I was feeling sad about something earlier today.  A possibility of connection that would have been really serendipitous and exciting, but that just wasn't quite coming together--and it made me disappointed and a little blue.

And then a friend IM'd me, and I described the situation to her, and we proceeded to discover that once again, as we have occasionally over the years, we were having astonishingly similar moments in our lives at roughly the same time.  And we were having roughly the same sorts of thoughts and ambivalence about them, in such a way that seemed (to me, anyway) almost cosmically calculated to make the conversation helpful to us both.  Because that seems to be the kind of thing that happens with the two of us, a sort of microcosm of the way our lives intersect.

And as we talked, I was struck by a really poignant sensation of awe, at the way all the threads of my life interweave.  That someone (whom I've only had the pleasure of knowing so well through some unlikely happenstances to begin with) is having an experience that parallels my own so astoundingly, at the same point in time, separated only by space... and that we still get each other so well after so many years of physical separation... and that we were able to empathize, in an eerily direct way, with each other's situations.  The kind of thing that would cause me to say that I grokked her, or that we grokked each other, if grok didn't sound so gratingly, unpleasantly anatomical and if I were the kind of person who used the word grok.

And it reminded me that sometimes the best things arise from letting time and space flow, and gently influencing them this way and that, rather than applying indiscriminate brute force to Making Something Happen.  It will or it won't, and there are positives and negatives that flow from both outcomes.  I'm still sad, and disappointed, and I'll still try to influence that initial situation if I can... but it's not taking on the dire portent-ial nature that I might have been inclined to assign to it otherwise.

*****

And here's the thing that really struck me about the whole thing: in all that coincidence and synchronicity, and even in the conclusions I chose to draw from it, that there is no sense in which any of this is, or isn't, A Sign of some larger principle.  It just is.

And it seems to me* that this feeling of awe is only heightened by the mostly nontheistic, or at least nondeterministic, outlook I have on the world.  It's amazing to think that there might be a pattern in these kinds of eddies in spacetime, and that we might be able to discern it by examining the ripples they leave behind... but how much more amazing is it that there might not be a pattern at all, and that the universe is so big and so wide that it holds such infinite variation and intersection as she and I, and yet allows it not to mean anything?

It makes me feel very small, and very thoughtful, and very grateful, and very glad.

And it reminds me to keep my eyes wide open, like a child's, because what comes next may be just as wonderful.

*and of course ymmv.

Have any of you read Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series? Josh thinks they are the Best Evar, and is insisting that I read them. Having slogged my way through the first one and kind of hated it... do I keep going? Is there a payoff commensurate with juggling this many characters and all this geography?

Seriously, the only character I particularly liked in the first book was Tattersail, and he kills her off (kind of - this is going to be one of those series where no one really dies, isn't it?) in the first third of the damn book. And then there are a lot of people whose names I couldn't remember running around like the revolutionaries in Les Miserables, and I couldn't figure out whose side anyone was on, and there wasn't even a Grantaire-analogue for me to lust after.* I mean, the big construct thing is intriguing, even if his name is, literally, T'ool. But then the old crazy guy turns out to be the all-powerful magician OMG HOW ORIGINAL OH WAIT NO. Really? This is the future of modern fantasy?

Oh, and while we're on a spoiler-seeking kick: I hear that despite the author self-insertion at the end of The Dark Tower, I'm going to want to keep reading. Except I've been halfway through book 4 since 2005. True? False? Help? (Assume for the sake of argument that I'm generally but not rabidly pro-Stephen King.)



*Of course, Grantaire. What, did you think I would be hot for Enjolras? Ewwww, earnest humorless-idealist boy-cooties. Mmmmm, chaotic cynical-idealist boy-cooties.

This Andrew Bird cover of "(It's Not Easy) Being Green" captured my attention a few weeks ago, courtesy of the nice folks at Cover Lay Down*, and I wanted both to share it with y'all (because it's awesome) and to put a copy of the French lyrics on the web, as I couldn't find them when I went to look.

I am sure there are grammatical errors below (as the last French class I took was seven or eight years ago), and would greatly appreciate any corrections the web at large can supply.

*Note: The track is available on Cover Lay Down as of the posting date; if it's no longer active, you can listent to various live versions on YouTube and possibly at the artist's website or MySpace. Regardless, go listen to it. It's gorgeous.

Ce n’est pas facile d’être vert,
d’avoir chaque jour le couleur des feuilles,
comme je peut-être quelque chose comme rouge ou jaune ou doré
ou quelque chose plus coloré comme cela.

Ce n’est pas facile d’être vert--
c’est comme si vous vous fondiez parmi d’autres choses ordinaires,
et les gens en tendant se passé à coté de vous,
parce que vous n’êtes pas aussi remarquable
que les étoiles dans le ciel.

