michelel72

So, tell me true, flist: Has alright (for all right or okay) actually crossed the critical-mass boundary from misspelling to acceptable neologism? I've suddenly been seeing it everywhere. I always correct it when I beta, but should I just give up and (grudgingly) let it pass? (Or, more likely, take my usual route of inserting a long-winded and pedantic usage note in brackets and leaving the choice up to the writer?)

I try to be accepting of falsely derived terms and variant forms if they serve a distinct purpose. I just don't see any use to introducing alright for all right, though; are there really that many contexts in which readers might confuse the okay interpretation with the each member correct interpretation? Or am I just being too prescriptivist on this one?

I'd usually see what the interwebs think, but the clearest write-ups I can find, although they agree alright is not (yet) standard, are over two years old. That's practically a generation in internet years.

Little Cindy descends the stairs, rubbing her eyes. It's Christmas morning! And there, underneath the tree ...

"A puppy!" or "A kitten!" An adorable little pet, complete with a bow around the neck. Cindy is delighted for an entire hour.

Two weeks later, no one's happy. The puppy chews, the kitten scratches. Neither reacts well to being squeezed too hard; sometimes one will nip. No one wants to bother spending time on the play the kitten needs or taking the dog on required walks. Little baby Jimmy is possibly allergic, and Dad kind of hates that damn animal, and Mom is annoyed that what she hoped would be a lap pet really isn't. The adults resent how much money the damn thing costs, and that's even considering that they would never spend a dime on medical care because it's "just an animal".

Six months later the pet is abandoned in a box in a swamp in the country, one day away from being a coyote's breakfast. Or wandering the streets, pregnant. Or run over by a car. Or taken to the vet to be "put to sleep" because it's just too expensive and inconvenient, so might as well kill it for those sins, but only by proxy and with euphemisms.

Don't do this. Don't be that person. I like to think anyone who would read my journal already knows better, but a reminder is worthwhile. Companion animals shouldn't be given as gifts, and they should never be a surprise. Dogs and cats in particular have personalities — some are terrified of adult men, some are lap pets, some bounce off the walls, some need to be the only pet, some have siblings they shouldn't be separated from, some get bored in five seconds and need both companionship and active play, some are great with kids and some terrible, on and on and on.

If you want a pet, approach adoption as the project it is. Meet the prospects, with the whole family. Know what you're looking for. Find out what you're in for. See if there's any chance the animal you're considering can spend a few days in your home as a trial. Recognize that you're adding a developed (or developing) personality to your family, as a lifelong commitment.

And be prepared to spend money. Consumerist reminds us:

According to the ASPCA, a cat costs $1,035 over the first year of ownership and $670 thereafter, while a large dog generates $1,843 in bills the first year and another $875 each subsequent year. The association also warns against the idea of surprising someone with a pet, as these often end up in shelters because the recipients either weren't prepared for pet ownership or are not pleased with your choice of pet.

If any of that sounds too daunting, or if you're at all unsure, buy a video game or a book or a movie instead.

I volunteer at a cat shelter. Trust me, there are more than enough discarded pets to have the place overflowing. (That includes the three beautiful, playful, friendly, precious kittens who were dumped at that aforementioned swamp. I hate people sometimes. Luckily they were discovered before they died — yes, we do have coyotes and foxes, as well as large and vicious racoons many times the size of these kittens.) Some of those cases are unavoidable, such as cases in which the owner died or the family lost their housing and just couldn't find other accomodations that allowed pets. Some are questionable. And some are inexcusable. Don't contribute to this. Please.

(And don't even get me started on Easter chicks and bunnies.)

I don't have enough time in the day. I know I'm not unique in that, at all, but it's still frustrating. I adore my job, but it is ludicrously intense, and I have very little time or energy left for reading and writing.

So I've just volunteered away something like eight hours a week. What was I thinking?

But ... Nine Lives of Norton seems to be well-run and well-organized (certainly better than my city's cat efforts), and they need volunteers for cleaning and feeding and socialization. And I have to do something to counter the criminally negligent and abusive wastes of oxygen out there.

So. Yay volunteerism. (And miserable, painful, lonely death to anyone who would mistreat a companion animal.)

Dear writers of modern, western-world police procedurals:

No, it doesn't sound like the victim is pleading for mercy. It doesn't sound like the victim is talking about their assailant's lack of (or possession of) mercy. It sincerely doesn't.

It sounds like the victim is talking about or to someone named Mercy, or talking about or to someone named Marcy, or talking about Mercy General, or spotting a Mercedes Benz, or hell, deliriously singing "Mercy Street" ... but when you have your detective musing that "It sounds like he's begging for mercy," for example, we in the audience simply roll our eyes, because we all know that's completely wrong and we know we'll be wasting entirely too much time on that foolishness.

Quit it.

And "Castle" and "Criminal Minds", since you've both tried to pull that nonsense recently, you are both On Notice. Try to pull it again ... and I will have no mercy.

Okay, okay, that just means I'll make a snarky post about it. Still.

The books have a new home! The original post is below for, I don't know, posterity or something, but this is all set now. Thanks, folks!

( Original post )

What is this? I'm liking stuff? Who am I and what have I done with ... me?

Doctor Who 6x10 "The Girl Who Waited": (No real spoilers) I kind of hate the open (primarily for the false! urgency! and the brief appearance of the Idiot Ball), but other than that, this episode works for me. Interesting, fascinating character dynamics, bad-ass-ness and devotion in rewarding distributions, dark elements. My DVR choked on the recording, and I'm glad I managed to track this episode down regardless. (I always forget I have OnDemand, because it never seems to have anything useful ... until now.)

Eureka 4x11 "Liftoff": ( Cut for minor spoilers )

So, anyway. I liked stuff for a change! There may be hope for me yet!

So my favorite radio station, hands down and bar none, has just been evicted so that WEEI sports talk radio can have an FM signal. And by "evicted", I don't mean it's moving elsewhere on the dial; I mean it's gone.

Mike FM was profitable and popular. What the hell?

I may be a Red Sox fan, but I don't listen to sports talk radio in the first place. I happily praised Mike FM at every turn. WEEI has now become the last station I would ever listen to and the first I'll malign to anyone who will listen.

Thanks for nothing, jerks.

I haven't been around much; I haven't had time. Most of that is work; I adore my job, but it's exhausting, and nights/weekends really aren't enough for me even to keep up with the day-to-day, much less reading (I haven't read half the SGA Big Bang archive; I haven't read any of last year's Atlantis Big Bang; I have over 400 fics, fic indexes, and other works tagged as "to be read"; the ReverseBang just went live and the GenFicathon is about to), much much less writing. Which is frustrating. I simply need more time than that to switch from programmer-mindset to writing-mindset.

( A brief (for me) whine about the State of the Writing. )

With reading and writing fic, as well as keeping up with my rlist/flist, I spend a lot of time on my computer. My ISP is Comcast, who provides Symantec's Norton Security Suite free to its customers, and I have to wonder what the hell they're thinking. Norton was once the gold standard for computer utilities, if I recall correctly, but it's been worse than a joke for years. Why in the world would Comcast encourage its customers to use a product that makes Comcast's service seem unusably slow? I'm not exaggerating — when my browser takes 48 seconds to process a simple page-down command (yes, I timed it, twice; yes, the response time is unmeasurably quick with Norton uninstalled), I may be savvy enough to blame the add-on software, but not everyone will be, and they'll blame Comcast's speed. Inexplicably stupid marketing/support choice.

Not much else to report beyond that, so I'll close out with a huge batch of …

( TV mini-reviews (and two bonus fic recs) )

And that's that.

Well, that was crap. I could dwell on ( spoilers )

, or even the Doctor suddenly using "virus" and "bacteria" interchangeably because it's so in-character for him not to know the difference, but ... meh. This one found the strange intersection between dull and annoying.

ETA: Actually, that last item might be an artifact of Eleven's speech patterns rather than his truly using them interchangeably; I certainly don't care to watch again to check. But I left out ( another spoiler )

! Why oh why do people write science fiction if they can't be bothered to follow through with the implications of the elements they introduce? It's like this whole season is a showcase for privilege-and-centrism fail. Bah.

So I have Comcast email. Technically I have others, including Yahoo and Gmail, but I don't use them; it's just been easier to have all my redirect addresses (such as Livejournal, Dreamwidth, and my college account) forward to my ISP. And I'm lazy.

It has its problems, such as Comcast insisting that most LJ forwards are spam and quarantining them, even though I've put the forwarder's address in my address book the way THEY SAY TO. (That's at least better than the period when they ignored LJ email redirects with no notice whatsoever, meaning I lost unknown numbers of private email messages.)

But now my outbound messages aren't actually arriving. I would think it's the fault of the recipient's ISP, but if I forward the same message to my Gmail account and it doesn't come through there, either? Yeah, that's a bad sign.

I don't wanna switch my primary email, dammit. I don't love Comcast's interface, but I'm used to it, and I find it slightly easier to navigate than Gmail. (And I certainly don't want to have to check multiple email accounts actively.) But when I actively can't trust my email provider, there's very little reason to stay with them, either. Ugh.

In related news, if you think I'm ignoring you because I haven't answered an email you sent or because an email you've expected me to send hasn't come, try poking me via an LJ or DW comment or PM. Those seem to be coming through (for now, even if most of the LJ ones still get quarantined), and I double-check directly at those sites occasionally as well.

Feh.