yuki_onna

http://whedonesque.com/comments/28908

http://kotaku.com/5911846/these-avengers-action-figures-look-so-real-youll-think-theyre-tiny-actors

They're looking absolutely lifelike. Article also contains links on how to win some.

Some short things I've said about various books etc. in various places recently, not necessarily edited.

From mail to Nineweaving:

( on P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins, and her other interests )

From mail to Sovay:

( on Naomi Mitchison's Under the Fairy Hill )

From a different email to Sovay:

You'd like Frances Hardinge's Fly-By-Night-- it reminds me of the revolutionary bits of the Dalemark books. Also has a perfectly lovely homicidal goose. And a con man who is a believable con man (and whose first name is Eponymous), and a bit in which someone has to shout, with serious intent, "Follow that coffeehouse!" And everyone in it is complex and has an agenda, and no one is perfectly good or bad, and the protagonist occasionally makes really stupid political decisions because she is twelve years old, which is very refreshing to see because usually in this sort of book being twelve does not hinder a clever person much, and here she just hasn't got the experience. And all of the incredibly serious political issues are worked out in action scenes that one suddenly realizes are on a sheerly logistical level perfectly ridiculous, but the emotional weight is still there. A nice trick.

And from a different different email:

( on Anne Ursu's Cronus Chronicles )

So apparently I review things in email to my girlfriend a lot:

( on the movie A Dangerous Method )

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.

Luna Park is one of two amusement parks in the world that is protected by government legislation. I don't know what the second is but, located on the edge of Sydney Harbour, I know that several of the park's buildings are heritage listed.

In 1979, six children and an adult were killed in a fire in the ghost train ride, a fire caused by age and neglect, and the park has suffered in stutters and moments of life since. It has spent years closed and years open. It has been the subject of legal battles from those who live in the area and don't want the noise from the rides, nor the noise from construction. It is now, operational, but with limited hours, and when you pass, it's mostly quiet, but lit up. Around you it's bright, bright, but the darkness from the mouth stretches back, into the rides, into the steel barriers, a stillness that lingers.

Link.

 . . the things that aren't getting enough attention here at my house.  Shipping will be based on weight/zip.  Generally imps and a bottle will ship for $2.50.  Thanks!

For me, anyway. See, Summer is typically official on June 21st but I don't go by those Soviet-like standards but instead use the simpler metric of 'First day I have to turn on the air conditioning', which was today. Hot, noisy day. And my car was blocked in the parking lot by one of the new residents who came home last night obviously drunk and only backed 2/3's into their spot. Along with the new family-types who moved in and constantly leave the front door pushed open. That door is the only thing keeping random tweakers from wandering into the complex so I have a problem with it be left open unsupervised.

Looks like tonight might be cure for my insomnia though, because I'm very, very tired. Probably going to be up another half hour, if that. And we all checked out the solar eclipse at 6:30 tonight. It was hard to see but the light got weird for a while.

Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.

The weekend was a blur, roadrunner style. Thank goodness I was caught up with my wordcount so I wasn’t actually trying to write at the same time as juggling the two daughters and their need for snuggles, soccer parenting, the birthday card factory line, actual birthday party attendance involving two year old’s first dip in a pool (only mildly traumatic), the desperate need to catch up on Futurama movies as a family unit, the weekly grocery shop, picking up daughter after Polish dancing and, oh yes, a migraine.

Whereas what I actually wanted to do all weekend was to lie on the library bed and read my new Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story book constantly. And/or listen to the novelisation of the Dalek Masterplan which I got out from the library in a flurry of Jean Marsh & Peter Purves adoration (their recent audio play The Anachronauts totally did for me, and Jean Marsh’s brilliant audio rendition of the original Upstairs Downstairs novel complete with grumpy Scottish butler impersonation DID NOT HELP).

May is disappearing at a frantic rate. People keep asking what I want for my birthday. More time please, instead of it ribboning out of my fingers and disappearing into the sunset.

June is upon us, and with it comes not only the school holidays (which I rather look forward to these days – my elder daughter is old enough that having her home is marginally more compatible with me getting some writing done than is having to juggle her school & activity routine) but also Continuum travel, and one of my twice-yearly bouts of actual outside-the-house work.

So… the novel writing is likely to slow in the first half of June, which is frustrating as I’m currently on something of a roll. Luckily I have signed up for the Clarion Write-a-thon (proper link to my page here – I think it wasn’t set up yet last time I linked) to get me back on track.

This year’s goal is simply to produce more stuff. Stories, books whatever. Words, Tansy, words!

Trying to clear out what I can between tonight and tomorrow before I leave town for a week. USA Shipping is $3.00 and I'm sorry but I can only ship within the USA.  I always include DC and ship 1st class mail.  I also ship very fast, generally the next business day. :)

All are 5ml bottles with fill level indicated below. I have loads of feedback on BPAL.org under the same user name angelicruin.  Thanks for looking!!!

• Crypt King - TOL (came that way from BPTP) - $50.00 Pending
• Cabaret Goth (Bat's Day '11) - Full, untouched back-up - $50.00 Pending
• Peach Champagne - Full - $40.00
• Strawberry Moon '05 (Trunk Show Label) - Full w/ dip - $30.00
• Dorian v2 - Full - $30.00
• Bah! (BPTP Inquisition 2008) - Full - $30.00
• Snow Angel '08 (BPTP Inquisition 2008) - Full w/ dip - $30.00
• Black Lace (Original) - About 80% Full - $30.00
• Cake Smash (Forum Only) - TOL - $27.00
• Sibyl - Full - $25.00 Pending
• Overprotective Possessed Talking Doll (BPTP Inquisition 2009) - Full - $25.00
• Left His Nurse While In A Crowd (BPTP Inquisition 2009) - Minus 1/2 decant - $25.00
• Deathly Pride (BPTP Inquisition 2009) - Full - $25.00
• Old Moon '11 - Full - $25.00
• CD: Misfortune Teller v3 - Full - $20.00
• Green Apple of Venus - Full - $15.00
• Maison en Pain E'Epices - Full - $15.00
• Monster Bait: Bones Trombone - Full - $15.00
• L'Essence L'Engouement (BPTP Inquisition 2012) - Full - $15.00
• B340 (Convergence) - Full - $15.00
• Lilith's Tea Party (Forum Only) - Full - $15.00
• Anne Beany (Forum Only) - Full - $15.00
• Pumpkin Masala Roobios - Full - $15.00
• Snow White '08 - Minus 1/2 decant - $15.00 Pending
• Lilith vs. The Giant Crab (Forum Only) - Minus 1/2 decant - $15.00
• Berry Moon '11 - Full - $15.00
• Blood Moon '11 - Full $15.00
• Nightmare (Land of Dreams Series) - Full - $15.00
• Plum Puddin - Full - $15.00
• Slaugh - Full - $15.00
• Golletes - Full - $13.00
• Tattered Lace - Full w/ dip - $13.00
• Pumpkin V '09 - Full w/ dip - $10.00

===Walking the Thresholds is coming up.  If you are attending, you really want to let me know. (grins)

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
Bob Dylan, made famous by Jimi Hendrix, covered by dozens, if not hundreds.
All Along the Watchtower

All Along the Watchtower is interesting in that Bob Dylan's original version from the John Wesley Harding album has informed almost none of the subsequent versions of the song. The original is a sparse acoustic recording and is notable more for its lyrics than for its music. As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, the Jimi Hendrix Experience famously electrified it and that became the definitive version; virtually every cover version (and there are many) takes its inspiration from Hendrix. Dylan himself adopted Hendrix's phrasing for live performances. Thanks to the obsessive people who track Dylan setlists, we know that Dylan himself has played All Along the Watchtower more than any other song, and virtually every one of those performances followed Hendrix instead of his own original version. It is arguably Dylan's single most famous song, although there is obviously a lot of competition for that title. My iPod has four versions of the song, including the original Dylan, Hendrix and an Indigo Girls live version. The fourth is my personal favorite version of the song and is performed live by U2.

