Archive for: January, 2008

What the Moral of the Backstory Could Be

Jan 31 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Review, Speechifying

Last night I should have installed a music player here, like the one I have at Ask Math Girl.* Instead I spent the evening doing rewrites on a story that’s due on February 2. So it’s not that I was lazy so much as easily distracted but trying really hard to concentrate on not flinging verb tenses around all willy-nilly.

The music player is needed, because I want the whole world listening to Challengers, by The New Pornographers with me. I have listened to it pretty much nonstop for the last week and it just gets better and better and I love it more and more. Critics talk a lot about the band because they seem to be musicians in the way many other bands are not; that is, they write and arrange complex songs that are never formulaic. Phrases like “pure pop” get thrown around, with people constantly referencing A.C. Newman as the primary songwriter and Neko Case (some reviews call her a “cow-punk crooner” when what they mean is she sings some damn fine y’allternative), but it’s so much more than that. The songs are really, really complex and of the two albums I have (Mass Romantic and Challengers; I know, I need to get the other two), there’s a big gulf in tone. Mass Romantic is really exuberant and powerful. Challengers is contemplative and heavy on the wonderment. Both are so catchy you almost can’t stand it. And both are lyrical to the point where you don’t know if it’s deep or just strange, but you don’t care, cos it’s gorgeous.

Regardless, here’s two songs for you. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Challengers (dear gawd, I want Neko Case to follow me around and sing my life)

On the walls of the day
In the shade of the sun
We wrote down
Another vision of us
We were the challengers of
The unknown

Unguided (That broken syllable thing? One of 10 frillion things that makes The New Pornographers lovable)

You spun chapter into rapture there
Yeah, you were as brave as traffic
You chased the spotlight into her arms
And you forgot that you could fight

“Spun chapter into rapture.” I could think on that all day. And the post title is from “Go Places.” It’s gleeful, absolutely gleeful. Also: a waltz!

Enjoy! Let me know what you think!

*Soon. Not that anybody cares anymore, but I care a little, so soon.

One response so far

This is Bat Country

Jan 30 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Recovering English Major

Was reading through the blogroll earlier to day and had to stop on Postmodern Conservative, because Poulos was pointing out inconsistencies with Michael Gerson’s column on Bush’s compassionate legacy. Regardless of whether or not you agree with either of them or even care about what they’re talking about, behold Poulos’s turn of phrase when discussing how “social justice” has been co-opted and perverted by Liberals:

Keeping social justice as the preserve of the Large-Brained, Large-Hearted Leviathan is not just repulsive and small-hearted on conservative grounds but confining and small-minded on liberal grounds, if by liberal you mean those bygone days in which individuals were trusted to make like Kant and think for themselves, make like Cesar Chavez and mobilize themselves, and make like Hunter Thompson and run for Sheriff on the Freak Power ticket to run the Fat Cats out of Aspen and bic your head bald in order to refer to your crew-cut competition as “my long-haired opponent.”

Yes it goes on and on and it’s hard to find a place to break in there around the word “Aspen” if you’re reading it out loud, but it manages to encapsulate really well the true liberalism behind conservative politics: individuals, personal responsibility and action. Further, use of the word “bic” as a verb took me three-reads to get, but it’s glorious! I laughed and laughed. And wanted to share it with you.

Connecting it to yesterday, a discussion question: Was Hunter S Thompson part of the Beat Movement, as some people would have us believe? Was he on the fringe of the Beat Movement as a reporter talking about its evolution into the youth culture of the 60s? Or is he a literary island, with no one else quite like him, before or since?

3 responses so far

Stupid Fucking Butterflies

Jan 29 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Surgically Altered

William Burroughs once wrote:

If, after having been exposed to someone’s presence, you feel as if you’ve lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia. We don’t like to hear the word “vampire” around here; we’re trying to improve our public image. Building a kindly, avuncular, benevolent image; “interdependence” is the keyword — “enlightened interdependence”. Life in all its rich variety, take a little, leave a little. However, by the inexorable logistics of the vampiric process they always take more than they leave — and why, indeed, should they take any?

I know it from his album Spare Ass Annie, which were recordings from Interzone set to trip hop music. It was playing on my head last night in constant repeat– Old Bull Lee’s dry midwestern accent telling me avoid that presence. I need to avoid support group.

