[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

More of a loon than the employer/client?

Well...yeah, no. I can't find any way to write that story without being a loon.

A favorite on line comic is User Friendly, set at a Canadian ISP.

<snip>

User Friendly offered plush Dust Puppy toys, and I got one.

That sounds fun. I'm going to look for that. I once bought a "Buddy Jesus" figurine from Kevin Smith. ;-) I really bought it for my dentist, who was a MASSIVE KS fan.

For that matter, you can tell by the online blurbs. For instance, I can't wait for Zombies to be "so last year". Part of my problem is that I read SF/fantasy, and have for five decades. New writers often simply haven't read enough to know what was done to death 30 years ago, and won't get why folks like me say "Oh, no! Not Yet Another One of X!"

Oh, me, too. It's got to be generational. I don't get the fascination with zombies. Never did, whether it's Romero or now. Walking shambling/running icky dead things? Yick. And yes--one of the genres really hit hard by self-pubbing is Sci-Fi, (and romance and, er, "romantica"), particularly, and it's not necessarily in a good way. LOTS of, lemme see, how shall I say this?...hmmm..."homages" to earlier books abound.

I'll take your word for it, but since that's the case, why use it in the first place?

STUPIDITY? I mean, really. I was so desperate to get AWAY from Expression Engine--my former CMS, which took suckage to whole new places (although it was fine when I first started to use it in '05-'06--just keeled over from old age, really) that I misunderstood the realities of J!. I looked at J! templates, addons, etc. and, no one to blame but myself, I failed to really understand the fundamental workings of the thing.

I shouldn't whine like a puppy; it's not godawful. Many are worse. It's just...some of the way it works feels precious. Sort of like..."we started with this CMS this way, to make it usable by people with NO experience, and weren't we CLEVER? And just because that clever bit gets in the way for people who can spell HTML, why, no, we're going to leave it that way." I don't know if that 'splains it or not. Just seems like some of the philosophy gets in the way of making it work like a "grownup" CMS. As I said though--to find the culprit, I need look no further than the nearest mirror. IDIOT!!

I'm accustomed to dealing with sharp people too.

The former editor I mentioned earlier and I had a discussion at one point about the issues involved in communicating publishing reality to aspiring writers and readers. She said "The problem is, we're smart, and we surround ourselves with people who are smart. We tend to forget most people aren't smart until we have to deal with them. They just don't get things that are obvious to us." She was quite right.
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Dennis

Did you read Mudd's The Head Game? He made a simple but profound observation, which I parroted here in this thread: that by definition, fully half the people are below average. Yes, I know that it ought to be obvious; but I tend not operate keeping that in mind. I probably ought to quote it in big print and hang it under my big wall clock, in my line of sight.

The idiot part of me continues to expect that my clientele will be like my clientele (former). And lo, by and large, they are not. This isn't to say that some of my clients are not geniuses or near-as, but holy crap, it's an entire new experience. I like to tell myself that I'll be a better person for it, but my inner cranky broad thinks that's BS, and thinks I'll have better luck improving myself if I light candles and burn incense.

Thanks!

Hitch