My fifth (and final) year of college was the first time I really listened to U2 extensively. I borrowed a bunch of their albums from my fraternity brother and one time radio co-host Dr. Bovi, including the Rattle & Hum album that features their recording of the song. U2's live version was performed in San Francisco in 1987, and follows Hendrix pretty closely. Most interestingly, it adds another verse that I personally feel is as good of a summation of politically oriented rock & roll as any that I've ever heard. This extra verse is the one that is lodged in my brain and that elevates this song to the songbook.

All I got is a red guitar
Three chords
And the truth
All I got is a red guitar
The rest is up to you

In part because of my obsession with this song, the summer after I graduated from college I did a radio show called "The Crossroads & the Watchtower." I alternated Crossroads shows (all blues) weekly with Watchtower showers (all freeform) and always ended the latter with one of the numerous versions of All Along the Watchtower. I never had to repeat versions, and I wasn't even trying all that hard.

After graduation I had to return Dr. Bovi's copy of Rattle & Hum. This led to me taking the extraordinary step of buying a new copy of the album for my own. I played it almost constantly for the four months I lived at home after graduation; I'm sure my mother would be happy to never hear it again. It ended up being the gateway drug into U2. I've seen them twice and own eight of their albums. Some twelve years after getting into them my interest has mostly waned, and the only album I listen to with any regularity is Rattle & Hum, which if the internet can be trusted is of course the U2 album that most of their fans have the least use for.

On a side note, Bullet the Blue Sky from Rattle & Hum also has one of the most damning lines of commentary to make it on to a live album:

Well the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister.

I seriously think Rattle & Hum is one of the great live albums of all time.

Tracklist
#1 - Welcome to the Jungle
#2 - Runnin' Blue
#3 - Cryin'
#4 - Mr. Jones
#5 - Blinded by the Light
#6 - Piano Man
#7 - Romeo & Juliet
#8 - Ecstasy
#9 - Seasons of Love
#10 - Red Sweater!
#11 - Insomniac
#12 - It Had to Be You
#13 - Cabaret
#14 - Psycho Killer
#15 - All Along the Watchtower

It took some four or five batches, but I finally perfected the recipe for the chocolate cherry cookies. Here it is, as requested:

Lisa's Double Chocolate Cherry Cookies (of doom?)

2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1½ sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1½ cups light brown sugar
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
5 or 6 ounces dark or bittersweet chocolate chunks/chips (about ½ a bag)
1 cup dried tart cherries (chopped if they're large)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a small bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a medium bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition, then add the vanilla. Slowly add flour mixture, mixing till just combined.

Fold in chocolate chunks and cherries.

Roll dough into small balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake 10-12 minutes.

Makes 2½ to 3 dozen cookies.

I was feeling extra ... let's call it "persnickety" and curious, so I dropped each ball on my little kitchen scale to make sure that the cookies were about the same size. 30-32g cookie balls made largish cookies, and would've given me about 2 dozen total. The 27-29g balls of dough made good-sized cookies and would've given me more like 3 dozen. It's the difference between a heaping small spoon of dough and a great, heaping spoon of dough.

Also, it's good to sort of squish the balls down a little with your fingers, to flatten them just a tad. The dough balls didn't spread a whole lot in the baking. I wish I'd thought to take pictures of the finished results, but all the cookies were gone by the time it occurred to me that it might be helpful.

I have a Concourse room that I forgot to cancel when I got a roommate. Apparently, the cancellation period has changed to one week (or you pay a night penalty), but I can still transfer the reservation. It's a double queen non-smoking room from May 24-27 at the con rate of $98/night.

Please let me know if you're interested.

Xposted to Dreamwidth.

I am pleased to announce that Chicon 7, this year's Worldcon, has donated two memberships to Con or Bust. It takes place August 30-September 3, 2012 in Chicago. The list of guests: Guests of Honor: Mike Resnick, author; Story Musgrave, astronaut; Rowena Morrill, artist; Jane Frank, agent; Peggy Rae Sapienza, fan. Toastmaster: John Scalzi. Special Guest: Sy Liebergot.

Requests for assistance to attend Chicon, Readercon (which donated three memberships), and other SFF cons that take place in July, August, and September are being taken now through May 25; please see this link for details.

K. J. Parker, The Engineer Trilogy

I started reading K. J. Parker with the publication of "Amor Vincit Omnia" in Subterranean and in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine a couple of years ago, and I loved the story, reprinting in last year's Best of the Year book. I quickly snapped up the Subterranean Press novellas Blue and Gold (which is magnificent) and Purple and Black (which is merely very good), as well as, last year in Subterranean, the also magnificent "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong", which I again reprinted. Obviously, it was time for me to read some novels, so I bought Parker's best known (seems to me) work, The Engineer Trilogy, and I read it over the past year or so.

The first novel is called Devices and Desires. In it, an engineer working at a factory in the city-state of Mezentia is condemned to death for violation of specification. It seems that Mezentia is the source of all quality machined goods in this area, and they feel that one of their strengths is the reliance on strict specifications for anything they make. Any deviance is criminal. The engineer, Ziani Vaatzes, was caught making a toy for his beloved daughter for which he made an improvement to the established design.

So, Vaatzes escapes, and makes his way to the country of Eremia, which has foolishly got itself embroiled in a war against Mezentia. Vaatzes offers his help -- he can design defensive equipment for them which will make it difficult for Mezentia's mercenary force to take the Eremian capitol city. It turns out that Eremia's ruler, Duke Orsea, is a pleasant and honorable but irredeemably stupid man. He takes on Vaatzes. This, it is made clear, is the first cog in Vaatzes' ultimate engineering design -- a "machine" to allow him to return to his wife and daughter. The rest of this book is the story of the siege of Eremia. The key character in it, besides Vaatzes, is Duke Valens of the neighboring country of the Vadani. The Duke is, apparently, an outstanding ruler, as well as brilliant at whatever else he does -- hunting, war, and writing letters to Veatriz, Duke Orsea's wife, whom he loves but cannot, of course, have. Though their relationship is in essence innocent -- and Veatriz appears to sincerely love Orsea -- it proves not surprisingly to be another fulcrum in what becomes a tragedy. And this relationship becomes another element, another cog, in Vaatzes' machine.

I won't say too much more about the plots of the books, because saying much about book 2 would spoil book 1, to an extent. (Not that important an extent, in my opinion, but then I realize I'm much less sensitive to spoilers than many readers.) The second book is called Evil for Evil, the third The Escapement. The books are somewhat symmetrically structured, each opening with the same sentence, applied in each case to a different character; each involving a siege or attack on a different city. The ultimate theme on the surface is, perhaps, people as machines -- the way people can be manipulated in the service of a larger plan. Look one level beyond that, though, and almost all the terrible things that happen can be laid at the door of love -- Vaatze's love for his wife, Valens' love for Veatriz ... and a couple other examples that it would be a spoiler to discuss.

There is a plethora of major characters, almost all quite interesting. Miel Ducas, for example, is the scion of one of Eremia's leading families, and, like Valens, is a sort of perfect nobleman, but for different reasons -- Ducas is born to this role (and thus ends up forced out of it) while Valens has had to construct himself. Gace Daurenja is a psychopath, but a truly brilliant inventor and engineer -- apparently the only man superior in that sense to Vaatzes. Lucao Psellus is a minor clerk in Mezentia who, partly because of his fascination with the motivations of Ziani Vaatzes, is thrust into an unwanted role as leader of the defense of the city. Add smaller roles for Veatriz, for Vaatzes' wife Ariessa, for the original chairman of the ruling organization of the Mezentines, Boioannes ... These are a group of people who are mostly, viewed objectively, quite awful people, but who are often quite sympathetic.

