http://twitter.com/MoTancharoen/status/6
Maurissa Tancharoen will be joining DeKnight on the series. Which cable channel Starz's has already renewed, before the pilot has even aired.
[ edited by RavenU on 2009-12-22 01:57 ]
Just wandered out to the front of the house to find a parcel waiting there. Quickly torn open, it revealed this:
Thank you, lovely, lovely Tartarus Press 
. Strange Tales III is another beautiful artefact, with awesome stories. And one of mine.
http://freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/s
This is one reason why I love my friends: they are wise.
We writers suffer together, even though some think writing is a solitary activity … and it is at the basic putting-words-on-page-and-hoping-some-st
Anyway – I have written stuff for three decades now, I am unlikely to let a little thing like the prospect of a lifetime of obscurity and penury stop me now. I will arise and go now, not so much to Innisfree but to the dining room table where my laptop is. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Find the next word, write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
The rest lives here: http://brendandcarsonsfiction.blogspot.c
We’re all Literature’s monkeys.
Self-reflection is a dangerous thing, and the Christmas/New Year period is particularly dangerous time to engage in it. Because I have too much else to do I have, once again, been spending some time re-reading old posts on the blog trying to recapture lost moments and to glimpse once again the mindset I had at a particular moment.
It seems to me that, over the lifespan of the blog, the Christmas/New Year has been an increasingly difficult time as I balance too many commitments with family needs etc. That, in turn, has tended to make me seem gloomier than I am. Also, I don’t blog when I’m having fun. That’s because I’m having fun, which makes sense. It does, though, mean you didn’t really hear about the awesome time I had in Adelaide, how enchanting the little side street alley cafes of Melbourne were, or any of a dozen other fun moments. I’ll try to stop that.
If I hold true to form there will be some year in review posts over the coming week or so, though I’m so scattered right now that I can’t quite imagine what they’ll be. Right now I can’t think of a book of the year candidate or a movie of the year candidate. I have my album of the year, but other than that…
Meanwhile, last night I headed out to Russ and Liz’s place in Greenwood with Alisa K for drinks. Russ was in good form, Liz was a wonderful hostess, I saw some good friends (hi Nick and Amanda), and Alisa and I had fun chatting before she heads off to the blissfully cool wilds of Tasmania for Christmas/New Year. I have no photos of the event, but we drank mocktails, sat outside, nattered and so on. You can probably fill in the blanks. Today, on the other hand, is a day at the day job, then Xmas readiness preparation tonight. Onward, onward!
Mostly, I've been too overwhelmed by the idea. To keep careful track, and do a double-blind study seems to be the obvious approach to my scientific method trained mind. And that takes a level of organisation that I don't have at the moment.
Instead, there is the approach I took yesterday. Middle child is my luck-favoured child, my solstice born. And because ze was spending all evening at rehearsals, we went out for lunch. After some discussion, the local yum cha restaurant was chosen. I considered the food on offer, the busyness of the restaurant, and the failure of our first waitron to have any idea as to what flour was in the first dish, and decided that it was all Too Hard, and I was just going to eat whatever. Hey, I'm sort of on holidays (yesterday and today), if there was a massive reaction, I would cope.
Last time I ate spelt bikkies, I had a reaction within 4 hours - overwhelming pain, cognitive dysfunction. Last time I had rye in my muesli, I spent the day monitoring my mental condition, because something was triggering the depression thinking, and I was struggling.
This time, I feel reasonable. I have a couple of stiff/uncomfortable muscles, but those problems all predate the food, and they are all better than they were yesterday, as would be expected with normal healing. I have no more digestive upsets than normal, and I was able to bring in the washing without having to rest a few times. Breathing is a little uncomfortable, but has been since the last virus, and I've been rather non-compliant about the anti-histamines that the doctor 'suggested', only taking them when it is really bothering me, or I have other hayfever type symptoms as well.
