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Sat May 26th, 2012
 | 11:36 pm - Change is vexatious to the spirit
Have been busy and virtuous and active today-- attending a puppet show, attending Doors Open, doing laundry, weeding the garden. But also, because someone may be crashing at my place for an unknown length of time, I've been moving clothes about from my guest bedroom aka my dressing room, to the chest of drawers in the bedroom aka the black hole where I keep odd garments, old djs, old cassettes, you name it. This has made me like a cat in the middle of moving day. I'm certain I shall never find any of my clothes again, because some have gone into suitcases. So have a bunch of manga in order to make room in the hall closet for clothes from the guest bedroom closet. What shall I do next time I need a suitcase?
Then was to sort the sheets and pillow cases. Then was to move the boxes out of my bedroom to make room for-- oh never mind. You get the picture.
( Read more... )
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Wed May 23rd, 2012
 | 10:15 am - Hmmm
I like the Vlad Taltos books well enough, but I'm not sure I'm up for the marathon reread, in chronological not published order, that I've set myself. Still, a refresher on who did what when is useful, as I discover on rereading Taltos itself, which clearly sets up half the later spoilers of the series. (Remains to be seen whether Jhereg, written five years earlier, does too; I rather doubt it.) But I need to bookmark with post-it notes every time there's an unexplained something, because actually finding any passage, in what I recall as a triple-stranded narrative, is impossible. And Dragon is not much better.
Shall maybe bog down in the later lacklustre Cawti Conspiracy books, but that's for then.
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Sun May 20th, 2012
 | 11:40 pm
Today was a perfect July day. Pity it's only May. But sun and blue skies and warmth and a cool breeze, birds singing, gardeners gardening, and fireworks in the evening. Am probably slightly sunburned: I feel a bit odd and zonked.
The Minority Council was wonderful, a perfact holiday weekend book. Am so sad it's finished, and so sad I have to wait for the next one. I feel I should probably review the Vlad Taltos books in order to read his latest, but I'm not sure I want to hear Vlad's voice after two weeks of Michael's. I did read a little 1Q84 after lo these many weeks, and probably should press on with it. In the kind of summer we're looking to have, reading Japanese might be the last thing I want to do.
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Sat May 19th, 2012
 | 07:01 pm - Thoughts on 'Minority Council'
Oh yes, the Matthew Swift books drive me up a wall. They drive me so up a wall that the minute I finished 'Neon Court' I trekked on over to Bakka-Phoenix prepared to shell out $20 plus for vol 4, and was delighted to find it available mass market paperback, light in the backpack and less than $10.
But they still drive me up a wall. Pleasantly, unlike Ackroyd and Mieville, the other two Londoners on the go, but still. Wall. Vertical direction. Towards ceiling. 'Oh my God why am I reading this who's gonna get cut/ shot/ burned/ killed in unspeakable ways this time?' Violence is so not my thing.
( List of arghities that go with the Swift territory )
And an oddity that may not just be Swift. 'He was sat on the bed, reading a book.' This pattern occurs over and over. What happened to 'he was sitting'?
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Mon May 14th, 2012
 | 11:34 pm
If there were a decent alternative to Firefox I'd take it, because paternalistic Firefox is going to update my version to 12 whether I want it or not. 'You're not protected against security flaws!' and so they'll protect me for me. Twits.
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Sun May 13th, 2012
 | 09:27 pm - A Madness of Angels
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) nojojojo is right, A Madness of Angels is-- erm, not necessarily a better book than The Midnight Mayor, but meatier, more hefty, and rather more satisfying in ways that defy description and thus give rise to misleading blurbs. Its action is also easier to follow, given the 'pick off these guys' structure, until it stops being so. (Truly, Midnight Mayor is like an action film; I truly couldn't have told you what happened where and when even as I was reading it. Thus it's probably a good thing that Griffin ramps up her descriptions perhaps more than necessary: the onslaught of adjectives slows down some of the non-stop mayhem, blood-letting, and running away from badnasties.) There being, to my mind, less mayhem and blood-letting in A Madness (but quite as much running), I found myself skipping passages. Some people are never satisfied. And because I'm never satisfied, I shall continue with my nitpicks under the cut. ( Read more... )
But the appearance of archetypes (you know who they are) pleased me mightily in this one, and London felt rather more Londonish than in the other book. That's a bit more like it, that is.
