Re: Announcing my new Sci-fi Book

Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote in
news:MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_614732d1@xxxxxxxxxxx:

Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taustinca@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taustinca@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote

[The Man Show]
[...] I believe they're the first ones to ever film an effort
to collect signatures - from women, many of them vehement
feminists - to "end women's suffrage."

Does that mean what I think it means?

Yes. That you had to ask should indicate the hiliary that
ensued, as most of the women (that they showed, anyway) had no
clue what the term meant, and cheerfully signed because
anything with the word "suffer" in it must be bad.

LOL.

Wonder how they tried to twist things to not look as stupid as
they are after they were told.

IIRC, the feminazi actually argued with them, and flat refused to
believe what it actually meant. Or maybe that was when Penn &
Teller did the same gag.

(I only know the term from a computer game; one of the
wonders to build was Women's Suffrage, and the symbol of
equality. Kind of the name for emancipation.)

If yes: Oh dear. :) Those women deserve to be mocked.

Women's suffrage is the right to vote.

Ah, right. Thanks.

Specifically, they had a petition to repeal the 19th amendment
(which guarantees women the right to vote in the US). Mocking
doesn't begin to cover what the ranting feminazi deserved.

Well, yes.

<still giggling>

Yeah.

If that, then it sounds like a much better idea than just
casting for one new idea.

I have no idea how much of a "direct market sales" industry
there is outside the US. It might not be a viable idea
anywhere else for a TV show.

If they produce it anyway, they could sell it the more
conventional way, if it is something people buy.

Some things sell much better that way, apparently. Plus, the
prices are often much lower because direct sales cut two levels
of middlemen out of the equation. So you get "buy one get one
free plus we'll include these other two cheaper products at no
addtional cost" deals.

I was wondering about transportation to (and profit of) the
actual stores, and figured a little higher price would be ok.

As a rule, in the US at any rate (and it can't really be much
different in any modern economy), a retaler pays to their
wholesaler, on average, about half what they sell stuff for. (High
end stuff, like cars, are different, of course.) And as a rule, the
final retail price (in a store) is between five and ten times what
it costs the manufacturer to actually make it. The direct sales
model (also known as mail order, though that traditionally involves
one middle mane between manufacturer and consumer) cuts a *lot* of
overhead.

With what you say now, I wonder whether putting the usual junk
in stores might actually get any customers at all; they would
get to see it up close and leave it. One thing about the
channels that sell stuff all day here is that they sell junk at
extraordinary _high_ prices.

Shopping channels do tend to do that, yes. These guys aren't
shopping channel, though. They sell through 1 minute or 2 minute
ads on regular (advertising supported) television. A lot of what
they sell is junk, too, but not as much, and their prices are
usually a lot more realistic.

Of course the products from the show, actually nifty new things,
aren't included in that. I'm just thinking of all the t-shirts,
pants, watches, earrings and so on that you could get in stores
for something between a tenth and at most half the TV price.

Only morons buy from the shopping channel. Most of it is utterly
worthless even if it's not junky quality, trinkets of no value
other than to collect dust in the knick-knack shelf.

They also had a battery operated, fairly small circular saw
with counter-rotating blades intended for use by rescue crews
(invented by a former fireman) that had an absolutely
incredible Wow! moment for anyone who has ever used a
tradtitional circular law. (He pulls a soft drink can out of
his bag, and proceeds to cut a slot - not all the way through
to his hand - in it while holding it in his had. Do that with
a regular circ saw, and the blade will catch on the aluminum
and shoot the can across the room fast enough to leave a dent
in the far wall.)

Cool.

It looked *very* cool. The firemen they gave the prototype to
to play with obviously didn't want to give it back. They were
cutting through window glass, mounted in a standard window
frame, without shattering the glass. And no sparks at all. It
was an amazing tool.

Heh. Did it get to be produced for sale?

I believe that was the "winner" for that episode. Which, hopefully,
means the guy got enough money to get his company going and make
what he really wanted to make. (This stuff is aimed at consumers,
which means it's perfectly OK to have much lower quality than what
he wants to make, which is for fire rescue people who might die if
their tools fail.)

[As Seen On TV]
Give worshippers of Satan hope, they do.

The customers must already live in Hell, what with having
nothing better to do...

Rather my point.

That's stuff for a short story, where they are indeed the
denizens of Hell, forced to watch and buy all that junk for
the rest of eternity. The end might be that one of the
producers here on the surface finds out about it.

Could be fun. Throw in some gay Daleks, and you have a classic.

LOL.

Gay's cool. I'm more in favour of Cybermen, though.