Possible conclusions that I can see (including suggestions by artisanat)
1. the problem was temporary, and being very good and avoiding gluten means that my body has got over it, and I can go back to not avoiding wheat/gluten
2. I have a threshold, and it hasn't triggered
3. this is a two step process - eat gluten, damage bowel, eat other trigger food, get reaction (this is my take on artisanat's suggestion, so I may not have it correctly thought through)
4. there was no gluten in the food I ate
5. it is all much more complicated than that
6. something I've missed.
I'm not sure how to go about differential selection of these. Probably, I'm back to my double blind study that I *really* don't want to do (and yes, I have it all sorted out. Buckwheat chocolate muffins, with various levels of gluten flour added (0, some, lots), individually packaged in the freezer with letters that I have the code for - not all muffins of the same type will have the same letter, but all of a letter will be the same type; I stash the code for later reference. A takes a muffin out for me and records the date and code, removes the code, hands it over. I record symptoms. (recordings done in separate logs) This progresses over probably 2 months, while I go through 3 batches of muffins at 2-3 per week. simple, innit).
But anyone who wants to make comments about my thinking, especially if there is a large glaring error in my logic, I would greatly appreciate it.
note: I've had one blood test for coeliac which came back negative. However, it would appear that I didn't get the set-up right, and thus there may have been no antibodies there to test. I haven't thought about going back again.
There’s smart stuff; there’s talky bits; there’s wisdom.
http://booklifenow.com/2009/12/choosing-y
- Location:The Kephra Memorial Library
- Mood:
hot - Music:Murder By Death - [Instrumental Soundtrack to the book "Finch" #02] Human Memory Bulb
On this particular Christmas Eve, I was eating Santa's cookies when I heard a noise from the front porch. I thought it was probably a cat, but when I glanced out the window, I saw the silhouette of a man standing there.
My childhood was rife with memories of a neighbor who would get drunk then end up at the wrong house - so seeing someone just standing on the porch at midnight was not something I took lightly. I watched for a moment, then went around to the door.
I opened the door, and saw him more clearly - a little shorter than I was (not hard), and still just standing there. I asked if I could help him, and he didn't answer. I pushed open the screen door and stepped out, speaking more forcefully: "Hey! Buddy! Everything okay? Can I help you?"
Still no answer.
I moved onto the porch - he stood ten feet away - and walked right up to him and practically yelled, "HEY!" And THIS got a response - he hissed something I couldn't understand and lunged at me.
I took five years of Tae Kwon Do, and my reaction was instinctive: I stepped back and threw my best kick squarely at his face.
It worked - not only did my kick throw him backwards and away from me, but it also snapped his head cleanly off, and I watched in horror as it sailed into the middle of the yard.
I stood there in shock, trying to decide what to do, when the porch light came on, and the rest of the household came outside to see what was the matter. They found me there, standing over the now headless body of Joseph, father of Jesus, in a now demolished nativity scene.
When I yelled, it scared the cat sleeping in the manger, and it had hissed and jumped against Joseph, knocking him forward. And so I got to explain why I'd basically beheaded Jesus' dad in the process of protecting the household from our own cat.
Why I didn't just turn on the light myself is a mystery that may never be solved.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Did you know that I used to write a weekly column called The Games of Our Lives for The AV Club? It was about classic arcade (and occasionally console) video games that were just far enough off the mainstream radar for Gen Xers to realize that they remembered playing or seeing them, even if they hadn't thought about them since the 80s.
I worked very hard to keep it funny, nostalgic, and even a little informative. Though I didn't always come up with heartbreaking works of staggering genius, I'm really happy with about 95% of the columns I turned in ... like this one for Satan's Hollow:
The flyer from Bally advertises "The hot new battle game that dares you to cross the blazing Bridge of Fire to do battle with the Master of Darkness-Satan of the Hollow!" After languishing for years in the obscurity of role-playing games, Satan finally crossed into the mainstream of arcades everywhere. Parents panicked as kids eagerly coughed up pocketfuls of quarters to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Gameplay: It's 1982, so of course you have to enter Satan's Hollow in a spaceship. To pull this off, you build a bridge across a river of fire by picking up pieces from the left side of the screen and dropping them onto the right side of the screen. You have a shield that will protect you (for about .08 seconds) from the gargoyles and demons dropping World War II-style bombs. When the bridge is completed, you cross into the game's eponymous locale and face down Satan himself. If you avoid his magic pitchforks and destroy him, you won't save mankind from eternal damnation, but you will earn bonus points and an extra laser blaster for your space ship.
