Making Light:  The miserable Hugo ::: March 25, 2004, 03:32 PM

Alex:

  Jane Austen Doe's whine was simultaneously fruity and bitter, not to
  mention immature.  I suspect that it became spoiled somewhere in the
  bottling process.

That's where these ranters usually fail--neglecting to put the cork in.

Meredith:

  So I'm good if I write the new as long as it is for something else's
  sake?  Like, say, the love of a good cat or to save the spotted
  subjunctive?

The Usher rant could have been poetic with a little more work.  For
instance, symmetry demands that there be an out for those who write
the old, say if it's not for the sake of predictability or nostalgia
or, oh anything.

Tom:

  Other Change of Hobbit's closing....

That's so damned depressing, even though I never got there.  I think
I've been sensitized by seeing Larry Smith's bag at Lunacon, with
the Somniorum Mercatores logo from Moonstone Bookcellars.

Jill Smith:

  When I read the title and the first sentence of this post, this
  flashed through my head:  "You don't mean a Hugo winner is now the
  latest to jump in and moaning about publishing?!"

On the way to that very idea, my eye chanced on the second word of
the second sentence, and I decided this was another of those high
culture moments in Making Light where we get to hear a fine French
auctorial whine of the nineteenth century.  Eventually I engaged
the reading muscles and was otherwise enlightened.  "Never mind."

Lisa:

  ...if everyone on the staff agreed to learn to give the cat an
  injection of insulin.

Everyone's hitting my maudlin buttons today.  I, too, learned to
inject from a cat, now ten years gone.

Josh:

  Perhaps we should invade large printing presses and B&N warehouse
  distributers and throw doc martins and berkenstocks into the
  machinery....

Or take a line from Cory Doctorow--invade the presses and
warehouses and do their job better (seventh section, "Bitchun
wars", and passim).  I've become a real Cory fan in the last week.

Tom again:

  The rant included swabbing out the piss that people leave in our
  entryway....

Another unfair advantage of the dotnets, except that it reminds me
of a National Lampoon parody of A Connecticut Yankee that used this
as the Achilles heel of the electronic future.  I wish I could
remember it better.  Something about our hero engaging in trial by
combat, and single-handedly shorting out the master mainframe using
the most convenient fluid.