One of Parker's great strengths is explanation of technology -- approprate for something called The Engineer Trilogy. (See for example a really neat article about swords in Subterranean, Fall 2011.) In these books there are long and fascinating sections about subjects like metalworking, hunting, and siege defenses.

Parker is a very funny writer, in a very black way, and these books are continually funny. Some of the humor is cleverness, some is very dry irony. None is slapstick, nor is any verbal hijinks.

The main shortcoming is that the plot, in its purposefully machinelike working out, becomes a bit implausible. On the one hand we are to believe that Vaatzes had his whole plan worked out from the beginning -- but there are enough clearly unplannable for contigencies (the whole question of Gace Daurenja, for one thing) that this just doesn't really make sense. The other problem is the ending -- the wrapup is a just a bit too "neat", in many ways. It's also morally queasy-making, as one group is just sort of brushed away. And the resolution of the central individual stories has the feel of the author manipulating the characters' reactions to make a point, rather than natural human responses.

At any rate, I certainly recommend these books ... and The Hammer is next on my list of Parker novels to try ...

1. Rumor has it that they are moving Revenge to Sunday nights next year. My response?
Noooo!!! Frigging hell, how many tv shows that I love do you have to put on Sunday? I can't watch all of them! It's hard enough as it is!

Currently we have : OUAT, Good Wife, Mad Men, Masterpiece, Game of Thrones, Girls, and Walking Dead. I do NOT need another favorite show on this night. Wed was perfect for Revenge, I don't like any of the other shows on Wed's - it is a sitcom/reality show/procedural grave yard.

Spread the wealth!!! Have a bit of compassion to those of us who prefer serials. Don't put them all on the same night! Stupid HBO, AMC and PBS put all their best and original series on Sunday nights. But at least HBO and AMC rerun. PBS not so much. Dammit. The reason I'm not watch The Killing - is I can't watch EVERYTHING!

2. Big Bang Theory is entertaining me.

Sheldon: Is this what male belly-aching about girlfriends is about? I complain, you complain, but no one offers any real solutions?
Leonard: Pretty much.
Sheldon: No wonder the women are winning.

LOL! Except unfortunately this is not gender specific, we do the same thing. I love Big Bang because it really depicts how difficult human relationships are. And the characters feel so real - very few sitcoms depict real characters, which is my problem with sitcoms.
I don't believe them. Friends and HIMYM have pretty people in posh apartments, I'm sorry no. Or okay, yes, but ugh, I hate these people in my neighborhood, I don't want to watch them on tv. Go AWAY! Admittedly I liked Friends in the 1990s and 2000, but this was before my neighborhood got gentrified and when I was the same age as the characters. Or slightly younger. (Yes, I'm the same age as Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, etc...)

3. Mad Men - I don't like the episodes that focus on Betty Draper/whatever her new last name is. I can't stand that character - she is so whiny. Whiny characters grate on my nerves. I know, I'm probably in the minority on this. But the episode before that which focused on Meghan and Pete Campbell, was interesting. I particularly identified with this conversation between Roger and Don:
( spoilers for Mad MEn )
Virgina Woolfe: In order to be a writer, one most need money and a room of one's own.

People see this as a feminist statement. I see it as a classist one. It is hard to write if you have to work really hard for a living. 5 days a week. 8 hours a day. Exhausted when you come home. Stealing time to write. After doing nothing but writing business emails and memos and letters all day long.

And then online, I saw a post that made me realize something...our luck is so much more than skin color, ethnicity or gender related...it's deeper and more complicated than that.
It's who our parents are, what our education was, who our friends are, our connections,
our lovers, our ability to have children, the opportunities and choices placed in our path.
I think sometimes everyone is dealt a hand of cards, with good and bad cards, we can't choose the hand - that's dealer's choice, but like any good poker player we can choose how to play that hand.

I struggle with my own choices. Hampered by the cards I've been dealt and aided, that too.
I do not know what I want. In that way, I'm more like Betty Draper than Meghan, which may explain why I can't stand the character. I want to be a writer - but I don't at the same time. I don't want the fame, fortune, the tinkering with my work, I don't want the criticism or the constant changing and altering of every sentence to fit what may or may not be in some editor's head. I want to be a writer and an artist on my terms not the world's. I look at all the jobs in the world and I see clearly the ups and downs of all of them...and I feel a bit like Buffy on Career Day. I've fallen into my own career, I did not choose it exactly and half the time I wish I could change it, but to what?

I do not know really what I want so much as what I do not want. I can't figure out the goals to get what I think I want...because that seems to change. I wish life was as easy and clear-cut as it is in all those self-help books.

4. I just finished a very disturbing contemporary romance novel (that I'm half convinced although I cannot prove it was once upon a time a Spuffy fanfic). ( Read more... )

May Day was late this year, due to the rain date cancellation, and I am even later posting my pictures. But here they are. I no longer have my parade book so cannot give you much commentary on the intended meaning behind many of the characters, some of them very strange, that marched in the parade. But as Terry Garey once remarked (and this sort of a hazy paraphrase based on my memory of an email she sent out about the parade once years ago), it all sort of boils down to the same thing every year: good conquers evil because it's nicer.

The parade and ceremony seemed so much more successful to me this year than last year, mostly because of the weather. Whereas last year it felt we were unable to banish the gloom from the park, this year's weather was warm and marveleous. It almost felt that all our work was done before the parade even started. We found a good spot near our usual location, at the point where the parade turns from Bloomington Avenue to head for Powderhorn park. Here's Fiona with a couple of her friends (Delia had wandered off to meet up with several of her own friends).






Pictures follow. Lots of pictures.

( The parade begins )

( The Tree of Life is carried in the parade, shrouded )

( I loved the big cranes )

( With my interest in the heart of flesh/heart of stone theme, I was happy to see the heart here )

( Stiltwalkers appear throughout the parade, always traditional )

( Sloths appeared in the parade to remind us to slow down and smell the flowers )

( Yes, at the May Day parade we have violins in the marching band )

( All the floats in the parade are human-powered )

( Community May poles )

( Part of the South American dancer contingent )

( One of the four horses representing the four winds, I think )

( More marchers )

( The May Day parade keeps community front and center )

( Marching bees )

This may be my favorite picture of the day. It says it all:





( One thing I enjoy about the parade each year is that it's so colorful )

( After the parade ended... )

( We headed to the park to picnic and watch the ceremony. Here's the sun, preparing to be rowed across the lake )

( And when the sun finally arrives on the opposite shore )

( The Tree of Life miraculously rises up to bless the community )

Happy May Day!





This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1601106.html. There are comments on the post.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/28907

http://www.blairwitch.de/news/cabin-in-the-woods-kinostart-verschoben-23590/

Germans won't be able to visit the Cabin until September 14th. Link is in German but I think that shouldn't be a problem (contains official short plot-description).

Initially, a June 14/Early Summer date was floating around but now the distributor (Universum Film) sent out a press release announcing the delayed release. Sadness ensues.

edit: This is a SECOND delay. The original delay was only until August 23rd but now Universum pushed it back even further. Thanks, Illy for even sadder news. ;)

Terminal

She makes a batch of sugar cookie dough
just to eat it all raw--so very bored.

She wraps her hands in purple bandages
and spends an hour pounding a beef slab,

slices off a filet to roast over
her backyard fire pit and feed her wolves.

