It’s been awhile

Hello blog world!

So it’s been a long time since I have written anything. But I have a good reason. I got a job. A real job. A publishing job. Woo. I’m now an editorial assistant a children’s book publishing house.

Moving on, since the end of October a new president has been elected and sworn in (Woo to Obama!), the holiday season came and went, wordpress went and changed everything and all of my favorite shows are back on television… so that means my life pretty much consists of spending my day reading middle-grade teen drama books and then I come home and hulu Battlestar Galactica, Bones, 24, Heroes (SUCKS) and The Office. Oh yeah and LOST is back.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOST: Thank goodness there is so much Benjamin Linus screen time. He is my favorite character in all of television history. I am super stoked to see how the Oceanic Six make it back to that crazy island. Also, Daniel Faraday is stepping up his game and just might bump Ben Linus from the top of my favorite characters list. Dude is just so goofy. I’m loving the island being lost in time, nervous about a potentially evil Sun, and want hope that we get to see Walt in the near future.

BSG: WHAT. THE. FRAK. The first episode back blew my mind. Ellen is the fifth? Dualla offed herself and who the hell knows what is going on with Starbuck? But Friday’s episode has made me nervous about what is to come. Obviously the writers are tying up loose ends, but ret-conning Callie and Chief’s baby to really be Hot Dog’s baby is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I don’t remember ever seeing Callie and Hot Dog interact. But whatever, Hot Dog is cool enough to have an action figure (LAME), so I guess the writers figured they could use him to write themselves out of the hole they dug when they drew Chief’s name out of a hat and made him a cylon. End rant.

So blog world, my goal is to return to blogging about more important things than tv… but we’ll see if that actually happens. Who knows, maybe I’ll review a book or something. NY Comic-Con is in two weeks, so that will give me plenty to talk about.

Speaking of books, I finished The Living Dead (zombie anthology) and loved it. I moved onto to another one of John Joseph Adams’ other anthologies Wastelands and have been spending my subway rides reading about post-apocalyptic worlds. Good stuff. Check it out.

Break time!

Aside from my very short lived telemarketing job a year and a half ago, I have never really held a job with a “break room” until now. For the most part, I take my lunches out of the building, usually at Cosi for the free Wi-Fi, but Sunday shifts leave me with a half-hour lunch instead of an hour, so I tend to eat in the break room. And because I am a freak about bringing a lunch (deli meat that has been out of the fridge for more than 15 minutes freaks me out) I resort to being fed by the vending machines… and vending machine remind me of my lunches in middle/high school. So every Sunday I am left in this weird time-warp for thirty minutes because I feel like a grown-up for holding a job where I can actually eat in a break room and at the same time feel like I’m twelve again because I am making the decision between Nacho Cheese Doritos or Bugles.

Today’s Zombie Story of the Day is Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman. This story follows a man who takes on the identity of an anthropologist who studied on the Haitian Coffee Girls (zombies). I dug it because it managed to creep me out, while exploring the world of academic conferences… and any story that has an anthropologist gets me excited… because I am a huge nerd. I only have 8 stories left to read in The Living Dead and I will be sad when it is over. But I think I will move on to another one of John Joseph Adams’ anthologies, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. Short stories make me giddy.

I am a television zombie.

Today was my day off, so I decided to catch up on my television shows on the most wonderful website ever… HULU.

I started with last night’s episode of THE OFFICE, because I am FINALLY caught up. I love Michael and Holly. Jim and Pam are making me nervous and I really adored the Dwight/Phyllis plot. Then I moved onto this week’s episode of HEROES. I still have a lot of issues with the show… but I keep coming back. I really need to stop watching it. I ended my hulu-binge by watching FRINGE. Now this show, I LIKE. The cold opens always manage to gross me out while keeping me interested in seeing what the trio will have to deal with each week. John Noble’s Walter is fast becoming one of my favorite characters and I am digging the slow build of the conspiracy of “The Pattern”. Typical JJ. OH yeah! And how about that Michael Cerveris as the Observer. Yay Broadway actors!

In other news, I am still loving zombies. THE LIVING DEAD has been one of the most enjoyable short story anthologies I’ve read. There is a nice balance between gory, zombie goodness and heartbreaking, moving storytelling. One of my favorites thus far, was Clive Barker’s Sex, Death, and Starshine. It not only had many undead characters, it explored the state of the theatre world today by chronicling a production of Twelfth Night with a soap opera star as Viola. Zombie actors, anyone? I would love it if Rogers and Hammerstein could come back to life and give the musical theatre composers of today a lesson in quality. But that’s just me. Back to zombies… this anthology is full of though provoking stories and I can’t wait to finish it.

