|
|
|
July 10th, 2009
10:58 am
Am I imagining it, or did someone do a vid set to Uncle Bonsai's "Don't Put It In Your Mouth"? I thought it was ![[info - personal]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) laurashapiro, but I don't see it on her site....
ETA: Ah, it's Chicago Loop instead. Thank you VVC database.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/373843.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
July 9th, 2009
09:10 pm - This is just to say...
... that I will basically karaoke anything with anybody during the VVC karaoke show. I don't have my finger on the pulse of the vidding world, so I have no ideas about what's out there that's singable, but if *you* know, and you were thinking "Oh, I might sing that, if only someone would stand up there with me..." well, now you're out of excuses. Your back-up singer is here.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/373627.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
June 30th, 2009
05:18 pm - a qualified recommendation
Wild Blue blueberry lager: so tasty, so fruity, so cool and delicious, that you suck the whole thing right down without even thinking about the 8% alcohol content. And then suddenly you are DRUNK.
(Especially if you're a lightweight like me. Especially if you've already taken cold medicine. WHOO!)
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/373493.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
June 24th, 2009
06:54 pm - I sense that I should not get involved in this...
... and yet here I go.
It is my opinion that the issue of warnings for triggery material should be framed as people requesting for their needs to be accommodated. I am totally in favor of the accommodation of needs. I am totally in favor of fans choosing to make fandom a welcoming and comfortable place for as many people as possible.
However, I am not comfortable with the way that people have been adopting the framework of racism or other categorical prejudices as a way to structure the debate about warnings. The power difference between the unwarning author and the vulnerable-to-triggering reader is situational, temporary, and entered into voluntarily when the reader starts reading. The power difference between, for example, the racist author and the POC reader is wide-ranging, long-standing, and hard to escape because it is a local manifestation of a society-wide power structure, and it is *in the context* of that society-wide structure that racist words do their harm.
My intent here is not to minimize the potential damage done when people unexpectedly encounter material that is psychologically toxic to them. I'm glad that people are talking about that issue seriously so that we can all consider how it fits into our writing and reading experiences in a more informed and compassionate way. But I also see potential damage that might be done by the sloppy metaphors that I'm criticizing here. When people object to writing that is misogynist, racist, homophobic, or supports some other structural prejudice, the immediate hurt felt by the reader is not the only issue at hand. The larger problem is that the prejudiced writing helps to support a system of injustice from which the writer benefits. (Most of the time -- although members of the less-privileged group can certainly absorb, and display, negative stereotypes about their own group, to their own detriment.) Because time and time again, in discussions of racism for example, we see people get accused of being "hypersensitive", because the accuser can't see how anyone could possibly be hurt by seemingly innocuous words like "exotic eyes" or whatever. I worry that if we start equating injustice with triggering, that problem's only going to get worse, because people's concept of the problem will be limited to the objecting reader's *feelings*, and not the structural aspects.
I don't know, maybe I'm just borrowing trouble, but it's been bothering me.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/372586.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
June 14th, 2009
10:17 pm - let us pause for the end of an era
I have just let my paid LJ account expire.
So, other than losing my icons, I haven't actually investigated what this will mean to me....
|
June 13th, 2009
04:09 pm - success!
Had I realized how incredibly easy it is to make onigiri, I would have made them ages ago! I used to buy them pre-made from Uwajimaya when I lived in Seattle -- they had this nifty double-layered wrapper that kept the nori separate until you were ready to eat it.
Today I was halfway through xxxHolic vol. 3 when I could not stand watching all the characters eat Japanese snacks any longer without eating something myself. So I looked up the recipe and discovered that it was pretty much rice, and salt. Hey, I have those! Also, nori! I didn't have any of the ultra-traditional fillings on hand, but I did have a can of tuna, so I used tuna with spicy mayo as the filling for mine, and plain tuna for the kids. The onigiri turned out fantastic, and even the kids liked them, nori and all.
A win!
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/372432.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
June 6th, 2009
08:56 pm - BPAL update
I'd never thought of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's global diversity of perfume inspirations as cultural appropriation until someone pointed it out during the last round of RaceFail. So, I will be passing on the scents named after Aztec and Egyptian festivals... but you can bet your sweet ass I'm buying a perfume called Lawn Gnome (scroll way down). Mostly because it will smell good on me, but come on, Lawn Gnome! Now *there's* my culture!
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/371675.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
03:25 pm - tiny toads & tiny turtles
It's tiny toad time, when vast schools of tadpoles in the wetland metamorphose into toads the size of my pinky fingernail and go hopping and popping all over our yard. While clearing more of the endless storm debris today, I disturbed another female turtle in the middle of nesting. This time I could clearly see the eggs beneath her. She was much smaller than the usual snappers and sliders we see around here; as far as I can tell from our reptile field guide, she was either a common musk turtle or Mississippi mud turtle (I didn't want to flip her over to check her plastron), and at 4.5 inches, she was about as big as either of those species ever get.
