nameless child (sonogram)

Been reading up on stuff (1000+ posts that need sorting out in my demonfeeder), and upon flipping through Whatever came upon a post interesting enough to want to click through to the comment (this post which is a blog-to-blog discussion), Cow Watcher snatched a thought here:

#23 by Doc Rocketscience on December 29, 2010 - 1:22 pm

John, as a result of this I just read the original post from 2006 for the first time. I have some questions. I note that comments are still open there.Would you prefer that I contribute to that (albeit quite dusty) discussion, or this?

#24 by John Scalzi on December 29, 2010 - 1:23 pm

Either is fine but if you want people interested in that particular essay to see them, it’s probably better to put them there rather than here.

See how that works, where with all the crossing and linking possible, between computers, information, platforms, programs, whatever,  in the end the thing that is our master remains time. No matter what we invent to help us link, we remain linear creatures and must make linear decisions. Will there come a day where we can develop split personalities for every moment we have to spin off our digital self into old parts of the digital world, or will we develop a sense, a social ritual or handshake to indicate we're visitors from the future and that at the same time allows us to instalink to it. A rollerdex of spinoff blips or something. Am I making sense? I don't mean developing some sort of digital agent to do the job for us (because it's a SF idea and besides I'm already using that idea). Usually, when we humans change the world (as the abstract place the world is after processing by our brain), it's by using old tools. Tools we know, inside and out, and use on new problems. In the same way the first ever smiley (click for archeological reference) changed the language we use to communicate, turning us into embryonic Bester* machines.
Anyways, sense or not digiblips, into the New Project container it goes with other thoughts on digiblippery and networking. Note to self: the baby still needs a name.

On the topic of instalinking and moving from one world/workspace/headspace to the next, my mind finds tabs mightily difficult to sort out the last few days. It happens once in a while, and I don't know how to fix it. At work I was totally lost between the running programs/groups in the taskbar and Excel tabs, always flipping the wrong things to the surface. It's not even a "clickspaces being in the same area" thing, since the Firefox tabs are currently also annoying the crap out of my digital-spatial senses. Like working in a cramped office on a cluttered desk. It only exists in digispace and yet it is so cluttered I can never seem to find the right piece of paper and I'm muttering to myself about "where did I see/put that thing?".
Why is my mind so confused? Is it working on stuff and not communicating, or is it the yello-boogers' influence (sinusitis yay!)?



* I don't mean something made by  Bester Machine Enterprise Co.,Lt from Japan, which makes "printers machinery for cup noodles, ice cream, pudding etc." whatever that actually might be. What I meant was actually the way in which reading Bester (specifically Golem100) teaches your mind to think differently about the tools we use to express language, the ink on paper, the characters defined after centuries of convention. And suddenly a semi-colon is not just punctuation but a reduced image of a set of winking eyes, and math and language are not so different...  

from Alfred Bester's Golem100

meep meep

haz work changes: roster will change to 3 days a week, since it's no use going for a half-time job and sitting the other half of my time on a train or in a station waiting for one. yay!

done some writing on train/lunch break. with pen and paper !gasp! and also a bit on laptop. editing Barynn 1 to make voice and shtuff fit with Barynn 2. this might be a never-ending-cycle, digiblips. thought about that while thinking of some ideas I had to fiddle a bit with Dreams of Cold Stone, and realized editors must be like cameras: it's only when the manuscript passes through their lenses that it becomes immutable, capturing the moment.

started Palmer's Version 43, stuttered. He does annoying characters a bit too well.

picked up Abraham's 2nd omnibus Season of War and breezed through that instead. hooked hubby on Stross, hubby went out and bought all the Stross he could find. now I need a ladder to tackle my to-be-read pile. methinks whenever vampire/Moscow nights runs out of steam, there will be Laundry universe waiting.

hubby also bought all the Le Carré he could find for rereading. keeps telling me I really should read some. I eye the TBR pile and make non-committal noises, or mumble something about him really needing to finish the beta-reading of Tiger of Opal and trying not to sarcasnap about how Le Carré is the new Pynchon in the house.

it snowed. thawed a bit. snowed some more. and some more. making that going to work thing just that little bit more interesting.

some of the flux (not work) imploxidated all over the place. my head turned itself inside out and is now in a much better place. picked up Version 43 again. and finished. note-to-self: need to put a cnepur backup on laptop so I can prep the blog on train (or in station).

started Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. like the story sofar though it took a while for the narrative to hold my attention, in spite of all the interesting new words, because you see, I don't like your similes, sir, no siree, don't like them at all.

meanwhile still no new government in Belgium:

• good point: apparently not having panicky egos at the helm helped to stabilize the economy, though they keep telling us that's a fluke, an illusion that won't hold until tomorrow, don't believe the hype pretty please
• good point: since the ship doesn't sink, it dawns on the sailors that maybe they don't really need that many captains, mm?
• bad point: during the slow but steady negotiations (they're talking about really big reforms, so give them time and space) it becomes more and more apparent that Europe is like a nirvana and all the serious, experienced politicians of this small but confusing country have transcended the last couple of years leaving only the idiots in this quagmire of communities, languages, and egos. we're left with the dregs, damnit
• bad point: some minor routine stuff running afoul, for instance the signatures needed to hand social institutes the money they've been alotted in budget need to come from areal/ full government. so some governmental social institutes had to loan money from real banks to pay the needy (at stellar rates of course, like as if society ever did something for the banks, innit just so?), meaning said institutes will have less to hand out to the needy, or need more of my tax euros than foreseen which I would be okay with if it wasn't simply to hand some more tax money to the banks. they've already got their fair share for the next century or so, I'd say.

In all: all Belgium seems to need is a Harry Tuttle.

whirligig

One that went down some rapids. That's how I feel. Things been moving fast, all things, in all directions, but things are finally looking up. Short and quick update:

I haz work, 18h in 4 days. Transport to and from work is the absolute epitome of what makes Belgium Belgium, which means for what is basically about 35km in distance I can go by car (1h30 drive in morning traffic if it goes well) or public transport: 2 buses, or 2 trains, or 1 or 2 trains and a bus, or 3 trains, all combinations averaging in principle on 1h, which I can live with if not for the fact that the 2nd train is ALWAYS late, and the either/or choice means the season ticket becomes expensive in case I don't use the bus, and I don't want to use the bus anyways.
See, I'm a "cured" car-sickness person. As a kid, mom or dad always put some anti-emetic in me, and it was no silly ritual. I remember being yanked out of the car at high speed and being held over the gutter so I could safely puke my guts out. Nowadays I only get carsick 1% of the time, and I can on good days even read! Buses tend to have a lower success rate, because of the being packed, usually too hot and smelly, the weird turning motions, not to mention speed bumps and roundabouts.
But trains I've solidly conquered. Only in 0.0001% of the time I might get a queasy stomach, so I prefer the train for transport any day: at least I can write and read without having to take drugs. And if I'm going to lose time by being shuttled from one place to another like cattle, I prefer to do something useful at the time, and somehow trying very hard not to blow chunks in the driver's neck is not what I deem useful. The driver might have another opinion of course.
Anyways, the train route to and from work is something that belongs in Alice's dreamworld or a Brazil bureaucracy: coming and going ain't the same. Even the hour makes a difference in at what station I have to make the connection with the second train. And then considering that with every passing year trains are riding less punctual, you can imagine that this shifting world needs some adapting to before I can slog the laptop along.
But! Cow Watcher has been busy, and with rewriting Barynn 1 no less, and also kicking around some new ideas.The incubator is running at full speed, digiblips, and this is good news!

Anyways, meanwhile I had to content myself with books that other people wrote. I finished Palmer's Red Claw (*love*), struggled through Charlie Stross' Atrocity Archives (struggle was my own head's fault: shifting world, getting up at silly hours to go to work, getting head filled with new important information about what job entails, waiting long time for trains that may or may not come, and then being just the halfbreed nerd that gets stalled on the technobabble because I know too little or too much), breezed through Daniel Abraham's Shadow and Betrayal in 4 days so much did I love it. I'm considering what to pick for the train tomorrow, but I think reading 600-some pages in 4 days has sprained my reading muscle. I'll see what entices me come morning.