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Thu May 10th, 2012
| 09:09 pm - Kusai!
Just had one of those twisty 'compact fluorescent' bulbs, the ones with mercury in them, overload and pop on me. Boy do they stink when they do. Have window fans on all over the upstairs and all the windows in the house open. Also they make an almighty noise when they go, which is as well, because otherwise I'd have been wondering where the smell was coming from.
As to why it blew, heaven knows. Had been perfectly well-behaved for the last three years. I put a new one in the lamp (freebie from the gas company of all things) which glowed dimly and then simply went out. Alas, have no 60 watt incandescents to try out to see if the problem's with the lamp. When I use incandescents, they're trilight 50-100-150, for all your reading needs, and as they're about to become illegal in two years, I hoard them mightily.
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Tue May 8th, 2012
 | 01:40 pm
Oh. Maurice Sendak. As the NYT says, Sendak's books were "Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten". And still are, the first and last, where I come from.
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Mon May 7th, 2012
 | 10:38 am - 'I am of my time, and my time has passed'
Say 'Avengers' to me and I think Steed and Mrs. Peel.
( Which is odd )
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Sat May 5th, 2012
 | 10:44 am - The Midnight Mayor- nitpicks
Of course, reading the first book of a series might inform you that someone called Oda isn't necessarily Japanese, even if everyone you've ever met called Oda is. Still, from the reviews I'm glad I didn't read A Madness of Angels, because it sounds like it has the same things I didn't like about The Midnight Mayor, only more of them. Largely a tendency for people to run (*run*) vast distances while in extreme pain and after losing quantities of blood. Adrenalin and (in Mathew's case) testosterone can take you far, but I do wonder if they take you that far. Also the tendency for people to shoot other people, which I can live without. The violence and body damage here rather suggest comic books crossed with H/C fanfic. Could have done with more atmosphere and rather less blood, myself.
Of course, I read it with my map of London spread wide, the one I bought for Moon over Soho. Didn't help me with the outlying areas like Ealing and Hounslow. I need a map of the *boroughs* of London, all of them.
( Read more... )
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Thu May 3rd, 2012
 | 11:08 am
1. If you are solitary, be not idle; if idle, be not solitary. If you *must* be both, have good muscle relaxants and all should be well.
2. Have never noticed so many abandoned, discarded, or simply lost winter gloves on the streets as I have this year. One expects it in very snowy years, when the glacier's retreat reveals where the glove fell as you were wrestling groceries out of the car in a white whirling haze. But this year's mild winter? Perhaps so mild people didn't notice they weren't wearing gloves.
( Read more... )
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Tue May 1st, 2012
 | 10:37 am
Spent yesterday evening power reading through the last two volumes of Kurotsubaki and in consequence have inflamed a neck disk. I'd forgotten that looking down while reading can do that, and that reading manga involves an acute degree of down-looking. (1Q84 is a hardcover, fortunately.) Shall remember from now on, but meanwhile right arm is all ow ow ow, especially when typing, which for me also involves a lot of looking down.
(Reading Japanese fiction is really a lot easier than reading manga, especially that manga. More room, easier to get stuff from context, etc etc. Downside- no pretty pictures.)
( April reading )
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Mon Apr 30th, 2012
| 10:44 am - Friend, I would not spoil thee for the world, but thou art reading where I am about to rant.
From one of my favourite stories, about the umm 18th century? Quaker, armed with a blunderbuss, confronting a night thief in his house. Following his religion's peaceable dictates, he said, 'Friend, I would not harm thee for the world, but thou art standing where I am about to shoot.'