I gotta say, there's a whole lot of fertility goin' on in our yard this year.
In other reptile/amphibian news, we saw a rough green snake crossing our driveway, and a couple of juvenile salamanders in the wetland. My field guide says that the term "axolotl" can be used for the juvenile form of any of the various mole salamander species, whereas wikipedia says the name only applies to one particular species in the genus, a Mexican species that is neotenous (i.e. it spends its whole life in the juvenile stage, even reproducing as a juvenile). So maybe we can say we saw some axolotls... or maybe not.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/371361.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
June 5th, 2009
08:57 am - And for the garden geeks...
... here's my haul from the Bluestone Perennials 50%-off sale:
3-pack, Aquilegia 'Melba Higgins'
3-pack, Dalmatian Bellflower
3-pack, Alpine strawberry 'Ruegen Improved'
3-pack, Viola 'Rebecca'
3-pack, Viola 'White Czar'
3-pack, Trifolium 'Purpurescens'
Hosta 'Fragrant Bouquet'
Hosta 'Guacamole'
Hosta 'Royal Standard'
Astilbe 'Bressingham Beauty'
Heuchera 'Midnight Rose'
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/371153.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
June 4th, 2009
10:25 pm - Book spoils
For the curious, the full list is here (under the June 4 tag). I had no intention of buying so many books; it's not a very good store, and I only go there a couple times a year and usually walk out with just five or six books. But this time the selection was ridiculously good. I wonder if they recently bought somebody's whole collection?
A few comments:
(1) My copy of Sign of the Labrys has the adorably misogynist cover copy that coffeeandink quotes here, although she skips the FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!! at the end.
(2) Michelle Sagara's Cast in Courtlight does not say anywhere on the cover that it is the second book in a series. I HATE THAT. HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT. Sagara has another pen name, right? Could somebody remind me what it is?
(3) Speaking of pen names, Ann Halam is someone else, too, right? And who would that be?
(4) I can't believe I got five of the first seven volumes of xxxHolic for $3 a piece. Alas, the first volume was not among them, so they do me no good at the moment.
(5) I did get the first volume of Yami no Matsuei, but the only other volume they had was the fourth, so that's not going to get me very far, either.
ETA: (6) The Lord Dunsany collection includes "How Nuth Would Have Practiced His Art Upon the Gnoles", and Margaret St. Clair includes "The Man Who Sold Rope To Gnoles". I'm assuming there is a connection?
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/370832.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
07:24 pm - I BLAME FANDOM
... and by that I mean you. And you. And ESPECIALLY you.
My local used bookstore had a two-day only 50%-off coupon in the paper; Andy didn't notice it until there were only two hours left in the sale, so we all ran over there and started shoveling books in a basket. The full book-spoils list is available upon request, but the part I blame YOU ALL for is that I bought a bunch of ST:TOS tie-ins. Despite not being a fan of the show.
Surprisingly, I managed to recall rachelmanija's recs list pretty well. I only passed over one book she had recommended (Vonda McIntyre's Star Trek: The First Adventure, because I thought it was a novelization of an episode, like the movie novelizations she did), and I only grabbed a couple that weren't on her list. I got:
Diane Duane, Doctor's Orders, The Wounded Sky, & Spock's World
Barbara Hambly, Ishmael
John M Ford, The Final Reflection
Janet Kagan, Uhura's Song
Vonda McIntyre, The Entropy Effect
Josepha Sherman & Susan Schwartz, Vulcan's Forge, & Vulcan's Heart
ETA: Whoops, missed one: Majliss Larson, Pawns & Symbols
So, now I suppose I have to read them!
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/370552.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
May 29th, 2009
10:31 am - nests a-plenty
On a whim, I bought one of those Topsy-Turvy tomato planters. It was only $10, and the upper level of our deck gets relatively decent sun (compared to the rest of the yard) and already has a couple of those tall shepherd's-crook style hooks bolted to it.
I just looked out the window and saw that a pair of Carolina wrens has decided that the top opening where you pour in the water would be a lovely predator-resistant place to build a nest. They're so cute, and the planter is only five feet from our bay window so we get a perfect view of their all their doings... I might just write off that tomato plant and let them have the planter for the summer. I know that male house wrens build several trial nests before finalizing their selection -- I don't know if Carolinas do the same, but *both* parents are working on this one, so I assume they're in it for good.
In other nest-building news, we've seen four turtles in our yard in the past week (three snapping turtles and one red-eared slider), and one of the snappers has laid eggs in our herb garden. We haven't actually seen the eggs, but she dug a pit and spent a couple hours there with her shell tipped back, and then filled in the pit, so I assume the eggs are there. I hope the local raccoons don't find them!
