yonmei:

I'm coughing quite a bit, and my throat hurts, and I'm having trouble focussing a bit. Does that suggest I'm ill?

I can't check my temperature. I don't have a thermometer.

selenak:

Just got my advance copy of Hand of Isis by jo_graham, which the rest of you will be able to read and enjoy in March next year. While its predecessor, Black Ships, was among many other things a unique reinterpretation of the Aeneid, Hand of Isis takes on one of the best known stories of the ancient world, the last queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. Who is not the main character of this novel, though she is an important one. The great strengh of Hand of Isis and the reason why this isn't just another retelling you could skip lies in the ingenuity of two of its premises: the point of view character is Charmian (whom people familiar with Cleopatra's life might recall as one of her favourite handmaidens), and Charmian, along with Iras, the other favourite handmaiden, are Cleopatra's half-sisters, their mothers slaves of Ptolemy Auletes. The core relationships of the novel and its emotional heart are the bond between the three sisters. Which isn't to say the usual supects - Caesar and Antony - aren't there, both skilfully drawn, plus jo_graham comes up with two original characters, the Jewish-Greek scholar Dion and the legionary Emrys Aurelianus, who are incredibly endearing, but this really is the sisters' story.

Alexandria, the main location, and the unique mixture of cultures that constituted Egypt at that time - the Ptolemies weren't Egyptian in origin, remember, but Macedonian - are lovingly described. As are events like theatre productions (a soft spot of mine - it's so rare a writer manages to bring something like performances to life, let alone ones held two thousand years ago under very different conditions) or religious ceremonies. It can be read as a standalone, but it will make you want to read the earlier novel - and look forward to the not yet written later ones, since the tapestry the author weaves of events and characters echoing and constrasting each other through the centuries is very rich.

If you're looking for a take on Egypt that contrasts the non-stop-orgies cliché started by Augustan propaganda (and surviving well into the present in some versions) without making the mistake of falling into the opposite extreme of presenting the Romans as vile beyond redemption, a story that doesn't forget how deeply the Herods and Judea were involved with Egyptian and Roman politics and renders said politics in their exciting complexity, this is it. If you're in the mood for a novel in which the love and loyalty between family and friends are even more important than ones between lovers, this is it as well. Enjoy! I certainly did.

kyuuketsukirui:

sjdhakjehwqehwhrdjkwehfrjwehrjtwe!!!!!!!

( Spoilers! )

kyuuketsukirui:

I got my cat-sitting money today, yay. Plus they're going out of town for nine days over Christmas, so that's even more (much-needed) money coming up. :D

telesilla:
I might not have posted this one, but that last line just yelled out "Grace!" to me. :)

selenak:

Two reviews, one tv, one book. First of all the one for the show with one of the best second seasons ever. (Many a show can do a good first season. It's the second one that is the trial.)

( What Terminators Do At Night )

kyuuketsukirui:

I was hoping maybe today my happiness would be that I wrote a huge chunk of the fic I need to finish writing, or maybe even that I'd have finished it. Alas, thanks to Write or Die, that was not to be. I had set it for thirty minutes, and then I wrote as much as I could before needing to stop and check the fic I was remixing, so I pressed "done", thinking that would just stop the timer. Instead, it navigated away from the page. If I'd realised it was going to do that, I would have c&ped my text (400 words!) first, but I had no idea it would do such a thing! Seriously, wtf!? Then a pop-up came up asking if I wanted to save my text to the clipboard, and I sighed in relief, thinking my work was saved, except when I pressed "yes", it didn't actually copy anything to the clipboard. D:

So. I did manage to rewrite about half of it, but I was demoralised and blah and not feeling like it. Maybe tomorrow.

We did get our Christmas presents in the mail from Amazon today, but no opening them until Christmas day. I should put up the tree tomorrow so I can wrap them and they can be all nice under the tree instead of sitting in a drawer.

I finally got my LibraryThing library organised, including romanising authors and titles for the 400+ manga and Japanese-language books I had on there. D: That was fun. But now at least things alphabetise correctly.

selenak:

After the last two parter disappointed me somewhat because of the Sarah Jane characterisation and the rehash of an old plot - which made it the first SJA story I genuinenly disliked and won't watch again - this one makes up for it by being a good return to form in its first part. Also, well. How can one not love the guest star, I ask you?

( All manner of space thuggery )

cesare:

# The one where it's season 1 and Rodney has an allergic reaction to a food item offworld, but instead of giving him anaphylaxis, it hits him like eight shots and a pan of pot brownies, making him bizarrely relaxed and giddy and euphoric, and he says to John, "You know what I like about you?" and John figures: shit, I better head this off, he's probably got a thing for me, and Ford really doesn't need to hear it if he does, so John says, "Yeah, buddy, sure do." And Rodney says, "Oh good. Wait... how'd you know about Pokey?" and Ford gets chuckly and intrigued and starts asking while John winces, but it turns out to be completely innocuous: Pokey was Rodney's cat when Rodney was a kid, and Pokey had dark gold eyes that looked green sometimes, and his fur stuck up like a kitty mohawk, and that's what high!Rodney likes about John... John reminds him of his childhood cat. Ford is amused to no end, John laughs it off, but he's also kind of disappointed, weirdly, a little? And strangely enough, that minor incident kicks off his show-long pining. Because hey. Why doesn't Rodney have a thing for him? Don't they kind of have something, there? If they don't, well... anyway, seems like John does.