Mais le vert est le couleur du printemps,
et le vert est frais et convivial,
et le vert est grande comme une montagne, ou important comme un fleuve,
ou très grande comme un arbre.

Quand le vert est la seule chose que vous puissiez être,
vous pourriez vous demander pourquoi, mais pourquoi,
se demander pourquoi
je suis vert … C’est parfait,
et c’est exactement ce que je veux être.

Quand le vert est la seule chose que vous puissiez être,
vous pourriez vous demander pourquoi, mais pourquoi,
se demander pourquoi
je suis vert. Merveille, c’est beau,
et c’est exactement ce que je veux être.

Well played, Henson Studios. Well played.

[Of the rest of my day, we shall not speak. No one died, and my pride will recover, eventually.]

(according to the Internet, as compiled by Lindsay, using Google)

--bread pudding
--equipment
--Basingstoke*
--[Samuel] Johnson
--Mexican hot chocolate
--the Internet
--killing Nazis
--Russian(ish) kids dressed up for a school play or something (maybe something a bit more serious)
--Tiger [Woods]
--the middle of the road
--Paris
--Canberra
--Italy
--Istanbul
--gardening
--blogging
--Tetris
--Drosophila
--Ursa Minor Beta

Original quote: "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." --Samuel Johnson (per Boswell)

Bonus quote: "Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing Magazine headlined an article with the words 'When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life', the suicide rate there quadrupled overnight." --Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Extra bonus quote: "When you are tired of life, come to Haven. And someone will kill you." --Simon R. Green, The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher

*Note: given that Basingstoke is apparently most notable for the large number of roundabouts therein, this seems unlikely.

(I realize I've been posting a lot lately; working in a quiet room all day is starting to get to me. If it's any consolation, I'm about to go from absurdly un-busy to absurdly busy at work, as of Monday, so think of it as me wringing the last few drops of slack from my life.

Also... I can't decide what to use this icon for. On the one hand, there's "appreciation of unconventional hawtness"... but it's also got shades of "time to salvage this potentially embarassing situation with massive quantities of panache!"... and, of course, what I'm using it for here, which is along the lines of "someone got a bluescreen for Christmas and just had to try it out.")

A few months ago, I started talking about my hair a lot, and finally got a layered cut. [Seriously, you'd think from this journal that I do nothing but obsess about my hair, make to-do lists, and bitch about things. This is entirely untrue. Well, mostly.] Anyway, my hair's gotten longer, I've been wearing it up a lot, mostly in a bun or a french twist held together with an octopus clip. For those unacquainted with hair, accessories, that's one of these:



However, it recently came to my attention that when I pull it into a ponytail elastic and then put it up with the octopus clip, it feels great, sort of executive-transvestite ballerina... but the look it actually creates is more along the lines of "East German gymnast". I.e., if my hair is lying flat on my head, I *have* to have some kind of strands or something hanging out. But because of the layered cut, many of my attempts at doing something about this have ended up with a sort of half-assed bun with little spiky bits sticking out everywhere.

So after some experimentation, I devised a hairstyle which is essentially gathering the hair into a ponytail at the nape, twisting it up, and clipping the octopus clip below it so it splays out over the clip, making a sort of messy waterfall of hair that doesn't spike out everywhere. (I'm rather chuffed at how it looks, so I'l try to get a picture up at some point, but I haven't an appropriate USB cable at work.)

Anyway, this morning I realized what to call it. And the word is thus far unattested on the internet, so I'm claiming coinage rights.

It's a chignonytail, of course.

I just saw the most awesome thing ever to happen in WoW... probably not unique, but hilarious and fantastic nonetheless.

So we have some friends/guildies, Frostheim and Arust, who run Warcraft Hunters Union, a blog about all things hunter (hunter being a class in World of Warcraft).  (Wearing various of their hats, they were gaming guests at Gamicon last year, and ran the WoW programming at Icon this year.)

They are currently running, on Icecrown (our server), a level 1 dwarven fighter raid.

As in, they have 90+ level 1 characters running through the WoW world en masse, headed toward a raid instance, which they will then attempt to run (beat).  (There is, admittedly, a little auxiliary healing going on.)

I'll post a link to the video when it gets posted.  Until then, if you don't play WoW... it's kind of like a river of lemmings.  Dwarven lemmings.  With guns.

This post brought to you by me, avoiding laundry-folding and trying not to dwell on the cancellation of Dollhouse.  Seriously, fuck you, Fox.

Dear English: You need a single lexical item for "words that sound dirty that aren't."