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/370348.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
May 28th, 2009
04:25 pm - PLAAAANTS!
Bluestone Perennials is having their spring half-price clearance sale, through May 31. Many thanks to jonquil for alerting me to this sale a couple years ago! I've had great luck with my Bluestone purchases. For the most part, they sell smaller, younger plants in packs of three -- many won't bloom the first year you get them, but they'll be all grown up and ready to go the next year, and it's so much more economical that way!
I really had to restrain myself. I only bought plants that I can plant *now* -- nothing speculative for all the new flower beds that will be going in once we clean up the storm damage, because although I have every hope of finishing that in the next few weeks, we seem to attract time-consuming disasters. I hate buying plants and then watching them die in their tiny pots because I just don't have the time and energy for the heroic structural landscaping that has to take place before the *dirt* is even in the right place.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/369940.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
May 26th, 2009
03:11 pm - That Top Ten Ships meme
I'm too lazy to go find the boilerplate, but it was all over my reading list this morning....
I think my Top Ten list shows some pretty clear patterns in my preferences:
(1) Mulder/Scully (X-Files)
(2) Shepherd/McKay (SGA)
(3) Buffy/Spike (before BTVS season 7, anyway)
(4) John/Aeryn (Farscape)
(5) Peter/Harriet (Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries)
(6) Veronica/Logan (Veronica Mars)
(7) Duncan/Methos (Highlander)
(8) Ivan/Byerly (Vorkosigan series)
(9) C.J./Toby (West Wing -- alas, once Toby had kids with his ex-wife, this starting hitting my adultery squick, even though they weren't married anymore)
(10) Snape/Lupin (Harry Potter)
There you have it: Het romances, mostly canonical, that tend toward the "epic", as Logan put it once, and slash romances (non-canonical but supported by heavy-duty subtext in most cases) that veer between "buddy" mode and "opposites attract" mode and feature guys who aren't exactly young anymore. If I added more list items, it would be Alexiel/Lucifer from Angel Sanctuary, which TOTALLY fits the pattern, and either Josh/Sam or Josh/Donna from West Wing -- a case where I was torn between my two patterns!
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/369844.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
May 22nd, 2009
02:47 pm
A complaint public service announcement:
Do you have the misfortune to be using MS Office 2007? Then for the love of all that is holy, when you send a document to anyone who doesn't work in your office, save it as a .doc or .xls file, not a .docx or .xlsx file. There is no guarantee they'll be able to read Microsoft's shiny new file formats.
(My own personal reason: because my laptop has a PPC chip, I can't use the most current version of OpenOffice, which I've heard can handle these formats.)
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/369168.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
May 17th, 2009
09:12 pm - meh. and dirt.
Oh, man, I am SOOO spinning my wheels in procrastination. I don't want to put Squeaky to bed (don't have the energy for the arguing or the interest in lying down with him for 30 minutes or more), and I certainly don't want to work on the grant proposal (of which the rough draft needs to be sent to a colleague by lunch time tomorrow).
Instead I'm obsessing over my soil.
Many of the plants in our yard (even the natives) are showing mild chlorosis, which indicates lack of iron, but it is a lack of iron *in the soil*, or is the pH so high that it's interfering with iron uptake? I grabbed the cheapest pH test from Lowe's, and it says we're definitely on the alkaline end of things, which sounds like it should make sense, BUT.... The original owners of the house loved gardening, and presumably knew a thing or two since they used to own a nursery, and they left bags and bags of ag lime in the shed (which the intervening owner never threw out). Why would they have so much lime unless they were trying to sweeten acid soil?
And the only map of Illinois soil pH I can find is tiny, but from what I can see, we're supposed to be in a mildly acidic region.
But could they really have added so much lime that five years later (or more) our pH still hasn't come back down to neutral?
I just don't know. But the one azalea in the yard, which has been limping along like a limping thing ever since we moved in, has finally given up the ghost -- also suggesting too alkaline.
So do I add greensand for iron, or add sulfur for acidity, or both?
Maybe I should crosspost this to the gardening comm....
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/369030.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
May 15th, 2009
03:58 pm - on erasure
Like many of you reading this, I have been saddened & pissed off by the cluelessness at the heart of Patricia Wrede's The Thirteenth Child (described in many places as "Little House on the Prairie, only with mammoths, and magic!").
"The *plan* is for it to be a 'settling the frontier' book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won't get the right feel".
Great! And while you're at it, why not write a book about an alternate 20th century "Germandy", full of happy, blonde, magical "Xhristians", and sidestep the whole issue of how to integrate Jews into your story by just pretending they never existed! Who could object to that?
