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In the year 2007 I resolve to: |
Goals for Life in General, Including 2007
- Exercise
- Blog
- Take more pictures
- Finish getting SQL certified
- Try to stop being so fucking hostile all the time
- Cut back on f-bomb
Now, who wants to join my cult?
Archive for: December, 2006
So Long, Aught Six
Sarah and the First of Many Additional Disco Freakouts
Spoilers, I suppose, though it’s just the title.
Harry Potter and the Very Possible Title for Book Seven.
To hallow is to consecrate or to make holy, as in hallowed ground. One of it’s secondary definitions is to greatly revere. And it’s the root of our word Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, from the Old English haligan and prior to that, old Norse halig.
I think that, by combining the words “deadly” and “hallow,” she’s highlighting the fundamental conflict of the book– good vs. evil and enhancing the m.o. of the villain: he is perverting salvation by trying to make himself immortal by magical means. He’s attempting to make himself both an object of reverence and consecrated into everlasting life primarily by killing others.
And the Halloween connection can’t go unnoticed. Voldemort, with his pagan sensibilities, no doubt thinks it’s a time of great power– hence his choice to make the attempt on Harry’s life to disrupt the prophecy. It would be tremendously poetic for him to meet his ultimate end on that day, by Harry, at Godric’s Hollow.
I’m also becoming fixated on the idea that the word hallow is derived from the Norse and the concept of Ragnarok. It’s Norse eschatology and in my mind, of the most prescient parallels is the idea that among the pantheon and the giants, each individual is given the power to kill one other and the weakness to be killed by that other’s particular strength. I think the final battle of the Second Wizarding War, if indeed such a thing even happens, will end in a series of mortal combat pairings– the story is too dramatic and sentimental (as in, unironic) to forego the change to create parity and justice when good triumphs. For instance, Remus Lupin will kill Peter Pettigrew, but only after Pettigrew kills Fenrir Greyback. I need to work out the rest of the specific pairings, but don’t you think it works?
And if she’s announcing the title now, and not that she’s wrapped up writing and moving onto editing, I really doubt the book will be ready by summer. With a title like this, release on Halloween 2007 would be perfect and there would be a marketing juggernaut the likes of which the world has never seen.
Return to Azeroth
After a not-so-short break to wallow in self pity and write a nice story for the Yuletide Treasure rarefandom ficathon and wait for guild drama to blow over, I finally got back on World of Warcraft this weekend. It was uneventful, but fun, which is probably how it should be. Within an hour of getting back in game, I had been conscripted to run Sunken Temple, or at least the first half. One of these days I’m going to find a way to popup a raid warning without being a raid leader or even necessarily in a raid that says, “The orange condom will be sheeped by the mage. Please do not aggro it until it is the last thing standing. Thank you.” Being away six weeks I don’t have a lot of room to talk, but still, isn’t that like a game wide rule? Main tank and all assists on the skull, Shack on the yellow diamond, and Sheep the Orange dot or button (it really does look like a rubber, viewed head on). Nevertheless, it was fun and exciting and people got their Troll mojo or whatever it is you go down there to get.
Xin Gan: I just buffed and picked a flower for the first time in [six weeks].
MacEwan: Now go die in a dungeon. It’ll be just like old times.
Laurassa: I’m starting to get all warm and fuzzy.
MacEwan: I’m getting a felwoody.
Dilbyrt: Hey [Erean], break up with Mac so we can invite you.
Laurassa: Yeah, ditch his ass already.
Dilbyrt: Damn bear-lovin’ dwarf.
MacEwan: All y’all can suck my bear!
I’ve got the Auction House alpha downloaded and ready to go so I can get back to selling the picked flowers and any greens I can grab out of the hot clutches of my guild mates. I was forced to respec (again– tho there’s really nothing to nerf) in prep for the expansion. They’ve increased the depth of the skill trees and as a mage, you have to make a lot more choices delimiting your power. Previously, I could spec out Arcane-Fire and do huge dps without giving short shrift to either tree. This time out, getting back some of the basic skills that I had to have, like Presence of Mind and Improved Arcane Missiles required me to put an inordinate number of points in the Arcane tree, thus depleting any I might use in Fire. I thought about it for about five minutes and decided that since I don’t use tree-level skills like Pyroblast, I might as well ignore the fire tree to the best of my ability. So I respecced with an Arcanist build. And I love it– crits all over the place.
And I made a new friend. There came a new guildie in my absence and he’s the biggest geek I ever met– has a signed, first edition of Snow Crash. I love him! We talked Firefly and Trek:TNG and BSG and Veronica Mars and Buffy and everything. Oh, it was so good! I love this game.