Oh, and we're having a polar week, snow included. And guess who once again forgot to buy salt to ice-proof the pavement and bicycle lane in front of the house, mm? Tomorrow morning is going to be interesting indeed...

Paris

was fun, exhausting, and it was great to see that even on the scale of a world championship event organizers can manage to screw up pretty big. But there was great fencing to see, and quite some surprises.

Things I'll remember of Satur/Sabreday: the American Homer who was up against a French opponent twice in a row (first Apithy, and what a match that was!, then Lopez), which means having the whole of the Grand Palais, as in hundreds of Frenchies cheering their fencer on and pin-drop silence when you score a point, and just marching on. That's quite some mental strength there. And of course the beautiful final: the German Limbach (who's 194cm but uses this length with surprising elegance and explosiveness) against the Korean Won (who can jump impressively high, probably over Limbach if he really wants to) and Won won.

Spent Sunday in my favorite Parisian museum, l'Hotel National Des Invalides, though the expo on the Tsars was a bit thin. But for all you digiblips that like to see weapons of all sorts, real fighting ones to beautifully inlaid hunting weapons and honorary sabres and uniforms and half the collection of Vauban's architectural models (the other half is kept in Lille) and also a good expo on the world wars: get there early, and you can easily while away a whole day in whatever period you like, and your ticket remains valid for the day (so you can leave and do something else if you're the kind of digiblip that could actually get enough of weaponry).

Monday was Epee day at the Championships, and though not my weapon, saw some great stuff too, even if our favorites managed to shoot themselves in the foot whenever they could. Had to leave before the finale to catch our Thalys, and then found out that the finalists we predicted did everything the other way around. Silly epeists...

On the writing front: on the train to the international station of Brussels Cow Watcher handed me an excellent solution for a problem that came out of something it thought up for part 3 in the Barynn trilogy and which has been bugging me for a very long time. Alas not an easy and simple solution, but damnit, a good one.

flux continued

this week running around to get what's needed done to get this job which already had me running around for the last two weeks. Yes, a job! Ain't that cool?
And of course, now also running around to get the stuff done I kept postponing since the life of the jobless stretched out into infinity and well who cares when this or that trash finally gets brought to the recycling center? Well it doesn't stretch into infinity, not really, so...
And this weekend we're off to Paris to see some World Championship class Fencing, which means some more flux, as I'll need to plan the packing carefully.

I've got this feeling this month, even if it's only just starting, is going to be over in a blink of an eye.
But the good news/job prospect has Cow Watcher singing with joy. I mean seriously, soon there will be trains again, and cows, and no way to avoid writing.

Meanwhile I've finished reading Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, currently into Palmer's Red Claw.

Tired

• of people who should know better, since writing is what they do, than to contribute to the easy pegging of names/words to people, whether the issues are racism, religiously inspired dumbassery, feminism, and all other sorts of morality based judgments. We've got enough crap like that going on TV and the blogosphere as it is.
• of people who should know better twice-over, since writing Sfaich is what they do, than to contribute to reigning and ever-growing dumbassery that everything can be reduced to one simple word, one single issue. If world-making is already such a daunting task, why not learn from the experience and deduce that the real world is an even more daunting place to describe accurately?
• of people who should know better thrice-over, since they have hands-on experience on dealing with readers who may or may not give the whole extent of their lifework but a casual glance before making an easy single-word judgment based on a paragraph or even one book out of many. If you're not prepared to read up on the complicated field of ethics, don't make simple judgments based on an article or two, and especially don't parrot others who were obviously just as lazy.

Or, to quote my man Marcus:

Word after word, every one by itself, must the things that are spoken be conceived and understood; and so the things that are done, purpose after purpose, every one by itself likewise. And as in matter of purposes and actions, we must presently see what is the proper use and relation of every one; so of words must we be as ready, to consider of every one what is the true meaning, and signification of it according to truth and nature, however it be taken in common use
~Meditations, Book VII.4

d'oh

Yup, still alive a good beating with a sabre and a flu-now-turning-into-snotfest later. Been a naughty girl with the digiblippery, I know, I'm sure y'all missed me heaps. Promise I'll do better. Soon. Too much things in flux right now.

and yet...

Just had to share this cool thang I found through Global Guerrillas: mycelium as near nanotech assemblers.

Seriously, Capsule Corp ain't that far off.

Radio silence

Sshht, I'm way too busy with this to keep up with my imaginary and virtual audience, dearest digiblips. Yup, that's how low you rank in my life, how I'm doing in your ranking?
I'll be back to normal after the weekend, if the body craptastic holds up during the beatings I will be enduring and handing out.

And hopefully my judgment of distance has improved since this picture was taken.

Shtuff

Alrightie, finished reading Sykes' Tome of the Undergates. Did laundry, cleaned windows. Filled 3/4 big weight salvage bag with crap from the garden and shed and whatnot. Got one non-review up.
Now gonna cut the last grapes off the vines and perhaps round up some apples, and then I think I've been quite productive enough for an asthmatic person disabled by a cold-that-simply-won't-break-through-but-still-festers-in-the-airways. 

Wish Cow Watcher would stop chasing real devils and having imaginary conversations with real people, and occupy itself with stories and fantasy people.

*proot*

The problem of brainfarts is that they beget brainfarts and not even if you wrote day and night would you be able to write all those damned stories.

Cucumbers

So while I play All's Quiet at the Waterfront, let's not drown this blog in silence. I know how much you missed my non-review, beloved digiblips, even if that was a secret promise to myself and not to you (like duh, if you hadn't figured that out yet). You certainly missed the weekly adventures of my alter ego, not to mention my witty insights into whatever is hot news in Belgium.

To cover your pain I'll just copy paste three little items from my "something to talk about when it's cucumber time"-file. Cucumber Time equals what you English folks call the Silly Season now, but apparently at some period of time your English tailors also used cucumber time to indicate slow season. Now wondering whether it has something to do with the fact that pickling cucumbers/gherkins is not like, preserving the most nutritious or tasty foodstuffs, so not really working on surviving winter (imagine having to live on pickled gherkins all winter!). It's really not a heroic work either, not like fitting a couple of pumpkins into a jar or making chutney or sumfin.
Anyways, for your pleasure I'll trot out some brainfarts, like news is wont to do in such times, with stories about a Taiwanese dog helping old people crossing the street, or quaint medieval left-over habits of some village you have never heard of even if it's somewhere in your own country...

 _________________________________________________

SF/F/H in my mind sounds as Sfaich.

Meatball: Oh you write then? And what sorts of stories you write?
Me: Sfaich

I know, correctly pronounced it should be Esefefaich. But that sounds as if you've got a mental disease. But then, what do you write again?

 _________________________________________________

On "blogging community": Half the time I don't even read the crap you spout into cyberspace, digiblips, I just mark that shit read and move on. I can only follow two or maybe three blogs in depth, because there's also real world and news and silly stuff like that out there. And let's be honest, 2 or 3 people does not a community make. The whole format is also wrong, since you can't give and take on the same level. You yell something at the world, and maybe some of the world yells back. Is that valuable communication? Is that relation building?

 _________________________________________________

What everybody seems to have forgotten about in light of e-readers:
Suddenly it's all-okay to be staring at a lightbox for hours on end? The bad for the eyes has evaporated (true enough, we've got LCD instead of CRT now, but how is LCD less demanding on the eyes, especially on handheld devices, out in the open, with reflections assaulting the screen?). They truly are miraculous machines, aren't they?
Makes me kinda grudgy against all those years people nagged to be careful with me eyes (by me mom, me teachers, Concerned Parents Inc, and the government) when I was watching television and playing computer games for hours on end.