Before you complain that none of this makes sense, please remember that the number-one song of 1982 was "Centerfold" by J. Geils Band, and the number-one film was Tootsie.
Could be mistaken for: Galaxian, Dark Tower, Phoenix
Kids today may not like it because: Satan looks more like a sea monkey than like the Prince Of Darkness.
Kids today may like it because: Freaking your parents out because you're playing a game with Satan in it is always cool, whether it's 1982 or 2005.
Enduring contribution to gaming history: Doom wouldn't have been able to take players right into Hell in 1993 if Satan's Hollow hadn't opened the portal 11 years earlier.
Every column had a different byline, which I tried very hard to make some kind of clever "nobody's going to get this, except for those few people who do and totally love it" joke:
.mraf ynnuf eht, notaehW liW ot seilper rouy dnes esaelP .egassem terces eht dnuof ev'uoY !snoitalutargnoC
See what I did there? It's a game with SATAN in the title, so I put at BACKWARDS MESSAGE in the column. Ha! Ha! Ha! I am using the Internet!
I loved doing this column, and deliberately retired it while it was still going strong, so it didn't turn into [Pick some series that should have ended years ago while it was still funny. This is not a placeholder note to myself, it's a free option for you, dear reader. Merry Christmas.]
Well, this one — though it features a giant turtle — seems to be the product of a completely different genre to that of the Friend of Children — a daikaiju eiga subgenre all its own. In fact it looks rather like a Gamera film made by David Lynch after a wild night at a party in honour of Mack Sennett.
Ichimotsu (Japan-2008; dir. Taku Yamamoto)
Racing, a giant turtle racing against two detectives, racing again!
As all the sites that have information on this strange kaiju eiga are in Japanese, it’s hard to put a coherent synopsis together. But it seems that it is an independent film. It takes place in 1970. The main protagonist is a policeman named Tobisawa (Kohtaro Takaoka), who may be in disgrace (I’m unsure of that) and as a result is sent to a village in Kumamoto Prefecture, where there have been reports of activists targeting a local magnate and his son. This pair have been manufacturing longevity drugs using turtles from a local pond.
Tobisawa is forced to confront an unbelievable creature, a giant (”over 17 feet long”) man-eating tortoise named Gami. Legend has it that the Kaiju Gami is hundreds of years old and will arise once again to take retribution. ["Gami" is a word coined for the film, combining the Japanese words G(K)AME（or tortoise) and KAMI (or Spirit).]
A key feature of confronting the creature seems to involve running away.
Confronting:
Running Away:
Here is a picture of the Gami puppet used in the production:
Somewhere in the mix are Tobisawa’s brother, Kamota (Kazuya Sasaki), an old man named Otojiro (Hiroyuki Kawano), who is suffering from memories of war, and his grandchild Yoshimi (Sayo Yokota) — I’m guessing that’s her in the image below.
There also seems to be a lot of lurking around in the pond reeds:
Strange gadgets, too:
Ichimotsu was filmed in black and white on 8 mm film and was directed, written, shot and edited by Taku Yamamoto. The music is by Taku Yoshida and Taku Yamamoto. It runs for 96 minutes… with “run” being a key word, as you can see from the trailer below. I think you’ll agree that the trailer displays a bizarre exuberance that makes Ichimotsu look like something we’ve never seen before.
Trailer:
Trailer 2:
I suspect that director/creator Taku Yamamoto is a weird guy. Here is his official portrait:
I’d love to see this film. It looks beautifully eccentric and exuberant with that peculiar form of Japanese weirdness that I never tire of. Currently Ichimotsu is not on DVD, though there was a Japanese DVD available a while back. It sold out. Hopefully whatever response that comes from this article will encourage the creators to do a new run.