( Shall still try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible )
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Sat Apr 28th, 2012
| 02:40 pm - Imaginary Cities
Being half an hour early for my doctor's appt yesterday I went to the used bookstore across the street. They had a loonie bin out front-- in Canada that's 'any book for a dollar'-- and the books were all ancient and sometimes classic SF. Passed on Ethan of Athos and a couple of Moorcocks (all Moorcock is the same Moorcock, in essence) but gladly copped M. John Harrison's The Floating Gods (In Viriconium by any other name) which I was pretty sure I didn't have. Bopped back to my doctor's office to discover that I was not, in fact, fifteen minutes early, but forty-five minutes late. Must speak to her about this disturbing mental fuzz at next week's rebooked appointment.
( Read more... )
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Thu Apr 26th, 2012
 | 10:40 am
Have been having an attack of Silence. It happens. Also stayed up to 2 am reading Chime, which is marvellous, aside from being YA and therefore (seemingly by definition) requiring a 'perfect love' plot. The echoes of 'We have always lived in the castle' were most satisfying.
Having finished Wyrd Sisters earlier in the evening, couldn't help thinking 'How different from the home life of our own dear Granny', though Wyrd Sisters is actually one of the closer in attitude.
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Sat Apr 21st, 2012
 | 11:00 pm - Dedicated to the one-eyed love
Thus my mondegreening of the original song that The Mamas and the Papas covered. I steamed through twenty-five pages of 1Q84 vol.2 on one eye this evening. Go me. We're at page-turning intensity and I must fight the urge to go to the English version, where doubtless the intensity will read somewhat flatter, given (cough) the translators' choice of words.
( Read more... )
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Fri Apr 20th, 2012
| 10:11 am - All's well that ends well
I walk into work yesterday-- which is to say, into the building and down to the basement where my unofficial realm is-- and the assistant cook holds up my change purse, miraculously transported from Bloor and Spadina. 'This is yours? It was by the phone.' But- but- I wasn't *in* the kitchen Wednesday afternoon. Toddler staff says 'I told you to check the kitchen. You always go straight to the basement when you come in the building, to the kitchen and the laundry room.' I do not. Except that I do. But I wasn't *in* the kitchen... except that I was, calling my chiropractor. Clear need for more gingko biloba.
( Our canine forebears-- or should that be foredogs? )
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Wed Apr 18th, 2012
 | 11:28 pm - We are so lightly here
The odd thing about reading the Tiffany Aching books after a fast romp through the witches series is how much darker the former is than the latter. It's supposed to be YA (though the cover blurb about 'teen witch Tiffany' makes me cringe rather) and I suppose it is, in the way that YA always seems to deal with Problems. Dark things pop up in the witches series-- fairies and vampires and the like-- but Granny and Nanny snap their fingers at them. Granny and Nanny are there in Tiffany's world, but it's a much less genial or even safe place notwithstanding.
I suppose it's because Tiffany is the protagonist, and however unflappable she may be basically, she's still a witch growing into her powers and finding what prices must be paid. That side of witchcraft is a recurrent but secondary theme in the witches books-- Granny Weatherwax, basically; though I've often wondered what Nanny's story was, and what sacrifices she had to make, if any. With them, though, it's all a happened: choices made for better or for worse. With Tiffany it's happening, and it makes for pretty comfortless reading.
( And in other news )
ETA: Oh look. The cut parentheses are back. LJ moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.
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Sun Apr 15th, 2012
| 07:46 pm
I was going to tell you about my lovely week. That was on Tuesday. The rest of the week went pear-shaped, with half the full-time staff *and* the casuals away or sick (including me), and since then I've been a Pratchett-reading zombie that does nothing but read Pratchett. And eat, of course.
( Yes, this cut thing sucks, and the override doesn't work for me )
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Sun Apr 8th, 2012
 | 09:37 pm
What a lovely long weekend this long weekend was. Cool-cold sun for two days, which saw me gardening without pain and assembling my new vacuum and vacuuming without pain, and cooking chicken livers and mandarins, and reading Carpe Jugulum and embroidering my jacket with (cough) mixed success.
