silver

So as the last entry may have suggested, I went to the symphony to hear Orff's Carmina Burana, and it was amazing.

It's a cantata scored for choirs, small orchestra, and tenor, baritone, and soprano. Orff used medieval songs/poetry from Beuern (Latinized to Burana) as his libretto, most of which were written in Latin but also Middle High German. He grouped them into several categories: drinking songs, love songs, songs about spring, all centered on a theme about Fortune. And then he set them to music.

You are probably familiar with the very first poem. It's O Fortuna and it's a very, very famous piece, often scored for epic scenes in pop culture. Here is a slowish Youtube recording. I really, really encourage you to listen to it, because I'm sure you know the first few seconds:



There was a hundred-plus choir singing this alongside a children's chorus, in what had to be like ffffffff dynamic phrasing. It was also a lot faster and had some incredibly clipped, marcato enuciation, so the impact can hardly be imagined in the concert hall. This is music to bowl you over completely!

( The rest of Carmina Burana, and a quick note about the contrasting pieces preceding (including translated & original lyrics, even!) )

So a couple of weeks ago Amazon announced that they are allowing the sale of fan-written fiction (fanfic, fanfiction, fic, ficcies¹, etc) for select fandoms through their site. Here is the announcement: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001197421

A lot of people have talked about this. I found out on f_fa, thought that someone was pulling my leg, but nope, it's true. Here is Scalzi's thoughts on it, which come from the perspective of someone who has been published and knows a little about contracts for writing, more than fic writers probably do: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/22/amazons-kindle-worlds-instant-thoughts/

Right, so I'm not even going to touch the fan side of it, except to boggle: I can't believe it's happening! Just like I was surprised at the mainstream-ing of Fifty Shades of Grey, I can't believe that fic is getting out there like that. Holy cow!

No, my main thought is: who's buying²?

( Like I said, I don't get where it's coming from )

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¹ *giggle*

² In case you ever wanted to know, yes I do spend a lot of time learning/thinking/talking about economics.

I work in a library and shelve books.

In shelving I remove the random pieces of paper that people stick into books. So far, I have found, among other things:

*Post-its, sticky colourful flags, plastic flags, etc, with and without text, sometimes shredded into small strips. Scrap paper with scribblings and paperclips fall into this category too.
*toilet paper folded over a few times (heh, obviously I am not alone in this)
*Due date slips. This is boring, except...some of them are from 1994! They're yellowing and bent and obviously no one has actually cracked open this book since '94. I am keeping track of the oldest ones (the 1994 one, properly, is a pre-printed piece of paper with the library's name, a notice saying "50 cents per day per book", and a rubber-stamped date. It's not the receipts that are computer-printed automatically when we check out books.)
*Interlibrary loan papers, complete with patron name, requesting library, date of request, a paperclip (often in colours like hot pink), and many other uninterpretable details which look like keysmashes to me.
*A "Parking Infraction Notice", with instructions saying: "If you plead not guilty then the trial will be held at [Province] Court at: [Address]" I'm not sure if they plead guilty or not, since the stub ended up in a book...
*An RBC banking receipt. Someone withdrew $100 at some point, apparently.
*A test paper on recent Chinese history, marked in red pen.
*A piece of paper with bunny stickers.

But today I found something that takes the cake:
*Someone's completed Social Security card application. With his name, address, date of birth, mailing address. Folded into eight squares. LEFT IN A BOOK.

AHHHH!

I am on dreamwidth partially because of the sudden change of fanficrants to explicit adult content (and blocked off to 18+ only), and also partly because I'm starting to feel that LJ is becoming more and more...insensitive, perhaps? Reneging on their privacy policies, and not really responding.

I think the bulk of my posting will still be at my LJ account (silverflight8.livejournal.com), and this account will probably be just a place for me to access other communities. However, you'll know when LJ finally pushes me too far--my dreamwidth account will fill up with posts.

Thanks again to jalendavi_lady  for the invite codes.