How about a goat? Then we're guaranteed to be funny, at least.

I trust you're right, but do I want to know more?

About Hollyweird? Probably not. But anything you hear about
how strange a place it is on the internet is probably not
outrageous enough. This is the place where it is impossible
to convict a celebrity of *any* crime that will involve
actual jail time, though being sentenced to rehab is
allowable (because it makes their future movies more
profitable).

I inadvertently close my eyes and want to think of something
different. <g>

Yeah, we do that, too.

Probably the reason for why they get away with it.

Not really. TV and movies starts are our royalty, or perhaps out
atheistic dieties.

Yeah. And Comedy Central didn't kill the series at that
point. In fact, it had multiple seasons, I think, and at
least one theatrical movie.

There's a German version of that channel now. At one time they
had some crank calls with puppets show, which was interesting
only for just having subtitles in German, no dubbing.

They're showing the actual US _Punked_ with subtitles? Wow. The
suckage must just drip out on to the carpet.

They did show it with just subtitles (I don't know what the show
was called in the USA, though), now they dub it, and it lost
all that it had that made it interesting.

Which wasn't much to begin with.

(But other viewers here probably disagree, prefering German
language as the only one they understand, as long as no long
words are involved, and not too good at reading either. <g>)

You mean there are people in the world who aren't *forced* to learn
English for the convenience of Americans? No wonder you people are
so primitive compared to us.

(English language TV is rare here, though as I'm slowly
crawling
into the 20th century - not the 21st yet - I do have a DVD
player now and some original DVDs, so that lure is gone.)

The only other interesting show they have is some of Little
Britain (though some sketches I could do without).

Never heard of it. But the BBC channel is a premium channel
here. And if I were going to pay for a premium channel, it
would probably be Showtime because they have more naked women.

Heh.

Indeed.

We've got a few channels that, due to lack of some real program,
show naked women at night. Pretty much everything but a good
look at the genitals. No extra charge, only commercials. But
commercials, at night, tend to mostly be the same kind, only
with the women trying to lure callers.

Maybe you should move. <g>

Dear, I live in beautiful, sunny southern California. I can see all
the soft core porn I want by just going to the beach, and if I'm
interested in "that sort of woman," well, there's plenty of those
on any street corner. And they probably charge less.

You're really out to sell something with me to make a lot of
money, aren't you?

I'm out to do, well, anything that will make *me* lots of
money. I don't object to you making lots of money, too, as
long as it's money that wouldn't otherwise be mine.

I share that philosophy. :)

Well, if *I* want to make *me* lots of money, and *you* want to
make *me* lots of money, then we're all set.

LOL.

Not quite.

Tease.

My main interest would be making me rich, though, without
doing something I don't feel like doing. <g>

I will point out that you *offered*, I didn't ask.

Heh.

You just come rushing in with cameras at every opportunity.

Hope. Eternal. Springs. Etc.

Are you, at least, an 18 year old with bit boobs that's
allergic to wearing clothes?

I'm more than twice that age,

Well, that can be worked with, I suppose.

but sort of allergic to wearing no
clothes. :)

But that's just Doing. It. Wrong.

(And my boobs only serve to have people think I
belong to the species 'female', while I don't feel at all part
of that species. Women are weird, they make no sense to me
whatsoever.)

You want confusing? The current fashion (For at least the last ten
years) 'round here is for natural blondes to dye their eyebrows
(and, if they have any, their pubic hair) brown so they *look* like
bleached bonde bimbos.

I'm more suited to frighten children, anyway. As I always say; a
six foot kid scare with hat.

Well, tall, at least, is promising.

Though if you want to believe something else, I can be whatever
you like. I once did a job on the phone doing that, and I was
good. (I also got regular fits of giggling after the call was
over. Gives one an entirely new perspective when one
experiences first hand what kind of crap some people buy.)

I'll just bet. At least on the phone, there's a good chance the
gender is what is claimed. As opposed to the interent, where men
are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents looking for
pedophiles.

But I prefer something that looks like real people, which so
far is only accomplished by real people. Though I have hopes
that one day computer graphics will manage it.

We're very, very close now. The governator appears via GCI in
the newest Terminator movie, for instance.

Haven't watched that (I might when it's on TV, I'm not much for
going to movies, or movies in general).

I haven't either. The best review I've seen on it so far is "It
doesn't suck as much as the last one." Which makes it above average
for the summer, so far.

Thing is, though, a lot of things where people say it looks real
don't to me. (I've had a few conversations with SeaWasp on that
already.) And anything that doesn't manage it looks no better
than the original Flash Gordon rocket on strings, to me.

