Oopsie! No Boat, the shop took it back for testing...maybe tomorrow. *sigh*

Ganked from windtear. The quiz itself isn't that great, IMNSHO, but the identification of associates deserves a grin.

It is now (finally...) over 70°F here (it's been a chilly spring). I've not only opened the slider to the deck, but for the first time ever (granted, I've only lived here a bit over six months) opened a bedroom window, to get some cross-ventilation.

The living room carpet is basically a light gray, with flecks of color (it's not of high quality, IMHO, but I can walk on it without getting frostbite or cutting my feet, which, to my mind, is what counts. Come back in five years, if I'm still around, and we'll discuss if I want to replace it yet). The sunlight from the skylights is reflecting off of it quite noticeably. Very noticeably; the glare might end up giving me a headache. Oh, well; I bought a new bottle of aspirin a couple of weeks ago.

During his visit last year, mbernardi showed me how to configure Pegasus to allow me to download the headers of my e-mail messages, rather than the messages themselves; I can then pick and choose which messages I want downloaded, which I want deleted outright, and which I want to stay on the university server. This has been extremely handy; but identifying spam is sometimes harder than it sounds.

One of the mailing lists I belong to is that of the American Dialect Society, which (among other things) often discusses unusual words and phrases. Unfortunately, messages from that list are not marked as such, and sometimes it's a little hard to distinguish them from spam. I mean, what would you do about messages with subject headers like these?

Perfect storm, not negative
Happy Gay
curebie
Why Swedish is a backward language
Shoes sans toes
"Anal astigmatism" bad
Court rules you can't swear like a
Loses Something -- But Not Color --
Lesbos Lite

(Explanations will be provided upon request.)

In addition to watching umpteen episodes of Buffy, I've been reading to Z this week. Since I don't want him to lose those neural connections that perceive non-English phonemes, I've been reading to him in French, German, and Spanish, along with English. He doesn't have any clue what I'm reading, but in the case of the German and Spanish, sometimes neither do I. Here's a sample of what we've been reading:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T. S. Eliot (illustrations by Edward Gorey, no less!)

The Space Child's Mother Goose - nerdy nursery rhymes, including such gems as

Possible-Probable, my black hen
Lays her eggs in the relative when.
She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now,
Because she's unable to postulate how.

Frida - a picture book in Spanish about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. This is great not only bc of the language, but bc the illustrations are done in a style evocative of her artwork--and she did some pretty disturbing artwork. This may be creepier than the Edward Gorey illustrations.

Die Drei Kobolde - a German picture book about, as far as I can tell, three orphaned goblins who can control the weather. The level of German is much higher than the level of Spanish required by the Frida book.

Best of all, N'heures souris rames - Mother Goose rhymes rewritten in French--sort of. The French words are real, but translate to utter nonsense, bc they've been combined to sound like the original English words. Best of all, there are footnotes deconstructing the French "verses" as if they are from a historical manuscript, with commentary on the politics and events of the 16th century.

Ok, maybe this is only funny if you speak French. It cracks me up. And Z seems to like it

Today was supposed to be 'rent sander & lay polyurathane" day.

Thus far it is 2 pm, and I've more spent it "taking out trash that the movers left".

The old bed frame, the rugs, the broken mirror, the bottles of steno, the other part of the bed frame, boxes.

All of which has to be walked down the hall to the elevator, then to the trash on the basement level. I don't want to be doing this, but it has got to be done, and I can't leave it for last, or I will be stuck spending an extra day here, just disposing of unwanted hangers.

I've bought airplane tickets to Kansas City for the Georgist convention there in July. I can understand that they cost more money that air tickets did a few years ago; fuel is expensive. And I understand why the times aren't especially convenient. Kansas City isn't New York, and there aren't enough people going back and forth between it and DC for the airlines to run shuttle flights every hour. But why did I have the opportunity to save a little money by going many hundreds of miles out of my way, burning more jet fuel, and spending hours in an airport way off anything like a straight line from here to Kansas City?