- Sources: Taku Yamamoto; Official website; hanapiku blog; bp-cocolog-nifty.com; foron-web.jugem.jp. Special thanks to Daisuke Sato, and, of course, Kaiju Search-Robot Avery, who discovered all this stuff.
I wrote an opinion piece for CNN about making gifts for the holidays.
For Christmas this year, I'm giving out homemade jars of sauerkraut (it costs me 50 cents a gallon and takes all of 15 minutes to shred the cabbage, mix in the salt and let it develop in a crock for a week), hand-whittled wooden spoons (these take a few hours each to make, but the therapeutic value of whittling on the porch is inestimable) and a couple of cigar box guitars I made. The other staffers at Make (and at our sister publication, Craftzine.com) have been busy elves this season as well. Here's a short list of the things they're making:Making merry with homemade gifts (Shown here: Shawn and Arlo Connally's snow globes)• Baby pictures mounted in old picture frames purchased at thrift stores for less than a dollar and painted a gold or silver metallic.
• Snow globes made from recycled glass jars and filled with little trinkets like Army men, plastic trees and foxes.
• A miniature remote-controlled submarine, made out of plastic plumbing pipes, with an underwater video camera attached to it to study ocean life in the San Francisco Bay.
• A cat toy that has an electronic circuit that senses when it is being played with and sends a Twitter message to its owner.
• An assortment of slippers, scarves and plush toy squid.
( Sex detail under cut for family- and work-safety )
Ah, the things we need to deal with. This was so much more interesting than my talk with my dentist.
I've had two days of the new chemo pill Xeloda. So far, side effects include:
- slight headache
- very foggy, dizzy feeling yesterday which cleared in the evening
- extremely tired
- emotionally fragile
- breathless
- dry mouth.
That's really it. No nausea, no diarrhoea, none of the other things, at least not as yet.
The tiredness is the horrible thing. I can barely move. I went up the street for coffee and it's only 200m. It took 10 minutes to walk it, and I needed a sit down halfway. Sheesh.
Hopefully that level of tiredness will pass.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kaolinfire for turning me on to the art of Mark Ryden I offer these. Abraham Lincoln seems to be a reoccurring theme in a couple I do believe.
Well, that was pure unalloyed pleasure. Though I wish I’d written this post immediately after finishing Persuasion, rather than now, when I’m still in post traumatic stress from having just read House of Mirth for the first time.1
Heh hem. Persuasion. Love it. Remains my favourite Jane Austen. With Pride & Prejudice only slightly behind. As I’m doing all this (re)reading in order to think about romance and heroines let’s start there.
The Romance: This books seethes. It’s full of glances, almost everything between Anne & Wentworth is unspoken. Until they get to Bath that is, which doesn’t happen until at least two thirds into the book. The scene where Wentworth writes his passionate letter remains one of my favourites in any book ever. I first read Anne’s speech as a littlie but I still hug it to my chest. Here’s a fave bit:
“If you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
I love that Wentworth is not of noble birth. I love that Anne learns that who you are is much more important than what you were born. Though it does seem she never cared about birth or status because she was more than happy to marry Wentworth at 19. It was smelly Lady Russell who talked her out of it. I like to think that Russell learns at the end of the book that you can be born a prince and still be a vulgar moron, like Anne Elliot’s father, but I find myself not entirely believing it. She’s just a bit too smug and satisfied by her own opinions for my liking. Yet unlike Sir Walter or Anne’s sisters she’s smart so there’s less excuse for it.
One thing I was struck by in this read was Jane Austen’s critique of the artificial means by which romances keep their lovers apart. At the time I’m not sure it was the staple of romance that is now.2 But I can’t tell you how many Romances I’ve read or romcoms I’ve watched where the stupid misunderstanding/transparent lie by “best friend”/missdelivered letter/whatever that has kept the lovers apart is tissue thin and unbelievable. In Persuasion I believe it. Yet here is Wentworth realising they could have been together sooner:
“But I too have been thinking over the past, and a question has suggested itself, whether there may not have been one person more my enemy even than that lady? My own self. Tell me if, when I returned to England in the year eight, with a few thousand pounds, and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written to you, would you have answered my letter? Would you, in short, have renewed the engagement then?”