I can usually tell what's CGI and what's real, though sometimes
green screen (where the background is real, just not behind the
actors) can go either way. It's *almost* there, though.

In games, something at least a decade old even looks better.
Perhaps because it's not so set on success and then still
failing. I'd prefer graphics like in Dune, or Master of Magic,
or Ultima 7 over what they hail as the new shiny game on the
news now.

I'd prefer something that actually runs on my computer without
having to spend hundreds of bucks on a video card. But it ain't
gonna hapen. (Not that I have the time, or really all that much
interest, in very many games these days.)

(You're free to call me weird - and no doubt will if it amuses
you. <g>)

My favorite games at this point are Civ II (which was, IIRC, a
Win95 game originally) and Stars!, which was written for Windows
3.1. Weird is a matter of perspective.

The only two cartoons I like is 1. Pinky and The Brain (caught
a few episodes years ago after someone on a newsgroup
mentioned it),

A classic, to be sure. South Park draws on that heritage,
though it's more juvenile and more willing to piss people off
with current social commentary. (They apparently *normally*
take about two weeks from the time they come up with an idea
for an episode to when they turn in the finished product to the
network, so their social commentary is *very* current. They had
the correct winner of the last presidential election in an
episode less than 24 hours after the election ended, though I
suspect they had filmed it both ways because it didn't matter
to the story who won.)

Nifty.

Still isn't something I'd want to watch, though.

Only about half is bodily function jokes. The rest tends to be very
insightful, biting social commentary. Not to everyone's taste,
either way, and the social commentary does tend to be very US-
centric.

In the eighties he had a two-man 'band', selling (basically)
ever the same song over and over again, each one a hit.
(Music show hosts seemed to be embarrassed to present and
congratulate them.) Did the same again around 2000. (Plus
he's written songs for famous names, also hits, but they tend
to sidle away after he's done them a hit.)

Sounds like the David Eddings (RIP) of the music business.

Never thought of it like that. I would have thought David
Eddings wouldn't have called his own stories ***. (Is there
any author who would? Genuinely curious...)

Well, not like *that*. But Eddings had a tendency to do lots of
books that were very similiar to each other.

It's hard to count how many times he wrote basically the same
book, often without even changing the names. But then, if
that's what the audience wants . . .

Exactly.

Or Suvivor: Baffin Island. Let's see those bikinis now,
bitches.

Unfortunately, I've never heard of Baffin Island.

It's north of the Arctic Circle. Survivor is known for its
tropical island paradise settings, because that way the women
wear bikinis (and the men, who I presume are equally hot, wear
swim trunks).

<g>

Survivor isn't about surviving in a wilderness, it's about
petty, narcissitc young people being petty and narcissitc. And
hot.

Well, if it gives you scantily clad hot babes and you enjoy
watching them, more for you!

I prefer my porn without commercials, and the internet is full of
free stuff. :) Generally speaking, I despise reality TV in all its
forms, other than the odd game show like program like America's Got
Talent.

I doubt they'd get me to watch it even if the men were of a
shape I find appealing and getting it on among each other,
without (due to their character) a single word spoken.

I think I'm just going to leave that lie.

(Letting me do that would lower the price to show it on TV
to something affordable, at that. Only it would have to
include a general "no going to jail" card.)

Just do it in Hollywood.

LOL.

You think I'm kidding?

Eh, yes?

Eh, no, not really. I wish I was.

Poor, sad world. <g>

Hollywood is, at least, not part of the world the rest of humanity
lives in.

The conviction of Phil Spectre for murder surprised a lot of
people, but says more about his (lack of) celebrity status
than it does about the courts in Los Angeles. There are
reasons to wonder if OJ was guilty, though not many, and
Robert Blake, well, not many reasons at all, but both walked
on murder charges. Buzz Aldrin punched out a paparazzi _on
camera_, and the LA County DA threatened to prosecute the
paparazzi. Welcome to La La Land.

Oh dear.

On the other hand, arguably, the pararazzi was comming a
criminal act by blocking Buzz's way out of the hotel, and had
literally been stalking him for several years (trying to get
him to say something that could be twisted in to an admission
the moon landings were faked). Plus, Buzz is a genuine hero,
and a celebrity, and the moron did this in Hollywood itself.
Can't get much stupider than that.

Kind of cheeky of you to leave out the other side until now. <g>

Yeah, well. It's not a particularly obscure story, you know. If you
want one where the "other side" is just as bad as the first, look
at Robert Blake, who it is hard to believe did not literally get
away with murder solely because he's a celebrity.

--
Terry Austin

Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more ***. -
David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
.

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