She juggles seven rusty daggers
until fatigue makes her miss a quick-toss.

She sits, surrounded by six fallen blades,
and stares at the dagger piercing her palm.

She doesn't call 911; she doesn't
remove the dagger or staunch the bleeding.

Her wolves crowd close, whine their concern for her.
She smiles, tells them, soon, soon she won't be bored

any longer.

----

Wow. I will post pictures, but I've never been so tired, right now. I'm only writing because I need digest food, so I must stay upright. My arms, due to workouts and all the work today, are noodles.
I did remember to take 'before' pictures with the new camera. :) After pics will wait for a bit, dammit.
Let's see, there was a Mad trip to Ikea last night, (all trips to Ikea are Mad. As the other customers will drive you to madness.) for a tall, thin drawer unit. I hate that I just spent money for garage furniture, but I didn't have time to wait for an amazing Goodwill find. We also dropped off books at half-price, and took care of some items at the hardware store.

Today, we slept in, and then attacked our own areas. Paul got to work on the greenhouse. The new polycarbonite panels are on the old greenhouse, and the edges are covered in protective tape. The old panels had algea problems due to the open ends on the polycarbonite tubing, and this should prevent the same problem from occuring again. Two old cotton rugs were dug out of the garage (yes, packrats. I know.) and they are going to line the bottoms of the greenhouses, for comfort and blocking grass invasions. Considering in Dallas, St Augustine and Bermuda grass are the only grasses that stay alive around here, and everywhere else considers them 'invasive weeds', blocking is good.
The second greenhouse is going up right next to the old one, and is going to be wrapped in greenhouse film. I bought a huge amount of it for Paul last Halloween, and at least it can be useed, now. The back porch will stay 'screened up' for the more delicate plants.
Like I've said before, the back yard isn't mine.

I worked on the garage. I have had a variety of hand-me-down furniture that has worked in a pinch, or cheap, plastic drawer units. My studio has never been very streamlined. I won't say it is streamlined now, but it's closer at least. Mears came over, and we put together the tall, thin drawer unit. I put up proper shelves in the garage. I swept, sorted, organized, cleared out and generally wreaked havoc upon the bug habitats in the garage. I now have a better setup. That old sewing table is now holding the mini-polisher and the kiln. The rolling mill is out, assembled and is working fine. The plastic-crap drawer units have been emptied, and I'm sorting out all the bits and pieces still. Much of Paul's crap was sorted, too. He has a way of creating crapalanche areas, just waiting to go off. I'm going to sort more of it tomorrow, while he's at work. No, I'm not pitching anything, it just needs to not be ready to tumble over all the time, you know?
I still want to clean the den, dining room and my office. I've finished the other rooms. I'm just too tired to think about it right now.

But my studio, it will be great. It will be usable. It will be efficient, and I will be able to find everything. :D

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/20/my-last-few-days-a-quick-recap/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18630

As I think most of you know, I flew in to the DC area last Wednesday to take part in SFWA’s Nebula Awards Weekend, not only because was going to be an awesome time with awesome people, but because I am president of the organization, so me not showing up to the thing would be, you know, tremendously bad form. Here’s what went down.

First, as I noted earlier, I left my travel bag in my car, which unfortunately contained my Mac Air, several books, my car key, and a bunch of cables relating to electronics. This annoyed me terribly. Contacted several cab companies and the DC cab commission to locate it. The good news, such as it is, is that the Mac Air is lockable and trackable from the moment anyone tries to access the Internet with it, so I locked it and will have it post a note asking to be returned. Also, almost everything I had on the computer was also redundantly stored elsewhere, so I have lost no work. Finally, the thing is insured. The bad news: It’s still not returned. I am going to have to work on the assumption that the bag and its contents will continue to go missing, especially since I am leaving the area tomorrow morning.

Other than that the weekend was fantastic. I was pretty busy, with two board meetings and a SFWA business meeting, both of which will be of limited interest to people who are not SFWA members but which were very productive and useful. Go us. I also participated in a panel on humor in science fiction and fantasy, which also included James Patrick Kelly, James Morrow and SFWA’s newest Grandmaster, Connie Willis. I thought it went very well, personally; between the four of us we covered a lot of ground in the subject. I also participated in our mass author signing, sitting between Nebula nominees Carolyn Ives Gilman and Mary Robinette Kowal; I signed a fair number of books, which makes me happy.

The big event of the Nebula Awards weekend, not entirely surprisingly, are the Nebula Awards themselves, which this year had Walter Jon Williams as MC (he did a great job), astronaut Mike Fincke as our keynote speaker (he was very inspiring), and of course Connie Willis as Grandmaster (immensely charming and heartfelt). And we gave away some prizes too. And then there was the after party, in which everyone poured into the SFWA hospitality suite and ate and drank and talked very loudly about things until it was time to go to sleep.

I really love the Nebula Weekends because in a sense, as SFWA president, it’s my party — I get to host some of of the most interesting writers in the world and celebrate their achievements. But it would be horribly, horribly wrong for me to take any of the credit for the success of the weekend. That properly goes to Peggy Rae Sapienza, in her role of Nebula Weekend event co-ordinator, Steven Silver, and a huge raft of volunteers who have put time and energy into the event. I got thanked by people for the weekend, but I’m not foolish enough to take the credit. That goes to the people who made it work.

At the moment I’m pleasantly dazed from everything and since I have an ungodly early flight tomorrow, I’m likely to crash early tonight. But to everyone who came to the Nebula Awards Weekend and made it wonderful: Thank you.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/20/nebula-awards-winners/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18627

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, of which I am the president, gave out its Nebula and other awards last night. Here’s what won, by whom, and who published it.

Novel
Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor)

Novella
“The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s, October/November 2011)

Novelette
“What We Found,” by Geoff Ryman (F&SF, September/October 2011)

Short Story
“The Paper Menagerie,” by Ken Liu (F&SF, March/April 2011)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
Doctor Who: “The Doctor’s Wife,” by Neil Gaiman (writer), Richard Clark (director) (BBC Wales)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult SF and Fantasy Book
The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman (Big Mouth House)

Damon Knight Grand Master Award
Connie Willis

Solstice Award
Octavia Butler (posthumous) and John Clute

Service to SFWA Award
Bud Webster

Congratulations to everyone above!

I have just added another batch of bottles and imps to my sales/swap post. For each purchase of $15 or more, you can choose either 10% off the pre-shipping total or 3 free GC or non-BPAL imps. I'm also offering free US shipping or $2.50 international shipping on any purchase of $25.00 or more, and of course you can always pick a free sniffy from the list at the bottom of my post with any purchase. There are dozens of bottles and a huge pile of imps and decants behind the fake cut, so take a peek!

Click to find BPAL, Arcana, Conjure Oils, Haus of Gloi, Heaven and Earth Essentials, Nocturne Alchemy, Possets and more!

I'm also open to swap offers for items from my huuuuuuge wish list. I'll trade extra-generously for a bottle of either Vespertilio Proterus or The Orchard, or I can probably scrape up PayPal for those (hey, I can dream! ;).

http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2012/05/blogging-caine-prize-2012-urban-zoning.html

This is my second post for the great 2012 Caine Prize blogathon. (See my first post for some details.) I'm coming a little late to Billy Kahora's story "Urban Zoning" (PDF) because it was finals week at one school where I teach and the last week of classes at another, so I haven't had much spare time, and then when I did finally start writing this it kept growing, and I disagreed with myself frequently, and I couldn't make anything cohere, and finally I gave up and just tried to salvage some of the maelstrom of questions and doubts that plagued me as I wrote. There are some thorough and excellent posts about this story up now, so I highly recommend following some of the links to them, which this week I will put first rather than last, because really if you do want to know about the story, you should read those...