Also, never let me say I've forgotten everything from grad school... just determined in a FB conversation with frozenbears that

Max(Entendre) , Max(Hilarious) >> Ident(Sensible), Ident(Comprehensible)

and that the statement "Life would be so much easier if people could be better at grokking each others' constraint rankings" satisfies that ranking incredibly well.

Right.  Must post this and leave my computer before I start creating an OT grammar for LOLcat.

is anyone going to unfriend me or stop reading if I succumb to the Plus account?  I sort of want more userpics and the ability to do polls, but I'm cheap.  (You'd only see ads if (a) you don't have a paid account and (b) you read my journal from my page, not from your friends page.)

Until 20 minutes ago, I thought G.I. Joe was a person.

Edit to add!

At least not in the movie.  In the movie (and, I think, the cartoon series) "GI Joe" is the name of the team.  (The protagonist's name is Duke.)

I see from my cursory scanning of Wikipedia, however, that the figures themselves have been called GI Joe... so never mind.  That wasn't nearly as relevatory as I thought.

The movie, by the by, isn't bad.  Well, not aggressively bad, anyway.

RT @jimchines 20 Gaiman Facts http://bit.ly/2mxp5

I came across this blog, which has lots of shiny reviews and giveaways of pens and things, sponsored by jetpens.com which is like the uber-site for Japanese pen amazingness.  Linked in case anyone else has an office supply fetish :)

A good friend of mine, [info]slyviolet, is a crafster who sells her work via artfire.com, which from what I can tell is like Etsy, but with less cost overhead. Anyway, they are having a contest to see who can get the most people to "like" a "why I like Artfire" note on Facebook. The winner gets a shopping spree there, which she would use to get things for her upcoming wedding outfit. A good cause, to be sure!

So, if you would like to help out, go here, "Become a Fan" of Artfire.com (because, hey, sites that support indy craftsters and artists are worthy of fandom anyway, right?) and then "Like" and leave a comment on the post. She's close to having a shot now, but isn't quite there so every one counts! Thanks!

Then, or if you're not on FB but like looking at steampunky pretties, you can check out her store here. And hey, while I'm a'pimping, she's also been making Telegrams from Last Fortnight, which is truly the cutting edge in telegram-based drunken Edwardian fop humo(u)r.

that Josh is now on LJ again (his password to the old account has been lost to the mists of time). samhain_king is his new username... please feel free to add him if you like! I think he might even update someday. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEjRHFom1Kk

ASL interpretation of Jonathan Coulton's "First of May."  I have no idea how good an ASL interpretation this is (and would love to hear from those who know!), but as a performance it works very well.  Plus, that guy in the back reminds me a little of eigenadam

I was AWOL from the Intarwebs this weekend, so I was most displeased to come back online to find that the Amazon rank  algorithm had been hit with an attack of Teh St00pidz.  I wish I was more up on my informatics/search algorithm-fu, but the word on the street says that the exclusion of books with glbt themes was done on the basis of publisher-provided meta-data (sorry for the one-source info, I'm trying not to be a slackass at work).  They filtered terms like "sex" and "erotica" but not more euphemistic but nevertheless clear terms like "nude" and "erotic photography."  Wow.  That's a big old old-fashioned fail.

[ETA: or it may have been a hack, done for lulz... perhaps this is true.  Or perhaps the truth shall never be known.  Regardless, the fact that it was up for (longer than?) an entire weekend is pretty fucking lame.]

Something I've been thinking about this week:

There are at least two classic musicals (Peter Pan and Annie Get Your Gun) which are still regularly performed, and whose original librettos include songs which are arguably offensive to Native Americans.

When I was in a middle school production of Peter Pan back in the mid-1990s, the director replaced the relevant song ("Ugg-a-Wugg/The Pow Wow Polka") with a scene in which the Indians* sat in a circle and told a version of a Native American story.  This was probably culturally more appropriate, but was unfortunately also incredibly boring.  Also, as I recall, Tiger Lily was still a blonde, so I'm not sure how "sensitive" that is.

Have you seen productions of these shows, and if so, what have you seen done with these scenes?


*I am personally of the opinion that in Peter Pan (show and book), the "Indians" can be read as being portrayed from the main characters' viewpoint - the Darling children are British kids in the early 1900s, and the song is absolutely in line with how they would imagine Indians to be.  It's also far and away less offensive than "I'm An Indian, Too", from Annie Get Your Gun... which was left out of the 1999 revival entirely, according to Wikipedia.  Unfortunately, I've been listening to the 1946 recording with Betty Hutton/Judy Garland, and so I've had it stuck in my head for three freaking days.  Hence the post.

Get Gmail stickers, for all you Google-philes and keyboard-shortcut nerds:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/get-your-gmail-stickers.html
I sent off two envelopes (one for me, one for Josh)... if neither of us gets a unicorn I'm going to cry.