Years pass, Rodney nearly marries Katie and has a brief romance with Jennifer, which dies when Rodney goes to meet Jennifer's dad and all involved realize to their intense embarrassment that Rodney, in his most relaxed and Jennifer-approved mode, is practically a dead ringer for Keller Sr, who's a workaholic medical researcher, stressy and prickly but kind. So Rodney mopes around in the aftermath of that, and John's trying to cheer him up with beer and a Batman: The Animated Series marathon, but instead of being cheered, Rodney acts sort of despondent and furtive around John, and John eventually buys a clue and realizes that five years ago Rodney admitted that he noticed the color of John's eyes. DUH.

cesare:

# The one where, per Brain Storm, Ronon and John go camping and surfing, and while they hike and set up camp, Ronon remembers the two or three previous times he's had sex with John: each time a plausibly-deniable situation that neither of them broached or tried to build on afterward. But Ronon thinks about that time they were captive/drugged/locked in a room and told to propitiate the gods or their teammates would be sacrificed/whatever, and how at first Sheppard was tense and stoic and just bearing it, but slowly, he gave it up, and how he was sweaty and drunk on it, pushing back onto Ronon, riding his hand when Ronon cupped him, how John crushed his hand over Ronon's and said his name. It was... memorable. And now, Rodney and Jennifer have gone through the gate together like it's the sunset in one of those movies Sheppard likes, and Ronon's not sure what he wants from this more-- if it's to fuck til the tender spot Jennifer left in him tightens up solid and strong again, or to soothe the misery that's wearing away at John til he's thin and sharp and strained. Anyway, Ronon figures, he's a capable guy. He can do both.

# The one where, in scene one of Brain Storm, Rodney's just a little bit more awkward and Jennifer's just a little more stressed, so when he proposes that she come with him to Tunney's event as his trophy arm candy, she's a little insulted, and tells him so, and he gets defensive, so she turns him down and leaves. Rodney slinks over to eat with the team and gets a critique of his approach from Teyla, who hints that perhaps Rodney was sabotaging himself. Rodney sulks about having to go to the event alone, and John offers to go along: Ronon's not at all into the surfing trip John's been talking up, and John's got some legal inheritance crap he could settle way faster in person on Earth, plus, John wasn't wild about the idea of Rodney going to an undisclosed location without armed backup anyway.

AND SO John goes along to the demo suited up in dress blues, and strategically deploys phrases like "Dr. McKay's not at liberty to discuss that" when people try to needle Rodney about what he's been up to, and of course when Rodney realizes the danger of the experiment, John immediately goes into "Who and/or what do I need to shoot?" mode. Somehow the bridge gets opened anyway, but instead of Keller's genius-sitting kindergarten singalong and double dose of condescending lectures, the middle of the plot involves lots of John and Rodney action-heroing around to close the bridge. There's probably still hypothermic kissing at the end, though.

selenak:

In which the gloves are off, and Miguel turns out to be a lot smarter than Lila.

( You just have a problem with the term innocent, do you? )

kyuuketsukirui:

I ran a lot of errands today, including going to the bank because I got a western union transfer for four weeks worth of my weekly translating gig, plus I got a check in the mail today for my old laptop. Yay, money! I haven't had proper work since the end of October, so this was very nice. Hopefully I should get my $100 for cat-sitting soon, too.

But anyway, Bruce had some errands to do, too, so we met up around lunch time when I was just heading out and he was heading home, and we had lunch at Tacos Por Favor, a tasty little hole in the wall place on Olympic.

While out, I read about half of Girl Meets Boy, a newish book by Ali Smith, whom I am loving more and more with each book of hers I read. So far this one is really good.


Oh, and here are the answers from the lyrics meme:

( Click! )

I'm on a weird sleep schedule. Actually sleeping at night (quite early at night, in fact; the other night I went to bed at eight). I don't like it, but other than forcing myself to stay up, I never know how to get out of a rut like this, and it's hard to force myself to stay up when I'm sleepy!

sorchar:
Almost Perfect, the one where Ianto wakes up as a woman.

I want to marry this book. So. Much. Wit. Jack/Ianto in spades, including a brief revelation of Ianto's true feelings towards Jack and ( spoiler ) Some Ianto backstory. Wistful mentions and memories of Owen and Tosh. Harry Potter reference! Jeremy Clarkson reference! And did I mention all the Jack/Ianto?
Defo worth the purchase.

kyuuketsukirui:

Put your music player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first song is the title.

I Can See a Time When I Won't Be Able to Feel the Pain No More

I hold an image of the ashtray girl
Everyone's a critic, but hey they really respect your talent
I got a plan we can do it
Hit the road in wander mode, inquire along the way

We were tight, but it falls apart as silver turns to blue
She was only seventeen, sixteen, or in between
The amount of pills I'm taking counteracts the booze I'm drinking
Look what you've done, you gigolo

Take back the city for yourself tonight
They rise above this
I wake up in the morning
I won't cut my beard

Whatever, whatever, girl, I'll do
Where are your friends, silly thing?

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
My voice is yours to keep for years
I can't believe what you did to me

I can see my teenage father standing straight on a desolate corner
A febrile shocking violent smack
I think I'll go home and mull this over

I think it actually makes quite a coherent song, amazingly. If you want to take a guess at the titles and artists, go ahead. I'll post the answers tomorrow. I will say my iTunes loved a couple bands quite a bit. These two bands came up three times each. Everyone else just appears once, I think.

selenak:

Aka the one nobody likes.

( Once more into the breach, dear friends )

yonmei:

Put your music player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first song is the title.

(Created last night while trying to do one last nanowrimo update, but I forgot they now check your time zone - none of that "you've got till 8am GMT" any more... Oh well. 30K+ words in November, that's not bad at all.)

