time and relative dimension in space

The CIA is officially acknowledging the existence of Area 51.

TBH, I'm not sure what to do with this confirmation, but I felt the need to acknowledge their acknowledgement.

First the depressing one:

♦ Caroline John has passed away, and I don't know what to say. I'm only familiar with her Doctor Who work, but Liz Shaw was one of the greatest companions, due largely to Caroline's skill. The Whoniverse is that much smaller now, and it's a terrible loss.




Less depressing and totally unrelated:

♦ I've reached 50K on my Camp NaNo, which on the one hand is nifty because I've reached my wordcount goal nine days earlier, but on the other hand this story is not quite half finished. I think I'm going to take the weekend off from this project (see next item) and then decide whether to keep pressing through on it now or to use the second half as my August Camp NaNo project.

♦ I will be spending this weekend with teh Niki and her boy, which is long overdue; haven't seen her in waaaaaaaay too long. There's a Big Damn Shindig in Norfolk on Saturday, so we'll be hitting that up. Shiny.

♦ I don't have anything else to talk about.

Elisabeth Sladen has passed away at 63 years old due to complications arising from a battle with cancer.

DWM confirms on Twitter.

ETA: BBCNews confirms.

So apparently Borders is declaring bankruptcy and closing a bunch of bookstores, which is actually pretty sad. I remember when I was a kid and the only major bookstore I had regular access to was the WaldenBooks at the local mall. And then Borders bought them out and they were still WaldenBooks, technically, but with different rewards cards and a website and a new store layout. And then a couple years ago they closed and I stopped considering that mall to be a mall (you can't be a shopping mall without a bookstore, okay, you can't). And then six months or so ago they opened a Borders Express in that mall and I begrudgingly let them reclaim the title. And then last time I went which was like a month or two ago they were having a going-out-of-business clearance sale, which was...ridiculous, they'd been there about five months.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that it makes me sad when bookstores close.

(Also sad: that the more-local independent bookstore sucks and only wants your business if you know exactly what you want and spend under five minutes finding and purchasing it. You are an independent bookstore. You are supposed to encourage browsing and community and people who enjoy looking for a book when they're not sure exactly what they want to buy and whatever.)

Seriously, what the hell, Broadway? Do you just hate it when I'm happy or something?

[/bitter and betrayed]

Day 24 ♥ Whatever tickles your fancy

I swear I had something in mind for this and now I have no idea what it was. Er.

Oh, oh! Has everyone seen this? UnfunnyBusiness on JournalFen brings welcome news of people on the Internet being amazing and helping strangers. Read the whole thing, it's worth it.

( the rest )

Yesterday I e-mailed their public address about the issue. Today I got the form-letter that basically boils down to "IT WAS A MISTAKE WE'RE TRYING TO FIX IT NOW SORRY (ALSO, IT WASN'T JUST GLBT STUFF!)". I'm completely not convinced that they're telling the truth about it having been a "cataloging error" but if they're gonna fix it, at least that's something.

meta_writer is still on the case. Currently they're trying to collect a list of the books that are still delisted, so as to keep Amazon honest. (Well, as much so as possible.)

Twitter is still going nuts. The petition is up to 18,933 signatures at the time of this writing.

Feministing is calling out the glitch story as false.

Craig's Pop Life points out this has been going on to a lesser degree since February.

Dear Author explains metatagging.

ETA: SeattlePI defends the glitch story, explaining how it might've gone down.

ETA the second: Links via _chibidragon_ (thanks, _chibidragon_!): Gakwer and GalleyCat poke a few more holes in the "glitch" story.


Also, half.com is my new love.

The unfunnybusiness writeup of the fail

An affected writer explains the fail, and communications from Amazon

A handy links roundup

A list of the affected books

Amazon Rank

Another writeup, with contact information for Amazon

I'm really, really mad right now. Mostly because this is an incredible level of fail. Partly because I have a minor Amazon addiction and now I have to find another online retailer to replace that. Suggestions welcome. Also, spread the word of Amazon's incredible level of FAIL.

Sources confirm Pushing Daisies has been canceled.


adaj;ldanjea This evening is far too up and down emotionally for me. WHYYYYY. NED. CHUCK. EMERSON. OLIVE. OLIVE/ALFREDO. *flails*