Also went to the matinee of Spirited Away Saturday, because I was not to be cheated of my two big screen viewings even if one was the dub.
( What a difference a matinee makes )
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Thu Apr 5th, 2012
| 10:49 pm
Was zipping along nicely with 1Q84 until I hit the Heike Monogatari passage near the end (and no, I don't remember every other verb in Heike ending with a form of tamau. Tatematsuru, *maybe*. It's been twenty-four years, after all.) Had recourse to the translation. Dear god but the translation is awful. I don't doubt Rubin's Japanese is better than mine, but I think I prefer the slant my language scrim gives the action to the one his does. F'rinstance, to me 'dowager' has all sorts of Lady Catherine de Burgh connotations that are very different from 老婦人's, and certainly *that* 老婦人.
But vol 2 arrived in today's mail, zipping along as well, to provide me reading matter this long weekend. Remains to see if I read it.
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Wed Apr 4th, 2012
| 09:17 pm
There's an odd conjunction between reading Pratchett's witches and seeing Yuubaba and Zeniba in Spirited Away. Granny Weatherwax with a bit more strangeness could be both, or either. Zeniba's house, though, on second viewing, isn't really Japanese at all.
Also it appears that the version of S&C that Miyazaki first scripted would have run three hours. I'd have loved to see that film.
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Tue Apr 3rd, 2012
| 08:03 pm - Very trivial trivia, and Spirited Away
One Sunday in 1993 I bought a copy of GanGan Something, and was overjoyed because I thought I'd got a Papuwa episode. But no, it wasn't the GanGan that Papuwa ran in, so I left it in someone's bike basket out front of Hourindo in Ikebukuro. Ikebuk's Hourindo first moved across the street and then closed. But after nearly two decades the universe has paid back my (doubtless unwanted) present, by mysteriously depositing in my bike pannier a set of nightlight bulbs. Which I have no use for either.
The garbage pickup has moved back to Thursday mornings. This feels far more natural and way it s'posed to be than Tuesdays. Of course, natural is two pickups a week, but that we haven't had in decades.
( Read more... )
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Sun Apr 1st, 2012
| 02:00 pm - Misty moisty morning
'Do one thing every day that scares you.' Thus I have set up my new monitor. Is a 19", which is too big for me, but same make as the 17" that went purple on me. (I rather miss my mauve tool bars and such.) I should learn how to turn it around, it being the kind that can; but I bet my Word docs will still fail to fit its window. Word really is the devil.
Is grey rainy day amid the plum blossoms. Almost Tokyo, in fact.
( March reading )
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Fri Mar 30th, 2012
 | 09:40 pm - Natter: Aten't Dead Yet
My doctor told me Monday 'You have a virus. Sleep as much as possible, have a little walk for exercise, then take a nap.' Have been doing that, only substituting 'work' for 'walk.' My paycheque will be a pittance this week. She was adamant about the need to wear a face mask to work so as not to pass my virus on to the kidlings. 'But they gave it to *me*!' cut no ice with her. Luckily I was with the pre-schoolers who think face masks utterly hilarious, and not with the babies who'd have screamed in terror.
( Viri leave little time for fascinating life, hence this lacks fascination )
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Sat Mar 24th, 2012
 | 10:47 pm - Reading, Watching, Listening... for once
Reading Melissa Scott's A Choice of Destinies, which is A/U Alexander the Great, of all things. I see echoes of Nicholas and Phillip in Alexander and Hephaistion, or maybe more, Nicholas and Phillip are both Hephaistion to the latent Alexander in the other. Alexander is not my man at all at all, and the book reads straightforward history, but I'm reading it with enjoyment still, so it must be good. Though I'd like it less without the little flashforward scenes from the future that evolved from Alexander not trying to conquer India, but turning back to deal with a Greek rebellion-- and then Syracuse-- and then the tribes of mainland Italy...