Pay no mind to her, she only wants to play

If you want me
If I were a carpenter
Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
So blue lonesome too but still true
Smile your little smile, take some tea with me awhile

In Europe and America there's
An old cowboy went riding out one dark and windy day
I chase your every footstep
The wind blows hard across the Texas plains
Oh, I could have worked on a research staff

If you can't say you love me say you hate me
At the end of the day you're another day older
Come over to the window, my little darling,
Ten years ago, on a cold dark night
You could have your choice of guys in town

I'm going to steal me a silver stallion
I learned the truth at seventeen
A man is walking on the moon, with his eyes turned up toward space
Just a kiss just a kiss
Riding on the City of New Orleans.


( Song titles/singers )

darkrose:

( Cut for length, and possible triggers regarding Alzheimer's Disease/dementia. )

kyuuketsukirui:

Are you a lego collector? Do you have a kid who likes legos and would like a bunch for Christmas?

We have a ton and I really just want to get them out of the house. At first we were planning on separating them all out and putting them up on eBay separately, but that is just not happening, so at this point I'm thinking maybe I could sell them in a lot.

There are numerous small and medium sets of medieval, pirates, outer space, underwater, archeologist, etc. themes. There's also several small and medium Star Wars sets and two or three of the Time Twisters set (including the train pictured and a larger set as well), which is a very neat theme that I really loved. There's also a bunch of Bruce's old legos from when he was a kid (I already sold mine long ago) and a 1200 piece tub. Aside from Bruce's old ones, all or almost all of them have instructions (though I think the box pictures is the only box we have left). Some have already been separated out into sets and put in baggies. Some of Bruce's old ones have some wear and tear, being old and having been actually played with. The others we just bought and displayed, so they're in excellent condition.

If anyone's interested, just ask and I'll be happy to give more details, including exactly the names of the sets, etc. I can take more pictures, too.

I'd like to get $125 (plus shipping), but the price is negotiable.

ETA: Sold!

kyuuketsukirui:

I read vols 4 and 5 today while cat-sitting. Man, this series just gets better and better. I just wish it came out more often! In the back of vol. 5 it said vol. 6 is supposed to be out early next year. (Actually, I do have chapters 19-23 I could read, and probably will end up doing so, but I still wish it came out faster!) Like Fullmetal Alchemist, this is surprisingly plotty and low on battles, and though it's only on volume five, the plot is already getting lots of nice twists and turns.

And the art! I am in love with Asada Hiroyuk's art almost as much as I am with Obata Takeshi's. ♥

Is anyone else reading it? Apparently it's being scanlated. You should totally check it out.

yonmei:

I met helenraven for lunch - she operates without a mobile phone, so we met at the hotel and walked to an Italian place not far from there: she left for a movie: and I met afrai shortly afterwards in a Starbucks. She is as lovely in person as she is in print, and we walked down to Charing Cross and looked in bookshops and I bought a new Robin McKinley and we ate Japanese food and found a Caffe Nero and had coffee, and it was altogether a very social, very nice day.

I never took any photographs. Well, two.

msilverstar:

( I am lemming, hear me roar )

Also I don't send holiday cards (I used to try, but then it was February...). So please don't feel you should send me anything. Let's just make some time for each other, soon. Even if you've been lurking, I'm curious about who you are and what you like.

schtroumph_c:



Finally! I did nothing else that write this week. Plus the story was really over, I had to add a long flashback. But Naperville is still winning.

Now, it's time to do the homework, plus it's back to the babysitting (Monday 13h to whenever Mika come home, Wednesday 7h to whenever Gaëlle wake up, and same for Tuesday. Still not sure for Friday.) and the Christmas shopping.

kyuuketsukirui:

The lists from the top five meme I did last week sometime. All of these are in no particular order, because it's hard enough just making the lists, much less trying to rank things. D:

( Top 5 mangaka of all time )

( Top 5 songs of 2008 )

( Top 5 songs of the moment )

( Top 5 names )

( Top 5 hobbies )

( Top 5 albums of all time )

( Top 5 LJ-related pet peeves )

( Top 5 candies )

( Top 5 SGA AUs I want someone to write )

( Top 5 Pushing Daisies characters )

kyuuketsukirui:
Okay, I cannot seem to find a cracked version of Photoshop that is both not malware and actually works when I try to install it. I just tried one, followed the instructions to the letter, and it did not work as promised. I also cannot afford to pay hundreds of dollars for the real thing. Even with Bruce's student discount, it's ridiculously out of our price range.

So does anyone have any recommendations for Photoshop-type editing programs? I don't want to use a different program, because Photoshop is what I've been using for years and I know how to use it, but this is getting ridiculous. Right now I've been using my old laptop whenever I need to edit something, but as of this coming week I won't have that laptop anymore (plus it's a pain to have to switch computers anyway). I need some sort of Vista-compatible editing software.

kyuuketsukirui:

I did a lot of walking yesterday. About a mile each way to go cat-sit, and then we went down to Sur la Table in the evening to return the probe thermometer we bought last week because it kind of sucked. Walked back from there, which was another two miles.

We stopped at Bay Cities Deli on the way home for dinner and shared a godmother sandwich. I also bought some red velvet cupcakes that are omg so good.

Yesterday morning I weighed myself for the first time in like two months or so and found I'd lost around six or seven pounds (I can't remember exactly what I weighed before). Yay for forced exercise. XD I haven't changed my eating habits much, although I have been trying to eat more cheese and fruit instead of junk food. But if junk food or desserts are around, I'm not not eating them. So mainly it's just all the walking I've been doing.

I know I'll never be thin and that's not my goal, but I would really like to be overweight and in shape like I used to be. I'd also like to be less overweight so that my stomach doesn't feel like it's in the way all the time, that sort of thing.

selenak:

This is the weekend of writing and signing Christmas mail. I can't stand the sight of my own name anymore, let me tell you that. And there is yet more to come. So, in brevity, some recs:

Vid:

Civil War: neither the English nor the 19th century American one, but the comics event in the Marvelverse two years ago. By now, enough Marvel characters have appeared in films for footage to exist, and here a vidder has used it to create a gread vid about the big crossover event that, while severely flawed in execution, still is the one providing some terrific character stuff.

