Shataina's Shout into the Void

tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn't died

2008-07-23T16:39:56Z

Sudden Poll! Give me a reason.

I am still the skeptic, yes you know me

2008-07-18T10:54:19Z

One of my friends is feeling guilty about not being attracted to this guy who's really into her. I feel like I know where she's coming from. Intellectually, I know that I shouldn't be guilty about who I'm attracted to, but it happens anyway, particularly when the non-attractive qualities seem especially superficial.

Let's face it, my physical type is extremely clear: pale, scrawny, not blond, at least my height, and long hair plus plus. I'm cool with this most of the time, and I'm sure there's some space for flexibility, but I start feeling guilty when I consider the fact that I am just not attracted to -- for instance -- Black guys. It's literally never happened. I tell myself I'm not dumb enough to call this racism, or whatever, but the anxiety lurks.

Sudden Poll! Do you ever feel guilty about not being attracted to someone? If so, describe the situation / qualities that you're not attracted to.

P.S. "The Dark Knight" is good. Extremely dense; it could have done with rather less density. I'm predicting Catwoman in the next one. And by predicting, I mean she better be in it. Also, I was just joking with someone the other day about how ridiculous a new "Terminator" movie would be, and guess what? ... Furthermore: it has Christian Bale in it!

interview with Rachel Shukert

2008-07-11T15:15:15Z

Gnomes, Masturbation, and Camping: the love of my and Brett's lives is a writer from New York

During the recent limerick contest, I discovered the best piece of poetry I have ever seen. Bar none. You may read it by clicking here, and you must do so, because that sestina is not an experience to be missed.

I introduced the sestina to Mr. Brett one night while we were, as is our wont, hanging out in the dining room at 2AM. We swiftly became obsessed with it, and I began to write it on our house's wall in golden calligraphy. Whilst I stood atop the ladder inhaling paint fumes, Brett interjected pungent commentary ... and at some point, we realized that we had to write Rachel Shukert, the author. I mean, we had to. It was necessary.

She hasn't written back in a long time, but she's our soulmate. You may think I'm kidding. You may think that two people can't have one soulmate. But look at this correspondence!

(It's sort of difficult for me to tell if this is all actually brilliant, or just pushes my buttons. Maybe it's all too opaque for a LiveJournal post, but it's too late now!)

I. OUR INITIAL LETTER

(email title: Re: "Subterranean", why do you craft such strong female characters? *)

Hi Rachel!

Been ... "camping"? jk jk

First, a bit of backstory. I recently bartered a freeze-dried piranha for scathing poetry in an attempt to humorously narrativize my recent breakup, an approach that has yet to implode. Unfortunately, one of the poets-turned-contestants attempted to pass off "Subterranean Gnomesick Blues" as an original entry; the deception was dealt with harshly, I assure you. This sad event did have the unexpected benefit of introducing me to your work, a worthy prize indeed. I now count myself among your most fervent supporters (in fact I have just finished painting your sestina upon my wall -- the fumes, they are delicious), and was hoping you could answer a few questions regarding your sestina output.

In what ways does your current work subvert the classic faerie tale paradigm?

Do you consider "Subterranean" your ultimate work of magical realism, or can we expect more work from you in the future?

Your poem seems to suggest further Gnostic/Gnomic/Paracelsian experiences outside of the narrative. Can you elaborate, and if so, why?

What do you mean by "gnome" and what does this metaphor suggest?

Your lines concerning the clearing of entryways are interesting to me. How do you feel this sentiment translates to those who view you as a role model?

Can you explain your decision to end "Subterranean" with a period?

Equality is a journey,
Brett & Lydia

II. HER RESPONSE

(It's worth noting that we sent our inital email at 5.32AM on a Monday. Rachel sent us her spectacular, creepy response at 6.49AM.)

Hello!

First of all, thanks for writing! Second--I can't believe that someone tried to pass my sestina off as theirs. That is, as the children say, off the hook. I'm gobsmacked.

Also, I wish I had a freeze dried piranha. I once stuck my hand into a tank of piranhas for 75 cents. I'm sad to say that drugs were involved, and I can't turn down a dare, no matter how idiotic. If the piranhas had been freeze-dried, I wouldn't have this scar on my index finger.

Watch out for the fumes. My mother didn't leave while they were installing the new granite counters in her kitchen, and she had to go to the emergency room.

I am more than happy to answer your questions. My answers are below. Write anytime.

All the best,
Rachel

In what ways does your current work subvert the classic faerie tale paradigm?

I always found the relationships between the protagonist and the shady characters that assist her on her way to the prince far more interesting the the eventual relationship (which ends as soon as it begins, in the story anyway) with the prince. It seems that these sort of leering elves, gnomes, witches etc. always wants something in return for their assistance--it is never an altruistic act; and in real life what people want is rarely a magic feather or straw spun to gold, but some sexual act, unwillingly given.

Do you consider "Subterranean" your ultimate work of magical realism, or can we expect more work from you in the future?

Oh, I think you can expect more. Certainly. Although I've never considered myself a magical realist. I certainly tend to make fantastical situations commonplace. This is especially prevelant in my plays.

Your poem seems to suggest further Gnostic/Gnomic/Paracelsian experiences outside of the narrative. Can you elaborate, and if so, why?

No. That's a mystery.

What do you mean by "gnome" and what does this metaphor suggest?

By gnome, I very literally mean a tiny, wizened forest dweller with large rough hands and a pointed hat. I found a book about them, translated from the Dutch, at a garage sale in the Bronx and that's how the idea came to me. But certainly, the metaphor can extend to all sorts of realms--whether its a dream that is so troubling it makes us question who we are when we wake up, or an experience that is forced on us/disgusts us and winds up changing our lives, sometimes for the better.

Your lines concerning the clearing of entryways are interesting to me. How do you feel this sentiment translates to those who view you as a role model?

For me, it means forcing ourselves to remove the blocks we set up for ourselves so that our journey through life can continue unobstructed. Or rather, sometimes we have to get out of our own way in order to live.

Can you explain your decision to end "Subterranean" with a period?

I like the finality.

III. OUR RETURN LETTER

(The minute Brett and I read her letter, we knew we had to do something special in response. Just to show how much we love her, you know? So we sat down -- or more properly, I continued inhaling paint fumes while he sat on the stairs and took notes -- and spent several hours composing a sestina for her. You may notice the various echoes of her work that we wrote into our sestina, in our slavish devotion. You may also notice that we, too, are fairly creepy.)

Saluton!

First of all, thanks for writing! Second--I can't believe that someone tried to pass my sestina off as theirs. That is, as the children say, off the hook. I'm gobsmacked.
Also, I wish I had a freeze dried piranha. I once stuck my hand into a tank of piranhas for 75 cents. I'm sad to say that drugs were involved, and I can't turn down a dare, no matter how idiotic. If the piranhas had been freeze-dried, I wouldn't have this scar on my index finger.
Watch out for the fumes. My mother didn't leave while they were installing the new granite counters in her kitchen, and she had to go to the emergency room.

In times when plagiarism makes you fume,
And it becomes clear that literary stars are being stalked,
Before writing critique about "Subterranean"
I find it masturbatory to stake
A scholarly mental tent under the heavens blue.
From their camp, the e-piranhas can smell for miles a fleshy gnome.

I always found the relationships between the protagonist and the shady characters that assist her on her way to the prince far more interesting the the eventual relationship (which ends as soon as it begins, in the story anyway) with the prince. It seems that these sort of leering elves, gnomes, witches etc. always wants something in return for their assistance--it is never an altruistic act; and in real life what people want is rarely a magic feather or straw spun to gold, but some sexual act, unwillingly given.

Indeed, your comments are well taken concerning the gnome;
The heroine's quest is heavy, the prince's light as perfume.
But your assertion regarding real-life consensuality makes me blue.
Ideally, love informs the stalking,
And for both lovebats ** there is something at stake.
Methinks there can be mutually exalting expression of desires subterranean.

Oh, I think you can expect more. Certainly. Although I've never considered myself a magical realist. I certainly tend to make fantastical situations commonplace. This is especially prevelant in my plays. ***

Have you considered making a play of "Subterranean"?
You should probably acquire a midget to play the gnome.
Could such a tiny thespian display intense lust for the woman-steak?
Perhaps the paint fumes ....
If magical realism is your flower, then what is your stalk?
The possibilities are like the seeds of a dandelion I blew. ****

No. That's a mystery.

When I first read your email, it was delicious as a steak.
But now it seems sinister; blue
Shadows, loaded glances, and secrets subterranean
Come to mind. Who knows who you are -- the gnome?
Do I recall a warning about these paint fumes?
Survey: prehensile tail, or flexible eye-stalks?