 _________________________________________________

In less brainfarty news: Mega-Evil-Beta Reader, whom you know as "hubby", dearest digiblips, started reading Tiger of Opal. He's making agreeing noises. Asked me about some of the noir stuff I put in, so obviously that's working. So far, at least, but allow me to go Weeeeeeee, even as his angry red pen scratches away at my beautiful baby.

Talking to walls

or thin air for that matter is a hobby of mine, dearest digiblips. So really, I'm not offended by the silence when silence is what I not only expect but partly also hope for.

In real life however I'm not so keen on silence, especially when silence is what I expect nor hope for. Also not so keen on people who support you all the way except for that last step. No stomach for that "yes yes go kill that dragon we're right behind you, really!" sort of situation, not when you're the finding all those supporters lacking when the dragon puts its beady eye on you. But, as a writer of unpublished shit, I'll give it a bit of spin and pretend it's a learning experience. And it is true, in yesterday's meeting of the fencing club direction I've learned quite a bit about group dynamics, about the courage of men, of how things are discussed and decided before and after the meeting but not during (what kind of crazy expectations is this silly blonde having anyways?), of how easy history is rewritten and how easy it is to get from SNAFU to FUBAR.

So, FUBAR got all over yesterday's non-review and it won't be for today either. We'll see. I must now take time and pour energy into separating those mountains that I can move, and those mountains I'll only ever be pretending to be moving. Because after yesterday's meeting it was clear that all the time and effort I've put into the club the last couple of months comes down to me desperately trying to fill my empty life and that honestly not where I thought I was. Stupid enchanted forests.

What difference this day makes?

 Well, this:

What you see here is the end result of a hard day's work and half a pumpkin, 5kg grapes and 3kg blackberries: Pumpkin Chutney (very fragrant and spicy stuff), Grape Jam with Rosemary (excellent with lamb), Grape Jelly with pineapple and pecans (smoked chicken here I come!), and Spicy Blackberry Jam (spicy with a drop of Strohrum, should be excellent for patés, and meatloaf and homemade Christmas pudding).

With the jam and jelly genius I am, it's hardly any wonder I just don't seem able to shake those kicking the nicotine habit pounds. Ach well, such is life.

Tomorrow I'll finish off the other half of the pumpkin, and then next week I'll work through more grapes and blackberries.

Jitterbugs

There's still some fallout drifting past from someone's misinterpreted brainfart, like snow or dandruff. Little things bug me in what people say in their fierce condemnation of said brainfart, because while most comments or open letters about said brainfart are quite thoughtful, some of those thoughtful people proceed to run into the same fail. Not race fail. Not religion fail. Word fail. Thought fail. In a discussion about morals and ethics, I consider that pretty bad shit, digiblips.

This afternoon, a bug bit me when Shaun Duke/SMD over at his blog, World In a Satin Bag, added some more beating of the dead horse by beating someone else beating a dead horse. But then I figured, hey, enough dead horses already, and who's going to eat all that?

Yet I couldn't refrain from skimming the reactions, where another huge bug but me while I read Dave Baxter's comment:

I still disagree with you, SMD, that Moon displayed politics worthy of a boycott (though they were faulty, I still fail to perceive the majority of stances you claimed she'd supported with that controversial post), but yeah, this guy's "If you boycott, then we'll boycott you" is the beginning of a Middle East style never-ending sense of victimization on all sides.
"Middle East style never-ending sense of victimization on all sides"? Does the Middle East have sole right, or enough right to make it a style, to "never-ending sense of victimization on all sides"? Why could he not have made that statement without adding "Middle East style"? Or supplant it with, oh, myriad of choices here.... Belgian style (Flemish-Walloon)? Irish style (Protestant-Catholic)? Eastern Europe style (Balkans, anyone?). Central African (ehm, go ahead, close your eyes and put your finger on a map of the area; I'm sure there's a story that makes it a perfect fit)... How about Cold War style?
Considering the context I think "Middle East style" is a really really really bad choice of words to voice your thoughts. And fuzzy: what Middle East we talking about? Israel/Palestine? Bahrain? Egypt? Iraq?

Then, closer to home: in the cached and saved and widely spread around comment section of Elizabeth Moon's post, a bug bit me in the ass when I read Rhipowered's comment:

The line-up confuses me. What do France, Belgium and Switzerland have in common, and, by omission, have not in common with the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, UK...?
Seeing how later on France's burqa ban is mentioned, I'm left to assume it's about veils and burqas. But even then I don't see the logic of the line-up. The discussion on a burqa ban has been raging in the Netherlands since late 2005. As far as I can see, the Swiss are also "just talking" about the issue. What about Denmark? They have partial bans in place...

True, the Belgian law concerning face-obscuring wear, still in the making I think due to the whole having no real government and overall there being more of a political jihad between Flemish and Walloon for over quite some months now, has in the media always been called the burqa law (and boy do I love the media!). I trust the senate to make sure there's no slanted letter or word in the law's make-up that could make it even in the most LSD infected interpretation a law against burqas.
The law is in fact the federalisation of what local law has been saying from olden times: your face must be recognisable in public. This ties in into Belgium's concept of privacy and public security, which might be difficult to understand in a country that goes apeshit each time something along the lines of an ID card is mentioned. See, in Belgium, the street is considered a public arena. As a citizen I have rights and plights in that arena. One of the plights is: I have to have my ID on me at all times. This is the means by which I can prove to the cops that I have rights as a citizen. I do not have the right to be drunk in public. I do not have the right to run around naked in public. Not sure about fornication in public, but in any case, the rule of thumb is: don't do things in public you don't want your mommy to find out, right? If your neighbour sees you humping someone who is not your wife in public, you cannot sue him for invasion of privacy, all right? I do not have the right to ask a fellow citizen for his ID, that's privacy at work, and if you catch me standing on a box to try to peek in through your window to see what you doing with that woman who is not your wife, you can sue me for invasion of privacy even if I'm standing in the street. However, I do have the right to be able to identify any and all people hanging around in the public arena. That is my security against burglars, rapists, and all sorts of people that hide their face in order to do wrong.
Sadly this upsets a handful of people that have no evil in mind. Some are burqa-wearing Muslimas (I've seen estimations of 30 to 100, this on 10 million Belgians), who will probably be confined to the house if and when the law becomes active. It will probably upset a biker or two who in his haste to buy cigarettes or sumfin' might catch a cop in a bad mood. That is the price they will pay to keep our public arena safe and equal. They might be asked for ID. They might be asked to explain themselves or get a fine. Just like drunks might. Or not. And yes, the public has to keep a really close eye on the workings of the federal police, because yes, there are sadly far too many incidents that smack of racism.

So, all this considered, I'd like to invite rhipowered to do his own homework: I'm sure in the UK that all people are equal, are treated equal, that classes are in more than just name a thing of the past, and everybody lives the happy and carefree life of equal citizens: not afraid from fellow citizens and not afraid from government or its servants.

And then I'll raise you a veil-wearing MP. Where's yours?

Wednesday = Alter Ego Day

So there, go here.

Bloodsuckers

There's nothing so annoying as having to wait for sun- and hubby-up so you can organize the hunt on what surely must be the last of the summer mosquitoes.

Last of the Summer Wine

Good news: I'm not a drunk!
Turns out I mistook the beginning of a sinusitis for a hangover. Haha, ain't that funny.
See I'm laughing, so I'm neither as depressed as I thought I was.

Anyways, I figured I'd tackle this sinusitis thing before it swamps my head with all kinds of snot by being productive. First I went and plucked the last of the blackberries. It's not much, but they're real ripe and juicy.

 And then you can go here for a non-review on Midwinter.


I considered being so productive as to post a thoughtful comment over at Mark Newton's Forgotten Tomes post, because, you see, I am terrible with books. I think it has to do with the way my brain makes stories. Finishing a book is to my brain as much catharsis as a nice dream with a solid ending. And then *poof* the story goes. When the stories are good, stuff sticks around. A name or two. A really good scene. Atmosphere. But nothing solid enough to be able to give someone a recap of what the book was about.

But since I've now written all I really need to say on the subject, why should I bother, dear digiblips? Reread the previous paragraph if you're addicted to my usual logorrheic self. Me, I've got a kitchen to clean, preserve pots to get up out of the cellar, some more fencing club stuff to sort out, and a ton of grapes to process. No really, I think I've still got 2 more tubs on the vines, but these will keep me busy all evening as it is:

Pickled brains

Sort of sucks, since I don't remember drinking that much.

That's bad, innit?

This means I'm going to postpone my non-review till tomorrow. I guess by then I'll have figured out which title to tackle.

Snipping off all of my beautiful grapes that won't be ripening much more in the weakening sun: also for tomorrow. We're talking a whole lot of grapes. And since they'll probably be somewhat sour with all the crap weather of August, it'll mean the official start of preserve season. Together with the giant blackberries from the freezer, and the pumpkins people tend to send my way. Need to clean kitchen first. And lots of pots. And the oven.

Also, I postponed reading Kiernan's Red Tree because a story about a depressed writer all alone in the sticks is not quite working for the current headspace. I'll get back to it when I feel more solid about being depressed. Or solid about being less depressed. Or shtuff, or sumfing.


Some good news during the weekend: the dishwasher was just acting up and not really broken.
I think. Could be my magic touch, though. See, sometimes I just touch broken tech and it works. It runs in the family. But since it's not a constant power, it can be quite infuriating. And, by touching things one doesn't learn as much as actually taking tech apart and putting it together again. Although, I could tell you some funny stories about that too...

The frizzled main computer has been replaced, because you know, I used all my touch&fix mojo on the dishwasher and the old motherboard I'd laying around for emergencies sort of died over the years. Or it's a power problem, and since it would be the third power supply to frizzle I'm quite right to consider the whole box jinxed. All I still need to do is salvage ram and whatever else is still useful for this computer. That's on hold though until my mojo's been replenished.
The prefab from Packard Bell wasn't even as expensive as I thought. It comes with Windows 7, hence I was all set for the required wrestling match with Bill Gates' spawn to get it all configured to *my* preferences. Even that turned out a breeze. Just the regular "I'm not talking to my older brothers" attitude that, let's be honest, anybody dealing with microsoft is well used to. Somewhere this week, when the pickled brain is over and other stuff that needs doing is done, I'll start the the maddening quest for a working peer-network.

Read through the Tiger of Opal draft. I'm a genius. Some spots still need polish, and the end needs some more work, I think. Wondering if some of the cryptic shit isn't too cryptic. Needs beta-reading.

Was also going to say something about devious digital blips, but I forgot what exactly. Sun hurts eyes. Need to soak brain in mixture of hot water and scented salts now.

ASSociations

In the Not So Serious Blogs that I follow, a post over at Grab a Pen led me to a title on Amazon called Birth Control is Sinful [...], and Amazon was so kind to show that title right there in my history next to Palmer's Debatable Space. Which I found extremely funny. Ex. Treem. Ly.

This might be an effect of the sleep-deprivation-brainshrink I'm still subject to. Now, knowing Tahereh has a certain fondness for crayons, I figured maybe I could come up with a funny word involving crayon for her contest.
I could not.
This is, evidently, also due to the brainshrink.
So I asked google, because mainly that's what google's for.

Google led me Yahoo Answers (which, considering I currently live in a world of animism, involving omniscient but dumb technogods [seriously, why do AIs always have to be that much smarter than us?], the referral is in itself also mildly funny). But, back to Yahoo Answers, which asked and answered: 

How many words can you make from crayon?

Acceptable scrabble words are
1 1 letter:A
11 2 letters:AR AN AY AN NA NO ON OR OY YA YO
13 3 letters: RAN RAY ANY ARC NAY NOR CON CAN CAR CAY COY OAR YON
7 4 letters: ORCA CYAN CORN YARN RACY ROAN NARY
5 5 letters: CORNY RAYON CARNY CRONY ACORN
1 6 letters: CRAYON

1+11+13+7+5+1=38

Actually, I logged on to post my er... Surprise? Disbelief? Disdain? to discover someone actually spent time and effort typing that out. Who does that? What for? People who have nothing else to do in life, no work, no friends, some poor sleepless shmuck with brainshr--

Oh *cough/shrug* well, who am I to laugh at idiots like that?



And yes, my ethical awareness about intarwaste is sound asleep.

DO YOU TASTE ME BRED

I'll have you know I was supposed to win the lottery Wednesday evening.

But by Thursday noon I merely had a broken dishwasher and frizzled up main computer.

Last week the submersible pump in the cellar crapped out, after 10 years. It makes me think that there's a universal statutory limit of 10 years on object in this house. What else did we get ten years ago? Must make list.



"Conceptbericht opgeslagen op 4:17"

Well look at that timestamp. Excuse me for the obvious case of brainshrink.

loose-handed priests

The endtimes crawl closer on that quirky entity called Belgium. But if we're lucky enough the mediahounds' and plebs' attention will be drawn away to more important matters (our very own Catholic Church & pedophilia! With extras content and extensions!) long enough for the political nitwits do get down to real business again.

Catholic Church issues always make me feel quirky. People commenting on Catholic Church business makes me even more so, and with our very own pedophile priest scandals spread all over the news, people are coming out of the woodwork with opinions of what the Church should do. Not that they ever go to church, except for on the important Church days maybe, like a wedding in white or a baptism or two. Of, once more, people that do not regularly go to church.

It's the fallacy of Western thought that someone not subjecting him or herself to the Catholic rites has the right to be heard by Mr Chief of the Catholic Church. It's the collision of everyday socialist/democratic values and what is the very core of the Catholic Church: the Catholic Church is in no way intended to be by the people, for the people. Previous pope helped muddy that issue, current pope would rather have a clear line drawn. It's his call, it's his church. Complaining about how the church ain't doing what you, the people, think it needs to do, is like demanding Tesco to sell Asda Smart Price items because that's what you want. Can you hear the big honchos go: Come again?

And let's be honest, with only 1 Catholic, not even necessarily a church going one, against 10 from regions where people actually do attend mass and wholeheartedly support the church, you really think your opinion matters?

Pfah, the question in such issues is never what the church should or shouldn't do. The real question is: why is the police not hauling pedophile priest's ass to the interrogation room with about the same respect as they would a suspect imam's?

Digiworld abuzz and other thoughts

Oh no! It's the end of an era, like a death of the party, the community is dying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's all this talk about death of an era? Don't you silly digiblips know that if you hang around long enough in cyberspace everything comes back, even when it's supposed to be dead?

First I believed this was because in this new millennium even retro is retro-recycled. We do retro so well we're remaking shit before it's made!

Then I thought, maybe it's because the community keeps bits alive like zombie raising necromancers.

But now I understand: cyberspace's got a hell of an echo.

NB: I'm sorta reacting to this and this and this and this ...

Interjection of random silliness: whenever I click through to Larry's blog I think of Gonads & Strife. And  my mind associates this with the death of an era, and somehow quite fittingly, the fall of two towers. Maybe one day, I'll talk about that. Gonads & Strife forever, man.

Anyways, there's been some hissyfitting over some dude (no offense) writing an article on fantasy and postmodernism, with all sorts of people (also no offense) commenting whilst trying to be so much wiser than the previous blogue(r) about the value of the article and postmodernism.

Seriously? Are you kidding me? Here I thought we were safely moving away from that old dead horse and entering the newer, though obviously not quite so imaginative, era of post-postmodernism. But maybe this *is* post-postmodernism at work: everybody's so stuck in/on postmodernism that the only way forward is to keep reinventing what it means to be postmodern. Ad infinitum. Fire up that retro-recycler dudes.

The way I see it, six decades and counting is a whole lot of time to react to modernism. The only place where postmodernism isn't dead is in philosophy, any kind of taste in philosophy. All the rest is resisting and rehashing what came before, which is a natural mechanism in any kind of movement, in any kind of creative act, whether it is in body and mind postmodern or not. Just like modernism reacted to what came before. I, for one, am done flogging a dead horse over and over again. Let's just skip the whole P-mod and move on.

So anyways. Here I am thinking about that Bruce Sterling quote on cyberspace cuz it came up in a convo with the hubby yesterday ("Cyberspace is the 'place' where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city. The place between the phones.").

And I'm thinking of how people are always so surprised when people die in train stations or other busy transit nodes without anybody noticing; it doesn't surprise me, train stations are perfect for spies to meet, thieves to earn their living, terrorists to plant bombs: not because there are too many people packed upon each other for any one to notice something strange, but because there are too many people on automatic pilot zooming through this non-place, this haven of anonymity.

And then I'm thinking maybe it's not so much the anonymity, but the fact that a train station has to the people in the daily commute transit as much no real physical existence as cyberspace. It's that place where mind does one thing, while meat somewhere else does something else. That place where strangers meet, spend daily hours together for months on end, and then suddenly the "community" falls apart as all participants walk away, as if they were living in some collective hallucination. Very faerie adventure like. It's a weird fractured and fractalised reality. X-nay on the P-mod, 'kay?

 

And whereas in faerie-tales there would be a source, or a lady of the lake, or a burning bush marking the border of the here and the other place, there's no tollbooth except for the simple everyday items, like a keyboard or a ticket dispenser. Not sure if things would be different if there were things like ladies of the chips and stuff. Like nine sisters.

And this makes me want to watch Avalon again for the nth time, but I loaned out the DVD and I can't recall to whom. Ain't the real physical world a bitch like that?

Wednesday = Alter Ego Day

So: clickety.

Sun's shining and subsidy stress is under control, so I'll see if I can activate this lazy ass and do some very needed jungle-clearing work in the garden.

Soundbites

Ka-me-ha-me-haaaaaaaaa!

Sadako!

Kiri kiri kiriiiiii!

Monday came and went

and there was no post.

Now I fully comprehend that you don't really care, beloved digiblips. But I do, so I've punished myself for being late on a promise I never made and by making myself write up two not-reviews.

How's that for woman's logic, 'ey?

In the meantime my last spending spree at the Bookdepository has materialized, which means it's a good thing the end of subsidy stress is in sight so I can finish the last book of the previous spree (Kiernan's Red Tree) and get on with that fresh mountain of books.

who needs sleep?

Certainly not me once past 4 a.m.
So, just to prove to myself I haven't unlearned writing fiction (though in how much writing up policy plans for subsidy requests isn't fiction...): I just finished 500 decent words that fit into the 2nd UTA novel. Not much reason to make backflips, except I actually used the elaborate backgrounding and restructuring of the 3,5k I've done. So consider me backflipping y'all.

I grow up and drag along in my suitcase...

With all the Is A Crisis, Is Not A Crisis* going on in Belgium the last couple of months, I figured it must be a really strange country young Belgians live in. Literally all of their life they've been seeing politicians shout and behave like adolescent shitheads or have talks that seem to go nowhere about things only politicians comprehend. They grow up in a Belgium where politicians continually polarize any problem in the country into something from one or the other side of the language barrier.

* sung on the melody of Soul Coughing's Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago

That train of thought got me thinking about what subjects from Belgium or international politics pierced the shell of my oblivious childhood years to leave a lasting influence on my then naive, nay, unformed view on the world outside.

World politics were incomprehensible. Absolutely. Bernard Benson's Peacebook offered a solution quite as simple as letting a little boy ask why big mean old people don't kiss and make up and then have them realize the kid is right. Can I have a collective "Awww that's so kewt"

And while harbouring that Peacebook dream all warm and fuzzy inside, I notice people digging out nuclear shelters in their backyards, even in little old Belgium. Mad Max beyond Thunderdome (1985) only fuels the easily titillated imagination of a child: this is what the end of the world looks like!

Then, 1986, cherry on the pie: spending lunchbreaks at school looking at the sky to see if you can see the poisonous cloud that's blowing in from Chernobyl.
Wait for the icing on this childhood's cake, darling digiblips: SEEING WHEN THE WIND BLOWS DOES NOT HELP OKAY??!!

Damn the world was a scary place back then!
But it did prepare me for whatever shit the world throws me now, from tsunamis in faraway countries to global warming and being an actual jinx for England whenever I visit (terrorist attacks, major strikes), to the End of Belgium. Nothing short of the true Apocalypse can rattle my cage, heh.

On the smaller--Belgian--scale, politics were zzzzzz boring, and televised debates were a contest in conservative fashions and nasal mumblings.
Nonetheless there was some scary shit going on!

Scariest mofos from childhood are the Nijvel Gang/Brabant Massacres, brutal gangsters active from 1982 to 1985, killing, torturing and plundering whatever they came across. The news speaks of pursuits and shootouts with police but on television it still looks like a contest in conservative fashions and nasal mumblings instead of CHIPS. The only exciting piece is the getaway car: a white Golf GTI. Suddenly, EVERYBODY wants a GTI. Dude, the cops can't catch up!

Then there's the very confusing (for kiddies) terrorism of the Cellules Communistes Combattantes, CCC in short. They were EVIL, I mean communist, bombs, links to all those other and certainly more deadly redski terrorists like Rote Armee Fraktion and Action Directe. But let's be honest: if you're turning in your own bombs, and giving the public services enough time to clear the area, you're way nicer than the *real* European terrorists. In the end the only deaths involving a CCC bombing occurred after an error in communication between public services, and this error may or may not have been deliberate, given the unexplained issues that surround both cases.

Good horror only functions if some of it is unresolved and left to fester.
Growing out of '80s childhood I find myself nearly trapped in that nightmare scene from American Werewolf in London: with the Gulf War the Mad Max reality can't be far behind, Chernobyl is on fire, and
legal prying and journalist investigations into unexplained issue and mysteries surrounding the CCC as well as the Nijvel Gang offer links with US stay-behind politics against communist influence. This brings the idea home of what a Cold WAR means. Nothing can be proven, though; it's all out there in the same fuzzball as Gladio, P2 and the fuzzpluzz which may or may not be named Echelon.


All in all, I guess my cold-hearted, cool-headed and sometimes acidly sarcastic worldview is not a surprise after all. Seeing all the truths and lies and love&rockets going on on my TV screen, I wonder what the world will look like to them kids when they're all grown up...

DO YOU SMELL ME DED?

You know, yesterday I was getting all stressed about the tons of serious but rubbish words I've been typing out lately for the fencing club's paperwork, feeling quite miserable about the timeflippingsink it is. Today's silver lining: well, at least this work earns money! Alright alright, it's all for the club, but it's money, right?

So, as stress relief I started sorting through my memory box (see piccie below: yes, it a big shiny black box and it gots all kinda memories inside) and came across my first rejection in life. It included the reader report of my far too short and supershitty work of art (hey, shit happens when you're 16). The reader ends his or her short report with a remark that, while my piece was too short for publication, I'm one to be watched.

I might go hardieharr (with black stuff oozing through the teeth) at that particular line now, 20 years later and hung over from all the recent sockboozing. But it does sort of warm the cockles of my heart that there is ... something. Whether that something can ever become something marketable, well... That's a whole different story.

No, the real funny thing is that my brain is a paranoid misanthropic bastard, so for years I never really *saw* that letter when I came across it. I just saw NO THANK YOU and TOO SHORT and NEEDS WORK, instead of QUITE ELABORATE STYLE AND THEMATICS FOR A 16Y OLD, GOOD NARRATIVE SKILLS.
And, it's not like the tealeaf reading I could be doing with the recent rejections; no no, those words are actually there, black on white.

Really, who needs a brain like that?

Black Box

Hunting

I'm up, because my brain insists I have other things to do at 5:30 than sleep. Hey, what do I know, right? But I got tired of hunting after Mr. Sandman and decided that I *do* have other things I could do.

Also there's a dead mouse starving under some piece of furniture in this room. I know, because its withering little body leaves quite the stink.
Aaah (though not inhaling too deeply)! The joys of having 3 fun-loving cats...

