Wednesday, August 13, 2008

It's not all about Central Asia:

Lake Como is also nice this time of year.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

One Thing I Absolutely Do Not Understand...

...is slash.

In any form.

I mean, I get porn. I even get erotic writing. I get fanfic, too, sort of, inasmuch as it's a way for fans to creatively interact with writing and the shows they love. So it there oughtn't to be this huge idealogical gap in me understanding slash in a meaningful way.

And what staggers me is the sheer /bulk/ of it. From TV shows that really don't easily suggest it.

The new Doctor Who does sort of lean towards it a bit, what with Rose and Martha's attachment to the Doctor, so some "shippers"* do something that sort of makes sense. And Captain Jack lends himself to poorly written erotica easily.

But there are Doctor on Doctor freaks. That just short-circuits my brains in all kinds of ways and leaves me twitching and drooling in the corner. There's Adric slash. Tegan-rape. Ugh. That's just as foul, if not worse.

And there's Office Slash out there, which I found out accidentally. (And you know I mean that accidentally, too, since I have no problem discussing actual my porn habits from time to time.)

Gay Office Slash. Which, because it was Jim/Ryan I looked at. Still didn't get it. I mean, I'd /watch/that in a heartbeat, cause I think BJ Novak and John Krasinski are both cuter than average. But it falls a little flat in practice, though, because it's just so creepy.

The Dwight/Michael stuff and the Dwight/Jim stuff -- god help us, there's a /word/, "Dwim," for that, which sounds like a semen euphemism -- I couldn't bear to look at.

I was -- in equal measures -- curious and repulsed so I nosed around looking for other bizarre slash. ER? Kovac and Carter, Malucci and Romano**, and a cross-over so bizarre it makes my brain hurt: Kerry Weaver and Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager.

That's so weird I have to go cry now.

*God, I loathe that word. The lingustics student in me understands it perfectly well but the English major just want to hit people who use it with a big book.

**Erik Palladino is another in the category with Philip Olivier that elicits a "shut up and fuck me" reaction in me that makes /no/ logical sense.

Virtual Dirty Looks

Heh heh.

Sitemeter is great.

The same day I posted about Sakhalin island, I got several hits from there (*waves).

Привет Друзья в Сахалине! Я надеюсь, что москиты не слишком плохи!

I also got a mysterious hit (no place of origin, no IP address, no referring page) from a government office in Moscow.

Привет Товарищи в ФСБ!

When I posted about Chechnya and Georgia, I got a few hits from the Caucasus!

Прошу прощения для того, чтобы использовать Россиян, но нет никакого ингуша Английским переводчикам в Интернете.

Долой российский империализм! Свобода для Кавказа!

And a few more from gov. offices in Moscow!

Этническое Сельское население - всегда скука, да?

(You can run those through this to see the Russian bits. And see and hear them here. Back translation is a hoot!)