Merry Faster Processors
I started wrapping gifts last night and this year we seem to have more that don’t come in boxes. Christopher was at loose ends downloading the new Auction House alpha they’re releasing for WoW prior to the expansion, so I sent him off to procure boxes. He has a hard time throwing away any box which has contained anything vaguely related to his computer, so we usually have plenty of those. It’s a bit funny to give my family these disguised gifts– like a sweater for my sister wrapped in a motherboard box. There’s a moment before they realize it’s just a box to hold something squishy and “what the hell do I do with this?” scrolls across their faces.
This year, however, he turned up with only a video card box, a processor box (much bigger than usual) and a motherboard box (much smaller than usual). I was there cutting and folding and taping, trying to cajole him into finding me more boxes when he finally says,
“This is what happens when I don’t upgrade for a whole year! Nobody gets presents!”
The moral of this Christmas story is to let your husband, wife, or signifcant other of any sort upgrade his or her computer as frequently as possible. You’ll have more boxes and the Auction House scan will take almost no time.
Humiliated, But Only by My Self
I finished up the Christmas shopping Saturday morning at the new outdoor mall in Trussville. It’s called Pinnacle Place or some such– something similar enough that I get it confused with Pinnacle Point, which is in Panama City Beach. It’s a nice place, I think. I don’t have a reason to go to most of the stores, but it has a Lane Bryant and a Best Buy and that’s really all I need.
As I was trying to get to the Best Buy to finish off the shopping, I passed a store called Scrap Etc. It bills itself as “the latest trends in scrapbooking.” I was overcome with a sense of dread. And not just about scrapbooking, which has always filled me with a sense of dread on account of I don’t really have an eye for things that involve fancy scissors. Also, real-life in three dimensions photo cropping scares me silly– I don’t know how those people function without an undo command. Anyway, sense of dread because it had an “etc.” tacked onto the end of the store name. Scraps, etc. Scraps, etc! Picture me wearing a fluffy magenta sweater and chirping Scraps, etc! in the voice of the bourgeois damned.*
And then I wondered if people think I am this type of person because of my domain name, which I chose because it was the identity I was using in forums and messages boards, for the most part, when I started blogging. Suddenly, having “etc” tacked onto anything gave it an unmistakable air of hausfrau, complete with SUV, musical Christmas sweater and hot glue gun. I have nothing but respect for work at home moms, but I can’t respect women who stay home and make purposeless crafts for no reason just because they can and that’s it, that’s all they do. And scrapbookers, on their own, are probably a fine lot. But I tend to back away slowly when confronted with them, as I’m afraid I’ll be hot-glued into a freakishly cheerful sweater.
I sat there, in Christopher’s car, with my head on the steering wheel trying to justify my own choices and not rush right into Best Buy, find the nearest internet enabled computer, and post, “OMG Y’all, PLEASE DON’T THINK I’M LIKE THAT!” You’ll think whatever you want. You always have and it’s why I love you. I also love you for not having made the connection, either, and for giving each experience its own opportunity to be exactly what it is. I obviously need to work on that.
*If you ever actually see this, you have my blessing to punch me right in the face over and over until an exorcism can be performed. I am not kidding.
I Failed to Fill Flash and it Turned Out Nicely
The more I use my camera to take what I think are pretty good pictures, the more I realize I have no idea what I’m doing. This picture of one of the bubble lights on our tree was difficult for the camera to take, and it whirred and gasped and wigged for a full five seconds before it snapped. I keep hearing all sort of photography terms in my head, as if they mean something, like I should be able to extrapolate their meanings now, based on experience, but I hardly can. I no more know what an f-stop is now than I did when I first heard it. I’m suspicious it has something to do with leaving the aperature open longer to capture more information in low light, but I’m not betting all my points. It’s also probably a moot point too, since my camera isn’t a DSLR and can f-stop around however it feels like. Or something.
I am keeping my ear to the ground for word of an informal, or at least free and non-credit, photography course. I’m still not sure I could take it since, no slr and all that, but I could at least get the vocabulary. I did have access to classes in college. I took a quick and dirty afternoon seminar in because I was about to be editor of the newspaper and hence, in charge of the darkroom. I was afraid of all the chemicals and the idea of mixing them in the dark, possibly setting the building on fire, or something worse. So, as copy editor, and later editor, I pretty much just used the darkroom for hiding beer. And hanging things on the englarger to maximize space.
And because it’s Christmas and you know you want it, a picture of Ford, all artily composed:
He gets snotty if I go too long without having his picture made.