Just call me comma fucker

[gwyn]

Man, what the everloving fuck is the matter with the person who posts things to the OTW news feed? At least three times recently, she's posted these insanely long records of chats that have completely borked my friends page, and I and many other people have repeatedly asked her to use a cut tag and she just keeps posting them in one piece. Has never responded to our requests, either. So many people have unsubbed from the feed, and I guess I'm going to have to, too. I like reading the OTW news, but fuck that -- if someone's so cavalier about borking people's friends page, I'm not staying signed up.

Reading things handled badly seems to be the order of the week for me. I'm finishing up the last pages of a really badly written book (this is a perfect example of the downside of the self-publishing revolution) that has not been helped by the copyeditor, a woman I've actually known for many years in a way through an editors' organization I belong to. I'm kind of shocked at how bad of a job she's done, particularly with punctuation. It's as if she really doesn't understand the basics of grammar. I've never read behind her as a proofer before, but it's been kind of an eye-opener. I suppose the good thing about being a proofreader in this case is that I can at least fix the most glaring errors, like the misuse of appositive commas, and no one will be the wiser. The sad part is that she'll continue to make that mistake. I wish I could feel like it's worth talking to the folks handling the business end of these, but I hate tattling as a general rule, and I'm not sure they'll want to hear it.

I saw on Tumblr recently that apparently the Finns call people like me comma fuckers rather than the really awful term we most often use here, grammar Nazi. I much, much prefer that and have decided to embrace that.

I have a new foster dog, called Billy Gibbons (yes, after the ZZ Top guitarist), who is kind of at cuteness turned up to 11. He has pneumonia, though, so I have to keep inside as much as possible, which is tough because he's young and energetic. He was not socialized to either people or other dogs, but he's seriously clever (well, he's a cairn terrier and poodle mix, so you can imagine how smart he is) so he's picking things up very fast. Like, he didn't know what to do at all about other dogs, but when I took him to meet black_bird_777's dogs Ocean and Buffy, he had a ball playing with Ocean. And he didn't know what to do with toys, but now we play fetch in the house and he's even figured out that he needs to bring the ball toward me so I can throw it.

The downside is that he's a very destructive chewer. I've bought him tons of things to chew on, but he destroyed the USB cable to my Wacom tablet, which I can't replace, so I had to buy another tablet altogether and they don't make the kind of model I want anymore. I found something on ebay, but the prices are high. He also completely destroyed a set of RF cables, but at least I didn't need those; it's when he keeps trying to chew on my electrical cords for my laptop and my back relax chair that I freak out. I can't hide or protect them, so. He also has rather a thing for shoes and carries them around, picks up those and other things and brings them to make a nest in his bed. He chews on them, but at least a little less intensely than other things. He also likes to gnaw on my office chair legs. I've never had a foster who chews like this. I'm tempted to keep him because he's really fucking adorable, but the chewing thing... arg.

Obligatory pic:


In fannish news, I've been watching quite a few things I mean to write about, if I ever get time. Mostly I'm just dying until I can see Winter Soldier. I've read all but one of the book compilations, and I'm so utterly consumed with Steve and Bucky feels I'm going to explode. I wish I could see it opening weekend, but it's more likely it'll be the following Monday or Tuesday. ::sobs::

Comments

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you're subscribed to the official otw_news feed, or is it just an RSS feed that someone else has created? Because if it's the second one, then no one from the OTW would be checking the comments there. You might contact otw_staff and ask?

http://otw-news.livejournal.com/ <-- this doesn't seem to have the uncut chat logs?

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Don't know -- I mean, I only know the feed came up when I was setting up feeds in my Dreamwidth account back in the day. It's called OTW news feed (with underscores). How weird. Well, I'm unsubbing that one anyway, I guess I'll try to find the other one (how do you know which one's "official"?). Thanks for the info; I honestly had no idea someone else would have just set one up that isn't connected to the OTW.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Now that I look at it, maybe it is an official RSS feed, but presumably it would be for people who aren't reading on one of the platforms where there's an official feed? Like, maybe if you're reading the RSS feed through WordPress or something there's an option there to cut tag your feeds, but I don't know for sure. I sent a message to the official staff side on the DW side letting them know they should probably cut-tag the long posts on RSS if they can.

