wish to extend our heartfelt gratitude for sending so much joy our way. Frank is still blushing with excitement over the love notes, proposals, propositions, and occasional intimate photos sent from his admirers around the world (China, Norway, Japan, and Poland just this week)! At his request, we blindfolded Justin, one of Frank's BFFs, spun him around in five dozen counterclockwise circles, and asked him to point to ten random postcards/envelopes pasted to the wall. After a brief trip to the bathroom, he chose the following lucky winners, to whom we will give a six-month paid account token (for paid, basic, and plus users) or, for our permanent account holders, a $15 voucher for the LiveJournal gift shop.

So, without further ado, the winners are:

1. seraphene
2. fotog
3. boykitten
4. seshat_6
5. anti_aol
6. lisalees
7. katrinkacat
8. mistyboston
9. _woody_lein
10. another_slender

Bugs, Tweaks, and Enhancements

1. We fixed a bug from the last release that was causing screened comments to become unscreened if they were edited
2. If you happen to be gaming around the corner, check us out on Facebook and be sure to spread the word!
3. We've added new vgifts to celebrate Thanksgiving! Check out our feathered friend, below!

Give more with charitable vgifts

In honor of national adoption month, we're offering a charitable vgift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that provides healthcare and adoption to orphans suffering from life-threatening diseases. LiveJournal will donate 100% of gross proceeds from the sale (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries vgifts in the Virtual Gift shop. We'll keep you posted on how much we raise!

Photos of the week

We're delighted to showcase yet more incredible photos from some of our brilliant LiveJournal photographers around the world. Keep posting (and tagging). And be sure to show some love by commenting on the awesome view at lj_photophile.

Check out this week's photos and more amazing user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. See you next week!

Could someone make me an icon that reads: "Every time you stop writing a fairy dies." And put a picture of a fairy or something sparkly on it? ^_^

Saw this phrase on a 2009 NaNo calender and loved it! Lol.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )