As I spend at least part of my time living under a rock, I somehow had not heard about Orson Scott Card's unnecessary and squicky retelling of Hamlet. Now I know about it, and while normally I would spend quite a bit of time in this entry grumbling about Card and his nastiness, I don't have to, because Scott Lynch has made it all better.

"Win a visit to the Magic City set and lunch with Jeff for you and a friend!

That's right. In appreciation for the incredible support his fans have shown through DonateJDM.org for the past 3 years, Jeff is donating a set visit to his new series Magic City and LUNCH WITH HIM for auction this year. The auction item will include 2 nights hotel lodging in Miami for the winning fan and their guest, a set visit to see Jeff working on Magic City, lunch with him, and much more. This item will KICK OFF the DonateJDM.org Great Jeffrey Dean Morgan Birthday Auction next week (rather than finish it), so keep your eyes peeled to the DonateJDM.org website and Twitter feed (@DonateJDM) for more details."

People, please tell me that it would not be a good idea to sell my internal organs on the black market to earn money for this.

**WANT**

A little while back, zombres recast The Stand. And I'm linking to it now because everyone ever needs to bask in the sheer "yay" of this thing.

((Philip Seymour Hoffman as Tom Cullen!! Alan Tudyk as the Trashcan Man!))

Seriously, go:

Draculas

It is fantastic. Gory and creepy and darkly funny and vampires that are actually vampires, not angst-ridden mopey people. And there's a ton of bonus stuff in there, too-- short stories and author interviews and novel excerpts.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go buy everything these guys have ever done. Or at least buy one or two things, and add the rest to my Wish List for when I have more cash.

Vermont Brownie Company.

Best. Brownies. Ever. I ordered a sampler pack for when Ashley came down-- they're all really good; my favorite is the Maple Toffee Crunch. Next time I'm just going to order half a dozen of those and hoard them all for myself. ;-)

This story is simply amazing.

((thanks, Cleolinda, for the link! Now to read through the archives. . .))


ETA: Speaking of heroes... This kid might say she doesn't deserve to be called a hero, but I have to respectfully disagree here.

As in, Alien Vs. Pooh.

I think "Eeyore questions his luck after finding a new tail" is my favorite. Or maybe "Tigger doing what Tiggers do best".

Now this is a news source I'll allow in the house. ;-)

I don't want to have to try and move over to Greatest Journal, darnit.

But if something doesn't get done about this situation, I might.

Basically, the gist is that some "but what about the chiiiiildrun?!!?" professional freakout group started reporting the livejournals of people who had 'questionable interests', related to things like incest, pedophilia, etc. Several communities/lj accounts have been permanently suspended. Including a group focused on discussion of the novel Lolita, some ljs listing "lolita" (as in, a type of clothing fashion) in their interests and, most infuriating of all, some rape/incest survivor communities.

As of right now, there's not a statement from livejournal about all this, though I am hoping for a reasonable one soon. I've never had a problem with this place before-- when we had that blackout of service, they even gave paid users an extension on their time to make up for what was lost. Maybe this will be handled equally well. *fingers crossed*

ficangel also has a lot of information up about what's going on, what can be done about it, etc.

And, an absolutely classic response to the freakout group and their "OMG anything having to do with incest/bad topics must be banned immediately!!!" twittering: Right here.

ETA: Statement and apology.

I'm still unthrilled that this happened, but at least the journals are not completely gone, and if there is an appropriate follow-through and the people who are clearly not involved in any wrongdoing get their journals back, then I'm willing to chalk it up to a huge 'oops' and be done with it.