Film reviews which make me not only want to see the movies in question but sulk over the fact it will take a while (read: months, if not a year) till they make it to Germany for me to watch, while you Americans and Brits are already able to do watch them at your leasure:

Milk

Changeling

The later's script was written by JMS. (That would be the creator of Babylon 5, for non-B5 watchers, J. Michael Straczynski.) One tiny paragraph betrays the reviewer can't have watched the show:

The Rev Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), an eloquent Presbyterian pastor with a regular radio programme, takes up her case, beginning with a fierce sermon indicting the LAPD under police chief James Davies for negligence, inefficiency and corruption, collaborating with criminals rather than serving the public. He seems initially to be an obsessive, hellfire preacher, another menacing role for Malkovich, we're led to think. He is soon revealed to be a courageous, implacable crusader.

Considering that JMS is not only an atheist scriptwriter who, like RTD and to a lesser degree Joss Whedon, is fascinated by religious subjects and keeps returning to them, but who also tends to present priests of various religions (both real ones and fictional ones) in a positive light, this is not especially surprising.

telesilla:
I tired to do the photo mosaic meme, but every single picture I chose--and I made sure to choose ones that weren't protected--came up blank. Every single one. :( So I did this meme instead.

The "Be Pete Wentz" Poetry Meme

01. Put your music player on shuffle
02. The first lines of twenty songs = a poem; the first line of the twenty-first song is the title

It was interesting and not as Vogon as I expected. :)

( Have I Lost You? )

yonmei:

...that was the most genderfucky experience I have ever had in my life.

kyuuketsukirui:

Wow, this is the fourteenth book I've read this year, and seven of them have been this month alone. (Of course that means I've hardly read any fic or manga this month; it's definitely a trade-off.) With a whole month to go before the end of the year and three books for sure in the queue (one already a quarter of the way through), maybe I should revise my goal from fifteen to twenty.

I picked this book up because of The Decemberists' Song for Myla Goldberg. I'd never heard of her before that, but I was curious and wikipediad her and saw the song was in part about Bee Season, and the book sounded interesting.

It turned out to be absolutely amazing. There is not a single thing I didn't love about it. I loved the writing, the storylines, the utter dysfunctionality of the characters (always a favorite of mine). I've seen some complaints in other reviews about the ending, but I thought it was perfect. It ends at exactly the right place. (But then I myself am fond of ending without a denouement, so.)

I'm impressed with how many threads she managed to weave together. The search for something spiritual they all share, the hints of Miriam's mental imbalance in Aaron and Eliza, the way both parents are looking to their children to fulfill their dreams. And everything begins and ends with the spelling bee.

I really liked the way it was told, too. I didn't find the timeline at all confusing, despite everything being present tense; the events of each section were easy enough to place in the past or present. I haven't read many (any?) modern novels that use an omniscient POV like this, and before reading this, I would have said I'd hate it, but it really works. The POV slips easily between characters without every being confusing and I didn't feel (like I often do with fanfic that has multiple POVs) that it robbed it of any tension or mystery.

I also love that it was set in the '80s, of course. :)

mikotokun, you might like this. It deals with kabbalah and Jewish mysticism.

kyuuketsukirui:

Wow, Pushing Daisies was the only show this week (well, Simpsons is tomorrow, I think, and maybe Family Guy). It's nice not to feel like I have a bunch of stuff I need to watch. I think Ugly Betty and SGA will be back next week, but SPN is off til mid-January, by which time SGA will be over (and maybe Pushing Daisies, too, depending on how they space out the remaining episodes). I'm sure I will eventually get sucked into watching some other current show, though. Despite everyone and their mother being into Merlin, it doesn't interest me at all as a fandom show (I don't feel like reading or writing historical fic, regardless of how anachronistic it is (or perhaps even more so because)). Also I went through my King Arthur phase already when I was a teenager. I am interested in RPS, though, just because they boys are so wee and adorkable. (This is your cue to rec some!)

Anyway, so ( Pushing Daisies )

I tried watching Entourage, but the first episode was really not doing it for me. I forgot that I hate stories about Hollywood and obnoxious entitled rich people*. Well, I didn't forget, but the stuff I read about the show didn't make me think it would be like that for some reason. And then the episode cut off before the beginning, and I looked at the rest of the files in the torrent and saw it was missing one ep and had doubles of another, and that the quality on the remaining episodes was really bad... So I don't know. I may just give up there.



*This is why almost all of the RPS I write is AU. I just...have no interest in celebrities or lifestyles of the rich and famous.

yonmei:

I'm feeling tremendously happy for multiple reasons:

1. I can get online at my hotel! At the little desk conveniently provided!
2. MY LAPTOP WORKS. (Admittedly, the nice repairperson warned me, the power connector should be considered on its last legs, may give out at any time, and as of next week I need to start pricing new laptops.)
3. I wrote nearly 400 words of my wrimowrimo story this morning: I am only 600+ words off being able to post part 3 of the current section.
4. I just had a really lovely day with ruthi in which we wandered around Burrough Market, bought CHEESE and other lovely things, and then had a really tremendously gorgeous lunch at Imli's.
5. I just drank a nice cup of freshly-brewed coffee and ate a cappuchino-flavour cream puff that we were both too full to eat for dessert after Imli's.
6. I am about to go out and hench for World AIDS Day with the London convent. This should be fun, and if it's not, I can always escape early, go back to my hotel room, and wrimowrimo some more.
7. The window in my hotel room opens! I'd taken for granted it didn't, because they usually don't, and last night was rather stuffy, but it does. Fresh air is cheering.

