channonyarrow

I used to use Sendspace. I gave that up for Lent. It's an annoying system, and I had not realised how annoying until I tried to download multiple files at once.

AHAHAHAHAHA.

Using it to download albums just cemented my dislike. That 50KB/second limit? Yeah, not so awesome. I can get an album off of Mediafire much, much faster.

And now? Now, I am posting this because of Sendspace. I am stuck here, on the computer, for another twenty minutes so that it can finish downloading a 253 MB file that I really, really want - at 50KB/second.

And I am almost out of EPICALLY LONG porn.

I hate Sendspace so hard right now.

Also, I know that what's going to happen is that it'll get to within, say, 10 MB of the end of the file and the internet will shit itself and I will have to restart entirely, and I'm not going to do that.

Other things that are suck: not including a track list with your ginormous soundtrack so that I can see if I want it for sure, and whether I have all/most/many/some/few/none of the songs on the playlist. And not breaking it up into multiple files.

Yes, I am the most pretty princess in all the land.

ALSO. Has anyone else heard about the situation in Oakland? I hadn't - and I had to do a keyword search on Google to get anything. When I did that, nothing that turned up was from news outlets, though one blog post did include a link to a segment from the Oakland news.

I, pacifist that I am, intend to shove this directly in my mother's face, as soon as possible. I don't believe in the "justifiability" of most police shootings, and the last conversation we had on the topic was her wondering why no one had any sympathy for the Seattle cop who shot some deranged mentally-ill man with a weapon in Seattle on NYE (as I recall, it was NYE).

WELL, MAYBE I DON'T HAVE SYMPATHY BECAUSE OF INCIDENTS LIKE THIS ONE, DO YA THINK?

Jesus fucking Christ.

But I am curious to know if anyone has seen news coverage of it, anywhere. I haven't, but I never, ever watch news, and my newspaper access has been extremely spotty of late. I wouldn't have even known if it hadn't been for Warren Ellis posting a flickr set out of the riots.

(ALSO: Internet apostasy in 3, 2, 1...)

Oh, what the hell. I still have 40 MB to go.

I really, really like Transmetropolitan. It's possible that this is obvious, given my user name, a number of my icons, and my user profile, and the fact that I have, on occasion, tried to forcibly convert people to The Church Of Transmetropolitan.

I really, really like Ellis's run on Excaliber. I really, really like Pete Wisdom, and I really like the storylines that Ellis ran with that character. I also laugh into my beer about how the next guy to take the mag over was so envious he wound up destroying the comic and it was canceled on his watch - maybe next time, killing off Wisdom (and fucking Kitty Pryde over at the same time) isn't a great way to get your ego back.

I really, really like Planetary, though it confuses the bejesus out of me. I think it's an awesome story, and I can't wait for it to get continued.

However.

A friend of mine, who is a kind and lovely person, far more so than I deserve to have in my life, sent me a package for Christmas that included a copy of Crecy, Ellis's account of (get this!) the Battle of Crecy, as told by an English longbowman.

It's an interesting account. It's factually accurate, and it's really interesting - even aside from the issue of being an amazing battle anyway - and the art is pretty cool too - the artist is top-rate and does a lot with the black and white format, almost as much as Robertson managed with colour in Transmet.

And the main character sounds exactly like Spider.

Except, then there's Global Frequency. Between them, Miranda Zero and Aleph manage to sound exactly like Spider. And you know, sometimes, Pete Wisdom, he really, really sounds like Spider too.

Elijah Snow doesn't - not really. A little bit, maybe, but not exactly, and my thesis here is that Ellis has pretty much got one character in his head - and that's Spider.

So, you know. Now I'm gunshy about reading the other comic my friend sent, to say nothing of Crooked Little Vein. I used to be paid to read people writing the same character over and over and over again, but I don't like it. I like it even less that there's so much adulation for someone who is not as skilled a writer as I used to believe - because if you can't make your characters sound different, then you're not a skilled writer. This is an issue that most, if not all, authors face; they deal with it in different ways and with different levels of skill, but for the sort of adulation Ellis gets, I'd like to see him back it up.

Because Spider? Sounds like Ellis.

And whatever else he does, with setting and details and technology and supporting players, it's Ellis reacting to the situation. It plays well, because everyone reacts to that angry person inside them who just identifies an obstacle and shoots it in the face, but that doesn't make it good storytelling.

Interesting premise, interesting plot, bad characterisation. It's one of those two-out-of-three deals.

I don't get it, I don't like it, and it's already shaped how I feel about him as a writer, when I'm not even in a bad mood.

And my file has FINALLY finished downloading. I'm out.

Oh, wait, no I'm not.

Is it really hard to convert all your files to mp3 before you post them? I cannot figure out a way to make iTunes recognise wma, and, surprise!, I have a Mac. WMP is kind of not a fucking option.

So, seriously.

When did the preservation of every single life* become more important than our freedoms?

Obviously by "every single life" I mean "white, middle to upper class American" unless the clause "outside of the country of America" is invoked, in which case remove the "white, middle to upper class".