By gnome, I very literally mean a tiny, wizened forest dweller with large rough hands and a pointed hat. I found a book about them, translated from the Dutch, at a garage sale in the Bronx and that's how the idea came to me. But certainly, the metaphor can extend to all sorts of realms--whether its a dream that is so troubling it makes us question who we are when we wake up, or an experience that is forced on us/disgusts us and winds up changing our lives, sometimes for the better.

How and why did you connect this book with tent stakes
And self-pleasure? Did a gnomic figure ever give you the blues?
I had a dream that, like a Delphic fume,
Arose from caverns subterranean:
A dream of sun-drenched agony, a silhouette who showed gnome-
-Ercy. ***** The dream is gone, the silhouette stalks.

For me, it means forcing ourselves to remove the blocks we set up for ourselves so that our journey through life can continue unobstructed. Or rather, sometimes we have to get out of our own way in order to live.

I pondered this question whilst probing your email with my prehensile eye-stalks:
If you get out of your own way, then what's at stake?
(Unless the point is to submit to a gnome.)
Losing ourselves often makes us sing the blues;
We may move forward, but our hearts lie somewhere subterranean.
Is your sense of self light as a fume?

I like the finality.

Perhaps my fuming has been mere masturbation at the feet of literature's brightest star (or gnome).
Your work is immortal, like a subterranean vampire far from tent stakes.
The eyes atop my campy stalks clearly aren't a heavenly blue.

Love always,
Brett & Lydia

* [Ed. note: Reference]
** Vampires, a.k.a. lovers.
*** [Ed. note: Dear Lord, what are her plays like?]
**** [Ed. note: I am confident that this is the worst line either Brett or I has ever written.]
***** [Ed. note: Man, we just subvert everything, don't we? From common decency to reasonable sestina word usage.]

Rachel never wrote us back, which was heartbreaking, because we love her. When I'm next in New York I'm going to see if I can attend one of her plays. And maybe kidnap her a little. But only in the best possible way. I mean it's clearly what she wants, anyway.

...

The Heterosexual Questionnaire
by Martin Rochlin, Ph.D., 1972
(from soylent_bomb)

The Heterosexual Questionnaire was created back in 1972 to put heterosexual people in the shoes of a gay person for just a moment. Unfair questions and assumptions made of Gays and Lesbians are reversed and this time asked to the straight people.

This is a fun survey, but also an activist survey. Please repost this to your email list, myspace bulletin, use it in a group setting -- have fun with it, but also let the point be made.

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?

2. When and where did you decide you were a heterosexual?

3. Is it possible this is just a phase and you will out grow it?

4. Is it possible that your sexual orientation has stemmed from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?

5. Do your parents know you are straight? Do your friends know -- how did they react?

6. If you have never slept with a person of the same sex, is it just possible that all you need is a good gay lover?

7. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality ... can't you just be who you are and keep it quiet?

8. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?

9. Why do heterosexuals try to recruit others into this lifestyle?

10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual .... Do you consider it safe to expose children to heterosexual teachers?

11. Just what do men and women do in bed together? How can they truly know how to please each other, being so anatomically different?

12. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?

13. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality?

14. Considering the menace of overpopulation how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual?

15. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you feel that he or she might be inclined to influence you in the direction of his orher leanings?

16. There seem to very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed that might enable you to change if you really want to.

17. Have you considered trying aversion therapy?

...

Overlay map of Chicago's community areas to go with Google Maps and Google Earth
Now this is awesome, though it's worth noting that "official community areas" are apparently not the same as neighborhoods.
from ericrogers_wp.

Ms. Metal: metalsmith near Chicago who makes custom car stuff and, more importantly, awesome sometimes car-ish punk jewelry
I love the Deluxe Screw U bracelet especially. P.S., did I mention it's my birthday today? Though if someone's gonna buy me a present that costs that much, I might prefer this fucking awesome antique paper-folding book, or one of these surprisingly expensive poster prints of my favorite Magritte painting, or a Kihachiro Kawamoto DVD.

Discarded paintings by gifted amateurs
This looks like one of those exhibitions that could be great or really terrible.

Believe Me, It's Torture: Christopher Hitchens voluntarily undergoes waterboarding
... in order to report on the experience.
from cooper_korman, I think.

For swimmers, new suit is a stroke of genius
OMAHA - The swimmers talk about the suit as if it's a supernatural skin. "When I put it on, I feel like some kind of Action Hero, ready to take on the world," said global backstroke champion Ryan Lochte.
Globe Graphic Speedo's new LZR Racer Michael Phelps, who could win a record eight Olympic medals in Beijing, says that Speedo's LZR Racer makes him feel like a rocket. Katie Hoff, the world titlist in both individual medleys, says it's like flying in the water.
Swimmers using the new ultra-sleek full-length bodysuit have torn up the record book this year, producing 38 world marks in less than four months.
from collegecate.

How To Console
Really nice guidelines on how best to comfort the bereaved.
from my mother.

Best sidewalk graffiti ever
Yeah, I hate love.

all our followers are blind -- too much Heaven on their minds

2008-07-04T16:19:06Z

The problem I keep coming back to is this: How do I make a real difference for the better in the world?

I am, at best, indifferently good at regulating my own lifestyle in terms of -- say -- consumption. I walk to work, but I own a car. I live in a vegetarian co-op, but I eat meat when I go out. I acknowledge the moral greyness of my actions (does that make me better or worse than people who act similar to me, and think they're lily-white? -- damn those recurring bullshit philosophy questions!). I think that I do better when it comes to interpersonal morality -- honesty, loyalty, maybe even a smidgen of charity -- but interpersonal morals are the easiest to finesse and fine-tune, often without self-acknowledgement. Sometimes I become unsure of exactly how well I'm doing. -- But I digress.

I've done various kinds of charity work. It tends to be badly organized, bureaucratically ridiculous, and profoundly unsatisfying for me. I am hoping that if the whole Peace Corps thing works out, I'll have made a contribution that matters, but I acknowledge that the likelihood of this is actually low. The Peace Corps is more about a global friendship experience and promoting the American Way than it is about actually being effective; you can see this both in a former PCV's recent editorial, and the responses to said editorial across the Web. On the bright side, I really do believe that the Peace Corps experience will stress me, isolate me and change me: really stretch me out. And I further believe that these are good things -- at least, they're good for my personal development. And I have realized that going into a needy country, and observing it up close and personal for two years, is most likely actually the best path to determining how to really help those people (and not just spread the American Way).

Or something.

It's hard to resist the urge to want to do something huge, and possibly self-destructive. (Self-destructive? Who, me?) I ache to starve myself to death for something, or throw myself onto a sword. Less dramatically, I want to put a good part of my life into doing something really important, really effective. But the reality is that there aren't many causes I have complete faith in -- and even if there were, I'm not sure my skills would be that useful for anything major. I'm a philosophy-trained artist, for God's sake, maybe a smart one, but my experience is in bookstores and cooperatives and such.

Art is awesome, don't get me wrong. It's beautiful and meaningful and transcendent and ecstatic. But if I spent my whole life just being an artist, I'd end up ... disappointed, I think. Same goes for academics, critical theory: I love them, I'm decent at them, but if I put my life into them I would end feeling as though I'd missed something critical.

Art and academics: effective for change? I think not.

Here's what I keep coming back to: marketing. Here's what we know in our fun capitalist, highly mediated society: marketing is everything. And I actually don't suck at it. Maybe with some training (scary!), I could become great at marketing. And marketing, unlike art or academics, seems like a real avenue to social influence.

So the most viable ideas I've had, I think, have been the ones that have to do with marketing for the better. But what better? What?

Anarchism could use some good marketing. But my doubts about anarchism are several and significant, and I'm unsure that the current American climate is receptive. And good luck finding funding. On the bright side, they'd have a hard fucking time throwing me out of the country like Emma Goldman, especially if I make it through the Peace Corps and thereby demonstrate myself to be an upstanding citizen.

I could attempt to market some kind of social critique. Imagine advertisements that simply encourage a surrealist outlook, or a feminist one! Yeah, good luck finding funding.

Sustainability would be a good one, I suspect. I have this vision of an advertising group that runs public awareness ads about eating responsibly, driving less, using fewer plastics, etc. In Ireland, they've managed to drastically reduce the use of plastic bags by means of a tax -- and an advertising campaign. Most people look at the situation and point to the tax; I point to the campaign. The reason Ireland is succeeding at this drastic reduction is that people had a public awareness "plastic bags are bad and socially irresponsible!" campaign slammed into them, so they now feel guilty about plastic bag utilization. The tax? 15 cents? That wouldn't even be a speedbump on people's decision-making, if it weren't coupled with guilt. And I think funding's a lot more feasible for an anti-consumption campaign ... though it'd have to be grassroots as hell, because no corporations are gonna do it. (Well, maybe that guy with the carpet company.)

There's something profoundly disturbing, for me, in the idea that the best concept I may have come up with for having some kind of effect has to do with advertising. Sell out for the common good! The ends justify the means! Well, whatever. I've grown far more callously manipulative as I've gotten older, so I'm sure I can accustom myself to this.

I guess the bigger questions are: how best do I put myself into a position to implement such ideas? If I really believe that marketing is my best tool, and that I have enough talent for it to be worth training myself, then shouldn't I be seeking out marketing jobs? Okay, so I might conceivably be willing to starve or stab myself for a cause, but am I willing to sacrifice an artistic, flexible, creative lifestyle?

Can someone who mostly loves stuff like irony, absurdity, subversion, storytelling, and esoterica really thrive in trying to do something to earnestly "make a difference"? Or am I just lying to myself?

Maybe my deepest confusion comes from this root: I may want to make a difference, for real, but it's hard to know what will make a difference -- and how much am I willing to give up for a chance of making things better? How much does my cynicism and lack of faith destroy my capacity for inspiration? How much of a vision do I really have? Do I truly have any moral conviction at all?

Sometimes I really think that I don't.

Man, my livejournal has been too much about me lately. I'll try to post something more interesting soon.

...

Recent study! Flynn, F., & Anderson, C. Too tough, too soon: familiarity and the backlash effect.

Assertive women often incur a backlash for violating their feminine gender role. We propose this backlash may be stronger when perceivers are unfamiliar with the woman they are evaluating. In a study of "first impressions," we found that a woman was evaluated more harshly than a man for demonstrating the same assertive behavior. Further, this effect was driven by assumptions of a self-orientation: the assertive woman was seen as less hirable because she was seen as self-oriented. However, a pair of follow-up studies showed that the negative effect of women's assertiveness on judgments of their hirability diminished when perceivers rated familiar targets. This improved evaluation was driven, once again, by perceived self-orientation—more familiar assertive women were seen as less self-oriented than less familiar assertive women. The moderating effect of familiarity suggests that the backlash effect may be more intense when perceivers are asked to rate women who are strangers rather than acquaintances.

And! Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger.

What don't we know, and why don't we know it? What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? Agnotology -- the study of ignorance -- provides a new theoretical perspective to broaden traditional questions about "how we know" to ask: Why don't we know what we don't know? The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Doubt is our product" is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible.

...

Interesting meditation on gay pride events, in the context of the San Francisco pride parade
we love cooper_korman around here.
edit special bonus link: His fascinating cultural analysis of Independence Day! /edit

The Book Bike of Chicago
... will apparently trundle about the city parks, distributing books like a mad thing, starting tomorrow!

Guaranteed to be the most flat-out insane site on cremation you have ever seen
It's hard to sum up how awesomely insane this site is. Suffice to say that it combines cremation, a leg fetish, and some astounding storytelling ability.
do not ask what Housemate Brett and I were doing when we found this (okay, actually I can't remember).

The Spanner Case: BDSMers arrested for consensual play party
(The Wikipedia article: here.) I cannot believe I hadn't heard of this before. And here's an American example of the same thing, just in case you think this might just be the UK/Europe (anyone know where I can get more information on that one, actually?). Apparently the theory used by the courts is that if you want to suffer pain or whatever, you must be mentally unhinged, and therefore are incapable of giving consent, so all your activities no longer count as consensual. :roar:

The Miracle Fruit: A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue
The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.
... The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste. Dr. Bartoshuk said she did not know of any dangers associated with eating miracle fruit.
Whoa. We're having a party.
from Housemate Mike.

Blindsight by Peter Watts: science fiction novel free to read online
From a review: Blindsight is an astonishingly dense and philosophical novel; unflinchingly dark, unashamedly literary, and unapologetically couched in scientific language and thought. It is probably fair to say that these aesthetics will ensure that it doesn’t appeal to all readers -- indeed, not even to all readers of the increasingly diverse and contested field of science fiction -- but the corollary of that is its direct route to the hearts and minds of committed fans of ‘hard’ sf.
I've only read a bit. Seems melodramatic, and who doesn't love melodrama?
from MCP (who says it's not bad, though he didn't rave).

bulletin for Hyde Parkers

2008-06-26T09:05:00Z

If you happen to enjoy going for very late walks, you may encounter Ron, a new security man at Hyde Park Bank on 53rd Street. He is very friendly and I am considering becoming his new best friend by going back to talk to him occasionally; he is Black and lives in Englewood, so this would be an inspiring multicultural, cross-class story. We could slowly reveal more about our lives until we have a sweet little brotherhood thing going on. Perhaps we could even publish a kids' book about our experience!

He:
* Went into the Marine Corps at age 17
* Was discharged recently after 3 or so years, for failing a urine test (ecstasy)
* Had some "wild adventures" out there that he preferred not to relate to someone he'd just met
* Offered me his cigarette, saying that I looked like I "needed it" more than him
* Related a story of the 60-year old woman who approached him while he was security guardin' and said something like, "I need cock! Can you help me out?"
* Shared some of the poetry he had written in a marbled black-and-white composition book
* Said that the only people out late at night were people who had things on their mind, and insisted on knowing what was on mine. When I told him the first thing that came to mind (of course, a recent situation involving a man), he gave an inspiringly new perspective on the problem that most likely arises from cultural incongruity and was really quite fascinating. And when I told him I had to go to bed and wandered off, he called after me, "Hey Lydia. If you gonna put up with some guy, you make sure the sex is good, okay?" -- Sometimes, gentle readers, that's all a girl really needs to hear.

she's got something you just can't trust, something mysterious

2008-06-25T22:49:26Z

[redacted]

...

Orange Cookies!

I made this recently and it turned out pretty well. Definitely orange-flavoured, which seems like it'd be hard to perfect for cookies! (I skipped the icing.)

2/3 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 large orange
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup walnut, chopped (optional)

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
3 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice
2 teaspoons orange peel, grated

1. Preheat oven to 350-degrees F. and grease baking sheets.

2. In a large bowl cream butter and sugar together until light.

3. Stir in eggs, juice from orange and grated rind from orange.

4. Combine flour, salt, baking powder, and then stir in.

5. Stir in nuts, if using.

6. Drop dough by spoonfuls onto prepared baking sheets.

7. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden, then cool on rack while making icing.

8. To make icing, blend the remaining ingredients together (powdered sugar - orange peel) until smooth; then swirl icing over cookies, covering cookies completely.

...

Jersey schools close down after a ninja is spotted in the woods
Okay, picture being a school administrator in New Jersey. Now imagine that someone comes to you and says they saw a ninja in the woods. Do you close the school down? What are your immediate instincts? Why would someone in freakin' New Jersey just assume that there was some grande deadly threat if a supposed ninja were spotted?

ABEbooks: Found in Books
Be careful what you use as a bookmark. Thousands of dollars, a Christmas card signed by Frank Baum, a Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card, a marriage certificate from 1879, a baby’s tooth, a diamond ring and a handwritten poem by Irish writer Katharine Tynan Hickson are just some of the stranger objects discovered inside books by AbeBooks.com booksellers.
Yes, we do sell some of our stock on ABE at Bookstore Y.

The speech accent archive!
Listen to accents from all over!
from iamfiction.

Amazing introductory article on biases
I already knew about some of these, but this is a really great overview of our current knowledge on how human brains are biased and what cognitive/rational errors we're all proven to be prone to. Includes bibliography for further reading!

William Kamkwamba: windmill maker
So, apparently this African kid was unable to afford school but managed to design and build a windmill that provided electricity to his home based solely on a picture from a textbook? I'm a little floored by this story, but at least I refuse to append a heartwarming moral about human ingenuity or the power of the human spirit or whatever.
from Mom.

make a whole new religion, a fallen star that you cannot live without

2008-06-14T21:53:13Z

I have roadtripped by car to Charlottesville, Virginia, and will be roadtripping back tomorrow. Function of trip: flower girl in awesome alternative half-Unitarian wedding (well, technically a non-wedding "commitment ceremony", cos the couple won't officially marry until teh gays can). I wore a long black dress and the flowers were perfumed paper. Candle-lighting was provided as an alternative to taking Communion. The ceremonial readings were folks like Kahlil Gibran and Madeleine L'Engle. And one of the wedding cakes was shaped like a stack of books, containing I, Robot; The Princess Bride; The Color Purple and a fourth that I forget. More people should have weddings like this.

On the way here, we passed the following billboards:

1) Hemorrhoids Service Center Plus.
-- Picture this: "I need to go service my hemorrhoids."
-- What's the "plus"?

2) The Nice Law Firm.
-- Only in the South would these people be hired, ever.

3) Tom Raper's business, which sells both RVs and real estate. I know it's lame and obvious, but still ....
-- He'll make you an offer you can't refuse.
-- Assuming the Nice Law Firm is named for Mr. Nice, wouldn't it be great if Mr. Raper got a law degree and joined the team?

...

You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy mine below, erase my answers putting yours in their place then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration! One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

1. First name: Lydia. I was named for my grandmother; Lydia was once a more common name. I have indeed heard the Marx song, and you should YouTube it if you haven't. I have no tattoos, though someday I plan to; when I do it'll probably be Shataina in some nice calligraphy.

2. Age: 23. July 11. I'm a Cancer, but I don't cry at weddings, usually. Okay, shut up.

3. Location: Chicago. I live near the University of Chicago, which is pretty great. I grew up in New York and went to college at Simon's Rock, in Massachusetts. (Actually the Bard connection is quite tenuous, and if anyone refers to me as going to Bard I will deck them. It is not fucking Bard College at Simon's Rock, argh.) I've also lived in Scotland and Atlanta, and spent some serious time in Berkeley.

4. Occupation: I work in an incredible antiquarian bookstore. I used to write games freelance, mostly for White Wolf's Exalted, but I quit because it's stressful / emotionally unsatisfying / badly paid and also I really want to write stories, and felt like I'd learned as much as I could from the game-writing experience. A small-time anthology with one of my stories in it will be coming out at GenCon; more information on that soon. I have also been paid for calligraphy. My current career plan is the Peace Corps; that should clear itself up by the end of the year, one way or the other.

5. Partner?: I just broke up with my boyfriend of ~2 years and am determined to be single for a while. There were some great limericks.

6. Kids: I am determined to have children. It is unclear how best to accomplish this goal and still have an awesome life. We'll see.

7. Brothers/Sisters: Not applicable.

8. Pets: I had many ferrets as a child. They are wonderful. I will have them someday, again.

9. List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life right now:
* I have become obsessed with lighthouses and hope to live in one. A movie will hopefully be made of the experience. This is not a joke.
* I try to write as much as I can. I achieve occasional success with this goal.
* I end up putting a lot of time into my co-op, partly because my house chore is the rather time-consuming one of processing applicants. I tend to enjoy living there, and it's got some significant up sides, but sometimes wonder if it's worth the occasional stress.
* I'm effectively manager of the bookstore. That's pretty cool, and it's such a great job, and I enjoy thinking of new promotions and organizations and suchlike for the place, but I do look forward to quitting and only having hours there when I feel like it.

10. Parents: My dad's a Securities & Assets lawyer. He seems to be pretty good at it. He also puts a lot of himself into an awesome yearly Unitarian religion and science conference. My mom's a slightly scattered and incredible woman with much traveling under her belt, as well as skills including botany; photography; American History and not even God knows what else. She doesn't have a job right now except for being Democratic village trustee of the place where I grew up, but she has a publishing résumé and community action credits as long as your arm (mostly regarding the management of feminist and environmental groups).

11. Who are some of your closest friends?: They know who they are and hopefully don't require this stupid ego massage of a question to love me. How about this: If anyone I know wishes to comment and hear something awesome about themselves, feel free.

Guess I can file this entry under my FAQ memory keyword, huh?

... I'd post links, but I have an evening reception to get to!

in the interests of science ...

2008-06-04T23:49:50Z

Blatant sex questions!

I've turned off IP-logging, so anonymous commenters have nothing to fear.

1. What is your sex and sexual preference?
2. (Women / gay guys only) Is non-oral penetration important to you? Like, would you feel as if something was missing from a given sexual experience if you weren't non-orally penetrated?
3. (Men only) Is non-oral penetration important to you? Like, would you feel as if something was missing if you didn't get to non-orally penetrate your partner?
3. (Women / gay guys only) Does size matter?

P.S. I appreciate that there are certain specific kinks that these questions sort of exclude by default. Sorry about that. If folks who enjoy them would like to leave commentary about what they think, they should feel free.

issues about marriage? who, me?

2008-05-30T18:42:02Z

Recently I discovered an odd but very interesting book -- Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. Rose, who clearly knows her personal lives of famous Victorians, begins the book with some excellent general insights about relationships -- not just marriage, really -- and then goes on to describe the marriages (Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens and George Eliot) in a charming and continuously insightful manner. (Yes we do indeed have a copy at the store, if you're interested.)

Quotation time!

In unhappy marriages ... I see two versions of reality rather than two people in conflict. I see a struggle for imaginative dominance going on. Happy marriages seem to me those in which the two partners agree on the scenario they are acting, even if ... their own idea of their relationship is totally at variance with the facts. I speak with great trepidation about "facts" in such matters, but, speaking loosely, the facts in the Mills' case -- that a woman of strong and uncomplicated will dominated a guilt-ridden man -- were less important than their shared imaginative view of the facts, that their marriage fitted their shared ideal of a marriage of equals. I assume, then, as little objective truth as possible about these parallel lives, for every marriage seems to me a subjectivist fiction with two points of view often deeply in conflict, sometimes fortuitously congruent. (7)

... like Mill, I believe marriage to be the primary political experience in which most of us engage as adults, and so I am interested in the management of power between men and women in that microcosmic relationship. Whatever the balance, every marriage is based on some understanding, articulated or not, about the relative importance, the priority of desires, between the two partners. Marriages go bad not when love fades -- love can modulate into affection without driving two people apart -- but when this understanding about the balance of power breaks down, when the weaker member feels exploited or the stronger feels unrewarded for his or her strength.

People who find this a chilling way to talk about one of our most treasured human bonds will object that "power struggle" is a failed circumstance into which relationships fall when love fails. (For some people it is impossible to discern the word power without adding the word struggle.) I would counter by pointing out the human tendency to invoke love at moments when we want to disguise transactions involving power. ... [W]hen we resign power, or assume new power, we insist it is not happening and demand to be talked to about love. Perhaps that is what love is -- a momentary or prolonged refusal to think about another person in terms of power. ... [W]hat we call love may inhibit the process of power negotiation -- from which inhibition comes the illusion of equality so characteristic of lovers. If the impulse to abjure measurement and negotiation comes from within, unbidden, it is one of life's graces and blessings. But if it is culturally induced ... then we may find it repugnant and call it a mask for exploitation. Surely, in regard to marriage, love has received its fair share of attention, power less than its share. ... Who can resist the thought that love is the ideological bone thrown to women to distract their attention from the powerlessness of their lives? Only millions of romantics can resist it -- and other millions who might see it as the bone thrown to men to distract them from the bondage of their lives. (7-8)

The plots we choose to impose on our own lives are limited and limiting. And in no area are they so banal as in this of love and marriage. Nothing else being available to our imaginations, we will filter our experience through the romantic cliches with which popular culture bombards us. And because the callowness and conventionality of the plots we impose on ourselves are a betrayal of our inner richness and complexity, we feel anxious and unhappy. We may turn to therapy for help, but the plots it evokes, if done less than expertly, are also fairly limiting. *

Easy stories drive out hard ones. Simple paradigms prevail over complicated ones. If, within marriage, power is the ability to impose one's imaginative vision ... then power is more easily available if one has a simple and widely accepted paradigm at hand. ** ... [N]either side of the patriarchal paradigm seems to bring out the best in humanity. In regard to marriage, we need more and more complex plots. (8-9)

[Compared to the Victorians], our easy recourse to divorce seems -- to adopt Robert Frost's image -- like playing tennis without the net. John Stuart Mill, who advocated divorce, nevertheless believed that re-marriage was an inefficient remedy for certain kinds of marital distress, those caused by the human tendency to grow unhappy in the course of years and to blame this unhappiness on one's spouse. The sufferer, after the initial elation brought by change, would reach the same point eventually with a second mate, said Mill, and at what a cost of disrupted life! It has become a story familiar enough today. But the Victorians, with no easy escape from difficult domestic situations, were forced to be more inventive.

Few were more inventive than Mill's eventual wife, Harriet Taylor, who, for twenty years, arranged to live in a virtual ménage à trois with her husband and Mill, a companion to both, lover to neither. Her inventiveness depended on a de-emphasis of sexual fulfillment which it requires effort to see as useful rather than merely pinched. But I think the effort must be made. Of the five marriages I discuss, at least two of them, and possibly a third, were sexless, and it will not do just to say "How bizarre."

In fact, scholars in our post-liberated age who interest themselves in innovative living arrangements are beginning to discover that people a hundred years ago may have had more flexibility than we do now .... I prefer to see the sexless marriages I discuss as examples of flexibility rather than of abnormality. Some people might say they are not really marriages because they are sexless; it's a point I'd want to argue. There must be other models of marriage -- of long-term association between two people -- than the very narrow one we are all familiar with. (11-12)

Many cultural circumstances worked against the likelihood of sexual satisfaction in Victorian marriages. ... We would seem to have a greater chance of happiness now. Theoretically, men and women can get to know each other in casual, relaxed circumstances before marrying. More young people feel free to sleep together, to live together before marriage. They do not have to wait until they are irrevocably joined to discover that they are incompatible. Nor are they so irrevocably joined. If we discover, early or late, that despite all our opportunity to test compatibility, we have married someone with whom we are not compatible, we can disconnect ourselves and try again. [Everything is better.] If all this does not ensure that, cumulatively, we are happier in our relationships than the Victorians were, then perhaps we expect even more of our marriages than the Victorians did -- perhaps we place too much of a burden on our personal relationships, as Christopher Lasch, among others, have suggested. Or perhaps the deep tendency of human nature to unhappiness is even harder to reach by legislation and technology than one might have thought.

Neither in novels nor in biographical material can I find much evidence that people of the last century placed less emphasis on their personal relationships than we do. Romantic expectations seem to know no season, except the season of life. Of the five Victorian couples I have written about, the Mills and the Leweses, for various reasons, expected less out of marriage and found greater satisfaction in it than the others. Temperament and ideological bent seem more important in determining happiness than whether one lived in the nineteenth or twentieth century. (12-14)

I am tempted to say that divorce makes marriage meaningless -- which doesn't mean I would wish for there to be less divorce, just less marriage. ... I do not want to move readers either to self-blame or the blame of others. I would like them to be prompted by these stories to question how the presumption of marriage, the fiction of marriage, has affected the shape of their lives, for I believe that marriage, whether we see it as a psychological relationship or a political one, has determined the story of all of our lives more than we have generally acknowledged. (18-19)

* I think people can be unhappy for reasons that have nothing to do with the "plots they're imposing on their lives", but that doesn't invalidate this point.

** [Mainstream] pornography, damn it, is a fantastic example of how an incredibly male-centric view of sexuality has managed to persist notwithstanding the fact that most men these days are willing -- even eager! -- not to be presumptuous and boorish with their female lovers.

...

"Horror Frog" breaks own bones to produce claws
Harvard biologists have described a bizarre, hairy frog with cat-like extendable claws. Trichobatrachus robustus actively breaks its own bones to produce claws that puncture their way out of the frog's toe pads, probably when it is threatened.

Review of the new non-Fleming Bond novel
Apparently it's pretty good.
The author’s real accomplishment is in recreating the tone and feel of the Fleming novels: the travelogue is terrific, and Bond’s confidence in his mission is part of the character’s enduring appeal.

More long literary quotations on gender!
I'm arguably rather biased in linking to this.

Cannabis blunder at Tokyo airport
An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry, officials say.

Timecube: The RPG!
I actually met someone the other day who had never seen or heard of TimeCube.com. It blew my mind!

dragonladyflame @ 2008-05-25T13:36:00

2008-05-25T20:01:42Z

I've been meaning to write an entry about some of Bookstore Y's best customers, who consistently brighten my day. For now, however: a rant.

You can always tell a customer who has never worked retail (or at least, never done so seriously and/or considered what might be going on with the actual management of the place). I don't think they actually intend to be assholes; they just don't understand the realities of running a store. That wouldn't be so bad if more of them tried. I don't have a problem with people who politely ask for the explanation behind one of our policies, or who express disappointment but assume that we have a good reason.

But so many don't try. They simply assume that they know what's best, that they'd do a better job than you. If I dare to contradict or say no to them, they have no self-consciousness about treating the girl behind the counter like an object -- like a machine that isn't operating the way they want it to. Or worse.

Take the customer who just came in and said he wanted a plastic bag for his book. "It's not one of your books, but it's starting to rain." "I'm sorry," I said, "but plastic bags do cost us something, and it's against our policy to give them out to people who aren't buying something here." He glared and snapped, "Well, I've bought things here before," then strode huffily out before I could say anything. From the door, his wife called after him -- "Wait, maybe if we explain that we've purchased here before --" and I heard him shout back: "Well, if they don't know who their regular customers are, snippy remark snippy remark."

Firstly: I've worked here for a year and a half. I recognize our regulars. He's probably come once a month or so, and now he's getting all bitchy because I don't recognize him? How dare I fail to exactly remember every customer to sniff around the store every once in a while! Has he even once considered how many people I interact with on a daily basis? I cannot understand how occasional customers get so bitchy when I fail to recognize them, but they do. As if I should (a) keep some perfect mental file of everyone who comes in the store, ever, and (b) treat them like god-kings when they deign to come back.

Secondly: Did it not occur to him that maybe if he nicely said something like, "Well, I have bought things here before, and I was just hoping you could help me out this time, but I understand if you can't," I might relent and secretively give him a bag? What does he think he accomplished by bitching and then storming grandly out, besides messing up both of our Sundays? I used to think that it was pretty much just bad-tempered people who were having a bad day who do this, but I've concluded that it has more to do with the fact that people just don't consider customer service employees to be worthy of respect or dignity.

Thirdly: Retail outlets have costs, people. Why is this so hard for customers to understand? No, I can't give every random dude who wants a plastic bag a plastic bag. No, I can't hand out shop supplies to anyone who wants them -- how shocking! Another great example: We can only pay about a third of our selling price for the books we buy, because the rest of that money goes to stuff like plastic bags, tape, light bulbs and all kinds of other shop supplies -- paying employees (to write irate blog posts instead of doing work) -- monthly rent. But people who sell us books often get incredibly bitchy when we -- say -- offer only a dollar or two per book, and then sell it for five or six dollars. Obviously we're gouging them!

Oh! Here's another example of customers sucking. So, we don't have a full inventory -- that means that if we're looking for a certain book, we have to physically search the store. That takes time. And there are a lot of books out there -- so if someone calls and asks if we have such and such a book, the chances are that we don't. Hence, store policy is that we don't try to look for books if someone calls and asks us to. It takes time, we probably don't have the book anyway, and even if we do it's probably too cheap to be worth the effort.

The problem here? The customer, of course. Sometimes customers accept my gentle refusal, and say they'll come in and look for the book themselves -- and I love them for it. But some become irate. "It's your job to look for this book!" Actually, lady, my boss explicitly instructs me not to look for books on behalf of random callers. But try explaining that to a customer who thinks that you're personally stiffing her. So, my boss has a secondary clause to the policy: not only are we supposed to not look for books, but we're supposed to put the customer on hold for a couple minutes and then return to the phone and lie. "Sorry, I looked for it, but I don't see it on the shelf." Because customers can't handle the truth. I actually prefer to tell customers the truth, and to try and explain that we have good reasons for not looking for books; but I'm not supposed to.

Roar!

It might be worth noting that both the bag rule and the don't-look-for-books rule are shared by Bookstore X. So it's not like we at Bookstore Y are being irrational here -- these are good and reasonable policies.

But hey ... today another of our regulars complimented the writing on the store blog and gave me some chocolate kisses. So I guess that makes today a net win. I mean, I guess he's arguably still objectifying me, but at least I get chocolate for it.

I kinda want to be the next Simone Weil

2008-05-20T23:09:53Z

He entered my room and said: "Poor creature, you who understand nothing, who know nothing. Come with me and I will teach you things which you do not suspect." I followed him.

He took me into a church. It was new and ugly. He led me up to the altar and said: "Kneel down." I said "I have not been baptised." He said: "Fall on your knees before this place, in love, as before the place that lies the truth." I obeyed.

He brought me out and made me climb up to a garret. Through the open window one could see the whole city spread out, some wooden scaffoldings, and the river on which boats were being unloaded. The garret was empty, except for a table and two chairs. He bade me be seated.

We were alone. He spoke. From time to time someone would enter, mingle in the conversation, then leave again.

Winter had gone; spring had not yet come. The branches of the trees lay bare, without buds, in the cold air full of sunshine.

The light of day would arise, shine forth in splendour, and fade away; then the moon and the stars would enter through the window. And then once more the dawn would come up.

At times he would fall silent, take some bread from a cupboard, and we would share it. This bread really had the taste of bread. I have never found that taste again.

He would pour out some wine for me, and some for himself -- wine which tasted of the sun and of the soil upon which this city was built.

At other times we would stretch ourselves out on the floor of the garret, and sweet sleep would enfold me. Then I would wake and drink in the light of the sun.

He had promised to teach me, but he did not teach me anything. We talked about all kinds of things, in a desultory way, as do old friends.

One day he said to me: "Now go." I fell down before him, I clasped his knees, I implored him not to drive me away. But he threw me out on the stairs. I went down unconscious of anything, my heart as it were in shreds. I wandered along the streets. Then I realised that I had no idea where this house lay.

I have never tried to find it again. I understood that he had come for me by mistake. My place is not in that garret. It can be anywhere -- in a prison cell, in one of those middle-class drawing rooms full of knick-knacks and red plush, in the waiting-room of a station -- anywhere, except in that garret.

Sometimes I cannot help trying, fearfully and remorsefully, to repeat to myself a part of what he said to me. How am I to know if I remember rightly? He is not there to tell me.

I know well that he does not love me. How could he love me? And yet deep down within me something, a particle of myself, cannot help thinking, with fear and trembling, that perhaps, in spite of all, he loves me.

~ Written by Simone Weil in Marseilles, Spring 1942, and accompanied by the note: The beginning of the book, the book which contains these thoughts and many others. Printed in Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil by David McLellan.

I have all the love I need, it is your blood I crave

2008-05-16T16:02:54Z

This week, I passed the medical checks for the Peace Corps! The medical checks were the step I was most worried about -- so yay! The Placement Officer who I spoke to said that they should be processing departures for November in a couple months, so it'll be a while before I start working out the specifics of my assignment. Also, as I understand it, there is still a chance that the PC won't take me -- but the officer assured me that although there are hurdles left, they are relatively small compared to the ones I've gone through so far.

In the meantime, my summer is looking pretty excellent. I will be attending GenCon (and might have a story in an anthology that's slated to be sold there), as well as the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS). I have all kinds of fun art projects planned, particularly making movies with the arguably brilliant Brett Hanover. There are tentative plans for Mexico and even more tentative plans for a return to Berlin (well, that's probably not going to happen, but it would be cool if I could fit it in). Two whole couples of my acquaintance are getting married, and I'll be the (or at least, a) flower girl for one of them! My housemates are even threatening to throw another Bondage/Formal for me, even though I said that last year's was the last one; we'll see if they're actually organized enough to go through with it. This is going to be great!

If you are thinking of visiting me before I leave the country (crossed fingers!), then the best times to do so do not include August. Don't visit in August unless you're part of the GenCon crew. Otherwise, I think we'll be able to work something out. Also, I'll be in New York in early August, right after IRAS.

...

There's this crazy book that we have in the store (or had, relatively recently); it's a 1930 limited edition (actually relatively cheap -- $20 in the store, and available online in that range!) called Facetia Erotica, by "Poggio Fiorentino". It's filled with completely ridiculous "dirty" anecdotes including such gems as, "Of a Man Who Lay with his Sick Wife, Whereupon She Was Healed" and "Everardo, Apostolic Secretary, Plays a Prank Upon a Cardinal". My favourite, however, is the following masterpiece of ambiguity:

"Of a Fool, Who Thought His Wife Had Two Openings"

A peasant of our district, a stupid devil, who was utterly ignorant in matters of sex, got married. Thus it happened one night that his wife turned her back to him in bed, so that her buttocks rested in his lap. He had his weapon ready and landed by chance right in the goal. Marveling at his success, he inquired of his wife if she had two openings. And when she answered in the affirmative, he cried: "Hoho! I am content with but one; the second is entirely superfluous." Upon which the sly woman, who was secretly consorting with the local priest, replied: "Then we can give the second away to charity. Let us grant it to the church and our priest." The peasant, thinking to be relieved of an unnecessary burden, agreed.

Accordingly, the priest was invited to the evening meal, and the matter was set before him. Thereafter, the three ate heartily and then proceeded to bed, being careful to have the woman between them. The priest, hungry for this rare tit-bit, made the first advances, which the woman answered with soft whispers and familiar sounds. At this, the peasant, fearing that the priest was attempting to trespass on his side of the fence, called out: "Hey there, old friend, remember the agreement. You stick to your own side, and let mine alone!" But the priest was equal to the occasion. "God forbid!" he replied. "I care nothing for your possessions, so long as the property of the church is at my disposal."

With these words he reassured the dull peasant, who thereupon urged him to continue to serve himself at his own discretion with the share that had been granted to the church.

I have very little idea of what happened in that anecdote. I think guessing is probably most of the fun.

...

Dude builds a real difference engine (a.k.a. Victorian "supercomputer")
The reason the machine is so highly regarded is because it is seen as the first attempt at automated computing and viewed as something of a missing link in technology history.
Designed by the 19th Century computer pioneer Charles Babbage, the Difference Engine No 2 is a piece of Victorian technology meant to compute mathematical expressions called polynomials and return results to more than 31 digits, knocking the socks off your souped up pocket calculator.
from epinicion.

Online graph paper!
So you can just print it out when you need it!
from Mom.

In the "ridiculous luxury goods" corner, an umbrella for text messagers
I can't even believe I'm posting this.

Three accused of using corpse's head to smoke pot
The Kingwood teenager's story of decapitating a corpse and using the head to smoke marijuana was so outlandish that at first Houston Police Department senior police officer Jim Adkins did not believe it.
Yet, Kevin Wade Jones Jr., 17, appeared almost indifferent as he relayed the bizarre description of his and two friends' activities at an Humble area graveyard, Adkins said.

Make your own origami weighted companion cube!
Wow, this blog sees a lot of traffic about Portal considering I've never even played it. Even non-gamers (who like science fiction) may enjoy the trailer, though.

Amazingly bad logo design!
It might take you a while to get it, but keep looking at it. It's worth it.

Romance novelist plagiarizes ferret wildlife report
When I traveled to South Dakota in 2005 to write a story about black-footed ferrets, I never imagined my words about the little weasels would one day appear in a trashy romance novel. I just wanted to write an informative and entertaining piece about these endangered prairie carnivores.
Three years later my story ("Toughing It Out in the Badlands") is at the center of 2008's sexiest plagiarism scandal.
[Passages in] a novel by best-selling romance writer Cassie Edwards match, word for word, my ferret story.

I guess none of these links are on a very elevated plane of discourse! But in case they aren't filling the void that is your life, try these wonderful guidelines for making your life more interesting:

1. Rediscover something you loved to do when you were younger. Sometimes even a simple bicycle ride through the neighborhood without any intended purpose or destination can be a nice break from boredom.
2. Add some excitement into your day-to-day endeavors. Is there a pretty girl at work? Make a note to catch her eye and smile at her today; just because. Do you always take the same route to class? Try a different one and take note of the things you see along the way. Challenge yourself through trivial endeavors. Is there something mundane you wish you could do -- like a headstand for example? Try and make it your goal to do one by the end of the week. If you enjoy the activity, try something else. If you don't, try something else.
3. Go over everything that you do that you feel is routine, and make an effort to break those routines. Plan to wake up an hour earlier tomorrow. Forego your morning smoke break and spend fifteen minutes doing something you've never done instead. Find a new restaurant tonight. Go to amazon.com and look at their recommended suggestions for bands based on what you like.
4. Shut the internets off tonight and do anything but sit still.

Normally I can't stand sappy advice like that, but that actually seemed pretty good, for what it is!

I bet you want a ridiculous project to accomplish over the next few days

2008-05-09T01:40:50Z

ScavHunt has commenced! I'm not doing too much this year -- more than last year, less than the previous year -- but of course I read the list over and I've put in some hours at my team's HQ. This year I defected from the FIST (which I still love regardless) to the Grad Student/Alumni team (at least partly because I find it so hilarious that I was invited to join notwithstanding the fact that I am neither a grad student nor an alumna).

Some dedicated people on my team managed to rent one of the unused storefronts on 55th Street for our HQ. Location, location, location! We're right near the dollar store, some Thai restaurants, and the hookah lounge.

If you should happen to review the list and be interested in helping us out, I'd love to hook you up to our awesome site and encourage you to go crazy ....

Some of my favourite items this year (I highly encourage that you Google references you don't recognize):

14. Dammit if Scav Hunt doesn't have the hardest time getting up those impossible hills in Hyde Park. If only we had a funicular to ease our ascent ....

21. Remember when you were in elementary school and you had to make a model of a volcano out of papier-mache and baking soda? Well, do that again. Only really big. There is a limit on the number of points you can win, but there's no limit on how big your volcano can be.

33. Have a potato break the sound barrier.

40. A bust of Abraham Lincoln made out of pennies.

46. I just love puppet shows. Make ready your miniature temple and chinampas because we're reliving Tenochtitlan's former glory as well as its precarious downfall. Of course the show would not be complete without puppet Cortez, puppet Montezuma, and ritual human -- err, puppet -- sacrifice. Catch is, the city has to float.