Must find the smelly little bugger.

word up!

I gave my insomnia-induced review of City of Ruin some more thought. Then I thought some more on all the books I've been reading lately. Then I figured I might want to keep track of some of my thoughts on the things I read. That's a whole lot of thinking thunk, my dearest digiblips! Then I thought (even more!) on the way to do this without spending too much time writing full reviews, because that's not Ze Plan.
And so then this happened: Ceci n'est pas une revue. Ze Plan is to have a bit on every title I've bought over the last months, which are listed in ... The List.

Well then, all that thinking has left me short of time. Subsidy deadlines still looming and Belgium is on the verge of destruction. I need to do some real work, hence I leave you with another Loire trip piccie, this time from the castle of Blois.

Stonebiter

PS: yes, it is quite possible I'm addicted to creating blogs.

Spending money

Ahah! Finally the credit card cycled clean.
Immediately charged an obscene amount on it for books, and what did I buy?


Philip Palmer's Red Claw because if you read A, you should read B

Stephen Deas' The Thief-taker's Apprentice, because if you read A, and you can't refrain from B, then you should also read A'

Sam Sykes' Tome of the Undergates, because if you read from A's hand, and you read from B's hand, you should read from C's hand. And because I checked him out in Watertstone's where I decided I wanted to read it but the tome was far too pricy in Brussels (without taking in account the cost of the train ticket). Turns out I can have it delivered by the mailman straight from the UK for 75% of the price, go figure.

Natsuhiko Kyogoku's Loups-Garous, because they waz on the list yo.

Pablo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl just to prove I don't really live under a rock, no siree.

Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief, because I can't not believe the hype y'all.

And then I nearly forgot, well no, actually I did forget so I had to log back in and make a second order for:

Neal Asher's Line of Polity, because I hadn't had so much fun reading an SF thriller since Hamilton's first Greg Mandel book. Just finished Gridlinked and 't was like dreaming of Mandel while watching the end of Akira on repeat and munching on Science and Technology Studies articles laced with LSD.

BE = headdesk

My words of last week were hardly spoken or the shit hit the fan. The last week following the news on the preformation was severely *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

Luckily for les petits Belges, everybody outside Belgium is looking the other way (tsktsk-ing at le Sarko in France, or trying to figure out what to make of the Middle -East talks) or staring at their own navel (tomatoes for Blair & Labour infighting, the Dutch are busy with their own government formation, and in Germany they're busy booting a racist from the Bundesbank board). It could have been a terrible embarrassment.

Without wanting to add oil to the fire, but extremely nauseated by dimwitted online comments from countrymen, I do however feel the urgent need to explain the following:

If Flanders goes independent we'll take Brussels with us (why1: because it's *ours*; why2: if we're not going to take it with us, then why make such a damned fuss over BHV?).
If we take Brussels with us, we'll be taking all the French-speaking inhabitants of Brussels with us (we can negotiate on foreigners like EU or US citizens). This French-speaking minority in New Flanders will have all the rights that go with that status. This means giving up all the small annoyances our Belgian law now let's us heap onto their heads: apparently we're not supposed to harass minorities. Unless, of course, when we do kick out those EU foreigners and don't accede as New Flanders to the EU. Screw the lot of 'em.

Nutshell: more rights for the French-speaking inhabitants in New Flanders. And we still end up having to pay for Brussels, but without the help of the Walloons this time. How is this the solution to the problems you define?



Anyways, < / rant>. I'll leave you lot with two snapshots from architectural ornaments in Tours I feel are quite appropriate:

Man tearing a Lion in half & Man showing his Butt and airing his Klokkenspiel

Promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep

What's that? Wednesday again? Well I guess it's time for the alter ego again. Read up on Comrade Yaroshka's adventures here.


And hence I leave thee, with another piccie from the Loire trip:

Stone dog from Loches

< / weekend trip>

Back from the yearly weekend trip with the inlaws, and in time for the club-management meeting tonight.

I read. I wrote. I splurged all sorts of crazy ideas onto white pages, sadly all for the trilogy that comes after the first trilogy and the hexalogy. How's that for being prepared?

For once I did not take my camera along, seeing as how I'm still wading through French castles and architectural details, and I still have tons of fun pics from previous trips to Ardennes. So I'll leave you with two little snaps of around the village of Herbeumont from a few years back:

Beautiful pine and moss, though we didn't see a lot of that this year

I love the light in those forests...

Dramatic skies, because I like them, and we had quite a bit of that this year. Luckily it was just not too wet or windy to have a couple of nice long walks in the wilderness.

Confession

I didn't like City of Ruin, sequel to Nights of Villjamur.

I read it, beginning to end, no skippage. But I don't like where MCN is going with this, neither style-wise nor plot-wise.

And this, my digiblips, makes me feel like an alien.

Paradoxically, in a bid to prove I'm not an alien, I might have proven I am: I spent the last 10 hours writing down what I didn't like, why I didn't like it, from the point of view of the wannabewriter trying to figure out why the reader was disgruntled. That's far too much time, dudette.

It's saved in my posts list as is, but seeing as how this started out at an insomniac 4 a.m. and it's now 2p.m., it might be over 3000 words of crap. So, instead of posting it right away, I'm going to sit on it over the weekend and see how it looks on Monday or Tuesday. Especially since I'll be gone for the weekend, and I don't want to make grown men cry and then let them stew in it without a chance for ripostes. Because that would be impolite. This ain't fencing after all.

But still I did not like it.


So! On that little note I wish you all a nice weekend, and I leave you with a very appropriate picture. An example of the cute little gifts Pipsqueak leaves us, now August is coming to an end. Usually at the bottom of the stairs in the living, between the cat-hair tumbleweeds and dirt, or worse, in the bathtub...

And along came a cat...

In the land of Beer and Fries

74 days have come and gone since the elections. The same elections that shook Belgium on its foundations, the one where -whatever your political interest or inclination- as a Belgian your only response -in whatever tonality, joy or glee or desperation- was: OH CRAP!

To the north: landslide win of Flemish Nationalists, whose leader saw (strangely intelligent for a Nationalist) that victory coming well enough to tone down his discourse on tearing apart Belgium

To the south: comfortable victory of Walloon Socialists, a party that has been lead by an amiable looking man who loves his fellow man (as in homosexual), but who nevertheless has shown resilience, authority and unforgivingness worthy of his Italian roots when dealing with scandals in his party.

The stage was set for a civil war!!!!!!!!


Well, at least for nuclear government formation talks, that's if the Flemish Nationalist leader, a staunch republican (not in the American sense, but as in: all for kicking the royals out of the palace and into the street) would not mess up protocol. Because, after an election, the Belgian king invites all party presidents and appoints the informator amongst the victors, who then has to find out what alliances are possible. (→ gleegleeglee)

But, the man had a good little talk with the king over coffee and cookies, met up with his co-victor of the Walloon Socialists and had some more coffee and cookies.
Nobody died.
(→ gleegleeglee)
They then decided together (it's a duumvirate!) to invent something like preformation talks: all political parties engage in a discussion that's padded by groundwork laying committees and all, on the 3 hot irons in Belgian politics (laws concerning complicated finances between federal Belgian state and the regional governments; Bey-Hash-Vey; revaluation of the Brussels region)  to come to a form of understanding before deciding on which minister gets what post. Meanwhile the old government continues, but of course with the new parliament.



What's this? Can we allow a government, that filed for political bankruptcy with the king, to continue to rule a country? Is Belgium some quaint Third World country?

I hear you, and it are all viable questions, but then you don't know Belgians. We have fries. We have beer*. We have chocolate. We are a resourceful people mostly interested in our own backyard, with a profound wish to simply lead our lives with too much interference by neighbours or governments. So they wanna have some more talks before starting with the actually elected government? *shrug* Why not? As long as I can continue to do a little moonlighting left and right while they're busy talking, all's well.

The only questions or remarks Belgians had was: Would having MORE talks on the 3 irons solve anything? Would all that blahblah finally lead to some results? Give it three days. Give it five. It'll all implode, you'll see, and then what? Civil war is just around the corner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Prepare your bunker/weapon/escape route!!!!!!!!!



Ah, but as it turned out, it was a good way of doing things. We've now had had 74 days of preformation talks, in an atmosphere so serene you can nearly hear angels sing. Well, okay, there's a hiccup now and then, but really, there's an amazingly small amount of press leaks, name calling, and general blundering about in public. It's so refreshing to have our Belgian tax-euro pay politicians to actually silently do their work, instead of producing an idiotic media circus. Apparently the only stick behind the door that will keep these ill tempered and foul- or loudmouthed politicians in check is the knowledge that if they do not succeed this time, the only future is:
having another election (bà-à-ààààd: not only: as if that's going to change things!, also: and risk complete fucktwat politicians to grab the steering wheel?) that will very certainly will have distrous results, ending in having to request Europe (or the UN, god forbid) for aid in creating a dialogue and fix this Kafkaesque country.


* and we keep the best brands for ourselves, trust me on this. Stella is just the shit we sell to tourists! At stellar prices too Muahahhaaa!



And so, I leave you yet again with a sample of our French vacation. And here you thought Lost was the shiznit. I bring you: The End is Nigh!

Apocalypse: this way!

 The apocalypse is available for man, woman and disabled, in several languages (English, French and German), and if so desired, an introduction is available in a specialized area to help you prepare.

 

Cross your heart & cross your fingers

I've promised myself to get some order in my life, including this blog; order is the order of the day, okay?
Or does that sound too much like I'm trying to convince my lazy, all-over the place, jobless self?
So, like, I'm not going to say up front what kind of organisation I promised myself, because that's setting myself up for having to call myself a liar. No lying, lying bad, okay?

Anyways, for now, let's start with this simple rule: Wednesdays are Alter Ego days.
Ergo, click here for a newly published part of my vampire existence.


And thus I leave you with a sample of our Loire-trip, an example of free thinking medieval France as seen on the outside of the Amboise-castle chapel. Imagine having this over your door...

Eve & the snake

YAOK or NOYAOK?

Stephen Deas is looking for YA readers and will throw free copies at them (not literally; the exact reasons and manners can be read on his blog) in a search for the essence of YA.

While I have yet to read the Thief-taker's Apprentice (damned maxed out credit card!), I think Deas makes an excellent point about how subjective the picking of a hero is, and that our childhood heroes are often completely different from those we pick as adults. All you have to do to confirm this is reread a couple of your favourite childhood novels, and you'll easily find that your beloved hero turns out to be a naive git, and that the boring guy is a far more intriguing character.

Only yesterday, whilst conversing with the hubby on *issues* (or -isms as they are or are not present in books or movies; this mainly prompted by our processing of Newton's City of Ruins), we came upon the subject when he reminisced on having heard about heroes and examples in popular culture from his 18y+ students. A bunch of worldly-wise, free and outspoken young women amongst them nominated Druuna as their female heroin and champion. Seriously, if you have no idea who Druuna is, click on the link and you'll see how this is a quite baffling choice for emancipated women to make. NB: I am not judging the choice here, only illuminating that it really is not as easy as it seems.

So I think Deas is engaging in an interesting experiment here. I know I've always been confused by the many ways you can define a genre, and in the end it *is* marketing that decides (as Adam Christopher wonders in his comment), for the same reason that readers of Dark Romance are considered (by marketing dudes) to feel more at ease standing close to the Thrillers and SF&F section than the mainstream Romance.

I'm one of those crazy kids who was reading adult fiction of all genres by the time I was 13, and most of the YA novels I continued to read were either emotionally quite hefty and thought provoking, or SF&F, where the only difference with the adult stuff was the difference in language. And as it happens, one of the definitions of YA zones in on the language used (as in the actual grammar and words) and whether it is on a YA level, which is already pretty vague if we're trying to define a box, if you ask me. Yet, it's the only definition I've found that holds up cross-genre (fiction, thriller, SF/F,...).

I regularly check reviews or comments about YA books, since I'm not averse to reading a YA book once in a while. But I often wonder why adults find a story more easily not-YA-okay (NOYAOK) when it's SF&F YA (based on the -isms or violence or dark and disturbing stuff the story deals with). As if SF&F for teens must always deal with cute ETs and nice unicorns, while mainstream YA fiction can go further without its YA-okayness being questioned.
Well, unless you're asking your Catholic schoolteacher if you can read Aidan Chambers' Now I Know for your book report. Ah, if only she had known that I was also reading  and working through Dante's Divina Comedia, verse by verse, as my serious lecture that year. Ah, good times, good times...

Bummer

Maxed out my credit card in France, so now I'll have to wait until the card has cycled through its automated payment day. Hope it is soon, because I need to buy more books to read, dammit.

Are you happy now? Are you satisfied?

Slowly picking through the far too many pictures taken during the France trip and that need cleaning up (pictures: oui, flash: non), a pack of work I have to do for the fencing club (deadlines looming for subsidy dossiers), and of course the gazillion posts my feeddemon had on offer upon my return.


Below my less concise response to Mark Newton's most recent post in which he comments on a NYTimes article "E-Books Make Readers Less Isolated". Let's start off with a song quote (title comes from the same song):

                                                     The thoughts of all the lonely people

                                                     Makes you cry

                                                     Cos you're lonely

                                                     You're lonely too inside

                                                                ~Poison Girls

The act of reading and the act of having a meaningful conversation cannot exist at the same spot in space and time, that's about the only thing I can agree with in that article. The rest is all wild tangents about how the e-reader will rehabilitate a supposedly ostracised group.

Having a shiny new e-thingummy people want to ask everything and more about might lead to some socialising, granted. But the point should be made that while you let others fondle your e-reader, you are very certainly *not* reading. I myself find the price of an e-reader still too high to use it as a conversational icebreaker. And having been a Lone Reader in public for years: people certainly do approach to ask about what you are reading, usually people who are Lone Readers themselves but currently out of books to read. Just as the *e*mproved Lone Reader will mostly be approached by people thinking about getting an e-reader (not to ask him out for dinner or engage in a thoughtful and meaningful discussion). Or am I to believe e-readers are enhanced with special pheromones to attract people?

Same goes for the Lone Reader who can now connect online from his corner table (as if he couldn't before through laptop or phone if so desired). The question is, can we still consider the Lone Reader a Reader if he's not reading but having a conversation (in the physical or the digital world)?

Aha, I have unearthed a dark and devilish plot! This is merely propaganda for a so-called miraculous piece of technology that will supposedly change the social habits of the Lone Reader. The Lone Reader, who with his strong attention span and ability to read, has not yet succumbed to the addictive lure of social networking. But now the internet will be slipped into his book, cunningly like a Trojan horse, and Lone Reader will stop reading and start chatting away, and then everybody will finally be equal: unable to read more than 500 characters at a time. Muhahaa!

Also the unknowns who are allowed to declare for or against how socially cool reading whilst commuting/travelling is are both completely beside the point. People do not get onto plains, trains, busses and undergrounds to socialise. They do so to get from point A to B, and most of them, especially when it's a regular commute, look for things to occupy their minds so as not to have to stare at each other like idiots for the duration of the trip (especially the same idiots every day).
So they read (newspapers, books, some stuff for work they forgot to read in the evening,...),  listen to music, do their nails, watch a movie, tap away on their iPhones at lightning speed and connect (with people probably sitting in another train), count cows, sleep...

I'm sure that if they ever invented an e-reader that would watch traffic for you while you read a book or browse the internet, to use on bicycles and cars, you'd really see the sales shoot up.