“Would I!” was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough.
I can’t help reading that as a swipe at all the dumb misunderstandings that are used over and over that could be so simply resolved. But, of course, in Persuasion Wentworth’s reasons for not trying to reconcile sooner are perfectly clear: He thinks his chances are zero. The Elliots and Lady Russell were perfectly vile. They persuaded the love of his life to dump his arse. And BEING DUMPED? It takes a while to recover. Only the Mr Collineses of the world keep on trying and that’s only because they don’t get they’ve been dumped. As soon as they do they’re off with the nearest Charlotte.
I love Anne and Wentworth’s relationship. I love that it’s agony to them when they are not able to speak and when they are at last, the words come gushing out. There is so much to share, so much to tell that only the other would understand. I love Anne’s restraint and well, manliness. And Wentworth’s womanly passion. It’s he that’s always trembling with emotion, not Anne. LOVE THAT.
I’d also forgotten how funny Persuasion is, you know, in between the seething passion. This bit where Sir Elliot is unhappy with the women and men of Bath cracks me up. Tell me you haven’t known someone like this:
“He hoped she might make some amends for the many very plain faces he was continually passing in the streets. The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them. It had been a frosty morning, to be sure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a thousand could stand the test of. But still, there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men! they were infinitely worse. Such scarecrows as the streets were full of! It was evident how little the women were used to the sight of anything tolerable, by the effect which a man of decent appearance produced. He had never walked anywhere arm-in-arm with Colonel Wallis (who was a fine military figure, though sandy-haired) without observing that every woman’s eye was upon him; every woman’s eye was sure to be upon Colonel Wallis.” Modest Sir Walter! He was not allowed to escape, however. His daughter and Mrs Clay united in hinting that Colonel Wallis’s companion might have as good a figure as Colonel Wallis, and certainly was not sandy-haired.
I know that’s a long quote but I could not resist. Modest Sir Walter, indeed.
In conclusion: Persuasion rocks out loud. And if I ever write a romantic heroine as strong and principled and honourable yet not boring or annoying as Anne Elliot then I will die a very happy writer. Persuasion is an incredible contrast with House of Mirth. Both Anne and Lily Bart’s existence are constrained by expectations of their class and sex. Anne cannot sail off to sea to make her fortune without forfeiting everything. And Lily can be disgraced as a whore, while still a virgin. I ached for both of them. My compassion for Charlotte and her dreadful marriage in Pride and Prejudice embiggened once again. I’m so glad I was born when I was and not when they were.
Note: This is not the place to declare your hatred of Jane Austen. We’re here to discuss our love. I’m sure there’s a Jane Austen haters forum you can find somewhere to share your hate. Yes, your hate will be deleted. Yes, I had to delete quite a number of JA haters from the Northanger Abbey discussion.
- More on that in another post. Complete with a detailed description of just how hard I wish to shake Selden and Lily Bart. Aaargh!
- At the time there was no Romance with a capital R . . .
batwrangler's photo of the grim, Slavic Father Christmas I made for my mom, out of that cinnamon applesauce playdough stuff:- Mood:
amused
(Plus, being a hippo -- short version, an in-chat anonymizing beta-finder for authors -- is crazy addictive.)
My assigned story is uploaded; due to quirks of fate (i.e. already having an AO3 account and having an [essentially] finished story), it was actually the second (!!!!!) one up. I am not usually that early *grin* The lack of flailness has been odd.
... but then, despite the fact that I told myself that I wouldn't pick up a pinch hit, since if there were prompts that intrigued me I could always write them unofficially, I went and got myself a pinch hit. *facepalm* So, today is quick emergency review of canon if I can find it, and tomorrow is story-writing time. Ack? :D
(I also discovered that somehow, one of my email addresses had a typo in the reply-to field [usemail instead of usermail], which means that any emails I sent out since the Great Computer Crash (which is when the email client got reinstalled, and is therefore the most likely time of entering wrongly) could not be replied to. gak.]