Oh, and tomorrow I get to meet up with first Helen Raven and then afrai. So that will be good. And Monday night dinner with the Maenad. Two lawyers in two days, can I cope? Probably. I believe they're both nice lawyers.

kyuuketsukirui:

I got Bruce's and my Christmas presents today, good sales, and I never even had to set foot outside. :D Yay, Amazon!

Also, we got the $75 rebate check in the mail today from our refrigerator.

schtroumph_c:

Still didn't see NCIS, I'm keeping it for when I'll reach the 40k. Between my sister and Mika, both ill this week, I didn't have to keep the kid, so I had a loooooot of free time, and made almost 30k in five days. Why do I always wait for the last days, moreover when I'm able to do so much in only a day? I could have finished nano days ago!

Plus, the France forum is in war with Naperville, Illinois. They're winning. We almost caught up two days ago, but they're still almost 400 words ahead.

The problem is that the story isn't long enough for the 50k, I'll have to add more scenes. And an aged man who was supposed to be turned by the bad guys during the story blocked everything, until I change him into a centuries old woman, young in apparence, who always worked for them and killed the original person and took her place inside the good guy's business. I could always write this scene, and win some words.

Some short comments about the last Heroes:

( Spoilers )

And I received my next lessons; I'm already late for the other ones. December is going to be fun.

I also fell into the Merlin's bandwagon. And now, I'm going back to Nano, I have to hit the 40 before midnight.

telesilla:
Dinner is over and the dishes are washed! Go me! *does victory dance*

( food talk )

This hasn't exactly been the greatest year for us. Never the less, I'm grateful for my wonderful friends, my great family and my lovely wife. I'm grateful that this country elected a President we can be proud of and I'm grateful that, even though it took a defeat to do it, my people and our allies are energized and ready to fight for our rights.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving or an enjoyable Thursday!

♥!!

darkrose:

This year, Thanksgiving at Chez Rozilla turned unintentionally heteronormative: telesilla did all of the cooking, while I sat downstairs and ran Positron's Task Force in CoH. (Hey, at least I wasn't watching football.) Like I said, it wasn't intentional; I didn't realize that the TF was that long when I accepted the team invite. I did contribute to dinner by running out to RiteAid after we realized that we'd never replaced the corkscrew that broke ages ago. And everything was delicious: the Cornish game hens with pomegranate glaze, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes in cranberry-orange sauce (thank you, Trader Joe's), mustard greens, a bottle of cabernet for Ruth and white zin for me (thanks again, TJ's!). And if we can ever eat again, there's vanilla bean cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory for dessert.

I'm not going to do the requisite "what I'm thankful for" post this year, because frankly, 2008 was mostly full of suck, and what I'm most thankful for is that it wasn't any worse. Instead, I'm going to look forward to the things that I'm hopeful about:

1. I'm hopeful that now that my mother's in the hospital, she'll be able to get the treatment that she needs. I know I'm never going to get the mother I remember back, but at least maybe she can get to a point where she's not constantly unhappy and angry and making everyone around her miserable.

2. I'm hopeful that the California Supreme Court will recognize that the civil rights of a minority--any minority--should never be left to the popular vote, and that Proposition 8 will be overturned so that I can be married again.

3. I'm hopeful that with an intelligent, competent President in the White House, there's a chance we can avoid hurtling off the cliff we've been careening toward for the past eight years. No, Obama's not the Great Progressive Hope, but he appears to be a genuinely thoughtful man who cares about all of the people of this country, and who wants America to live up to its promise.

4. I'm hopeful that 2009 will suck less than 2008, for everyone.

telesilla:

The Festival of Giving Thanks
Author: telesilla
Fandom/Pairing: SGA, John Rodney
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~700
Disclaimer: The SGA characters do not belong to me. Duh.
Summary: "Why, on this night, do we give thanks together and not alone?"

Notes: Just a little Thanksgivingish piece that was written for mcsmooch. I hope everyone who celebrates had/is having a wonderful holiday!


( ''Tomorrow, it will be twenty years to the day since we stepped through the gate and into Atlantis.'' )

kyuuketsukirui:

1. Our Thanksgiving dinner went well. The food was all delicious and everyone was impressed by our clean house. :) We brought in a little folding table from the garage to put the food on, which was very nice, since we have hardly any counter space in the kitchen. I took some pics and posted them on flickr, along with more commentary.

2. My grandma reimbursed me for the cost of food for today, and she gave me cash! $61, woohoo!

3. I sold my laptop and scanner to gairid, yay. Now I have to remember to go look at boxes at Staples on Monday. I hope they're not completely sold out like they were last time I was there!

4. I tried Write or Die last night and amazingly was able to write 600 words in half an hour. Partly this is because it was a story idea I'd thought through quite a bit earlier, so I knew what I was doing and didn't have to pause to think it through. Also it is a very conversational style, so that made it quicker. Unfortunately it wasn't any of the things I really ought to be writing... ;_; But still, it felt good to get some writing done, period.

sorchar:
HAHAHAHA Macy's Parade FTW!

dana_kujan:



Enjoy the pie!

selenak:

Devil's Whore, Part II: still disappointingly predictable and full of bodice ripper stereotypes. Though I will say the leading actress has a great period look. Still, given all the talent involved, I expected so much more, and I'm sulking at not getting it. (And considering rewatching Charles II - The Power and the Passion, which does a great job in delivering the ensueing epoch, its religious and political strife and its main characters in a complex and still compelling fashion.)