56. A zeusaphone.

71. Fix the CTA! Duct tape together two different stations of the El.

76. Spend a night at a major Chicago museum, a la From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

79. The prank call of Cthulhu.

89. Greetings, Aperture Science Test Subject #3252613. You need a friend, one that cannot speak, and thus will never threaten to stab you. Please construct a fully-functional weighted companion cube. For the best one, there will be cake.

110. A recreation of Michelangelo's "Birth of Man" or Picasso's "Guernica". In tooth marks. On your back.

124. A computer virus that does little to my computer's ability to function but scares the living hell out of me. [Windows 9.5 points]

135. A robot programmed to love. [3 points per tear that your robot's cuteness draws from my eye. -300 points if 'love' involves a vibrator]

136. The Blues Brothers set future Chicagoans up for a major disappointment: since moving here, I have never once seen enormous groups of strangers moved, as if part of a flash mob, to spontaneously burst in elaborately choreographed song-and-dance numbers in iconic locations. Fix that.

157. Exit, pursued by a bear.

176. Present an appropriate mom with a bumper sticker that says, "My Child is a Nobel Laureate." I think you know what font it needs to be in.

179. A genuine copy of The Pleasure Prison of the B'thuvian Demon Whore. Bring evidence that you have survived it and displayed a level of sophistication that is beyond the ken of the mere hobbyist gamer. [1d20 points] (Yeah, I'm on this one. I may dress up like Krunk, the barbarian from the frozen wastes.)

181. Egon Spengler, painted in the style of Egon Schiele.

184. Wearing a black and white striped shirt, a black toque, and a burlap sack full of money with a big dollar sign on the front, go into that bank. And buy a savings bond. [15 to Life points]

194. Pocket rockets. Pockets made of rockets. Pockets® made of rockets. Rockets made of Pockets®. Rockets made of rockets. Pockets made of Pockets®. Pockets® made of Pockets®.

205. You gotta taste this! This is... oh, it's got a kind of... mmm, it's burny, it's melty... it's not really a smoky taste. It's kind of like a certain... Psh-ah! It's got like this "Ba-boom! Zap!" kind of taste. Don't you think? What would you call that flavor? Lightningy? Yeah! It's lightningy!

215. A blank check with a 19___ pre-printed in the year field. (Do you have one? If so, you should totally send it to me!)

257. A pipe that can both blow bubbles and smoke tobacco. [3 points, 7 bonus points if it can do both at the same time. Double bonus points if it can blow bubbles filled with smoke. As a University of Chicago scholar, you can accomplish this]

258. A tar gun. A feather gun.

260. Build a working lightbulb from scratch.

1008. (ScavOlympics) Life size Battleship®. We'll need six human boat pieces from you, to be divvied up and placed as you wish. You'll need a goodly supply of water balloons.

motorcycles for gnomes!

2008-05-05T05:01:17Z

I have made myself a shirt that says the above. Other shirt ideas:
GUNS FOR EVERYONE
STARVING FOR ART
IDEAS ARE FOOLISH. WE SHOULD BAN THEM.

If you think of every hand as an untapped llama, there are billions of llamas out there!

GR: I want to be in a place where I can sleep and hang out at the same time.
JB: That's being dead, isn't it?

[insert image here: a selfish shellfish]

It seems to me that it's rather selfless to watch someone starve to death, if s/he really wants to.

Sudden Poll! Would trying to sell "limited edition shirts" be a viable business model? For instance, I've got some shirts that I've already made, for which I frequently get compliments and that I love all to pieces. Examples include not only the above MOTORCYCLES FOR GNOMES, but also BLAME GOD; YOUR PLAN HAS ONE FATAL FLAW; and $10 FOR THE ANTIDOTE. It occurs to me that I could also adapt some of my previous greeting card ideas into shirts, such as IT'S CANCER (though that one really works best as a greeting card, methinks).

However, I have no interest in making a CafePress shop or anything like that. I like the hand-lettered look, probably not just because of the whole calligraphy thing but because I'm quite arrogant about my conscious efforts not to brand myself with other people's slogans/ideas. But it would be pretty cool to sell Lydia-brand shirts. After all, as this incredibly brilliant article on the brand underground puts it: Perhaps the first lesson of the brand underground is not that savvy young people will stop buying symbols of rebellion. It is that they have figured out that they can sell those symbols, too.

So: what if I make limited edition shirts? Basically, make some shirts with the above slogans by hand -- each subtly different -- and attempt to sell them individually for more money than your normal slogan'd shirt. Maybe do many of them by commission -- for instance, wait for a person to request a certain slogan and put half the money down before actually making the shirt. Sure, if one of my slogans takes off I guess someone might start CafePressing the things (although I suppose I could copyright them? can you do that? not that it'd be that effective if people really wanted to steal the slogans), but then the "originals" will have more cachet. Is this a good idea?

...

Ecuador considers enshrining women's right to sexual pleasure in law
A new inalienable right could be enshrined soon in Ecuador's constitution: the pursuit of sexual happiness for women.
It's funny how "obvious" it is that men don't need a similar provision. Is that true? I mean, the instinct is always to say that it's way easy for men and they don't need any fucking provisions to feel capable of seeking sexual pleasure, you know? But I'm not sure if that has to be true, or it's (at least partly?) bias. We all know that men have a way easier time getting off. And that's gotta be partly biological. But there is a cultural aspect -- it's very difficult for women to determine what they want sexually, not just because it's biologically harder -- and not just because there are far fewer accepted social examples that show women how they can get off (porn largely seems to fulfill this function for men) -- but because the world hammers the lesson into our heads that the real point, the real goal, of sex is for the man to get off. Not for the woman. So I think I do admire this provision, because the more social backing there is that says: "Yes, you do have a right to your own sexual needs and pleasure despite the fact that you're a woman," the fewer women will have an impossible time with understanding and asking for those things. I could go on, but this is probably a whole post in itself.
from miketodd13.

Spiders see love in a different light
For people, ultraviolet B (UVB) is an invisible, cancer-causing ray to be blocked with sunscreen and dark glasses, but for a species of jumping spider, the light sets a romantic mood. In the first evidence of an animal having the ability to see UVB, researchers have found that the ornate jumping spider uses the light in mating displays.
from fleurs_du_mal.

Lesbos islanders dispute gay name
Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian".

Cool discussion of the current shift from read-only to participatory media
I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. ... She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."
Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment ... they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.
I can't remember where I got this ... though apparently it was posted on BoingBoing.

EveryBlock: a news feed for your block
EveryBlock is a new way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city.
It seems to mostly be crime right now, but methinks it's got a lot of potential to go further.

[Exalted] The best way to deal with Invincible Sword Princess, the hypothetical overpowered Dawn Caste
Assume you're a Sidereal.
You put together a Resplendent Destiny which is "ISP's lovable yet bumbling comic-relief sidekick". Set up a lot of astrology effects to support this.
... and hilarity ensues. I love it when people really get how Sidereals are supposed to work.
from MCP.

wow, I haven't listened to Nine Inch Nails in ages

2008-04-28T04:24:31Z

Sudden Poll! This reprises a meme that went around a few years ago:
Post a memory of me in the comments. It can be anything you want.

...

In a moment of madness the other night, I reviewed almost all my LiveJournal entries from my senior year at Simon's Rock. (Well, not exactly a moment of madness ... I was looking for this excellent Mad Libs entry, with which no drugs were involved.) I found some other classic entries that I'm really quite proud of, including:

* My assertion that Bernie, the dean of Simon's Rock, was a myth. He resigned soon after I posted that entry -- coincidence? I think not!
* My account of the best your mom joke ever, a practical joke that I very nearly played on Jake. Skip past the request for creativity to read it. I actually have no idea what happened to those panties; I just hope my dad doesn't like, find them in my room at his apartment ... well, actually, I think he'd just be amused.
* The first entry where I asked everyone to comment with a memory of me.
* My final Simon's Rock nostalgia entry. Aww.
* Special bonus: ethical conundrum of food colouring, from August post-graduation.

The best link I posted all year was probably Myths Over Miami:
Captured on South Beach, Satan later escaped. His demons and the horrible Bloody Mary are now killing people. God has fled. Avenging angels hide out in the Everglades. And other tales from children in Dade's homeless shelters.

I also discovered the following charming note ... Lydia of 2003-04 stated offhandedly:
I have this bizarre guilt sort of thing for not being all perverted. I mean, I'm really not even slightly perverted. It doesn't seem realistic. Shouldn't I be at least a little perverted? Oh well, I'm probably in denial and my capacity for perversion probably surpasses all, mwa ha ha ha.