Cross-posted between DW (
- Yeti Stomper interviews Paul S. Kemp.
- The World SF News Blog has A Round Table on Australian SF with Gillian Polack, Simon Brown, Yaritji Green and Tessa Kum.
- Book Banter Podcast interviews Jeff VanderMeer.
- The Science Of Fiction interviews Maggie Jamison, Apex Submissions Editor.
- Tor.com interviews Innsmouth Free Press.
- Diabolical Plots interviews Nancy Fulda.
- Jim C. Hines on Are Booksignings Worth It?
- Jeff VanderMeer on Choosing Your Platforms and Protecting Your Private Booklife.
- Rachelle Gardner on Where the Money Comes From.
- Janice Hardy on The March Toward Publication (or What Happens Next, Part Two).
- John Joseph Adams on The Secret of My Success—Revealed!
- Mark C Newton on Thoughts on 2009.
- Randy Susan Meyers on Books on Writing.
Booklife by Jeff VanderMeerOver at the American Book Review, they’ve made a list of 100 best last lines from novels. Most of ‘em aren’t even spoilers. Some of ‘em really make you wonder what the hell kinda book came BEFORE that line. Check it out.
Also a note to whatever hacker tried to line up vietnameseorphansfund.org to point to my website — thanks, but I’ve deleted that now. And: what the?
Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
For the record, I didn’t intend for yesterday’s post to be particularly negative! I was hoping for more evidence that there were in fact whole slews of fantasy fiction which centres around more than one female character, and their interactions. Thanks to comments here and on LJ, I have a few more to add to the list:
Thoraiya Dyer reminded me that while big chunks of the Mists of Avalon are about Morgaine-Arthur-Lancelot-Gwenhyfar with the women being the only ones not really having a relationship, Morgaine does have relationships with Viviane and Morgause and basically the whole book is about women talking to each other. Sometimes not even about men. Which is true, and my only excuse for not remembering is that I read it in my teens and the book represents my first ever literary experience with an Arthurian threesome.
[in addition I'd like to shout out to Merlin, which looks on the surface to be a Boys Own show but does have Gwen and Morgana who are, though very very divergent from the traditional versions of said characters, are at least two girls who talk to each other, and this is much better than poor old Marian in Robin Hood who was only allowed to talk to smelly men in armour. I haven't got to see the second season yet but I just read Sarah Rees Brennan's summary about sensible girls and the romantic boys who love them, and sadly it looks like there isn't nearly enough Morgana in season 2...]
This discussion of Mists of Avalon reminded me of The Firebrand, which I think is a magnificent and much better book than MoA (basically does everything Bradley did in MoA but with TROY which is infinitely cooler than the Arthurian cycle imho) which gave me Kassandra and Andromache and Hekuba and Amazons and the wimpiest most annoying Paris ever and is basically awesome and stacked with womenfolk.
Rowan mentioned The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey, which features two women from widely different backgrounds who become blood sisters, work together in everything and generally appear on the covers together. Mercedes Lackey! I definitely should have remembered her, and it makes me sad that I didn’t read enough of her books in my teens when I think they would have been at their best. I have quite liked her recent fairy tale books especially The Fairy Godmother.
( Read the rest of this entry » )Yesterday, I decided that I'd reach into The Vault a few times this week, and reprint some holiday-related posts.
While I combed through the WWdN archives, I came across this post, which I haven't thought about pretty much since I wrote it. It has nothing to do with the holidays, but I still like it. I'm reprinting it today so I can remember a time when I didn't feel so self conscious about my writing, could totally lose myself in a moment, and do my very best to fearlessly capture it in words.
We are under partly cloudy skies today here in Pasadena. All day long, the blue sky has been brilliant and beautiful. The few clouds that dot the sky are small and fluffy, blown at incredible speeds by the high altitude winds, and illuminated to a magnificently bright white by the sun.