Brideshead Revisited, film version: I agree with yahtzee63's review here, which is beautifully phrased and to which I can add little. Except that any version of Brideshead Revisited, book, tv or film, makes me snap out of idyllic homoerotic Oxford scenes by thinking: "That's nice, boys, but who pays for the strawberries and the champagne, huh? Not you, so quit the whining later!" Which robs me of sympathy for Sebastian the poor little rich boy and Charles the social climber both.

Mind you: this might be caused not so much by my own social conscience than by the awareness of Evelyn Waugh as one of the most spectacularly unpleasant people and snobs on the planet. Which didn't stop him from being a witty writer, of course. Here are some choice excerpts from his correspondance with Nancy Mitford, which I might as well start with quotes about Brideshead Revisited:

NM: Darling Evelyn, Brideshead has come (...) - there are one or 2 things I long to know. Are you, or not, on Lady Marchmain's side? I couldn't make out. I suppose Charles ends by being more in love than ever before with Cordelia - so true to life being in love with a whole family (it has happened in mine tho' not lately). (...) I think Charles might have had a little more glamour - I can't explain why but he seemed to me a tiny bit dim & that is the only criticsim have to make because I'm literally dazzled with admiration.

EW: Dearest Nancy, Yes I know what you mean; he is dim, but then he is telling the story and it is not his story. It is all right for Benevunto Cellini to be undim but he is telling his own story and no one else's. I think the crucial question is: does Julia's love for him seem real or is he so dim that it falls flat; if the latter the book fails plainly. (...) Lady Marchmain, no I m not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God. Does that answer it?

NM: I quite see how the person who tells it is dim but then would Julia and her brother and her sister all be in love with him if he was? Well lov eis like that & one never can tell. What I can't understand is about God. Now I believe in God & I talk to him a very great deal & often tell him jokes but the God I believe in simply hates fools more than anything & he also likes people to be happy & people who love each other to live together - so long as nobody else's life is upset (& then he's not sure).

EW: There is no doubt that God does like dunces repugnant as it is. I think it is like the lower classes - everyone loves the simple gaffer until he starts telling us what he heard on The Brains Trust the evening before. We are all very lower class to God and our cleverness & second-hand scholarship bore him hideously.

Nancy Mitford tried to avoid theological subjects - but that was hard to do with Evelyn Waugh, who had all the fervour of a convert and seems to have regarded tolerance is one of the lethal sins. Occasionally they came up, which led to exchanges such as this:

EW: My dear Nancy, Would it not be best always to avoid any references of the Church or to your Creator? Your intrusions into this strange world are always fatuous.

NM: Don't start My Dear Nancy I don't like it. I can't agree that I must be debarred from ever mentioning anything to do with your creator. Try & remember that he also created me.

Their exchanges were quite often in this Punch and Judy style. See also:

NM: I hear your daughter Teresa is beautiful & fascinating how lucky for you.

EW: My daughter Teresa is squat, pasty-faced, slatternly with a most disagreeable voice - but it is true that she talks quite brightly. She has cost me the best part of 1500 pounds in the last year & afforded no corresponding pleasure.

He must have been horrid as a father; these kind of remarks about his children are quite the rule. Though as he grew older, he democratically disliked everybody. With the French (Nancy lived in France) getting special bile and Americans special condescension:

EW: You see Americans have discovered about homosexuality from a book called Kinsey Report (unreadable) & they take it very seriously. All popular plays in New York are about buggers but they all commit suicide. The idea of a happy pansy is inconceivable to them.

And then there is Evelyn Waugh's list of how to deal with fanmail. If you think Aaron Sorkin or Tim Kring or Russell T. Davies were rude...

a) Humble expressions of admiration. To these a post-card saying: I am delighted to learn that you enjoyed my book. E.W.
b) Impudent criticism. No answer.
c) Bores who wish to tell me about themselves. Post-card saying: Thank you for interesting letter. E.W.
d) Technical criticism. Post-card: Many thanks for your valuable suggestion. E.W.
e) Humble aspirations of would-be writers. If attractive a letter of discouragement. If unattractive a post-card.
f) Requests from University Clubs for a lecture. Printed refusal.
g) Requests from Catholic Clubs for lecture. Acceptance.
h) American students of 'Creative Writing' who are writing theses about one & want one, virtually, to write their theses for them. Printed refusal.
i) Tourists who invite themselves to one's house. Printed refusal.
j) Manuscript sent for advice. Return without comment. I also have some post-cards with my photograph on them which I send to nuns. In case of very impudent letters from married women I write to the husband warning him that his wife is attempting to enter into correspondance with strange men. Oh and of course
k) Autograph collectors: no answer
l) Indians & Germans asking for free copies of one's books:no answer.
m) Very rich Americans: polite letter. They are capable of buying 100 copies for Christmas presents.

****

Another recently read book: England's Mistress, by Kate Williams, which is a good and vividly written biography of Emma, Lady Hamilton. It occurs to me that after The Duchess brought back the Georgian age on the screen, we might be due for another take on Emma, with her improbable yet true life starting out in poverty, then going from exploited child servant to teenage prostitute to courtesan to wife of an ambassador to Nelson's mistress to dying in debts and poverty. Two of the most memorable screen portraits so far were Vivien Leigh back in the day in Churchill's favourite film, That Hamilton Woman (the Romantic version) versus Glenda Jackson in A Legacy to the Nation (the character eviscerating version - this is the Emma the vulgar drunk versus Fanny the noble wife story). Surely it's time for something balanced in between extremes? Novel-wise, there has been Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover which is actually about Sir William Hamilton, Emma's husband, but the irrespressible Emma managed to kidnap the story and made herself the most memorable character anyway. Williams' biography is written with sympathy for Emma but without attempting to overlook her flaws. Or Nelson's, for that matter. It also does a great job bringing Georgian society to life, from the brothels to upper class parties, and, I thought, managed a more vivid portrait of Sir William and his relationship with Emma, both before and after Nelson, than most other renderings of this story. (Sir William Hamilton must be the character most baffling to contemparies and ensuing biographers until the present day, because he refuses to fit into clichés, being neither the "cold" husband - he married his nephew's cast-off mistress for love, after all - nor a jealous old man; he genuinenly liked Nelson and when Nelson threw a jealous fit imagining the Prince Regent might take Emma away from him wrote him a stern letter about being sensible and not upsetting Emma.)