OOH! Maybe FRINGE can do a ZOMBIE episode. I would like that.

Blogging makes the world go around…

Hello blogosphere! I spent most of my day reading blogs. I’ve mentioned it in the past, but tor.com is great. Link to it from the blogroll.

In my recent blog reading I happened upon a brilliant piece John Joseph Adams wrote recently called Beyond the Guidelines: 25 Ways You Might Be Annoying Editors Without Even Knowing It. After having been an intern for a year and a half, slush is something that I know well and many of my personal gripes are listed on JJA’s list. He begins with my biggest gripe of all. “The Impenetrable Envelope”. When I was an intern at Tor and I pulled a duct-tape covered submission down from the wall, I was inclined to reject it on principle alone. Of course I still read the submission and most likely rejected it anyway, but the tape was always on my mind. So to any writers out there submitting their work to anyone, agents, magazines, publishers, PLEASE give this article a read.

In other blogosphere news, David Barr Kirtley mentioned my blog post on The Living Dead in his blog about the New York Review of Science Fiction’s reading of The Living Dead. Yay for blogging.

Finally, a buddy of mine just started up a quirky blog called Reasons Why I Hate Girls that is really quite funny and worth a look.

ENJOY!

OK… now I seriously have to start job hunting.

Ender’s Game Comic!

I had a bit of a rough week, but it was all made better when I got my copy of Issue #1 Ender’s Game: Battle School.

I have blogged numerous times about my love of Ender Wiggin. He is my favorite character in literature, both when he is a child and when he is an older man. Very different people and I love them both. I have been anxiously awaiting the comic adaptation of Ender’s Game since I first found out about it. This issue is really an introduction to the characters. It ends with Graff and Ender preparing to go to Battle School. I can’t wait to see the Battle Room. I think comic Ender is really cute, Peter is scary and Valentine is her perfect self. Finally getting the visuals to go along with the story is very exciting for me. I’m still on the fence about an Ender movie, but I am all for the comic-book.

Go out and buy it. See what the fuss is all about.

“The enemy’s gate is down!”

Peter Petrelli is a silly name

Ok, I just finished watching this week’s episode on Hulu (The most beautiful and time-consuming website ever) and I have to say I am really starting to get annoyed with the show. The amount of time-travel used is excessive and just shows that there will never be a real end to the show. It will never end if Peter or Hiro keep jumping all over time trying to save the world from one disaster after another. Every time they save the world, they realize they have to save it all over again. Also, the time-travel manages to ret-con episodes worth of character arcs and plot lines. I can’t keep it all straight. And what the heck is up with Hiro not just teleporting himself and Ando out of the cell? I’m sure “the company” has ways off stopping powers in the cells, but I would have appreciated a shot of Hiro at least making the attempt. I did like good guy Sylar. Too bad he blew up. Who the heck was that boy’s mom? What in the world made Claire die her hair black and be all angry all the time? Ya see, too many questions that I doubt will ever properly be answered because in three weeks, the future I just invested several hours of my time in WON’T MATTER ANYWAY.

But the truth is… I will continue to watch this show because I need answers. Oh yeah, and Parkman is following a turtle. Awesome.

Zombies make Jordache happy!

OK Blog World. It’s been awhile. So how about quick update on the life of the Jordache and then I will ramble on about what ever I feel like.

Jordache’s World: I’m working at Barefoot Books, a children’s bookstore that is inside FAO Schwartz. I’m living every 8 year old kid’s dream of working in a massive toy store. I get to do storytime and read for lots of really cute 0-3 year olds. I enjoy myself enough. The customers are always interesting and the books published by Barefoot are really great. When I end up having kids (in the far off future), I plan on stocking their little baby bookshelves with Barefoot published books.

In other news, I worked as an agent in training for about a month at a NYC literary agency. I’m sad to say that things did not work out. My first attempt at signing a client failed when she used my offer as leverage to get a better agent. Combined with that fiasco and my lack of a desire to read slush for free anymore, the agency and I parted ways. But I learned a lot, read a large amount of YA and if anything, it solidified my desire to work in publishing. So, onward and upward, little Jordache!