About 20 minutes ago, the sun began to set, and I watched as it put silver linings behind cloud after cloud as it sank into the west. Shortly after the horizon took it away for another day, the sun did an amazing thing: it illuminated the only cloud in the sky, a monstrous one — several thousand feet cross, at least — which hung over my house. The cloud acted as a giant reflector, bouncing yellow, then orange, then red light down upon my neighborhood.
At first, the yellow light was beautiful, bringing out a brilliance in the lawns and leaves seldom seen in winter. Then, the orange light became a little creepy, casting the same muted color as sunlight filtered through the smoke of a brushfire.
When the light turned red, though, it was positively scary. The red glow that it washed over the Earth was straight out of the fires of Mount Doom.
As the light turned from orange to red, my mom called me, and asked me if it looked like the world was coming to an end over my house, too. I laughed, and told her that it did.
Then a Ring Wraith knocked on my door, and I politely hung up the phone.
Remember when Lord of the Rings ruled the world with a power and inevitability challenged and equalled only by frozen yogurt shops in the 80s? Those were some magical days, Precioussss. We loves them.
charlesatan) has an good interview up with Lee Harris, publisher of Hub Magazine and assistant editor at Angry Robot Books. Check it out HERE. (I'm a bit partial to the gentleman as he published "Pandering Dwarves," which is still the current story at Hub. ;D)
- Mood:
cheerful
Mr. Bali Hai of Goofbutton says this photo of a cute female nerd on a telephone pole is the "best picture ever." He might have something there.
UPDATE: Here's a picture of the ad with all the copy. It reads, in part:
Alana MacFarlane is a 20 year old from San Rafael, California. She's one of our first women telephone installers. She won't be the last.Additional research says that this was a full page color ad in Life Magazine May 12, 1972.
(Do you think this is the same Alana MacFarlane? I do.)
ashacat is inexpressibly relieved; netcurmudgeon is ecstatic. I'm going over in a few minutes to take care of his brother so dad can go back to the hospital for a few hours.
- Mood:
tired
Mexico City just became the first in Latin America to approve same-sex marriage.
More responses to the abortion compromise in the Senate bill, from RH Reality Check and Cynthia Nixon.
Jill from Feministe gives her thoughts on the health care reform bill--and argues we can't afford to kill it.
In the spending bill that Obama signed into law last week was also a provision "prohibiting defense contractors from restricting their employees' abilities to take workplace discrimination, battery, and sexual assault cases to court. The measure was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad." Via Think Progress
A new order from the head general in Iraq makes getting pregnant or impregnating a soldier while on duty an offense punishable by court martial. He says those pregnant via sexual assault will not be punished but questions remain about the ethics of such a policy.
You may have missed it amidst all the news about the health care reform debacle, but quite a bit has happened in the past week about immigration reform. Here is a quick round up of what's been going on on immigration.
It's long been said that once health care reform was dealt with, immigration would be the next big issue to tackle. Folks have also predicted that the fight for immigration reform will be even more difficult than health care (hard to fathom). The Obama Administration had made promises to tackle the issue this year.
Representative Gutierrez introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill last week in the House of Representatives.
Others are claiming that the bill is DOA (dead on arrival) because the House leaders are hesitant to take on such a controversial issue during an election year. The Dallas Morning News reports:
Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quietly assured freshman Democrats and other vulnerable lawmakers that she won't allow a floor debate on immigration unless the Senate acts first. Backbenchers are frustrated at being forced to cast politically delicate votes on issues like cap-and-trade, only to see the bills stall in the Senate.
USA Today caught flack for an article about immigrant students where it referred to them as "illegal students." A campaign called USA Today Fail has been created to fight back.
Finally, a check out the Media Consortium's blog The Diaspora for more on what's happening with immigration reform.
The 16-ft.-long "Work Sets You Free" sign was found cut into three pieces and buried under debris and snow in a wooded area. The theft probably wasn't the work of the far Right, police say. Rather, they've detained five people described as "common criminals", and believe the group was hoping to sell the sign to a private collector.