---

Other writers' posts about "Urban Zoning" by Billy Kahora:
Black Balloon
Stephen Derwent Partington
The Reading Life
Backslash Scott
Ikhide
Loomnie
ndinda
City of Lions
zunguzungu
Practically Marzipan
bookshy
Cashed In
aaahfooey

---

Thinking his way through (or toward) "Urban Zoning", Aaron Bady digs into a bunch of provocative questions about what it means for something to be an African story and/or a Kenyan story, and Stephen Derwent Partington, City of Lions, and Ndinda at Inkdrops, among others, have all placed "Urban Zoning" within its specifically Kenyan cultural context. It is a story very much of a particular setting: Nairobi (and, according to Kahora himself, a specific time: the '90s). That does, and should, raise the questions Aaron and others have asked about the story's resonance and even intelligibility to an audience that is not deeply familiar with the specific reality from which it is drawn.

In many ways, though, all fiction (all art! all everything!) depends on the knowledge, experience, and assumptions each audience member brings to it. This is also true for aspects of the story that have nothing to do with its setting — I think we saw with last week's story how each reader's assumptions about what a story should be and do affected people's appreciations for the actual story in front of them. My own preferences for fabulism and metafiction led me to notice, emphasize, and value those elements of the story more than other readers generally did, and my relative indifference to gritty realism in some respects got in my way with "Urban Zoning", a story I admired (there's some excellent writing in it) but was, after two readings, pretty much indifferent to.

It's entirely possible that my indifference stemmed from my having only superficial knowledge of Kenyan culture and Nairobi in particular. I've been there, but as a tourist, and not for an extended period of time. I've read more Kenyan fiction than the average American, but that's not saying much. Nonetheless, the setting felt less alienating for me than a story set in, say, Eastern Europe, a region about which I know almost nothing, have never traveled to, and have only occasionally read about. The characters, situations, and allusions were far easier for me to understand, or at least recognize, I think, than just about anything in The Illiad. At least with "Urban Zoning", I could think, "This feels like a sort of update of Going Down River Road..."

Instead, what probably kept me at a bit of distance from the story was a short attention span for booze-soaked tales of urban life. I want to think of myself as a person who is willing to read a story about anything so long as it is interestingly told, but this isn't really true — certain subject matter has got to be told in a way I find especially different from the norm for me to embrace it, while other subjects I'll happily read about even if they're written in the most ordinary, even clichéd, manner.

Stories of drunks wandering around had better be at least as idiosyncratic as Under the Volcano for me to surrender heart and soul to them. Or, for that matter, to have the depth and richness of detail that defines my memory of Going Down River Road. It is unfair, though, that I'm comparing "Urban Zoning" to two novels; it doesn't have the space to expand itself, and one of its strengths, I think, is the economy of its narrative: the structure of the sentences replicating the mood and patterns of thought of the protagonist, the choice of details, the contrast of characters and moments, the implications of its allusions and asides.

I highlight my own response here because it is easy to look at a story that relies on a setting or characters not from the most familiar templates of the world's dominant cultural powers and to say that the story's greatest obstacles are its cultural references — but this may not be the case. Readers are complicated, and stories are more than their settings and characters (and our response to those settings and characters may not be limited to our response to their cultural/geographical details). Consider, for instance, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and Dambudzo Marechera's House of Hunger — two Zimbabwean writers of the same generation, both of whom spent some time in England, but their approaches to writing are quite obviously different, and readers, I suspect, are likely to find themselves more strongly drawn toward one or the other. (Tangentially: Some of this, too, relates to the forms and styles most popular with literature teachers. That Nervous Conditions is still in print in the U.S. and House of Hunger is not seems to me to be at least partly because Nervous Conditions fits so well into school culture. For a provocative exploration of that idea, see A.O. Amoko's essay "The Problem with English Literature: Canonicity, Citizenship, and the Idea of Africa".)

I suppose I'm thinking about this not just because of the questions Aaron raised, but even more so because I've just finished teaching a course called Currents in Global Literature for the second time, and in doing so I often highlight questions of how we read and, especially, how we value texts with unfamiliar references and allusions. My students in the class both times I taught it were almost all white, almost all from northern New England, mostly from New Hampshire. I've been consistently impressed by their intelligence and thoughtfulness, but for various reasons they are almost all quite ignorant of the world and history (as was I at their age, although I think I had a somewhat better grasp of history simply because it was of interest to me, and I've long been an obsessive researcher). The most challenging books in the course have proved themselves to be A Sentimental Education and Burger's Daughter, with The Kingdom of This World close behind but a bit less daunting because of its short length. The River Between (new this term, replacing Petals of Blood, whose challenges simply required more time than we had) and In the Country of Men were generally the most popular books in the course, and also the ones the students struggled with the least. Both are written in a plain, straightforward style that, yes, hides complexities, but the complexities are not on the same scale as those presented by Flaubert and Gordimer (or Petals of Blood).

During our last day of class, I talked with the students about what, if anything, had changed in their perspectives about reading books from places less generally familiar to them than the sorts of stuff they get in survey courses on American or British literature (although, really, is anything we read nearly as exotic as everything in the first semester of Currents in British Literature?). In the midst of that conversation, one of the strongest students in the class asked why it was that so many of the books we read are focused on struggles for a sense of national identity. Why, for instance, is Libya as a country such a topic in In the Country of Men and yet she couldn't think of any U.S. novels that are primarily concerned with U.S.-ness in the same way. I wished the question had come up earlier in the course — wished, in fact, that I had been aware enough to raise it myself — because it's so full of assumptions that there wasn't possibly time to really unpack it during class. Nonetheless, I said something about the privileges of power, the invisibility that it allows, and also the differences of circumstances of countries with less stable governments than ours (it would be absurd and, I think, immoral to write, for instance, a nice little domestic drama about apartheid South Africa that never acknowledged apartheid — it might even be impossible, because in such a setting, the unmentioned would scream out of the subtext). There is also the power bestowed by the dominant national publishing infrastructures and their expectations, a power Bernardine Evaristo was getting at in her comments as chair of the Caine Prize judges this year when she said, "I’m looking forward to the time when the concept of ‘African literature’ also cannot be defined; when it equates to infinite possibilities and, as with Europe, there are thousands of disparate, published writers, with careers at every level and reaching every kind of reader." I don't read that as being Eurocentric and looking to Europe for models, but rather as a point about the effect of power and dominance. Making generalizations about "American fiction" or "European fiction" is impossible and meaningless in ways that are obvious, but people who would never think of making such generalizations will go on to then make confident generalizations about the literatures of other places with less global publishing power, and those generalizations and assumptions will narrow the possibilities for what is seen as publishable for writers from those regions. What Evaristo is calling for, it seems to me, is not for African writers to mimic European writers, but to be given the freedom to be writers of whatever they feel most compelled to write, and for literatures of all sorts to rise beyond a regional reductionism, free of the obligation to be exemplary of their place.

Literature is, of course, partly bound to time and place — even the most unspecific story was still written by someone(s) and somewhere(s) with a particular language and cultural norms. Few stories are unspecific about this, and many, in fact, revel in the details of place and culture, and are all the stronger for doing so. (What would Under the Volcano be without Cuernavaca — and particularly the Cuernavaca of its time? Ten years ago, I spent two months in Cuernavaca, and it is not at all the same place as it was when Lowry wrote about it. My brain now contains, for a while at least, until senility gets me, both the Cuernavaca of my experience and the Cuernavaca I experienced in Lowry's novel.)