Once I get there, I'll do Georgist Table Topics, as well as attend the panel discussions and such. Does anyone have any good topics to suggest?

Because I have no shame, my favorite playlist this week:

01. Mary Chapin Carpenter - Passionate Kisses (3:23)
02. Wilson Phillips - Hold On (4:27)
03. Jennifer Saunders - Holding Out for A Hero (3:56)
04. Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart (5:28)
05. Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On (4:41)
06. Pat Benatar - We Belong (3:42)
07. Cher - (This Is A) Song For The Lonely (4:01)
08. Melissa Etheridge - Come To My Window (3:36)
09. Berlin - Take My Breath Away (4:12)
10. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon OST - A Love Before Time (English) (3:45)
11. Mask of Zorro OST - I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You (4:43)
12. Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out For A Hero (5:50)
13. Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You (4:33)
14. Vanessa Williams - Save the Best for Last (3:39)

So I hate romance novels but have a thing for power ballads.
There you are, girl genes! If Bonnie Tyler made it twice,
Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" should be on there too.
Leona Lewis singing "Bleeding Love" should be on there as well, but
the radio's giving it plenty of play already.
--

Boat Car today, probably tomorrow too.

First, I have a post up today at sfnovelists. Go have a read if you like.  It starts like this:

The first title of this post was: I write crap. I changed it though and the rest of this post is about why and why I would call my writing crap. Read more . . . .


 And now a snippet from The Turning Tide:

As Fairlie pushed through behind him, the path closed again. He was caged within the metal thornbush. William looked at her, pressing his handerkerchief to his cheek, refusing to let his rising fear show. Her nostrils flared and he knew she could smell it.

“You’re heart is racing,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He became aware of another sound, soft and sibilant. He couldn’t place it. He started to step forward. Fairlie caught his arm.

“Look down.”

His gaze dropped obediently. At his feet was a blue basin made of worked sylveth. Inside it, silvery raw sylveth swirled and lapped like a miniature sea. It was making the noise he’d been hearing.

And what have you got for me today?

Oh, and on another note, bought some plants and seeds today. Going to dig in the dirt.

Chad's put up a post with day-by-day pictures of the garage remodeling. Note the enormous frickin' hole in the front, where two egress-sized windows will going. (The contractors are just coming in and out through that each day, and bypassing the actual doors completely.)

The rest of the house is to the left in these pictures. A new door into the living room has been cut just out of frame in the front (as seen from the living room). A door to the outside on the right, also just out of frame, has been removed; there's a picture on Flickr of the nice job they did matching the siding (cedar, apparently—who knew?).

And if you want to see the existing door into the kitchen (roughly where these pictures are taken from), plus the dog and doggie dialogue, Chad's got that too.

It's been a wonderful weekend, full of portents of the past and present and future. I just said goodbye to my friend Raquel, possibly for the last time in a long time, not for the last time ever: I promised to see her again, no matter where I have to go to do so. Maybe China again, on a short visit; maybe some other country, as she's hoping to travel the world herself. Maybe I'll have the pleasure of hosting her in Portland someday. I hope so.

I met Raquel during my brief stay in Shenzhen; we were staying in a hostel together; we stayed up all night talking, woke up after scant sleep and talked some more. She's a student in Beijing, studying Spanish, and having a better grasp on English than any other Chinese person I've met here -- the subtleties, the nuances, the slang -- and a connection to subculture that's rare here, but somewhere in there I'm also at least half in love, in such a way that I don't know whether I'd be more so or less so if there were a possibility of seeing her in the long term. Probably it would settle out to the kind of romantic friendship heron61 talks much about. That's not in the cards, though. It's enough to just connect and go our separate ways with the promise of a future meeting.

There are so many people like that in my life -- people I love deeply but don't live near -- and when I think of them I think again of the idea I had several years ago, of asking these people to select small images to tattoo in a row on my skin. Maybe someday I'll know where it goes.

--

While I was walking with her and another American today, a reporter (for apparently a large newspaper!) stopped us to ask what we thought about the earthquake. I said that I thought it was a terrible tragedy, that I was glad the pandas are safe, and that my hope for the future is that China will learn to build buildings the way they do in California. Which about sums up my thoughts.

