alg | (no subject)

I think RWA is (generally speaking) a great organization. I think a lot of times it's extremely helpful. I think RWA has done much to help romance become a genre that's taken seriously. I think RWA refuses to be shunted aside by people who say, "Oh, it's just women." I think that is awesome.

However. The number one thing I see from RWA members that makes me cringe is this "Pro" thing. Really. Stop it. I don't care that you have a pro pin. It doesn't actually make you a professional at all. In fact, I sort of mentally groan and roll my eyes and think to myself, "Great, yet another person who has no idea what she's doing."

It's not your fault -- RWA encourages you to think this is important. That's fine. But here's a reality check: it doesn't matter. If you're sending me a proposal, I care about your words a lot, and your publishing history/contacts a little bit, and your RWA status not at all.

(If you don't know what I am talking about, here's a quick definition: RWA offers something called a "Pro pin" to its members who have finished and submitted a manuscript. Since 999 times out of 1,000 (999,999 times out of 1,000,000?) a first-time submission won't get published, you can prove that you are a "pro" by showing them your rejection letter. Seriously. I have run into more than one person who writes and submits a crappy ms. just for a pro pin, and more than one person who thinks that a pro pin means something to editors. It does not. Obviously.)

La la la. Moving on. Yesterday when I woke up, Vincent was dragging his back legs. In fact, I woke up because he was making weird noise. It was like he didn't have the use of his hips, but he wouldn't let me look at his legs. So I called my vet and left a message and called in sick to work. I kept calling my vet. To make a long story short, she couldn't see me, so I went with both cats to the ghetto vet near the Williamsburg Bridge. Vincent was fine -- by the time we got there, he was totally okay. But it turns out that Shiksa's got conjunctivitis!

I felt kind of hysterical and ridiculous -- yet at the same time absolutely vindicated because something was wrong.

Then I went to the office, because I am a compulsive workaholic, and, before going out for supper with some of my friends, I stopped in at a B&N near my office. I was kind of appalled to see that romance only had two bookshelves, whereas mystery had five, but whatever. I picked up six or seven books, and read one of them while drinking a mocha -- The Admiral's Bride by Suzanne Brockmann. She's one of my favorite writers, and this is a reprint (originally published in 1999), and I loved it. And when I was finished, I realized that I shouldn't have done that. I should have saved her for last.

Because the other five books or however many I had? Were crap. I flipped through them on the train on my way home. The most egregious errors were ones the copyeditor really should have caught (like the heroine who first graduated in 1996 and then in 1998, and either way, there was no way that she was a successful sociology professor!). I hated so many of the characters. There were a lot of clumsy beginnings -- dossiers instead of character development, etc. Totally boring stuff that actually kind of upset me. Why so lazy, writers?

Not to even mention that 99% of the time, when there's a dossier to introduce characters, they're always accurate. I hate that. I think it would be much more interesting to do something like what

cesperanza did in her story MVP and have the dossier actually be inaccurate (or not entirely accurate, anyway). Come on, shake things up.

Jeez.

I don't mean to sound so vehement, but.... blah. I had high hopes. I always do. I just hate everything! I can see why other people would enjoy some of it (sometimes I can, anyway), but I just... Hm. Like my userinfo used to say, I am interested exclusively in things that are interesting.

Things I have tried and failed at in the last few days: to set up a "real" blog using movable type (that shit is hard!), Trackbacks, PB Wiki (

scratchyfishie and

2muchexposition both have one, but I can't figure out what to use it for!), the Xvid codec, the DivX codec, and to teach myself to compress video files without losing too much quality.

I have, however, suceeded at eating a lot of burritos, listening to a lot of Kane, watching a lot of Supernatural and Criminal Minds and Grey's Anatomy and The Evidence, and planning out what I am going to do with my life, which includes opening a roadside truckstop diner with my friends where we will serve pie.

In conclusion, Christian Kane is hot. There's not much more I can say about that.