I've gotten far away from Kahora's story, its own specificities, and questions of African/Kenyan fiction generally. Let's return to something Aaron wrote:

The fact that the landscape of The Lion King is recognizably the East African Rift Valley and that the animals have Swahili names causes them to signify not as Kenyan but African, and this is the point: the typical American knows lots of (wrong/stupid/racist) myths about “Africa” (and may even know that they are wrong/stupid/racist), that person will still tend to know nothing at all, for good or for ill, about “Kenya.”

I beat this point to death, perhaps, to raise the question of whether the dilemma of the “African” writer and the “Kenyan” writer are different things. After all, Bernardina Evaristo, the chair of the Caine Prize’s judging committee, called for stories that “enlarge our concept of the continent beyond the familiar images that dominate the media,” and demanded to know “What other aspects of this most heterogeneous of continents are being explored through the imaginations of writers?” But does Billy Kahora’s story speak to or have anything at all to say about “Africa” as a continent? Or does it simply address Kenya? In expressing the aspirations of the Caine Prize in this way, Evaristo is enunciating the ambitions of a great deal of what has gone by the name of “African writing” in the past, the struggle to overcome the reader’s sense that the continent is a single thing — the coherent set of pejorative images and stereotypes which we all know — and to expand the reader’s sense of “Africa” beyond its presumed status as “a country.”

Who is the we in Evaristo's "enlarge our concept of the continent..."? The judges? Readers who seek out the Caine Prize stories? The world, the children, the ones who make a brighter day?

And what of Aaron's question, then: "does Billy Kahora’s story speak to or have anything at all to say about 'Africa' as a continent? Or does it simply address Kenya?"

Certainly, the rhetoric of the prize and the power that it bestows tempts us to look at the stories as embodiments of some geographic essential — a Caine Prize for African Writing presumes a meaning within the idea of "African writing" and creates an exclusion in the way any prize's rules do: no matter how broad and inclusive the definitions, there must be something that is outside the realm of the prize. In this case, non-African writing. (Really, it's the Caine Prize for African Short Stories in English, but that's another can of Pandora's worms...) While some might say that the differentiation is purely geographic, the ways we talk about the prize add ideologies to the geography: somehow, we want (expect?) the stories, especially the winning stories, not just to be written by people from a particular place, but to speak to and have something to say about the idea of Africa.

The obligation to address the idea of Africa is one those of us who are not African impose through assumptions and unconscious/unspoken expectations for writers who are from the continent. No one text can address a whole country, never mind a continent. Chris Abani has said, "If you want to know about Africa, read our literature — and not just Things Fall Apart, because that would be like saying, 'I’ve read Gone with the Wind and so I know everything about America.'" I wouldn't say Things Fall Apart is quite Gone with the Wind — maybe The Great Gatsby would be a better comparison — but the point is important. Obviously, one story, one book, one writer cannot be the embodiment of a continent's literature, never mind its many cultures or identities — and the same is true for countries and regions.

The texts that probably have the most to say about that idea, texts that directly speak to it, are ones that really take on the notions and absurdities that fuel it — I'm thinking especially of In the United States of Africa or some of Evaristo's own works.

Coming back to Kahora's story, who has the authority to say what it "speaks to" beyond our own experience of it? I don't, obviously. For me to say that the story embodies or just represents anything essentially African or Kenyan or Nairobian would be silly, even if I weren't suspicious of the idea that there is or can be something "essentially" African or Kenyan or Nairobian (maybe, instead of "essentially", a different term: "commonly" or "frequently" or "generally"). I don't have the experience or background to say. But I wonder if I have the experience or background to declare that anything speaks to or embodies ... anything... (I could not possibly declare, for instance, that any text speaks to the condition of being from New Hampshire, even though that is the place on Earth with which I am most familiar. I have no idea what it means to be from New Hampshire in any real sense. Or do I? It means not having a state income tax or sales tax, I know that. It means usually being surrounded by white people, except in certain parts of a couple cities. It means relying on automobiles because the public transportation is far from comprehensive. Is there is an identity within all that that I, as a writer, could speak to? I don't know. The idea doesn't interest me: it feels too small, too minor, too limited. I don't want either the burden or the limitation of having to speak to any identity with my writing. Perhaps that's a result of privilege. Perhaps it's a result of being from New Hampshire, where individualism is the strongest ideology.  Perhaps I've read too much Coetzee, perhaps I have been consumed by countervoices. [I once published a story with a magazine that publishes a very specific type: "stories of speculative fiction that feature gay male protagonists", and while I like the people involved and was happy to have the story reach an audience that seemed to appreciate it, I find such specificity unsettling, because it imposes definitions and expectations. I'm much happier with something like "Walk in the Light While There is Light" appearing at Failbetter, because the reader's expectations going in are much less narrow. But that may just be my own neuroses. I loathe expectations. Are we ever actually free of them, though?])

And yet there are commonalities of experience, whether commonalities based on place, language, events, personalities, or emotion. Without such commonalities, communication would be impossible and literature unimaginable. We would all be stuck in our solipsistic selves, incapable of breaching the gap between one person and another. Even after thousands of years, The Illiad still communicates something.

I keep trying to pull some sort of conclusion from this scattershot post. I've been writing paragraphs and deleting them, cutting sentences from them and moving them around, rereading what I've written and wondering why I wrote it, forgetting what the original point was...

I've lost Billy Kahora's story here. Its details still remain with me even now, though, and more than I expected when, ages ago, I began writing this post. There's a lot going on in and between its lines.

It's African, yes, and Kenyan, yes, and Nairobian, yes, because it's set in Nairobi, in Kenya, in Africa, on Earth.

It communicates images of people and places, of events.

It's still rattling around in my imagination.

More than that, I can't declare with any certainty.

Well it’s time for The Glory, The Glory with Aidan Morgan and Adam P. Knave – episode 16. This week we get a bit riled up. About Community, about Sherlock and Moffat and about a bunch of movie trailers. It was that sort of week.

You can subscribe to the podcast only RSS feed right here at this link and also click the button below to listen/subscribe to the podcast on iTunes:

As always, you can also just hit play below, as well. Thanks, and we hope you enjoy!

This entry originated at adampknave.com.

I have a governor's club room that I got from a nice lj person. and I can't use it. either someone else wants it, and I can transfer it to you, or I have to pay a penalty of loads of money, or I try to get there with my child and not really get to do much. Really wishing I had changed the reservation last week, but I think I was holding out hope my partner would be able to join us...

anyone want a really sweet room for Thursday through Monday morning?

http://whedonesque.com/comments/28905

http://conceptartworld.com/?p=13163

Concept artist Fabian Lacey has kindly released several of his concept designs for the film.

Hi all! I'm the new WisCon Social Media Maven on the ConCom. My purpose is to disseminate news and information about WisCon on LJ/DW, Twitter, and Facebook. I wanted to pass on a couple of updates as we approach WisCon 36:

1) We are very excited to be having ASL interpretation for select events at WisCon 36! If you have questions about this service or would like to make requests, feel free to e-mail the Access Team at access36 (at) wiscon (dot) info. 

2) Safety is looking for some volunteers. If you like parties, this might be the job for you! Please contact volunteers36 (at) wiscon (dot) info for details. 

3) The official hashtag for WisCon 26 is #wiscon. We'll also be providing official hashtags for each panel, which we encourage you to use. The more content you all can generate online, the easier it is for our at-con newsletter maven to put together fun content. I also recommend using Storify to collect the tweets, blog posts, and other online media for particular panels. I'll put out a call for those after the con, and provide a collection of links. 

4) As a reminder, this community is fan-run, and isn't officially affiliated with the ConCom, though there are many of us on the ConCom who follow these posts. This community can be a great resource, but if you're especially concerned about sharing questions or feedback with the ConCom, you should contact the relevant department directly (of course, feel free to start discussions here as well!). 

5) There are still registrations available for Wiscon36! 

6) We have two very exciting guests of honor chosen for WisCon 37! They are...not going to be revealed until next Sunday, so stay tuned!

All Auctions are ending in the next two hours!! ~>HERE<~

Midnight on the Midway, The Girl, Velvet Unicorn and many more!!

I look at two antique French SF novels, newly translated:

http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/05/paul-di-filippo-reviews-gustave-le-rouge-gustave-guitton/

God knows how stupid this will sound, depending on how things turn out when the marchers reach McCormick Place, but I'm watching a little bit of the Chicago anti-war march provoked by the NATO summit there. Most of the police conduct looks like anything else you'd see at a routine, uneventful protest: lots of cops walking alongside the marchers, between them and the sidewalks, basic crowd-control, crowd-protection stuff. More of them are wearing helmets than I think makes any sense at this point, and even more of them are wearing visible armor vests, neither of which makes sense to me at this point, especially given the heat this weekend, but still pleasantly boring. Everybody looks miserably hot and exhausted on both sides.

But a little while ago, the protesters were being steered around a corner by the cops, presumably to make absolutely sure they didn't deviate from the approved parade route ... and at that corner, every single cop was in anti-riot helmets and, and here's the part that really caught my attention, every single one of them had their long anti-riot batons drawn and at the ready position.

If I'd been there, I would have wanted to stop at the barricade and ask one of them, at random, if he could spare a second to answer a question for me: "Officer, I'm not challenging your authority and I'm not going to cross this barricade. Can you help me with a question, though? In your personal opinion, not your supervisor's opinion, just your opinion, are the drawn, at the ready batons appropriate at this time? Do you, personally, think you need them, either to intimidate the crowd or because you think violence is imminent?" Either way, whether I got a "yes" or a "no" or a "no comment," I'd apologize for bothering him while he was working, thank him for his time, and move on. I wouldn't have been looking for an argument; I just really want to know?

So far, it's the only really weird-looking thing I've seen. Every protester and every other cop looks calm, if tired; that one squad looked like they were in a war zone. Everybody else looks, if anything, bored; they looked grimly terrified. I wonder what the hell they were thinking?

(This could all look either very stupid or very prescient in a couple of hours. It will pleasantly surprise me, and ever so slightly increase my faith in America, if there isn't a police riot when the protesters get to McCormick Place. This is an election year, peak "punch a hippy" season for Democrats.)

Home from trip @ 11:00PM Winnipeg time last night. (We got up at 5:30 AM Spain time, so this is a 24+ hour jaunt, in which I might have got an hour or so of sleep.)

Baby has only slept 6 (not all consecutive) hours since we got home, and even with the parts of the flight where he did sleep (Including most of the last leg), he should be on a sleep deficit, but he seems to be on a play deficit (He's currently in the jolly jumper, which he missed. Which *I* missed while in Spain, as he didn't jump less, we just had to hold him to do it and wear out our arms). Understandable after a day of airports and airplanes.

Spain was good to awesome with the exception of one disappointing day. More on the cool stuff later.

Airline flights were mostly better than we were afraid of; on the way there, the hardest bit was the last short flight, from Brussels to Malaga, and while the seat was cramped, and the baby and parents worn out, we were seated in a whole area of kids and parents, and Joseph cheered up a lot to have a chance to trade smiles with other babies and toddlers. And Joseph slept decently when we got to Spain. On the way home, the Frankfurt to Toronto (Yes, Frankfurt, on a trip to Canada from Spain) on the way home was the biggest suck by far of all the airline flights either way: it was the "flight with a baby" that many people dread. (Okay, even at that I think Joseph cried less than most horror stores about flights with baby, but I was almost in tears at one point anyhow.)

Plus, my big bag disappeared somewhere before Toronto. Since it was tagged all the way to Winnipeg, and both TO and Wpg. airports know, the hope is it will show up soon. (Nothing either Joseph or I need in the next few days is on it. Some things that would suck to have to replace, though, and too many of the souvenirs.) But while we were waiting in customs to report this, we realised it was five minutes to our final flight time, and while I *thought* I'd seen that the flight was delayed, I wasn't sure by how much. (Enough is the answer.) But that was one more stress. I was *this* close to tears *again* in that line-up.

The last flight, though, they moved us up to executive class, I'm not sure why and I wasn't complaining, and Joseph fed on take-off and slept the rest like the proverbial rather than actual baby. It was a very very nice way to recuperate, even if I couldn't sleep (baby sleeps in lap usually = mom doesn't. At home, if I'm sitting on the bed with him on a pillow, and the most he can fall is the 4 inches onto the bed proper, I don't sweat it. On an airplane, it's different.)

Anyhow. Home safe and zzzzz.

Everything is crossposted to DW and LJ until further notice. Post comments here or there. (Comments at DW: )

I'm trying to be better and more consistent with this blogging/updating thing, but every time I'm about to call our settling in "complete enough for a routine to establish itself," I am proved wrong.

I'd like to think we're closing in on the home stretch, but my husband is still deciding what to do about bookshelves in his study/the parlor - which unfortunately means that we still have boxes and boxes of books lying about. The core problem is that he wants to do built-in bookcases, and built-in bookcases are crazypants-expensive and time-consuming to achieve; but regular bookcases are also less than ideal because we have these massive 11-foot ceilings, and anything except absurdly tall bookcases would look weirdly stubby in there.

Absurdly tall bookcases are also crazypants-expensive, as it turns out. I'm not sure what, exactly, we're going to do yet. But I sure would love to unpack these books.

Also in the Not Quite Finished category ... the Perplexing Back Room. The PBR - part of a bonus area added in the early 30s - is still empty except for the cat's condo and some curtains. And okay, in the interest of full disclosure, it's also littered with all the crap we can't be bothered to take out to the garage, or haul up into the attic right this moment.

This littering/stashing is made all the easier by a Truly Questionable Built-In Cabinet.

It's awful. Painted a dozen times through the years, with all twelve layers peeling. Topped by doors installed so poorly that they won't stay shut unless you loop a rubber-band around their knobs. There's only one really nice thing about it: It's so shitty we aren't worried about messing it up. That's why it's stocked with paint cans, birdseed, plant food, and gardening supplies.

As a side note, while vacuuming yesterday it occurred to me that I'd never before had a place with so much room that I had to keep moving the cord around from outlet to outlet. I was tickled by this, until I noticed that I also had so much room that I had an entire room with almost nothing in it but room.

*sigh*

I swear to God, you guys - apart from the Perplexing Back Room and the Unfortunate Master Bath, the rest of the house is just gorgeous. If you don't see me going on and on about anything else, it's because everything else has been so damn easy.

Well, except for the yard.

The yard is somewhat less easy, but that having been said, it's not that bad, and it's very pretty. We have a lushly overgrown back (prettily landscaped with that precise intent), but we don't have a lot of front yard - which works out just fine for us and our interest in yardwork, which could best be described as "intermittent."

On Friday we actually took a crack at it, though.

I donned ratty jeans, long sleeves, work gloves, safety eyewear, and my stepmom's old combat boots ... then seized the electric hedge trimmer and went to town.* Town needed to be gone to. The yard had been unaddressed for the better part of a month, and those of you familiar with the southeast in the summer can just guess what this place was starting to look like.

I didn't do any cool shapes with the bushes or anything. Mostly I just took a little off the top, to make it look like civilized adults live here. Joke's on the neighbors, I suppose.