OK, enough Jordache life story excerpts… onto the good stuff.

The Living Dead: This past week, Matt and I went to the New York Review of Science Fiction’s reading from The Living Dead, a zombie anthology. I have a thing for short stories, especially when they come in the form of sci-fi or horror, so I was really giddy the whole time. I was also one of five women who attended the reading, which is so not what I am used to. The publishing world has an overwhelming amount of women working in it. When I was at Tor, I was surrounded by women, so I guess I assumed I would be surrounded by women at the reading. ANYWAY, the anthology was edited by John Joseph Adams, Assistant Editor at S&SF and two stories were read. The first was called “The Skull-Faced Boy” by David Barr Kirtley. The story follows a young sentient zombie during a zombie invasion and what happens to him when he gets in contact with his still human family. I really enjoyed the story and was moved by it. I wasn’t expecting to be moved by zombie stories…I expected a lot of gore. It says a lot about the quality of the stories in this collection. The other story was called “How The Day Runs Down” by John Langan. He read an excerpt from the story that was pretty much “Our Town” meets zombies. The piece he read was a monologue of the character Mary Phillips, a mother who talks about life after a zombie invasion. Again, I was moved and this story actually managed to really freak me out with some gross out moments.

In conclusion, buy the book. I did. I also forced myself to actually talk to people at this reading and had a nice conversation with David Barr Kirtley and was introduced to John Joseph Adams as an aspiring SF editor. Overall, it was a very satisfying evening.

Fandom

When I was doing my first anthropology research a couple of years ago, I decided to focus on fandom, so I spent two semesters researching fan groups. The first was fans of LOST and the second was the hard-core Broadway fans who stage door after the shows to meet the actors. For awhile, I joked about how I could just jump from one crazy fan group to another and publish a book about fandom using multiple case studies.

In the past 24 hours I have been doing some reading about two of the most rabid fan groups out there right now. The Potter Heads and the Twilight fans (who I am sure have a nifty nickname too). Both fan groups have been terribly offended by the decisions of the creators recently. The release of the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was moved back from a November release to a July release. The fans are very angry.

THIS Wall Street Journal article details the fan outrage at Warner Bros. President Alan Horn. One angry e-mail included the phrase, “I hope you choke on your own saliva.”

Yes, it is upsetting for Harry Potter fans (myself included) that the film’s release date has been pushed back and I do see how the idea that the date was pushed back in order to have bigger box office numbers in the summer can be frustrating. It’s not like the movie don’t already have huge box office numbers anyway, but ya know what? I trust the studio. I would rather have the film come out later and be a stronger film instead of a film just cranked out for the fans. But I do get why the fans are so upset.

The Twilight fans, on the other hand, are insane. Twilight author, Stephanie Meyer, announced that she would not continue writing Midnight Sun, a companion novel to the series after an early, incomplete draft was posted online. The fact that a breach like that even occurred is horrifying to me and I am sure some intern has been fired for those shenanagins. So imagine, my shock when I read this EW article about the situation and decided to read some of the fan comments. Many of the comments were attacks on Meyer for not continuing work on the series and that it is her job to deliver the book to her fans. As someone who works in the publishing industry, I am aware of the amount of work authors put into their books and how violated one can feel if a piece of their work is produced without their knowledge or permission. The fans seem to care little about the terrible act that Meyer endured and simply expect to have their product delivered because it is their right.

Now I am all for fandom and fans voicing their opinions, but these two recent examples show how out of hand and out of focus the fans can get. Where are the days of protesting a tv shows cancellation by sending bottles of Tabasco sauce or nuts to the network? Fans used to join together in support of their shared love, now many fans feel a sense of entitlement to the work of their heroes and favorite authors/movies.

I am a rabid fan of many tv shows and book series and although there have been times when I have been frustrated with the creators, I never criticized them the way that these fans are attacking the very people who create the product they are clambering for. I was at midnight releases of the last four Harry Potter novels and the past two films in the series and you can bet that when Ender in Exile is published, I will have my nice hardcover copy. I get fandom. I watch Lost religiously and spent a week this summer at Comic-Con.

Why can’t these fans be grateful for what they have and support the decisions of the creators?

I wonder if Sarah Palin ever “regifted”…

So how about that Sarah Palin?

