Reuters: “Ten years after winning the Booker Prize for her first novel, and a decade as one of India’s leading social and environmental activists, Arundhati Roy is planning a return to fiction.”

Excerpt from Wallace Troglon’s “The God Who Taunted Her: Lee Goldberg, Cathy Young and the Tragic End of Young-Limsky,” pp. 34-35:

Of all the moments in the blogosphere, with the exception of the unexpected third-season frottage moment between Sam Tanenhaus and Bat Segundo[1], few have been as controversial as the relationship between Fanfic Warrior Princess Cathy Young and Lee Goldberg, the Television God of War. It is difficult for the amateur scholar to determine whether any of these relationships are true. It is further difficult for the amateur to limn the demarcation between reality and fiction.

Lee Goldberg, however, came across as a more menacing villain than Tanenhaus, causing much division and rancor within fandom.[2] That the show’s writers would disrupt the safe territory that the show had operated in for so long was an insult. That the show would dare to emulate real life to some extent, which most of the fans had previously avoided by spending their time writing 100,000 word dissertations and derivative stories based on the show’s characters, was an outright existential blow.

Goldberg was the first to challenge the much believed and still valid conclusions of the Young-Limsky School, making the bold claim that the litblog was not a form of fiction. This seemed, Goldberg averred, ostensible to anyone with a pulse.

I shall not address the “pre-Goldberg” and “post-Goldberg” periods of fandom. It has been discussed enough elsewhere.[3] But I am most concerned with the various dead gophers that Young sent Goldberg in the mail, along with the magazine subscriptions that Young had signed Goldberg up for. If we accept Goldberg’s contrarian thesis in part, were these moments initiated by Cathy Young? Or were they scripted into the series by the show’s brilliant head writer?

[1] See Season 3, Episode 55, “Books and Bats,” when the series switched over to Showtime to take advantage of the network’s “No Limits” policy. On March 3, 2005, a few weeks after the episode’s airdate, there was considerable debate in alt.fan.litblogs over whether the actor playing “Sam Tanenhaus”[a] whispered “You can’t write” or “You’re all right.” Whatever the three words were, it still doesn’t explain why the show’s writers followed this with a more explicit love scene that was completely out of character with the tone of the first two seasons. Fellow scholar and fanfic defender OMyGawdGoldberg!, leaving a comment on Tod Goldberg’s site, settled the matter by calling both Goldberg brothers “a bunch of heartless cretins.”

[a] The actor’s name remains unidentified, despite a coordinated stalking effort by fans of the show to get the answer from the producers.

[2] For more on this topic, see R.U. Phuckingsomeone’s invaluable “Litbloggers Copulate Too,” a 6,000 word treatise that posits many hypothetical couplings if we agree with the Young-Limsky school that considers litbloggers to be a fictive construct arranged within a five-season television series that aired between 2000-2005, released shortly thereafter on DVD.

[3] See Cathy Young’s trio of articles, “Fanfic is the Only Form of Fiction,” “Fanfic is Better Than Updike and Better Than Sex” and her confessional piece de resistance, “The Night Lee Goldberg Made Me Cry.”

Another crazy side project is being formed as we speak. You’ll know more in a week. You’ll see it in about two weeks. Keep watching the skies.

Hacking Hot or Not. (via MeFi)

I’m a native Californian. So this makes me something of a clueless wuss when it comes to East Coast winter. You see, here in California, unless we head up to the Sierra Nevada mountains, we rarely experience any weather below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, we Californians shiver and complain when the temperature hits tepid winter levels, and this makes us something of an understandable laughing stock. (This does not, however, explain California’s rampant libertarianism, nor its wacko New Age movements.)

There’s a corollary to this Left Coast predicament. California’s relative warmth also means that many of us (or at least me) are utterly clueless about winter wear. Hats? Scarves? Gloves? You don’t say! What the hell are those? I have a trusty full-length wool coat that gets me through the cold winter nights, thank you very much. And if you push me against the wall, I’ll drag out my thermal underwear under duress, which I honestly can’t remember where I put. But I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in my apartment!

I hit New York this weekend, where the weather ranged from 15-30 degrees. With my Californian idiot thinking in play, I likewise figured that the wool coat would serve me well in these comparatively freezing conditions. This worked out okay for me, except when I ventured beyond three Manhattan blocks in the cold. After three blocks, I began to experience an astonishing freezing sensation in my cheeks! This was something new and strange (and, dare I say it, exotic) to me, and I did my best to hide my panic. When my silly masculinity dissipated and I began to realize that this was not a good winter wear situation, it was suggested by certain folks kind enough to comprehend my cluelessness that covering my ears and hands would probably be a good thing.

So I sallied forth to do this. But I could not find a trusty cap or gloves for sale in a ten block area. This was New York! Why was it possible to order smoked Cuban fish at 2:30 AM, and yet not find winter gear? I was prepared to abandon my quest altogether, silently shivering and risking possible frostbite, until I stumbled upon one of those 99 cent stores. I walked into this dubious outlet with some trepidation.

I was stunned to discover a hat and gloves, which I obtained for the amazing price of $2.58. The freezing feeling in my cheeks disappeared! There was better body heat distribution! I began to walk proudly in the cold, thinking that (at least for this weekend) I could probably pull a Travolta strut and ask for two, two slices of pizza somewhere.

There is a moral to this story: a discount store will save you from the cold more effectively than one of those silly Duane Reade outlets that purport to serve the general public.