Blog for a beer damnit.

Earlier this week I went to see the musical Wicked on Broadway for the first time. I’ve been vaguely aware of the show since it premiered in 2003 and knew it was based on the Gregory Maguire book of the same name. I’ve read about Wicked, but never read the book itself. Still, I was familiar with the plot enough going in that I was put off a bit by the many, many liberties the musical takes. In fact, the stage plot has very little to do with the plot of the book at all, mainly taking the characters and turning them into archetypes while morphing the story into a typical geek girl and popular girl grow to understand each other and discover their personal power tale. Also, they fight over a guy.

Adaptations are generally a touchy subject. Many original creators bristle when asked about adaptations and derivations of their work while others just shrug and note that they were paid well to have their story and characters mangled. Audiences reactions vary depending on the medium, the nature of the adaptation, and the depth of their love for or ignorance of the original.

Take the original ending to Little Shop of Horrors our Video Vicar pointed out earlier this week. It’s the same as the successful stage play’s ending, just acted out instead of just described. But test audiences, who had probably never seen the play, hated the fact that Audrey II killed the protagonist and his love interest. The director, Frank Oz, had a theory as to why: “In a stage play, you kill the leads and they come out for a bow — in a movie, they don’t come out for a bow, they’re dead. And the audience loved those people, and they hated us for it.”

Changes in medium obviously have a huge effect on adaptations. But is it preferable for the second or third medium painstakingly recreate even the tiniest details of the original, as the director and producers of Watchmen seem to be doing?

Well?

I think that Genevieve and I are probably the only people in our circle of friends who will find her column today (Fantasy’s Guide to Holiday Fashion) uproariously hilarious. Back in the day we both worked for S/h/e/F/i/n/d/s, though she was a writer and I was a web monkey. We actually first met at a holiday cocktail party for the in-NY cadre of employees that featured some of the most expensive (tiny portions of) cheese ever.

Genevieve perfectly captured the style and tone and feel of our holiday fashion guides with her piece. I mean, really, if those clothes were actually in style, this seriously would have been published at SF. I’ve leave you to determine what that says about the state of our culture.

Is it just me, or has Google’s blog search been kinda broken lately?  Like, I’ll look at the dashboard of a WordPress site and it will load some links, but then if I reload or come back 2 seconds later there will be none.  And then it will list a whole bunch of links to individual blog posts that do NOT link to the site in the post, but somewhere in the sidebar.  Used to be Google could tell the difference.

This is seriously putting a cramp in my style, people!  How can I obsess over stats if things are wonky?

It seems to me that while you’re spending a lot of time creating special keyboards for gamers, you could be putting a little of that R&D and design know-how to use in creating special keyboards that would be useful for, oh, people who have to use them all the time at work. “But regular keyboards are fine for that,” you say. I say: no they aren’t, you asses, else I wouldn’t be making this post.

Let’s take my job, for example. I’m a Web Producer. I spend 75% of my day doing repetitive tasks like copying and pasting, performing the same three functions over and over in photoshop, and clicking between windows and tabs. You know what would be nice? A set of keys on the left side of the main key area that are programmable. One click access to the 10 most important functions would save me a lot of time and stave off carpal tunnel for a few years, at least.

There are many, many web producers and print producers and graphic designers and data entry personnel and other people in other jobs who could use such a thing. I don’t see why gamers are the only ones who get special keyboards. Most of them can’t be appropriated to business use because the special keys are on the right side of the keyboard (except this one), but right-handed people use that hand for the mouse. You suck, keyboard manufacturers!

Instead of spending time rolling out natural keyboards that aren’t really all that ergonomic or useful, try designing something actually helps someone.

No love,
Me

Until Forgiveness Comes — go read!  Comment!  Tell other people!  Happy Snoopy Dance!

It’s actually not a terrible show.  No really.  Stop looking at me like that!

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I has new WordPress theme!  I love it — it’s the best theme evar.  And very easy to modify.  It’s everything I ever wanted in a theme.  Those of you reading on LJ should click the permalink and see.

In unrelated news, I just discovered that I am the #1 google hit for ‘making fun of twilight‘ without quotes.  I fear for my safety.

Today’s Blog for a Beer:

This week Silvia Moreno-Garcia gave us an excellent primer on the many ways in which fantasy filmmakers completely mess up Pre-Columbian cultures by lumping them all into one group, assigning practices and beliefs they don’t have, and generally turning them into random brown savages. Because who cares, right? They’re all dead anyway. Oh wait…

Hollywood is not the only offender when it comes to misrepresenting non-American, non-Western or non-white cultures. Literature, comics, television, and even games get in on this party. In your experience, what are some of the worst offenders?

Help me decorate my cubicle!

Today I finally got my permanent computer at work so I am able to arrange my deskspace how I want it to be forever.  I’ve avoided personalizing my space until I was sure where everything was going to be.

So, how should I decorate my space?  I’ve never had a cubicle before.  What’s essential?

My story is coming out over at Strange Horizons next week.  Up until a week ago I was being very mellow about it.  But now that it’s so close, I want it to be up NOW OMG!  I’m impatient.

You would think I’d be used to this by now, as I have stories coming out in other markets that won’t see the light of day for months, maybe even a year.  I have no particular problem with that (especially as in one case I knew upfront it would be a long while), but it makes me do the little ‘I have to pee’ dance in my head.  Wait, the: ‘I have to see my fiction published NOW’ dance.

Ah well, I’ll get over it.

…omg 5 more days.