I’m sure you’ve all seen Daily Kos blog or at least heard about it. For some reason, the link I had no longer works… In summary, the blog post puts forth a lot of evidence that Sarah Palin’s youngest child, Trig, is actually the son of her daughter, Bristol. The blog shows photos of Palin throughout her pregnancy and she never really appears to be pregnant and there is the tidbit of information that mentioned that Bristol was out of school for 8 months with a severe case of mono. Whether or not the allegations are true, I am still very bothered by a large amount of the information that has come out about Palin’s pregnancy. How does taking an 8-hour flight while in labor from Texas to Alaska (with a layover in Seattle) and then driving to her home-town hospital instead of the closest to the airport seem logical to anyone? Someone with that amount of disregard for the safety of herself and her child has no business being a heartbeat away from the presidency.

So Bristol is pregnant now at 17. Now I take issue with this not because I am uncomfortable with teen pregnancy or because I think that the girl made bad choices. My issue is that Sarah Palin supports abstinence only sex education. I am very opposed to a curriculum where teenagers aren’t given all of the information possible when it comes to sex. I went to a high school that had a day care ONLY for children of students. Teachers could not use it. I know about teen pregnancy and I’ll say that for most of my time in public secondary schools, I was in sex education courses that pushed abstinence but still gave the proper information about birth control and safe sex. That is until my senior year.

Halfway through my senior year, the senior class had to attend an assembly on Abstinence. Keep in mind, my senior class president had her child when she was 13. We listened for an hour as a man talked to us about how virginity was a gift and was only to be unwrapped on our wedding night. He had gift wrapped boxes as props and everything. Brilliant. We all sat there and wondered why on earth we had to sit through the assembly. When the time for questions came, someone asked him about how to deal with things if they had already “unwrapped their gift.” He response? “You can wrap your gift up again and regift it on your wedding night.” WHAT?! Instead of taking the chance to discuss safe sex with a group of high schoolers, the man told us we should all just rewrap our gifts.

Abstinence only education didn’t work for Bristol Palin. Perhaps if she had been taught about birth control and condom usage, John McCain wouldn’t be banging his head up against a wall.

Oh yeah, but the REAL moral of the story is that Bristol didn’t get one of those abortions. That is all that the right-wing conservatives think about. Sigh.

In other completely unrelated news, I found a very funny article today that any fan of Battlestar Galactica will appreciate. Apparently the word “frak” has become a mainstream word. It’s a goofy article that is worth a read. CHECK IT OUT

Egyptian Endings

OK! So, about a year ago Matt and I took a trip down to Philly to see the King Tut exhibit. I was VERY excited because all of the ads implied that not only were King Tut’s treasures at the exhibit, but King Tut himself. I’m serious. The ads said “TUT has come to Philly.”

Tut was not there. Where was he? In his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. DUH.

Me outside of Tut's tomb!

So I was able to go into Tut’s tomb and see his mummy. Pics weren’t allowed, but I promise you, I was very happy. Yet another box checked off on my bucket list. One other thing to add about our Valley of the Kings tour is that our tour guide, Abdullah, pulled the three of us aside after he let the tour group go off for free time to explore the tombs. He told us about a painting on the ceiling on one of the tombs. He said to look in the lower left corner and there we would find our proof of aliens. We made for the tomb and stood staring at a ceiling for five minutes, but we found our aliens. Again, we couldn’t take pictures, but I am more convinced that ever.

After our trip to Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Hatshepsut (Hot Chicken Soup as our Cairo guide called her) we went back to the ship and just relaxed.

Tequila Sunrise by the pool.

The next day we left the ship and went to Karnak and Luxor temples. They are huge! Then we hopped another sleeper train for Cairo. We were woken up at 5am for breakfast and left the train at 6am and got into our van for a three hour drive to Alexandria. I was really tired. We went to some catacombs, the Roman Amphitheater, and the new Library of Alexandria. HUGE library.

Made it back to Cairo at night, had a nice final dinner and prepared to leave the next day. Matt and I had a day layover in London… so we went to the London Eye. Look how happy we look!

The tourist trap that made me miss my flight.

And then I missed my flight home. I hate Heathrow. So I spent an extra night in London, woke up mad early to make a flight to Amsterdam to connect to Newark. It was pretty stressful, but I got home.

SO I’M BACK IN THE STATES! Not much has really happened other than getting our apartment in Astoria. I’ve had some job interviews and a tentative job offer, but I’m waiting a few days before making any decisions. But I might actually have a job in the publishing world. Woo.

Now I can get back to blogging about what is going on NOW!