The only complaint I have is a minor, minor nitpick. Quoth the author: "By the spring of 1787, she felt ready to show Goethe, travelling Europe to enjoy some of the celebrity of his smash-hit Sorrows of Young Werther and relax after a punishing schedule of work." Err, no. This was a decade after Werther (about whom Goethe at this point already felt like Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes), and Goethe didn't travel Europe, he lived in Italy for two years, enjoying not celebrity but a break from same (he travelled under a pseudonym). Also a chance to rediscover himself as a poet because he had tried to be a statesman after the young duke of Weimar had given him the job, for years; it was in Italy that Goethe decided he was a writer first and foremost and if he returned to Weimar, it would be on that condition.

(There seems to be a curse on writers about Emma Hamilton re: Goethe. Susan Sontag in The Volcano Lover presents him as a stiff humorless caricature, which owes more to both Thomas Mann's characterisation of the old Goethe in Lotte in Weimar - Sontag was a big TM fan - and Thomas Mann himself (he tended to write Goethe as a self portrait) as it did to JWG, who was at his best in Italy and absolutely enthusiastic about meeting Sir William - a fellow naturalist and lover of antiques! - and Emma, whom he described with much admiration in The Italian Journey.)

kyuuketsukirui:

Oh, I forgot to mention on my earlier post, but I got an email back from the folks at US Bank and they reversed the $40 charge. Yay! But they also said that to avoid the charge in future, I had to use the card at least once a year, so I probably will end up cancelling it eventually. I have enough other cards for emergencies that I don't need to keep one that charges a fee.

kyuuketsukirui:

I'm looking to sell my old laptop. Anybody interested?

It's a Toshiba Satellite A105-S4254 from a couple years ago. 1GB RAM (can take up to 4GB), 80GB hard drive, Intel Core Duo 1.6GHz processor. It's a 15" widescreen, 1280x800 display. 4 USB ports and 1 firewire. CD/DVD burner. Universal memory card slot. It comes with XP, but can run Vista. I still have the original box, packaging, and everything that came with it. I will reinstall the system before shipping, and can include Photoshop and/or Office 2007 for you if you want.

It has had some problems in the past, but is a really good machine and works well. The main problems I've had are that once in a while when I carried it from room to room while it was on, the motion put it to sleep (one time it wouldn't come back from sleep and I had to reboot); the CD burner sometimes acted like it made a CD with no problem, but then when I played it in the car, it either wouldn't play, or had skips (however, for playing CDs and DVDs, the drive works 100%); and a few times I had trouble getting it to turn on until I disconnected the external drive, at which point it turned on fine, I plugged in the external, and there was no problem.

Since I bought this new computer a few months ago, we have been using the old one for scanning and watching TV and doing other stuff, and have had no problems at all. There are no dead pixels or scratches on the screen, the case is in good condition, etc. Looks great.

I'm looking to get $250, but am willing to negotiate. UPS ground shipping is included in the price.


In addition, I have a great little USB scanner that works 100%, never had any problems with it. However, it is not compatible with Vista or more recent Mac OSes, so once we get rid of the old laptop, it's useless to us. I'm just looking for a home for it. It can be yours for $20, which is basically shipping and maybe a little more.


I also still have manga for sale here. I've added a few more since last time, and dropped prices on most stuff to $1-2 per volume. (The set of Renai Catalogue 1-34 is actually less than $1 each.)

yonmei:

The soup isn't purple. One of the vegetables that went into it is purple. The others were potatoes, parsnips, and onions.

The soup is actually the ugliest green I have seen in my long experience of making vegetable soups.

I hope it's tasty.

I'm going to Surichi Too for lunch.

kyuuketsukirui:

Wow, I won the mail jackpot today. Four packages! :D Two were books from BookMooch, one was an mp3 player, and the other was a box of candy!

The mp3 player was from busaikko. It's an old 1GB Creative Zen, something to tide me over until sometime next year when I get something bigger. 1GB sounds so small, until I realised it's about ten times more than what my current one holds. D: So it's small in comparison to other stuff on the market, but huge in comparison to what I've been using. :)

The candy was a total surprise (I was expecting one thing and got a bunch), and I'll talk more about all that when I do my candy post this weekendish.

I stopped at the library this afternoon when I was over that way cat-sitting, because I really wanted to get one of these bus passes that lets you refill it so you don't have to have change all the time. Unlike the old bus tokens, the card doesn't actually get you a discount, but it certainly is handy. We were completely out of cash for the past few days and I had to use some quarters out of Bruce's state quarter collectors book. ^_^;;

Anyway, I got the card. They sold $10 and $5 ones, so I got $10. That should last me for a while. I also thought while I was there, I might as well take a look at what new books they had. They had Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk and Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith, both of which were on my BookMooch wishlist. (I only found out last night that Palahniuk even had a new book out. How did I miss that?) Since they're new books, they're only two-week loans, but one is 150 pages and the other is 200, so that shouldn't be a problem. If I can finish those and the book I'm reading (Bee Season), I'll actually be ahead of my goal of 15 books by the end of the year. :)

yonmei:
...hello.

telesilla:
I'm sick. Which, you know, is just fun seeing as I have to cook tomorrow. So if you don't see me around the internets it's because I'm resting up.

kyuuketsukirui:

Guy Burt - The Hole

Woohoo! Book #13 finished! After reading half of The Hole this morning on the bus, I found I just had to finish the rest of it up this evening. It was a really quick read, only 150 pages (one of the reasons I picked it; long books are being saved for next year!) and really kept my interest.