Saying that, I realized that I'm still the person who looks at a tragedy and says, what good can come of this? Seven years haven't changed it. I often fear it makes me come off as callous, but Raquel pointed out that right now, people are becoming intensely superstitious about all the frightening events in China this year and what they mean about the Olympics, and optimism can only do good.

I learned also that the tension has led to some gay bars being shut down and others going quiet, which is why I did not have the opportunity to do a drag show this weekend. I am angry about this, and also frightened: it means that they're not acting based on what the powerful countries will realistically perceive of China, since of the first-world nations, the US is pretty much bringing up the rear on acceptance of queer people, and the US isn't shutting down gay bars. They're acting based on some twisted mirror image that doesn't exist in the world outside.

More diplomatically, I said to the reporter when she asked me, People are too nervous about the Olympics and they need to relax. Everything will go better if they relax.

I hope that gets out there if anything does.

--

I'm going to see the Great Wall tomorrow, and going to get up stupidly early to do it. I'll be quite exhausted by the time I go back to Yangzhou and sleeping on the train probably won't help. But now I'm in the process of saying my goodbyes to China, and feel the urgency of transience in a way I haven't before.

Yesterday I visited the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. I have not so much to say about the latter except that the feel of the place reminded me of the feel of the Washington Monument, which, when you think about it: oh, just think about it. Ugh. Moving on.

The Forbidden City -- the ancient palace complex -- was fascinating. I saw relatively little of it; it would take multiple visits to really complete the exploration; but I walked among as much of it as I could. The grounds themselves interested me more than the museum, especially from the point at which I began to experience fragments of story.

This was in one tier of... a walled stone area that must have been a garden, once, by the look of it. In my mind there was the story of a child, a small girl playing in the garden, with the sort of extremely internalized thoughts children have. And then I thought: Is that my own mind generating story, as I've always assumed, or am I experiencing a ghost?

When I visit certain kinds of places I get fragments of stories around them; it's a writer thing. It's always happened and I've never really questioned it.

I opened up my mind a little more and tried to experience the drifts of whatever else might be caught on the stones, and I got a few more distinct moments like that, including one which was more or less backed up by the information on a sign which I saw a minute later.

Yesterday I theorized that I might be engaging a kind of mental time travel -- which is how I think of ghosts, at least of the common "here is a moment repeated" kind: either that moment's thoughts are travelling forward to meet your mind or your mind is travelling backward to meet that one. (Theoretically, you can also run into others who are travelling backward to meet you, but I'm not all that sure what they're going to look like.)

Now, this is the kind of person I am: Is it my mind making story or are these fragments related to people from the past? Or people from story-land who are hanging out around pieces of history? Who knows! Who cares! It is what it is.

I know that I am a story-making thing, and I'm part of a story-making machinery, not all of which exists inside of me.

(In fact, the above could be a statement of the nature of my belief in God.)

But as I contemplated all of this I remembered that belief itself is an act of Will; a choice made from moment to moment.

Who I am is what I make of my reality.

And to some people that might be a cynical thought, but for me it just makes me love the world more.

The bug pills are helping my wrists some but I am still mostly off the internets. Trying to get better all the way. So this may be the last for a while. Take care out there in computerland, kids.

I'm housesitting for the next three weeks, and have car privileges while the household is out of the country. On Tuesday I dropped an email about driving/route practice, got an 11:15 PM phone call, and shifted my flag Wednesday. This morning I ate my Thursday lunch for breakfast, because it's been that sort of week. I've been completely oblivious to monsoons, earthquakes, California marriage law and anything else in the news. So if anything other than driving without hitting things happened, I don't know about it.

Oh! I'm in that death zone where you think you know how to drive, and are totally living in a fantasy universe. Tell me stories of horrible near-misses (or not-misses) to scare me out of any illusions I'm ready for weekend Beltway traffic. (Lies. Lies, lies, lies. But I might try major state routes.)