( Read more... )
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Thu Mar 22nd, 2012
| 09:58 am
Something at First Known When Lost reminded me of the poem To a fat lady seen from the train, which is ahem reflective of a certain mindset, as well as being a useful example of the triolet, as In Flanders Fields is of the rondeau:
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
( Cut for retorts )
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Wed Mar 21st, 2012
 | 09:32 am - The Dream Time
Either the meds or the meditation or the surreal out-of-time late May in late March weather has managed to turn me into a serene zombie.
Evidence 1: Assembled all my tax stuff with nary a tremor of concern. During last year's panics, the wibbles of getting tax stuff together cheered me by being at least a familiar anxiety. This year it was no more than a mild foot-dragging chore at the end.
( Read more... )
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Thu Mar 15th, 2012
| 07:23 pm - Not at all sure how I feel about this
Alan Garner is finishing the Weirdstone Trilogy. "I have no expectations, none," as Stoppard's Guildenstern said (unless it was Rosencrantz.) But what happened to Susan, if Colin's the only one left in this mortal realm? wibble wibble
(Garner, famously, is the writer who never ever wrote the book I wanted him to. The Moon of Gomrath was followed by Elidor; Elidor was followed by The Owl Service (aka 'what these people need is a limey'); The Owl Service was followed by Red Shift and its unlikable self-pitying rapist protagonist. After that I gave up on Garner. So yes, mixed feelings here.)
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Mon Mar 12th, 2012
| 12:42 am
It is not either 12:10 am, no matter what the clock says.
A sociable weekend, for my definitions of sociable. Someone at work said there's regular jam sessions at the Tranzac club on Saturdays, so I arranged to meet her there. And there she was, telling the regulars that she just had to rush off to this birthday party along the street. OMG-- the double party of two of our kids, that I'd forgotten all about. So we went together and greeted the birthday girls and a number of their little friends, then back for the jam session.
( By way of contrast )
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Fri Mar 9th, 2012
 | 07:17 pm - "I keep forgetting to take my ginkgo biloba"
I wanted to google something. I checked the hours of my acupuncture studio before googling. In that 30 seconds I forgot completely what it was I wanted to google.
I shall put this down, charitably, to fallout from the weird weather that was -2.4C on Monday, 16C on Wednesday, and is currently -3C with a wind chill of -11. (And that wind is knocking branches down.) You may google the respective Fahrenheit. Bref: it was unseasonably warm and now is unseasonably cold-feeling, and will go from 1C tomorrow to 13C on Sunday. These drastic changes are hard on a body. Throw in a full moon there somewhere and reputed solar flares and you have a perfect recipe for brainfry.
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Wed Mar 7th, 2012
 | 10:22 pm
Strong drink is not a mocker. Strong drink is a glib-tongued tempter. A quarter litre of wine makes me think a trip to Paris is perfectly feasible. Half a litre and I'm thinking about going back to Japan. I believe I once decided to go on an opera trip to Eastern Europe after half a litre of wine. And did, which had the educational advantage of showing me Prague and Budapest under full soviet control, and teaching me that guided tours are best avoided because even when people are off to see opera, some of them will still behave like jackasses and prats.
(This last is sad because tours do at least take care of all the anxiety-making details for you, like hotels and train connections and such, and being taken cared of is such a nice feeling.)
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Sun Mar 4th, 2012
 | 02:00 pm - "Wonderful things!"
1. White plastic dragon. Wants so bad.
2. The blue sunglasses from my cataract surgery. Evidently all I've ever wanted was to see the world through a blue filter. It calms me. It induces tranquility. And it makes the nasty bright light of late winter Go Away, says the Gollum in this corner. Alas, these glasses are thin and cheap and will not last forever; and for some reason no one makes blue-tinted wrap-arounds otherwise. But for the moment, am happy.