Side memories:
* I learned today in Ethics of Warfare that nerve gas smells like Juicy Fruit.
* My entire year's priorities were a three-way tie among thesis, gaming and Dustin. Well, it should be a two-way tie -- thesis and gamingDustin.
* Student Life was sure I must have a drug problem because every time they came by, I was asleep (my normal sleep schedule usually involved staying up until at least 5AM) and "seemed confused and dazed all the time". This is especially entertaining because I did fewer drugs than anyone else who lived in my residence hall.

... But the best part may have been the many, many quotations I recorded from my friends.

AlmightyAnus: i mean, honestly, how can someone be that moronic and not manage to kill themselves trying to operate a toilet?
AlmightyAnus: the only problem with people like that is that the bodies don't disappear when you slay them

MsFireCat: oh hey, one of my mom's coworkers saw a photo of me the other day and apparently said, "she has blowjob lips."
God of Archery: [away message] computer in use. but not by me. say hi to my parents!!
MsFireCat: You're just saying that to freak me out.
MsFireCat: Does your mom know what they're saying about her on streetcorners, Adam?
MsFireCat: If she's really on the computer I hope she sees this. it would be funny.
MsFireCat: HEY ADAM'S MOM!!... I did you last night!!!
(extremely long pause)
God of Archery: lydia, thank you. you made my night wonderful.
God of Archery: that was absolutely perfect.
God of Archery: teach you to IM people without reading away messages first
MsFireCat: I'm on AOL, I can't
MsFireCat: I have to IM to get the away message
MsFireCat: I don't care, your mom can hate me permanently, what happened though?
God of Archery: nothing much...she wasn't at the omputer.
God of Archery: but i just laughed myself to a hemmhorage a second ago

Me: Do you have a ruler, Ed?
Ed: No. I find that a good deal of my oblong objects end up getting lost at your mom's house.

Nathaniel: If you snap, and go after some obnoxious, clueless, bitchy, printer-hogging non-senior with an icepick, I'll post bail. Well, okay. I'll print out *my* 270+ page thesis using the newly vacant and slightly bloodstained terminal, *then* post bail. (He and I had a thesis length contest.)

iamsimplyme2001: okay singing nekkid in the rain is not a hobby, though it is a good way to spend your time
MsFireCat: :laugh: man, I haven't done that in soo long
iamsimplyme2001: wow, must be a drought

Sam Ruhmkorff, philosophy professor: (tells us all about his new habit of playing cricket)
Adlai L.: What's the philosophical justification or argument for taking to a game at which you suck?
Sam: Any question with a necessarily false presupposition cannot be legitimately answered in any possible world.

MsFireCat (4:12 AM): my reading comprehension skills have begun to blow (due to the insanity of senior year)
sensorysensation (4:12 AM): oh man, my reading comprehension skills have just gotten fucked up
sensorysensation (4:12 AM): like... Foucault is mad easy
sensorysensation (4:13 AM): but I'm pretty sure if I tried to read a novel
sensorysensation (4:13 AM): I'd explode

Delea: they probably encode lessons in their DNA
Delea: snakes do that
Delea: playing dead is a hereditary trait
MsFireCat: dude
MsFireCat: that's awesome
MsFireCat: so we could encode snake dna in people and make them play dead?
Delea: We'd have to infect everyone with the playing dead virus
MsFireCat: it'd be like "28 Days Later", only mad boring
Delea: zombies would approach, but if you threatened to attack, they'd just fall down

Rebecca: You're like the Pope.
Lydia: What?
Rebecca: Why do people always look confused when I say that?

Mad MacRae (6:19 AM): I noticed the earlier your mom joke but I was startled
MsFireCat (6:19 AM): startled?
Mad MacRae (6:20 AM): It was like watching C-Span and having someone suddenly whip their dick out and slap someone with it and go, "I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE!"
Mad MacRae (6:20 AM): Startling!
(later)
Mad MacRae (6:26 AM): Your mother is such a Kantian that when she sits around the house she needs to consider the ramifications of everyone in the world sitting around the house and whether or not it would be reasonable

Squiberis (5:26 AM): There are strange sounds coming from the other room...
MsFireCat (5:27 AM): Describe them. 15 words or less
Squiberis (5:28 AM): It's like a rat pretending to be a dryer.

I adopted a cute lil' pikachu fetus from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!

Lorien Feanturi: i...
Lorien Feanturi: the fetussy thing
MsFireCat: Shocked?
Lorien Feanturi: i hope you have horrible nightmares of big scissors and a llama suspended above your bed
MsFireCat: the llama of damocles?

Well. There you have it, gentlemen. I wonder if any of the people quoted above will see this entry.

...

Texas Polygamist Wives Calendar
Like it says on the tin.
from miketodd13.

Apparently Katherine Hepburn was incredibly awesome.
"If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married."
"It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack."
"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."

Baen Free Library
Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed.)
from foolinchrist.

Vladimir Putin Too Sexy for His Kremlin, Eyes Bid for Catwalk
In a rare exhibition of hotness, Russian President Vladimir Putin posed shirtless while vacationing with Prince Albert II of Monaco in the Siberian Mountains. The hunky former KGB heavyweight thrilled an adoring Russian public with his ripped chest, toned arms, and pert breasts.
Initially feigning indifference to the attending press, President Putin then smirked while tearing a Moscow phone directory in half with his bare hands, used a classic judo hip-throw on a Black bear, and then clenched a strap in his teeth to pull a Lada sedan across a creek.

The Metropolitan used to have a fashion blog!
Apparently it's closed now, but their archives are awesome. They always did have crazy awesome old fashion exhibits.
from dvitol, I think.

Nostalgia Digest: the Glory Days of Old Radio
They've got some supercool stuff in the archives.

2AM insight of the day

2008-04-24T07:11:27Z

Discuss:

The idea of "female mystery" -- female sexual mystery, female emotional mystery -- is one of the most damaging cultural concepts for women. It not only leads men to feel like they don't need to bother with understanding women (and often, therefore, with aiding women or contributing to female liberation); it also leads women to feel like they don't have the right to be understood.

ah, the lyme

2008-04-21T06:51:58Z

Ideas my housemates and I came up with tonight include (dialogue may be paraphrased):

1. Earplug earrings

Mike: (holding up bag of earplugs) Look at all these earplugs.
Me: Oh my god, can I have some? These are awesome. Whoa, this one is really awesome! I should take a picture!
Lisa: We should rate them!
Me: Yes! We should rate all of them on five-point scales! And then post our findings to the Internet! You know, these earplugs would make some great earrings.
Lisa: Yeah, you could suspend them on your ears from little chains, so that if your coworkers were annoying you then you could just go ahead and stick them in your ears!

2. Celebrity hose water

Basically, we should sneak into celebrities' gardens, fill up bottles with their hose water, and then sell that water for $5 a pop (or more if the celebrity is really huge). Just imagine it: hose water from Madonna's garden, $10 a bottle. We could build up the mystique. Eventually people would be wondering whose garden would be hit next! Having your hose water stolen and sold as bottled water would become a status symbol!

3. Jesus waffle iron

'Nuff said.

4. Greeting Cards by Lydia

Examples include (all of these are in plain lettering, on a plain white background, unless otherwise noted):
* Torture is fun
* You will die
* You will die tonight
* You will die tomorrow

Me: And I'll also make one that says, "It's cancer."
Matthew: How about, "Your dog has cancer"?
Me: Yes, and it can have a happy picture of Lassie running across a sun-soaked field!
Matthew: We could do a whole cancer line!
Me: The final one could just be a postcard that simply says, "Cancer"!

P.S. I'll try to actually call people tomorrow and also respond to old email / livejournal comments. Sorry, I've been holed up in my room gazing with feverish intent upon a writing project since mid-yesterday, except for the time that I went to work today and gazed with feverish intent upon the project using my work computer. (I am an awesome employee.) And before that, Mike T. was visiting for a week and we were dressing up like demons and running about to masculinity lectures and old radio show demonstrations and goth nightclubs, and also I was finally sending off my Peace Corps medical forms (now I get to hurry up and wait to hear whether they think I can be trusted not to have a nervous breakdown in Africa).

P.P.S. Piranha. (Available for $15 on the North Side!)

P.P.P.S. Does anyone have that comic that refers to the Saturday Night Live cowbell sketch + cancer in a genius fashion? I believe the dialogue goes something like this:

Doctor: You've got a fever.
Patient: And the only prescription is more cowbell!
Doctor: No. Cowbell cannot cure any fevers. Especially not cancer. Which you have.

P.P.P.P.S. There will soon be a Bowers House Lecture Series. We'll serve fries and call it "Lectures and Fries". This is not a joke. We're hoping that the first lecture will be this dude speaking on the subject of rat social dynamics.