The return of the not so thin white duchess

Here I am, back from France, head still reeling with the impossibly complicated history of Europe, with a gazillion pictures to sort out. History is written by the victor, and then rewritten and rewritten some more. So if you do go to the region, a bit of historical background certainly helps to put things into perspective. It also helps you to avoid sounding like a total idiot; actually  overheard in one castle:
"Well, they certainly have a lot of things from Brussels and Flanders here"
"Didn't I read somewhere that the owner of the castle Belgian?"
Ack! We're talking about a period long before Belgium existed, I mean, hello, France wasn't France yet!

But anyways, history is just a big noodle puzzle of facts and you can twist the story any way you want it. Just to give some impression of the noodles: there's this large part in European history where the king of France had the Île-de-France (part of modern day Paris, and mightier persons (Duke of Orléans and Maximilian of Austria) had all the rest. Some of these mightier men also had England, like one of the most beloved kings of England (if the Robin Hood story is to be believed): Richard the Lionheart. But if you look at the facts (king of England from 1189 to 1199, hadn't set foot in England yet by 1194) it's easy to see why he would be beloved: what's better than to have a king who doesn't meddle in local affairs!


It was good fun, informative, thought-provoking, and I had plenty of good ideas even if I didn't do one jot of writing. Ha. And now for some fencing!

Dreams

One day I'm going to be sickly famous and stinky rich. So to prepare for my neverneverlife, I'm going to shop for habitat ideas for about ten days in the valley of the Loire, because if anybody knew how to be rich and famous and live large, it were the kings of France, and their queens, ministers, mistresses, dogs and other assorted appendices.

Magic Dice

So, Scalzi's taking a long break and Whatever will become the playing ground of plenty of guest bloggers. Kate Baker showed us her dice and asked about ours, which is actually a great trick to break the ice, isn't it?
Unlike the topic of game systems, dice are a safe conversational subject. And the answers can tell you plenty about a person, game system, and preferred game play. You've got your mixed bag D'ers, 20-D'ers, 10-D'ers, 6-D'ers, even no D'ers.
Just by showing your dice, you're telling something about the game system you use.
And it got me thinking how there's two kinds of people in anything, even in rpg-dicing. You have those who do the cold math of risk calculation and you have those who always end up blaming the dice. Some of us believe in statistics (well, duh, you only had 12% chance to succeed in that roll) and some of us simply love the un-randomness of random.

I'm firmly in the latter pack, because dice are dice, and even if you have 4% chance of fumbling that one roll, you've got plenty enough chances to succeed, and plenty of chances to fumble again in the next. Trust me.

So as a player, you cannot but end up developing fetish excuses, like "Cold Dice Always Fail", or "Rolls on Soft Surfaces Always Succeed". In this animistic view, dice live up in a metalevel of roleplaying, become part of a character and characters on their own. It leads to buying new dice when you change characters*, and punishing them when they act up. Threaten them that they will be replaced.

Which is not an idle threat in my case. Over the course of 18 years, I've gotten quite the collection, and they all have stories. Going back over my most recent dice history, we have:

Manon de Brissot, daughter of a colonial landowner with noble roots, should have been a princess to be married off. But despite her parents efforts, she never lived up to that, the tomboy. Her dice were the classical rounded d6, in pink pearl with black pips, and mauve marble with black pips for the damage she dealt (and boy did she deal damage).

Sandre de Brissot, little brother of Manon, though with certainty a little indiscretion of her mom's with tonton Sevestre, a blond pirate and cursed adventurer,n and not the fruit of de Brissot's loins. Sandre was into forbidden knowledge, alchemy, magic and demons, and ended up a brilliant strategic in the army too. Sharp edged, dark purple with gold marble and golden integer. Always dancing with the devil, he was.

Aron (a.k.a. Captain Lonny, that's what you get for having Asian blood and teaming up with a damned redneck) had rounded d6 of metallic coloured plastic, which were lighter than normal, which irked me somehow so I ended up not liking them. The two damage dice of real metal with blue dots, however, I loved to bits. I'm thinking of getting more. Eventually I started using the red marble dice with gold pips I bought for the current game for Aron too.

So currently Yaroslava works with dark red marbled with gold pips for regular throws, Sandre's magic dice for powers, and the two heavy damage dice for punching people's lights out.

Hmmmm, all this talk about dice has made me want to shop for some new ones...


*I should add here that we usually spend around 3 to 4 years immersed in one world, and sometimes manage to stick to one character. I can see that if you play short story-arcs and often switch world your dice might just remain tools, simple as is, or as an extension of you, the player, personally.

Reaping what you sow

I'm wading through all the digital clutter that has piled up while I was busy in the flesh and slowly getting back in touch with the here and now. The business has also meant I did not work as much in the garden as I wanted to; I only had time to pick some fruit today, which in the blueberries' case means at least a kilo has been lost to utter over-ripeness and other decay. But not to worry, the yield is more better than usual, and as this picture shows they only become more gigantic. That blackberry's over an inch tall, y'all. Poor little Yaroslava should know better than to face this dark-skinned danger in daylight.

Speaking of Yaroslava, I've created a blog for my alter egos. Chances are that I'll have the time to write up some of her adventures when I'm on vacation in France.

Do digiblips dream of electric trees?

I'm in ignomode, because I've got special visitors and special things to do this week, so I'm ignoring the digiworld. Just quickly checked the feeddemon, and the feeddemon has simply too much feed after five days. 100+ posts? There's no chance in hell I'm ever going to read all that (if it were real feed I'd be supersized in no time!).
It's also on moments like this I realize that only a very small amount I read actually makes some sense--to say it disrespectfully, most of it is just a waste of digital paper, which is okay until you think about the poor people out there that have to grow all the digital trees from which to make this paper.
You laugh, madam? Do I hear you chuckle, sir?
Well, think about it. The intarweb doesn't exist out of thin air, not really. Whatever we do, our whole online digiblippery needs real world silicon chippery to exist. And while intarwaste might be infinitely more easier to recycle, you still have to wonder about that whoopee let's fill all this free space with crap because it's okay mentality (and yes, I'm just as guilty). I wonder how many more servers are put online each year because we write too much online crap and the intarweb just grows and grows and grows?
Even if they start making servers from wood and other natural resources, a little historical sense and perspective should caution us for this mentality. After all, burning oil and rubber didn't hurt anybody either in the early days (or so they thought time and again), and progress never starts out as industrial and financial malicious intent. But by the time we realize we've put ourselves on the same list as other (over)specialized animals, we can't easily go back and extract the progress from the industry that feeds us and the finances that take care of us in our old age.
And, you know, who's to say that within a century we won't find out that filling digiworld with crap has a disastrous effect on nature or our own chances of survival? It's never the thing you expect that gets you in the end.

Jungle fever

Too little sleep because the damned birds are too noisy at 5 a.m.
Now, birds are always noisy in the morning. First light, they all do their interpretation of "Good Morning Vietnam"  in their racial twitterese.
Loud, happy, chirpy twitterese.
Then they decide they're hungry and go hunt for worms and stuff and quieten down.
That's how things should be. But nowadays they are so damned chirping noisy, for so long, that I'm wide-awake come 5:30.
And I think it's my own fault too. You see, last autumn should have been Serious Pruning time. Not just a little snip here and there, but the real tree-killing work that's needed once every two or three year. But silly me, I managed to sprain my thumb real bad with fencing (a sports injury bearing the frivolous name of "ski thumb"), and so no snipping and sawing and hacking that season. This means my garden, a long overgrown tunnel of 4,5m wide and about 65m long, becomes the safe haven for all sorts of noisy birds, who feel safe from the three clawed hunters and thus make some noise.
I was going to tackle the overgrowth in spring, but I don't really know what happened to spring. Came and went, and now I'm here with jungle fever.
So today, since it was dry enough, and much much cooler than the last couple of weeks, I got out the axe and the saw and got to work. One third of the trees and bushes I needed to tackle are done. I'll continue Saturday if the weather keeps up, so my poor blistered fingers and still sensitive thumb can rest some. Also, tomorrow we've got visitors, which means I'll have another kind of cleaning to do.
I only hope that I managed to keep free of phototoxic juice, but I'll guess I know for sure tomorrow...