The hospital where I had surgery offers two support groups per month and can be attended by pre-ops, post-ops, and any concerned parties. I’ve been to five now and I desperately want those ten hours back. You can do a lot in ten hours. Speaking of William Burroughs, I read the whole of Naked Lunch in ten hours. Last night I spent an hour listening to a strikingly uninformed woman try to sell me on an intranasal form of B-12, mostly by repeating over and over again that the body just couldn’t absorb it any other way. Then I spent an hour listening to 10 people tell me who they were, how much weight they’d lost and what their complications were. The same 10 people I’ve heard at pretty much every meeting. I am obliged to clap for them all. They say the same words, clap the same claps, harp on the same protein and vitamin requirements and then that’s it.

So today I’m trying to let go of the idea that this is something I need to do. I have plenty of people in my life with whom I could talk things over if I needed to. I don’t actually need to go and hear the same horror story, followed by new and different people offering “encouragement” by saying things like, “you gotta quit thinking about yourself and think about your kids and just do it!” How is that encouragement any different than just bitching her out? How can someone be under the impression that a very sick woman, with two lovely children, had totally forgotten about said children when coping with her many and serious post-op complications?

I itched to slap someone. It takes so much effort to keep my mouth shut anymore, too. There was supposed to be support, but I didn’t actually see any. All I saw was a bunch of bitchy formerly fat people congratulating themselves on their change and their compliance. And taking the opportunity to bark endlessly at anybody who did not fit their idea of compliance. Enlightened interdependence my ass; vampirism at all levels.

So I’m bugging out on the support group idea for a while. This is the first time I’ve made a decision to break with the rules of being post-op. I feel strange and giddy and relieved. Actually I feel just the same as I did having just finished Naked Lunch.

4 responses so far

Yes Sir, That’s My Velociraptor

Jan 28 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Gaming

Last night, as Christopher was hitting three and a half bubbles away from 70 on his undead warrior, the Outland server crashed. And in some kind of cascade effect, the rest of the servers crashed. I was reading smutty fanfic, minding my own business, when Skillzy IM’d me asking if Christopher was freaking out. He wasn’t happy, but all things considered, he wasn’t freaking out. He was on the forums joining the chorus of people demanding that Blizzard break out the Epic Stick of Techy Hustle.

We had a solid World of Warcraft weekend, even staying up late (for us) on Friday night with Skillzy and another friend to run the whole of the Scarlet Monastery. It was a good time, especially with a higher level Druid to hold most of the aggro. I’m playing a Hunter now and the last time I did SM, I was the higher level Mage running people through. The differences seemed huge– especially since I went in with 2000 arrows, then had Skillzy bring me 1400 more when he joined the party and ended the night with only 96 left in my quiver. I played too many guys melee just to make sure I had plenty left for the big bads at the end of the Cathedral portion of the run.

There are awesome parts of playing a hunter though, parts that make me not regret rolling a Mage on the Horde side. Having a pet to tank it up is fantastic. Having a pet is fantastic for many other reasons, mostly because it’s a pet and he becomes sort of a mascot and punching bag for the party. My pet (current and only, though I keep threatening to tame one of the big turtles in Hillsbarad) is an orange velociraptor from Durotar called Butterbeer. He makes a great pet, mostly because he runs around behind us looking like a big, fierce, strangely-decorated dog.

You have to keep track of your pets: tame and feed and heal them in between sending them off to claw bad guys so you can pick flowers. Took me a few minutes to figure out the feeding thing. Butterbeer is actually my third pet– my first two kitties ran away cos they were hungry. But Butterbeer hands out cos I toss him meat every couple hours and he likes to jump on bad guys. Christopher likes having him around too. I started keep track a while ago of all the things Christopher has declared in regards to Butterbeer and it’s an interesting list. Butterbeer:

  • the tallest velociraptor in Silvermoon City
  • likes to climb on stuff;
  • always gets buffed first;
  • ran through the fire again;
  • blushes;
  • has trouble with elevators;
  • would like a shadow pancake;
  • needs to stop being such a slacker;
  • is being snowed on;
  • is being an aggro slut;
  • needs to quit being such a slacker, seriously;
  • is secretly considering a solo career;
  • is soaking up the aggro;
  • is lactose intolerant;
  • accomplishments as a Paladin will go unheralded;
  • is poisoned, but trying to be less poisoned.