( More within )
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Sat Mar 3rd, 2012
| 09:28 pm - Convalescent reading
Had some flu-allergy-arthritis combination last week, apparently attendant on getting a tooth crowned, with an accompanying psychic malaise that made reading anything but Pratchett feel nightmarish. Worked at Michael Chabon's essays on the grounds that non-fic is more steadying than fiction, and certainly more than the fiction I have in the on the go pile-- Ackroyd's Chatterton (*why* do I read Ackroyd, she moans again), An Instance of the Fingerpost, Jack Maggs: the horrors of London, in short. But Chabon has an essay about Phillip Pullman that gave me horrors-by-association, because Pullman is just as lowering and depressing and kimoi as Ackroyd, *and* he isn't even writing about London. (Also want to call him Chabon-dama, soap bubble in Japanese, because natch I pronounce Chabon as if it were French, which I doubt the Murcans do.)
( Read more... )
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Thu Mar 1st, 2012
 | 09:47 am
Yesterday's dream was some wonderful Miyazaki film about a boy and his huge plume-tailed wolf in the lush and teeming grasslands of their world, who had to rescue the same region in an alternate world that had become, well, southern California scrubland, basically. Last night was a mishmash that contained a not bad apartment I was subletting/ sharing with my old friend M back when he was M (diffident, considerate, bookish) and not the academic who drank himself to death two years ago. Living areas divided by curtains, shaded courtyard and outside stairs somehow filched from University College here. Featured also M's blond feckless roommate, some small child from work, and an Indian friend who said the original sublease hadn't run out so he was still entitled to share with M even though there was no space. All influenced by beginning Unseen Academicals before bed and the achey flu-like whatever that I currently suffer from.
( February reading )
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Wed Feb 29th, 2012
 | 10:52 pm - The dangers of language acquisition
Reading along in 1Q84, come to this sentence 'Very few people were as good at kicking/refusing (unknown kanji+ round) as Aomame.' Try to find unknown kanji in the wordtank. Try five different possible radicals. Nothing. Kanji that are so obscure as not to appear in the Wordtank usually get furigana'd, but not this time. Huh. Shall ask P, the young Hong Kong student at work, who'll know if anyone does.
Trouble is, obscure kanji looks vaguely familiar. Blood on top of happy, is what I make of it. Have met it before-- have met it before in this book, remember having trouble with it before. Something clicks. I look up 'testicle' in the English function and get, yes, 睾丸. What a good thing I didn't ask P after all. (And the radical, it turns out, is 'eye'. On its side. With a dot on top. Ohhhkay.)
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Mon Feb 27th, 2012
| 10:12 pm - Merde alors
Today's Great Accomplishment was lugging one of those huge ancient monitors down the stairs and putting it out on the boulevard; where someone at once walked off with it, and I envy the upper body strength of the person who did.
( The day descended from there )
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Wed Feb 22nd, 2012
| 09:08 am - But I can still post, as you see.
As long as I do it from someone else's user info. Curse LJ's new style, because I used to be able to do it from comments.
In my daily blog reading, Aaronovitch has useful advice on dieting. He's losing slower than our mayor, but then our mayor is a loser. Stephen Pentz has some musical commentary I agree with.For instance, I am willing to acknowledge (albeit reluctantly) that people are entitled to believe that "Imagine" is John Lennon's best song, and that it provides a possible blueprint for reality. (I, on the other hand, would opt for "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "If I Fell," or a dozen or so other of his songs.)
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| 08:48 am - Paranoia
Everybody's LJ will load but mine. Does this have anything to do with the guys who've been hacking into my files and putting malware there, in spite of unguessable passwords? Or the three Russian spam blogs that hit random tanbi entries on Sunday? Argh.
Oh, OK-- now incandescens' & petronia's LJs load, but none of my other friends'. Oh them wacky Russians, I suppose.
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Tue Feb 21st, 2012
| 09:29 pm
Pleasant long weekend, of which I remember very little. Much wine was consumed next door and in restaurants, so I must stop drinking wine.
1Q84 may become my Japanese reading project for the year-- and that's just book 1. Every Sunday I go to Starbuck's and read about 25 pages, intending to read more next day, and never do. The Tengo sections go fast, the Aomame ones require the wordtank more than they should.