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

The good news is that terriers tend to grow out of the chewing--Hagrid destroyed almost $200 worth of my stuff when he was young and kinda frustrated with being cooped up in a small area. But as he got older (and we got into a more comfortable, less stressful situation) the chewing disappeared. It took until he was a bit over 2 yrs old for a lot of that energy to tone down.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's good to know, since cairns are in that same family of terrier. It's hard because he hates the crate, just hates it, and while I'm working on it with him, I try to leave him out of it if I'm gone more than a half hour, but that means I have to run around the house hiding anything I think he could destroy. And that's a LOT of stuff. He's finally taken to bully sticks, but he goes through those like water.

It doesn't help that it's really boring here for him, with me working all the time, and him being cooped up with pneumonia and we can't go on walks.

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

If you can find them, AKC makes a line of realistic looking toys that hold up pretty well to terrier teeth, and my guy really, really loved to shake them til they were "dead."
Oh, poor little guy--pneumonia is a tough one for pups.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Was gonna say what Livia said, that the official LJ /Tumblr/ email announcement list all have cut tags etc. I would be totally annoyed if what you were describing were the case but I'm subbed to most official OTW things for obvious reasons on my various platforms and have never seen this, so I assume something's off!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I think, judging by everyone's comments, that I'm going to have to read it on my friends page in the regular way of subscribing to it, rather than through my news reader as a feed. It sounds like that's the only way around it. Some of this is just my own ignorance of how things work -- I mean, I love it when I can just click on something. Because that's the limit of my intelligence.

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

WINTER SOLDIER WINTER SOLDIER WINTER SOLDIER

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I CAN'T HANDLE THE WAIT.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

OMG Billy Gibbons is so cute!!!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's kind of a heartbreaker with the cuteness. I've only had a chance to walk him a couple times before the pneumonia, but people stopped us to talk about how adorable he was.

[sperrywink]

STEVE/BUCKY!!! All the feels no lie. I can't wait for Winter Soldier. I'm hoping for a morning show the weekend it opens, otherwise I have to wait for the weekend after, which would be tragic.

Good luck with the chewing and the foster dog!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be chewing my arm off all weekend. I don't care about spoilers, and I read the comics anyway, but the anxiety of knowing everyone's seeing it and I won't be able to ... arg.

[kerithwyn.livejournal.com]

I join you in comma fuckery. Solidarity! *fistbump*

Hope the chewing abates. What an adorable critter.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Editors untie!

Yeah, it's a good thing he's so cute because when I saw that my tablet had been destroyed, it took a lot to not want to drop kick him into the next county.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

How in the world do you misuse appositive commas? The mind boggles.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I know, right? I see everywhere this thing where people put a comma unnecessarily in front of names, like
"the book by author, JK Rowling" and I mean, it makes me gnash my teeth, but I can see why people who never paid attention in English could see it that way. But this person is an experienced editor, and she has this consistent thing where she lets this construction like "wherever they went, Jane's closest friend, Joe Blow captured everyone's attention" just go and there are quite a few of them, and then there's this other thing she does where she lets constructions like "in confusion, Jane, patted her hair" go. I just can't even.

[hobbituk.livejournal.com]

Aw, he's gorgeous!!! Have you tried giving him the really big hide chews? Might work... *keeps fingers crossed*

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

You know, I have like...15 things here for him? And he pays only the tiniest attention to them. He's finally opened up to bully sticks. But he goes through them like crazy. He'd still much rather chew on a cord. Yum, plastic and sharp wire.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Foster pup is a cutie. Sorry about all the chewing.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's pretty darling. He bounces like a tigger. Good for him that's he so darling or he'd be toast. ;-)

[rattlecatcher.livejournal.com]

Who's a puppy! You're a puppy! Yes you are! Yes you are!

Oh, sorry - you were saying something, but I just saw the dog, and - oh yes you're cute, yes you are!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I know -- I have a feeling that if I took him somewhere, like to a class or something, no one would hear I word I saw because AW HE'S SO CUTE! It's going to be very interesting to see how people react at the adoption event this weekend.