If I'm going to call the Republicans "Team Evil", I should have a nickname for the Democratic Party as well.

Should I use "Team Useless" or "Team Enabler"?

The only thing worse than a ruthless beast who-wants-his-morning-walk-dammit are two ruthless beasts who-want-their-morning-walk-dammit, and shove slippers in your face to get you out of bed and follow you around the house and plant themselves in front of you as you eat breakfast and begrudge you every mouthful because. They want their walk, dammit.

I was only running a half-hour behind schedule. Jeez. You'd think it was the weekend or something, and that I might want to, you know, sleep in.

The guilty parties are both sound asleep now, having walked, sniffed, and competition-peed for close to an hour. It's a lovely morning, sunny and 60F. Unfortunately, the wet spring allowed for the birth of mosquitoes by the truckload. Long sleeves a must.

Work for a few hours. Then, grocery shopping. Errands. A squirrel decapitated a lovely red begonia, so I may look for a replacement. I need more birdseed. There's always something to do.

Over in the Fermi Paradox thread, j_larson said "The whole fan community seems to skew sharply right-libertatrian.[1][2]" heron61 then observed "Not just the fans - while there are some very obvious exceptions, there is no shortage of right-libertarian US SF authors as well as a fair number of US authors who seem to be right-wing non-libertarian technocrats, [...]."

Presumably this is a reflection of what sells and so is more of a measure of the readers than the gatekeepers but aside from Toni Weisskopf and the late Jim Baen, do US SF editors skew right? I mean, I know of a self-confessed Republican editor but neither pnh nor tnh strike me as likely to vote for John McCain or Bob Barr.

Let's restrict this to editors whose publications would qualify contributors for membership in SFWA.


1: Although I don't think the core of Wiscon's supporters can be described as "sharply right-libertatrian," that's just one con.

2: heron61 then says "which is why an increasing percentage of SF I read is written by Canadians and UK residents." It's interestingly difficult to find a Canadian SF author who doesn't have some close tie to another country, either having been born abroad, moved abroad or having qualified for dual citizenship. I don't know why this is.

I remember nothing except: at one point, a girl and some friends are jumping up and down, waving their arms and shrieking.

They explain to someone (brother?) that they are playing at being the flying monkeys from "The Wizard of Oz."

FOUND: "The Changeling" by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

From my Twitter page:

• 11:11 Amazing coincidence: I get kicked off RedState, and immediately I start getting emails I didn't sign up for. #
• 11:51 retweeting @Scobleizer - Twitter in realtime! firehose.stamen.com/ #
• 11:56 @akselsoft - I think I need to look this up myself, thanks! #
• 12:34 @akselsoft - absolutely classic. This guy deserved what he got. I might not have been able to name what Chamberlain did, but I wasn't on TV. #
• 13:32 @factoryjoe - interesting reasoning there... #
• 13:43 VFP folks -- anyone know why COPY TO XL5 is really slow on my system, where XLS flies? #

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Saturday, June 14th, anyone else want to revisit the memories of that Valentine's Day in 2004?

Just one of the declarations from the in re marriage case

more cat pictures

It was 85 here in Seattle today.

Nice day for people watching, as everyone suffering from Vitamin D deficency took advange of the strange glowing orb in the sky.

Did I tweet yesterday? I did!

09:48 Prince Caspian opens this weekend. I'm not sure if I have the energy. #

14:38 Urge... to kill... rising. Dumbest customer ever on the phone. #

16:15 Finally got around to re-uploading my collection of lj userpics - tinyurl.com/4ogl52 #

19:13 Watching Monster House. It's so sad! The poor old man just loved his wife. #

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Sunset over the Gulf of Mexico

Anna Maria Island, Florida
May 2008

This is all brown_betty's fault[1]. To be fair, she may not have KNOWN about my inability to control my reflexes in the presence of objects of this nature.



WANT.



WANT.



WANT.



WANT.

And in conclusion:



[1] The situation alluded to in my icon? In NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DEGREE OF WANT.