Butterbeer is pretty accomplished as a Paladin. Christopher plays a Paladin when I’m around and I have to ask for Blessing of Might, whereas Butterbeer is never without it. And when we did Christopher’s last pally-quest, the NPC conned the dinosaur as the one killing the bad guys, so he technically gets the cred. Now I just have to teach him to rez me if I bite it.

9 responses so far

She Blinded Me With Science!

Jan 25 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Lexpionage

Geology, to be spicific! The past several weeks I’ve bemoaned the lack of new words in my life. Then this week, wham! Words, words everywhere! Coincidentally, this week I also replaced my deskpad/blotter at work. I used to have a big calendar and lexpionage came easily when I could write the words in the little boxes of the days. Then I spilled stuff all over it and had to throw it out and that seemed to coincide with the start of the drought. Now I’m thinking it wasn’t a drought so much as it was lack of an effective system for keeping track of words. Within half an hour of the new deskpad hitting my desk (no calendar this time, just big sheets of thin paper), “flocculation” was at the top of a short list, courtesy of Marcie. So let’s start there, and talk science.

Several of my good friends are scientists of some sort and I am a science groupie. This week, one of Marcie’s gchat taglines was “Flocculation (but not fluxation).” I was drawn to it like a Tesla coil junkie in a Dalek-shaped Faraday cage. Flocculation is the formation of lumpy or fluffy masses. That’s all well and good and as an all purpose word, you could really turn some heads. Scientifically, flocculation is:

The process by which individual particles of clay aggregate into clotlike masses or precipitate into small lumps. Flocculation occurs as a result of a chemical reaction between the clay particles and another substance, usually salt water.

Which sounds like something right up Marcie’s alley. Unfortunately, the story of flocculation doesn’t get to clay or salt water. In an unexpected twist, it turns out she was merely in a fight with a spellchecker over “fluctuation,” which she was spelling “fluxuation” in an awesome nod to Isaac Newton and the scientific revolution. Flocculation comes from after that time period: the New Latin of the early 18th century, as the scientific revolution was gathering steam to morph into the Industrial Revolution. Can I get a hell yeah for Thomas Newcomen!?* I so knew I could.

And then, just this morning, Honu Girl managed to turn my glee at some crazy onomatopoeia into a story about science, which made me want tackle her. I get an email newsletter from Bariatric Eating every once in a while and today I received one with a recipe for protein powder hot chocolate. The recipe is pretty basic (chocolate powder + hot water = ….), but it said, “Top with a splooge of Redi-whip….” Did you get that? Splooge! It’s so awful it’s awesome. These people are trying to make money and they’re using words like “splooge” in their publications. I can’t stop saying or typing it. So I immediately told Honu Girl, who replied that she’d once received extra credit on an exam for using that particular term. Science-wise, splooge is also geologic in origin:

There are these things called flame structures that show up in sedimentary rocks. They form when sediment is deposited (usually fairly rapidly) on top of mud, and the mud splooges up into the overlying sediments, creating funky forms, that look like flames.

So something a bit like the process of flocculation, but not quite. Sploogification, maybe. Curiously enough, “splooge” is not in the dictionary. Yet!

So that’s your science (for the morning at least). I have a few additional words, but I’m working on trying to categorize them thematically. Do you all have favorite scientific terms? If so, what are they and how do they connect to Robert Hooke?

*Yes, yes, also James Watt. But Watt was building on Newcomen’s ideas from the Royal Society (Watt was a member of the Lunar Society), which were in turn built on Robert Hooke’s ideas. It all comes back to Hooke, sexy motherfucker that he is.

3 responses so far

When Your Art Needs More Math

Jan 24 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Geekery

There is Understanding Art for Geeks. Now you can get a good sense of art’s meaning via its PhP, or hex code, or AIM buddy list. My favorites are The Creation of Adam (God installs more distros before 6:00 a.m. than anybody but Doc), Nicolo Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, and Design for a Helicopter.

4 responses so far

Words Meaning You

Jan 24 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

I’m in the market for jewelry lately. Rings specifically, but I’ve always got my eye out for an interesting necklace. None of my rings fit my left ring finger anymore, and I feel strange and not a little bit naked without having something on that finger. I’ve shifted my wedding band to my right hand, but it’s just not the same. So I’ve been trying to find something inexpensive and a little different to wear for another year or so until I feel confident I can get my wedding set resized just the once.

