Random bits...that I thought during the day.

[shadowkat]

1. The national park system really is an unique idea that America came up with - apparently in response to the tacky monstrosity that was Niagra, which Europe made fun of America for back in the 1800s or thereabouts. The comment is made that Europe does not have the natural wonders that America does (note I did not say the world) - I'm not sure that was true. It did, but over 1000 years of civilization and war had sort of eradicated the beautiful Primeval Forests that rivaled the Sierras and Muir Wood. If you read your history books and literature and legends, the wonders are there...they've just not been preserved. (This to a degree is via Ken Burns epic documentary "The National Parks - America's Best Idea". As an aside, my father in his twenties was a gear jammer in Glacier, Rocky Mountain, and Yosemite National Park - he drove wobbly buses around twisty roads with tourists and has stories of running away from bears and cougars. He's going to the 50th anniversary of the gear jammers next year in Glacier. He did this back in the 1950s and 1960s. So when we moved to KC in '78, off we went to see Rocky Mountain, and later Grand Teton and Yellowstone and Grand Canyon.
Have yet to see Yosemite or Glacier. Which are on my list.)

2. Some days I feel as if I'm just bluffing my way through...today I had to evaluate and score quality management proposals, plus facilitate a discussion on them, and I know next to nothing about quality management. Guess it's good I have a course on it on Thursday. Shame didn't have it last week. Good news though is that my scores were the same as one of the technical evaluators with over thirty years in the biz, and my comments the same.

3. On Buffy fandom...read two posts, which I agreed with but declined to comment, since they had over 50 comments already and I figured...it only be repetitive. Do 50 or more comments scare anyone else off? At any rate - the two posts were:" Why I love the S8 comics" and "why the Buffy/Riley relationships...did not work."

On the first post - yes, I enjoy the S8 Buffy comics for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I enjoy the writers and the characters they've created and like comics as a medium in general. I have low expectations when it comes to comics..I don't expect much, and that may to a degree be why I'm enjoying them more than most?

On the second post - "about Buffy/Riley" - the poster, gabrielle, nails why I did not like the relationship or grew, for that matter, tired of the Buffy/Angel one. She also nails my difficulties with a lot of the men I've known and dated over the years. And why I love Buffy as a character. And still do, in some regards, more than most of the ones on tv.
I am not emotionally needy. Emotionally needy women make me crazy. I have little tolerance for women who can not take care of themselves, who are not self-reliant. And less tolerance for men who have to continuously fly to their rescue, and how it makes them feel all powerful doing so. It's a personal thing. Unfortunately for me, about 85% of the fairy tales and tv shows are about needy manipulative women (Desperate Housewives and Cinderella). When I was a kid, I told myself stories about how I was rescuing the guy or the guy and I were rescuing the damsel together, then riding off together afterwards. This may explain why I adored Buffy as a character so much. She wasn't emotionally needy - it was Angel and Riley's problem with her to a degree. She did not need them. She could do fine on her own. They needed her.
When she's emotionally needy, she hates herself a bit, and resists it. I can completely identify.

4. Watched two sitcoms: "Accidentally on Purpose" (adorable) and "Cougartown"(unwatchable and offensive). Which is odd, because the tv critics hated Accidentally and loved Cougartown, which may explain a few things. Cougartown was about objectification. You want to see a tv series that is all about looking at people as sex objects - watch Cougartown. Accidentally, actually has three-dimensional characters, who are not gorgeous, and there are consequences - I actually know people in those situations and can see myself getting into them (I laughed).
Granted CougarTown may be a satire, but it is a bad one. Poorly written and acted. Unwatchable. I cringed during most of it.

5. While I'm generally speaking a Mets fan, yay, Yankees!!!

Comments

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

It really is an interesting series with some amazing photography.

[shapinglight]

The comment is made that Europe does not have the natural wonders that America does

Hmm, that strikes me as a very odd thing to say. And untrue. How strange.

Also, I don't think I had particularly high expectations of the Buffy comic. What I didn't expect, though, was to be bored a lot of time while reading. Sadly, however, that is the case.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I should clarify - I think they are talking about the sheer scale of the natural wonders. The context of the statement was:

Europe at that time was saying why would anyone want to visit America for a vacation? They don't have the colisieum or the parthanon or Big Ben, or the history that Europe has. There's no stone henge. The ancient manmade structures aren't there. (Well not in North America at any rate - there are quite a few in Central America - ie. the Mayan ruins.) All you have is Niagra - which granted we don't.

Then the Americans discovered areas of wild - vast areas that Europe no longer had. The Grand Canyon is well the biggest natural canyon. And YellowStone has geysers and hot springs plus mountains. They hadn't seen that before. So it was whoa. Which was what motivated the people who had fled immigrated to the US to turn these wonders into national parks, perserving them as opposed to losing them.