I originally heard about it from rachelmanija's Young Adult Agony Awards (though I don't know that this is YA? It's about teenagers, but I don't know that that automatically makes it YA, and Amazon offers no insight), but lucky for me, by the time I read it, I had completely forgotten any spoilers I'd read.

Anyway, the plot is that five teens have another friend lock them in this basement room at their school while everyone else is away on a field trip. The friend is supposed to let them out after three days, but doesn't come back. I highly recommend it, but it's best read without spoilers.

( Spoilers under here! )

Apparently there's a film, which I've put on the Netflix queue, but from the book reviews I read, the film was reeeeeally different. In fact, almost all the negative reviews were people criticising the book for not being like the film. One criticism was that the characters were more fleshed-out in the film and given backstories, but honestly, that didn't bother me at all. I didn't find it relevant. There was the right amount of information needed to tell the story. (In fact, I was quite impressed that the author was eighteen when he wrote this. This book certainly deserves a lot more praise than dreck like Eragon, to name another book written by a teenager.)

This also seemed to have a high number of reviews by people with no reading comprehension whatsoever. One person commented on how you don't know who the narrator is til the very end, but it's clearly said on page ten that it's Liz. D:

Rokuhana Chiyo - IS~Otoko Demo Onna Demo Nai Sei~ 1-4

I ordered the first four volumes of this off Amazon Japan and really wish I had the money to order the rest! (There are currently fourteen volumes and it's still ongoing.) I read all four of these in one go because it was hard to put them down.

IS is short for intersex (or intersexual, as it's said in Japanese), and I want to start off by saying how impressed I am with the author. It's not a guarantee that any author anywhere, even a professional, is going to do research or treat a topic with respect, and manga often feels more like fanfic than other professional fiction, in that it can be very, very self-indulgent and cracktastic, and many authors who are serialised just write whatever comes into their head rather than plotting ahead.

So when I read the author's notes for this, I was really surprised. She originally read a fantasy story about a boy who turned into a girl (or vice versa) and thought it would make a neat manga, so she talked to her editor about doing something with an intersex character. Her editor told her that was a sensitive topic and she would need to research and treat it with respect, and she agreed, not thinking it would be anything. Then she got online and started reading and realised how much work she had ahead of her. And instead of writing something fantasy or sci-fi, instead of writing something made-up that could possibly be offensive, she actually did a ton of research, joined a messageboard for intersex folks, talked to many people both online and in person, and then wrote her story. Furthermore, each chapter she writes not only has to get approved by her editor, but is vetted by one or more intersex people to make sure she has her facts straight and hasn't done anything accidentally offensive.

It's sad that this is something I'm so surprised and impressed by, but that's how it is. I wish fandom would take that to heart for any number of topics...

Anyway, the manga starts off with a couple of one-offs about different intersex people, and then starting with volume two, it focuses on a third character for the remainder of the series. I enjoyed the first two, but I'm glad it settled into something more than just a bunch of one-offs, because there was a lot of repetitive information between the three, plus the first two felt a little too much like issue manga (which tbh, they were).

The main story is about Haru, and the story starts when sie's born (one nice thing about this series being in Japanese is that you never have the pronoun problem!). Haru's parents are upset when they first find out their baby is intersex, but they soon decide to raise Haru as-is, and let hir decide to get surgery or hormones or whatever when sie's old enough. However, they do put down female on Haru's birth certificate, which will become a problem later. ( More rambly, with vague spoilers )

yonmei:

Everything, from the sublime to the ridiculous...

1. Dell. Because the big laptop I got from them for work has a LAN connection that is completely disturbed: I normally don't use it to go online at home at all, because it switches back and forth between "now connected" and "a network cable is unplugged" several times a minute.

2. Hewlett-Packard. Because the neat laptop I got from them 18 months ago is in the shop being repaired for a power-connector problem, which is why I have to use my Dell POS instead.

3. Beanscene. Because if they would actually provide WiFi that, you know, worked reliably, instead of a WiFi that just hovers around the "we swear we've got it" level, I could sit in their big empty-ish cafe on Victoria Quay and work, quite happily. And buy their expensive coffee as the price of doing so. I have written to them pointing this out: they do not respond.

4. The British judicial system, which comes up with a measured response like this to a man who raped his daughters:

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was given 25 life sentences yesterday. He will serve a minimum of 19 years and six months in prison.

He fathered nine children with his daughters, two of whom died at birth. The other 10 pregnancies were miscarried or terminated.

The British man pleaded guilty last month to 25 counts of rape, dating from the early 1980s and continuing until this year when the terrified women finally sought help. The Guardian

In what universe does raping your daughters for three decades and getting 25 life imprisonment sentences add up to a minimum of 19 years six months? In principle I believe in rehabilitation and I do not believe in the death penalty, but I also believe you can say that there are people who are too dangerous to ever be let out of jail - and someone who spent 30 years torturing his daughters, only letting up when he made them pregnant and only for the duration of their pregnancies, is such a person.

5. Childline.

The court heard that in 1988 suspicions were raised at the victims' school due to their injuries but these were blamed on bullying. One of the women was asked by a doctor if her father was the father of her children, but she denied it. The girls called Childline, the court was told, and asked for a guarantee that their children would not be taken away, but hung up when this assurance could not be given.