I set myself a price cap of $50, but I’m willing to cheat up a little and until today, I hadn’t found much of anything I really liked that was in any way affordable. I think I may have actually read about half the Etsy jewelry pages out there, too. Today, though, I found Chris Parry’s Etsy shop and his Dream a Little Dream rings. Little silver rings that he stamps your choice of words into, for about $30 each. For that price, I could get two or three and stack them up. And if on down the road, I wanted more? Could get them, right? Seems like a great system.

What I’m wondering now, is what words do I choose? What sort of things are significant to me in such a way that I want to wear them, show them to the whole world. I think my first choices will be “Christopher” and “Firefly.” From there, though, I wonder. Ampersand, Lexpionage, Slytherin.

What sorts of words would you break down into?

13 responses so far

I Feel Right at Home in This Stunning Monochrome

Jan 23 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

It’s very gray outside. Birmingham does’t have much in the way of skyscrapers, but of what tall buildings we have, you can’t see their tops today. They’re all covered in fog and clouds and coming across the viaduct at 1st Avenue North at Sloss Furnace, the city looked still and quiet.

This week seems to begin the last slog through the end of our winter, into February, which will hopefully be as wet as February is supposed to be. All the pansies I planted a few months ago are still fluffy and blooming bright yellow, but they don’t cut the grim sky and creeping damp. Despite all that, though, and the sense of listlessness that seems to go with it, I am very happy.

I go to bed every night and check in with God, and mostly I say “thank you” over and over again. There’s so much to be happy about, so much to be grateful for. It’s the grizzled end of winter, and I have no motivation, but I’m happy. And what’s more I’m content and optimistic. I wish that everybody else could be, too.

2 responses so far

Words of Advice for Cloverfield Viewers

Jan 21 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Speechifying

Enjoy disaster movies? Me too! So we saw Cloverfield and it was nice, if you like disaster movies. Nothing approaching a triumph of film making and the September 11 visual references were uncomfortable, but big monster, big explosions, good disaster. If you plan to see it, however, I recommend you take:

  • some Dramamine
  • a can of Ginger Ale
  • a few saltines
  • a barf bag

One a scale of one to ten, I give it: Severe Handheld Camera Motion Sickness.

8 responses so far

Couple Greco-Roman Mouthfulls

Jan 18 2008 Published by Sarah, etc. under Lexpionage

I haven’t come across very many new words at all lately. It’s a little disappointing, but I’m trying to gather up the one new one I find every other week. I’ve broken down now, and these are the two new words I’ve come across since before Christmas. Or rather, the one new word and the other word I already sorta knew, but have resolved to really know from here on out.

Uxoriousness I first read in a story called Plenty:

“What a disturbing display of uxoriousness at an orgy,” Severus said in a disturbing display of coherence. “Let’s take his clothes off.”

Snape is there discussing one Arthur Weasley with Remus Lupin and all three are stoned out of their gourds. Uxoriousness is “excessive submission or foolish fondness of one’s wife.” Taking your wife to an orgy with Snape sorta makes a case against uxoriousness, but still a delightful word in a delightful story.* The etymology is fairly simple as well. Uxor is Latin for “wife” so slap a nounifying suffix on there and go to town. Interestingly though, my couple online etymology sources don’t go back from Latin but say “of unknown origin.” How about that?

I neglected to note where I saw the word Apotheosis that made me stop and say, “Okay, word. I am not going to forget what you mean anymore.” It means exaltation to divine rank; deification; the epitome or quintessence of something. Like uxoriousness, it dates to the late 16th century and is Greek in origin. The word breaks down into three parts:

  1. apo: A common prefix for Greek loanwords. There are several levels of meaning including away or apart, response or defense, or separation and derivation.**
  2. theo: Meaning god. You all knew this one, right? The Greek the comes from the Proto-Indo European root *dheas, which also undergirds Latin words applied to celebrations of gods, including feriae, festus, and fanum, meaning “holiday,” “festive,” and “temple.” There’s something exciting, to me, about the way certain roots galvanize across the board. This is one of them.
  3. osis: A suffix for denoting action, condition, or state. Greek -osis corresponds to the Latin -atio.

Put them together and you’ve got a word meaning deriving a state of godhood. Apotheosis.

I’m going to try to broaden my search for new words, cos it’s dull without them.

*Other orgy participants include Molly Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Luna Lovegood, and Hermione Granger. Please meet or exceed the age of majority in your country before reading.
**Zoey_Glass04, this Oxford Comma goes out to you!

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