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MichaelEhart
Sage

Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2336

Posted 10/17/2007 1:43 PM (GMT -5)

I posted this on Lois Tilton's sff.net newsgroup about the recent SFWA kerfluffle:

"All small group politics are the same. My wife is an actual politician, and believe me, local political groups are made up of wannabes, poseurs, peter-principle victims and a very few people on the rise. I refuse to attend any of her board meetings or events, because everywhere there are people whose entire existence is based around going to the mat on the most trivial of causes. I want to be able to like these people, and if I see them in a political light, I cannot. Churches, charities, professional organizations, whatever, the dynamic is the same.

As for the internet facilitating flame wars, yes it speeds things up, but for years I subscribed to Biblical Archeological Reveiw, a bi-monthly. Even at that snail's pace, with a minimum 3 month lag, the letters to the editor were flamalicious, to-the-death affairs, usually over something like the placement of a diacritical in the writing ("How the learned and oh so authoritative Dr. Humbug could mistake this for an intended chisel stroke when it is so very obviously damage from careless excavation is astounding. This makes the translation "In the sixth month of the reign of Ashurbanipal"-- not as Dr. Humbug so blindly claims, "In month six of Ashurbanipal's reign"!) on some monument that made no difference at all in the actual translation.

The sad thing is, I sometimes suspected that the event that happened in the sixth month of Ashurbanipal's reign (see, now I have taken sides, and so will be added to Dr. Screech's distain list in his next scathing letter, which will appear in about 6 months) was a violent disagreement carried out in cuneiform between two in-groups on the lay council of the First Church of Nergal (Reformed) on whether the wicked apostate members of the First Church of Nergal (Revived) would suffer 10,000 years of torment and then be cast into utter blackness, or if the utter blackness thingy was part of the torment."

Buy my book!

The Servant of the Manthycore available Nov. 17th from DEP

Illustrated by Rachel Marks, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock

Read me in 2007!

"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, Feb 2007

"Voice of the Spoiler" The Sword Review, June 2007

"Servant of the Manthycore" The Sword Review, July 2007

"Darkling I Listen; and for Many a Time" Fear and Trembling, coming soon!

"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, August 2007

"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Summer 2007

"Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review, September 2007

"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Fall 2007

"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, October 2007

"The Stars by Law, Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, November 2007

"Who Comes for the Mother's Fruit" Every Day Fiction, November 2007

http://mehart.blogspot.com/

nathan
Sage

Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2122

Posted 10/17/2007 2:01 PM (GMT -5)

MichaelEhart said... the event that happened in the sixth month of Ashurbanipal's reign

I don't know about your entire post but it is so obviously month six in that translation that I can't hardly take you serious on the rest.

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"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews

Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages."

Dave Panchyk
Yankanuck

Date Joined Sep 2007
Total Posts : 85

Posted 10/17/2007 3:36 PM (GMT -5)

Kissinger said...
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

crystalwizard
Forum Moderator

Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 5004

Posted 10/18/2007 5:49 PM (GMT -5)

Wouldn't this work better if you had a subject line on the first post? Oh, and maybe it would fit better in the gripe forum?

Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!

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erazmus
Master

Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4539

Posted 10/24/2007 10:44 AM (GMT -5)

I think its fine here.
Funny how you get the same tempests no matter what tea-pot you use.
Yet worrying to much about it can cause one to become a hermit. Speaking as one who once longed for a cabin in Idaho, I tell you it isn't really worth it despite the resulting peace and quiet. I can think of few places one can have fun that does not have a political factor working somewhere.
Fandom is rife with it, hell the boy scouts is rife with it. I think most people try to muddle through the best they can though an awfu lot of us find ourselves taking sides. Almost in self defense.
Mike

Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm

"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:

www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php
"Stains" in Tales of the Talisman 3-1 www.zianet.com/hadrosaur/index.html
"Slushpiles" in Between the Kisses
www.samsdotpublishing.com/betweenkisses/TurnerSlushPileS.htm

von Darkmoor
Small Press Publisher (and Dancer still)

Date Joined Dec 2005
Total Posts : 3056

Posted 11/4/2007 11:10 PM (GMT -5)

Michael, what's been the response on Lois Tilton's sff.net newsgroup to your post?

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Fantasy Acquisitions Editor Staffs & Starships Magazine
Anthology Editor Flashing Swords
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