While I was at it, I cut a narrow swath behind the holly bushes, clearing the way for me to reach the garden hose and spigot. This also allowed me to reach my very tall, somewhat high-placed windows - a feat I achieved via ladder and a whole lot of swearing, plus an army of holly-leaf scratches up and down my shoulders.

This was a lot of trouble for the sake of some window-reaching, yes, but it had to happen. Why, you ask? Because our million-year-old screens were in utter tatters, and they'd been installed at some distant point on top of some old storm windows. This struck me as odd at first, but then I realized that the storm windows were installed at an even more distant point, back when the primary windows still opened, and all three levels of window-covering could be easily accessed from indoors.

Long story short, here in 2012 these particular windows don't open** and the screens couldn't be removed - even though they made the house look vaguely like a ghost ship with fluttering sails every time a breeze came curling down the mountain.

I could sit here and make up a bad-ass home improvement story about how I Macgyvered some fabulous resolution to this issue; but in fact, what I really did was take a box-cutter to the damn things, and slice them right out of the frame. Not the world's most elegant feat of problem-solving, I'll grant you, but I am not prepared to give a damn. They're gone, and the place looks much, much better.

Hmm. What else has been going on? Let's see.

We once again have TV in our lives, which is nice. Just basic thirteen, because any more than that, and I'd never get any work done. The TV hook-up was a low-drama affair, as compared to the internet hookup - but I don't think I remembered to post about that. In short, the internet guy drilled a hole through our water line. It was our first full day in the house, and our first minor crisis as homeowners. Luckily, this particular crisis wasn't our fault, and EPB fixed everything within a few hours.

Yesterday, my cousin Ryan (formerly of cat-sitting fame) swung by for a visit with his wife and son. His son is about 14 months old, so the cat stayed hunkered in the bedroom closet the whole time, but that was probably for the best. After awhile of kicking around the homestead, we wandered off for ice cream and pizza, and lo, a fine time was had by all. It was fabulous to see them! I'm absolutely delighted to be back in their time zone.

Next up: becoming local. Tomorrow I'll hit up the DMV for a new license, and get new tags put on the car. With any luck, we'll get registered for health insurance once again. I hate doing the self-coverage thing; it's expensive and the coverage you get is crappy, but it's (somewhat) better than nothing. I think.

Anyway. I believe this post has run long enough, so I'll wrap it up and go see about making myself some tea. I don't want to get too optimistic over here, but I just might try and get some work done ...

---

* The husband donned shorts and flip-flops, and started out the door with the edger/trimmer.
** Most of the house has newer windows, but this stretch doesn't. Naturally.

It's a long list, and it's on my decant circle page over here.  I just updated it up to and including the Strawberry Moon update.

It's a long list, and it's on my decant circle page over here.  I just updated it up to and including the Strawberry Moon update.

For Orthodox Jews, Mayim Bialik is like our Sandy Kovacs or whatever Jewish baseball player was famous when egg cream was around. Jews are represented in the media and some would say over-represented in the media but Orthodox Jews - that's a tough one. Oh sure, we've tried to latch on to Dr. Laura, Kirk Douglas and Jackie Mason. But seriously, these people just don't work for us - too stereotypical, too old, too much of an evil bitch, etc. (ok there was a time when Dr. Laura was THE Jewish celebrity beloved of Orthodox Jewish communities. And then her feelings got hurt when she was not declared the moshiach.) Beyond that, what are we going to see emulating us? The Jews who light candles on Friday night, look for meal invites, eat kosher and attempt to find kosher alternatives to bacon? Who play way too much Settlers of Katan until it becomes obvious that Fima wins every damn game? There's that Israeli show about Orthodox Jewish singles. We can always laugh at The Chosen. There are only so many times you can watch The Big Lebowski and not everyone wants to hear Shomer Fucking Shabbos at the Shabbos table.

Apparently no one is lining up to talk about Tim Lieder, author of a few stories and publisher of many fine titles with Dybbuk Press.

So Mayim Bialik became the frum Jewish celebrity - famous, shomer negia (even on television where she plays a character just as autistic as Sheldon), keeps kosher and brings up Jewish topics on her FB fan page. Oh sure, she's a vegan and she's famous for starring on some REALLY BAD television shows. But hey, we'll pretend that The Big Bang Theory is decent or at least not condescending in the way it panders to geek culture and makes bullying out to be HILARIOUS at least when done by an autistic manchild.

But now she's got Attachment Parenting on her brain. And suddenly all the other stuff - the vegan lifestyle, the Orthodox Judaism - it all comes together in one very smug package. Oh don't get me wrong. There are plenty of Orthodox Jews and even baali tshuva Orthodox Jews who are NOT smug assholes who like to push the superiority that they think they've discovered in Judaism on everyone else. There are plenty of Vegans who are cool and don't preach the Vegan gospel at every opportunity. There are plenty of Attachment Parenting advocates who aren't Stepford Wives who in the immortal words of the song "Pregnant Women are Smug" find everything beyond motherhood to be so trivial.

But you got someone who is into AP, Veganism AND Orthodox Judaism - you got a recipe for a person who is a smug asshole who sees their way as the best way. It's the overlap of non-asshole contingent in these groups.

So now the Mayim Bialik FB fan page is just full of bits about how Shmucky Boteach is wrong in declaring AP parents weird, pride that her kid is the poster child for breastfeeding into toddler years and people saying that she knows best because she's the mother and she has experience over the "experts." That sounds great until you realize that experience and academic knowledge are two different things and that experience is not going to automatically trump academic knowledge. It could. But not always. For example, doctors and midwives did not wash their hands until the middle of the 19th century and this wonderful TRADITIONAL method of child birth killed millions. Yet when the hygiene standards were introduced, they were resisted for the same reasons - because some so-called "expert" tells doctors to wash their hands, he automatically thinks he's better than all these doctors who have YEARS of experience.

So that's creepy. Also Attachment Parenting seems to reduce women to baby machines and the extremes of staying with the kid 24/7 just doesn't sound healthy for anyone. I wonder how betrayed they will feel when their kids really want to be left alone. No seriously, get the fuck out of my room and put that away. I'm 11.

Also, she doesn't vaccinate her kids and she uses pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo to justify the decision. So dangerously smug.

I was delaying posting because I was going to put up the pictures from May day, but there were so many of them and I've been so busy...argh. And so there have been quite a few days go by without a post, which really was not my intention. But all's been pretty good on the home front. Just busy.

I may yet get them up today. Although again, I have much to do. But I just wanted to poke my head again and say yes, I'm here.

I went to see a performance that Delia was in at her school, '8,' about the trial Perry v. Schwarzenegger which one of the students put on as part of his senior project. Delia played one of the expert witnesses. It was well done, and the audience discussion afterward was lively.

Delia has a summer job! She got it through the Step Up program here in Minneapolis, which is how she got her summer job last year. She will be working with a center for printmaking as an education intern; they partner with schools and the community to teach the process of printmaking. This is very exciting for her because she's thinking of a career in graphic design. She'll get about twenty hours of work a week. She's also lined up a yardwork job and some babysitting, so she'll be very busy this summer.

Fiona has caught up on her sleep and has now been home long enough to be very bored. She still needs a job. She's been looking, but nothing yet.

This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1600864.html. There are comments on the post.

I’m still just spinning away on the Little Princess fiber.

I’ve actually done more work on the camel/silk, but I’ve been lazy about taking pictures. Here’s where I am now. I have just a little more to spin and then . . . I don’t know. I’ll put it aside and figure out what to do with all my pretty little samples.

Originally published at Jodi Meadows. You can comment here or there.

The ones I finished since my last post, anyway :)

( a plushie, a scarf, a bookmark and a tablecloth )

Hope you liked them!

“Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law,” NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement released Saturday.