Which sort of brings me to Hetalia: Axis Powers. For any of you lucky enough not to have to sit through my capslocks and exclamations about it a few weeks ago, it's a manga in which various countries of the 20th century (mostly from Europe, but also some from Asia and the Americas and a few from Africa) are represented by adorable young characters (mostly male, but it turns out there are a few girls as well), who frolic their way through some cute political satire.
I am simultaneously appalled and delighted by this manga. Why delighted? Because for once, my people are not erased. It is true that my skin crawls and I can hear my grandparents rolling over in their graves every time I read some fangirl gushing about how cute a Russia/Latvia romance would be. But still, Latvia's there! We're canon, for the very first time in pop culture history! (Okay, the first time in pop culture history that actually had some visibility, albeit underground, in the U.S. Eurovision doesn't count... although if Eurovision suddenly becomes trendy, someone will tell me, right?) We have a voice in the story, and if I wanted, I could write awesome, elaborate fanfic revenge fantasies against Prussia and Russia. I could give them chibi payback for centuries of feudal servitude and decades of slaughter and cultural destruction.
But you know who can't do that? The Jews of Europe. They have no voice in this manga, despite the fact that it should be impossible for any sane person to think about the political history of mid-20th century Europe without thinking about Jews. But they've been erased here. Would the inclusion of a character representing European Jewry cause the specter of the Holocaust to hang over the whole manga to such an extent that no one could have any more happy fun times? If so, then no one should be having any fun NOW. (Personally, I've satisfied my craving for cute Latvia fanart and won't be having anything more to do with Hetalia, unless Jews are de-erased in canon.)
Hey, you know what else should be impossible for sane people to do? Think about the American Frontier, without thinking about Native Americans. And if the inclusion of Native Americans in your work of art causes the specter of genocide to hang over your story to such an extent that no one can have any more happy fun times? then maybe there's something wrong with the kind of fun you're having now.
And for everyone who's saying things like "But all of *humanity* was erased in Story X, and I didn't take it personally!" please don't tell me that you can't understand the difference between a fictional erasure that has no parallel in reality, and a fictional erasure that comes on the heels of centuries of attempted physical and cultural erasure IN REAL LIFE.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/368830.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
|
May 14th, 2009
08:23 pm - triumph!
|
May 13th, 2009
01:13 pm - still no power...
...at home, though we have it at work, so I've dragged the kids in and they're watching a DVD while I try (mostly in vain) to get some work done.
The first couple days were kind of fun, but the lack of electricity is starting to drag, especially since 3/4 of the region has their power back already, so we feel like we're suffering alone. Also, we suck at preparedness: our house came with a generator, which is missing a part, and we've been saying for almost two years "You know, we really ought to get that repaired," and we just haven't done it. Also, the house came with an old gas stove in the basement, which wasn't hooked up so it wasn't tested as part of the home inspection. So we finally got the equipment to attach it to the gas supply, and it turns out that it leaks. No wonder it was disconnected! So we've been lighting a fire in the charcoal grill every morning to boil water for our coffee/tea. At least our hot-water system is gas, so we've had hot showers. Other than that, it's like camping.
Also, people are bumming me out. The prodigious amount of woody debris is a RESOURCE that could be used for a lot of different purposes, but instead most people are just hauling it to the landfill or burning it in big piles, and I want to slap them around and yell at them about sustainability. Maybe I will allow myself the luxury of a (friendly, polite) letter to the editor later today, if I can get another couple pages done on this grant.
Also also, am bummed about missing the AI semifinal last night. Will also allow myself the luxury of looking for the performances, if I get some work done. So if anyone has links handy, I would be most grateful!
|
May 9th, 2009
01:59 pm - We survived "The Inland Hurricane"
That's what the National Weather Service has termed the storm that blew through Southern Illinois yesterday. No tornado -- just sustained, straight-line winds of over 100 mph. With the ground saturated by two weeks of rain, huge trees were uprooted everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. Every house on my street has at *least* one large broken or uprooted tree. We have a 110' sycamore (yes, we're geeks, we measured) that landed ten feet away from the house, bringing down several smaller trees with it. (The kids and I were in the basement when it happened. Andy was at work. My mom and stepdad, who were on their way to visit us from Michigan, pulled off the road and took shelter in a Hobby Lobby.)
Residential power and phone probably won't be restored until the middle or end of the week, but campus might have power as early as tomorrow, so maybe I'll have email access then. Right now I'm posting from a riverfront park in Kentucky -- we wanted to visit civilization for a while before going back to Treemageddon. Carbondale, Murphysboro, Marion, Herrin -- all completely trashed. But it barely made the national news; we were bumped by tornadoes in Missouri and Tennessee, apparently.
Alright, off to go buy disaster supplies before we head home. What excitement!
|
|
|