My response is that Europe did have wonders on that sheer scale or vast areas of wildness- but they were either perserved only for the "rich" and made "private land" which public can't see or they weren't preserved.
Mostly due to bad luck and timing.

But I'm no historian, so could very well be wrong.

Africa does have those natural wonders on that sheer scale as does China.

[shapinglight]

Sorry. I shouldn't really have commented on that, not having seen the show in question. It's perfectly true that we don't have anything like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

No worries. ;-)

I wasn't very clear in my initial comment.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Do 50 or more comments scare anyone else off?

They scare me off, and it was my post. :-)

Seriously, I don't know if it's just my journal set-up or it's automatic in LJ, but as soon as someone posts the 50th comment, all the threads collapse. So to read them, you can't just skim down the page, you have to manually click and open every single thread. That's a big disincentive to continuing a discussion, I find.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

They scare me off, and it was my post. :-)

LOL!

You sort of lose track of the comments after awhile, I think, which is why I often get scared off. I think - okay if there are 54 comments already...do I really think whatever is in my head hasn't been said already and far better by someone else?

But just to be sure...I try to read them and..

Seriously, I don't know if it's just my journal set-up or it's automatic in LJ, but as soon as someone posts the 50th comment, all the threads collapse. So to read them, you can't just skim down the page, you have to manually click and open every single thread. That's a big disincentive to continuing a discussion, I find.

And the above is exactly what happened. I think I got lost somewhere between the 2maggie2 thread and the aycheb thread.
Then threw up my hands and gave up.

If I respond to say 2maggie2, then say you responded to me, 2maggie2 may only see my response pop up in her email, but not yours. It's funky. I had this happen once or twice with gab's threads and got lost.

I agreed with your post by the way. When it comes to the comics at the moment, I sort of fall somewhere between you and aycheb, with a few minor quibbles that may echo beer_good_foamy and 2maggie2. I look forward to the comics each month - next week can't come soon enough. I love getting the Buffy and Brian Lynch - Angelverse/Spike comics for separate reasons. The story isn't boring me, I remain curious about Twilight, and about how the original creator sees his creations arcs playing out over time. Also, the bank robbery in my view doesn't need any further resolution or attention, they more or less said what needed to be said in regards to it and Buffy has more or less paid for it - with the current negative press about slayers. But, stories with lots of gaps turn me on, I tend to automatically fill in the gaps myself, which I sort of did with the bank robbery bit. That said, I completely understand why others may see it differently.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

I have a handy Greasemonkey script that puts a big bold "NEW" by the new comments. Comes in handy when the threads collapse as I can easily find the new stuff.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

Do 50 or more comments scare anyone else off?

Not if they're substantive. If they did, I'd never have stayed at the ATPo Board.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think discussion boards are different than lj. For a couple of reasons:

1. The host or owner doesn't get emailed every response. (Although I know there is an option to turn that off on lj, it's hard to do without losing the emails you want.)

2. You can see the thread and pick and choose which to read fairly easily. As stormwreath notes above - LJ automatically collaspes all the threads after 50 and you tend to lose them. It's harder to follow the discussion on lj when you go over a certain number of comments than it is on a discussion board.

3. On a discussion board you can see who responded before you did, what their heading was, and pick and choose off the bat who to respond to. On LJ - while you can do that, it requires more work, and a lot more scrolling.

So, I don't really think they are comparable. 50 comments obviously didn't scare me off on discussion boards. But on LJ? They make me think twice before responding. I'm often think on lj - someone probably said it already and that my comment will just be lost and never seen, so what is the point. On ATPO - I knew it would be seen.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Also ATPO had a level playing field. The only people who could edit a post or remove were the moderators.
ON Lj - only paid users can edit their posts after they've been posted. Also on LJ - people can respond then delete their response and substitute a new response or none at all. (I know I've done it and it makes tracking discussions much harder.) Completely different forum and not one that I think is necessarily conducive to lengthy and multiple thread discussions.

[next_to_normal]

50 comments usually doesn't bother me. Well, if it's a stranger's journal, I'd probably just read without commenting, but if it's someone I like and would comment on their post otherwise, the number of comments won't scare me off.

It's not always repetitive, either, because if there's a lot of back-and-forth discussion, there may not be all that many comments saying, "Hey, I agree with you!" And especially if it's a heated topic, I figure the author will appreciate the gesture of support. (Who doesn't like being told they're right? lol)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think stormwreath nailed my difficulty with long comment threads on lj above. It's really hard to follow or read the comments.

At any rate...you make a good point:

"there may not be all that many comments saying 'Hey I agree with you!' and especially if it's a heated topic.
I figure the author will appreciat the gesture of support."

Yes, a thousand times yes! There have been times when a random show of support after a heated debate, has made my day. Disagreements can get wearing, while aggreement can make one smile. Plus aggreements are easier to respond to. Disagreement is really hard to respond to, without, well looking like an idiot. Although I've managed to look like an idiot doing both. LOL! ;-)