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
After a year of dragging her feet and go-slow protests, of “whyyyyy daycare” and “I like school more than daycare” and my personal favourite, as the mother of a new baby: “but I need more rest,” Raeli woke up this morning, dressed herself in her uniform including knee socks and shoes, not the sandals she’s always fighting for, but proper sneakers, and came in to show us. She then went to the toilet, had breakfast and cleaned her teeth, all efficiently and calmly. I didn’t have to nag once, for anything.
Wow. Just wow.
Next year she’s in full time school. I’m sure a morning like this won’t happen again until the stars align some time in the next 12 years or so, but right now it feels pretty good.
Profile
- girliejones
- girlie jones
- Twelfth Planet Press
Page Summary
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
reuters_topnews : Israel passes response on prisoner swap to Hamas [+0] - buymeaclue : reasons i will always ride part-arabs... [+0]
- whedonesque : DeKnight gets some Whedony company on his new series 'Spartacus'. [+0]
- a_slatter_rss : A Christmas Squeeeeeeeeeee! [+0]
- a_slatter_rss : And even more wisdom … [+0]
- reuters_topnews : Senate on track to pass healthcare bill [+0]
- reuters_topnews : U.S. mortgage industry grapples with new disclosures [+0]
- reuters_topnews : U.S. court urges misconduct probe into Polanski case [+0]
- coode_street : Russ, reflection and a nice night out. [+0]
- fred_mouse : playing food roulette [+1]
- bbcnewsworld : Mexico City backs gay marriage [+0]
- bbcnewsworld : World 'failed Gaza over blockade' [+0]
- bbcnewsworld : Testing limits [+0]
- bbcnewsworld : House divided? [+0]
- bbcnewsworld : In pictures [+0]
- homonculus : For the 'fans' [+0]
- a_slatter_rss : VanderWisdom: Choosing Your Platforms and Protecting Your Private Booklife [+0]
- ashr501 : Total Climate Change [+0]
- coppervale : Did I Ever Tell You About The Christmas I Killed A Man? [+16]
- bbcnewsworld : US police officer rebuked for drawing gun in snowball fight [+0]
- wilwheaton : From The Vault: Cross the Blazing Bridge of Fire! [+0]
- roberthood_rss : A Rival for Gamera? [+0]
- boingboing_feed : Home made holidays [+0]
- jaylake : [cancer] More about sex [+10]
- alinta_thornton : Xeloda [+0]
- marshallpayne1 : the Art of Mark Ryden [+13]
- ny_times_books : Books of The Times: A Photo of a Smell and Other Scoops [+0]
- larbalestier : On Rereading Persuasion [+0]
- matociquala : (no subject) [+7]
- isabeau : Yuletide update [+0]
- charlesatan : December 22, 2009 Links and Plugs [+0]
- deborahb : More on endings [+0]
- bbcnewsworld : Mexico City approves gay marriage [+0]
- reuters_topnews : Qaeda makes rare public appearance at Yemen rally [+0]
- cassiphone : More on Multiple Women in Fantasy [+2]
- wilwheaton : From the Vault: The Fires of Mordor [+0]
- marshallpayne1 : Interview with Lee Harris [+0]
- grouchiegrrl : fingers crossed [+1]
- boingboing_feed : Girl makes call on a telephone pole [+0]
- matociquala : Baby! [+9]
- maevele : (no subject) [+0]
- bbcnewsworld : Mexico City approves gay marriage [+0]
- bbcnewsworld : Man City defend sacking of Hughes [+0]
- feministing : What We Missed [+0]
- feministing : Comprehensive Immigration Reform introduced last week in the House [+0]
- charlesatan : "No experiences are ever wasted if you remember them, and use them in future endeavours." [+0]
- maevele : signal boost [+0]
- whedonesque : (SPOILER) Preview Pages For Buffy Season 8 #31. [+0]
- boingboing_feed : Stolen Auschwitz sign found [+0]
- cassiphone : Daughter’d [+4]