( Reading )
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Fri Feb 17th, 2012
| 10:47 pm
Not dead, or not quite. Have cold, have had a full week at work, come home brain-fried, take cold pills and go to bed and get up again next morning to do it all over again. But now! Three day weekend! Hurray!
( Highlights of my week, such as it was )
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Sat Feb 11th, 2012
| 12:36 pm - Several things make an entry
1. One can't call Leonard Cohen's voice melodious, but on some albums he's more melodious than others; or maybe it's just his back-ups are. There are only two Cohens I can listen to in their entirety-- Songs of and Various Positions-- and I note that both those are associated with seminal years in my life. Ten New Songs is close behind; there are two tracks I always skip because their sound irks me, but the rest are magical. I can't listen to The Future or I'm Your Man at all (except for Everybody Knows); if there's a song in there, it doesn't make it past the voice and the arrangements. Of the other albums, I like either the obscure tracks (The Story of Isaac, The Partisan, Seems so longs ago, Nancy from Songs from a Room) or the well-known ones: Chelsea Hotel & Who by Fire from New Skin, Last Year's Man & Famous Blue Raincoat from Love and Hate. There's four albums I've never heard, not counting the new one. I may hope for some gold among them, maybe.
( Read more... )
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Thu Feb 9th, 2012
 | 09:54 am - How badass is this?
Quotes without linking:While researching the 13th Michigan Infantry during the Civil War looking for more information about my great-great grandfather... a small note caught my attention. Soon I was reading about a Canadian woman, a Michigander, Civil War Private Franklin Thompson, a black man, an Irish peddler woman, a black mammy, a spy, a male nurse, a female nurse, and the only female member of the GAR. To my amazed surprise, it was all the same person: Sara Emma Edmonds. She disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Infantry, Company F. And then disguised herself as a black man, using silver nitrate to darken her skin, and infiltrated the Confederate camp as a spy.
Monstrous Regiment, meet John Howard Griffin.
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Wed Feb 8th, 2012
| 11:28 pm
Evidently the Points books have become my comfort reading. Since there's going to be a new edition of Point of Hopes, I'm half-tempted during this current re-read to mark up my old copy, noting when little snippets of information are being dropped as to what's located where and how people look and things like that. Possibly with a view to fanfic, but possibly just so as not to be lost when the new works come out.
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Tue Feb 7th, 2012
 | 01:22 pm - Nice things
Christmas in February. incandescens sends me Sherlock DVDs. I have no TV-- well, I have one, or actually two, but neither are digital and neither shows shows any more. I hear there are ways to DL from the net, but such arcane technology is beyond this Gramma. So I was resigned that current shows would pass me by. But one will not! Thank you, incandescens.
Meanwhile xsmoonshine sends me a tiger's heart wrapped in a dragon's hide. Which is: a plushy keychain with a white and black striped tiger wearing a red dragon outfit. The dragon head becomes a hoodie kind of affair, the body is a coat. Ah, pictures! Mine is the smaller version, without teeth. As well: the dragon looks sufficiently kerblonxed as it is, to find himself a piece of apparel. 'Why do I have this tiger in my mouth?' Poor Goushou.
Googling for the above, I find something like the plush dragons rasetsunyo sent me, sans treasure bag and box. So now you know.
Also belated happy birthday to kickinpants and congratulations to paleaswater on Thuglet #2.
And one of the mums at work said her two year old was talking about me: 'Jan? With the red top? Who lived in Tokyo?' How she picked that up I cannot say, but still.
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 | 12:23 pm - Imaginary landscapes from reality
Online representations of the paintings found in this entry of First Known When Lost change the colours, so I shall link to it directly.
The garden picture looks like archetypal March in Toronto, as might be expected of an English landscape, except that the present February is looking exactly the same. Beslyn's Pond looks like Tokyo, and also like archetypal November here. Stephen Pentz is on a roll with his pictures: thanks to him I've discovered James McIntosh Patrick and Karl Hagedorn.
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Mon Feb 6th, 2012
| 11:16 pm
My acupuncturist and her rebel studio appear in the Toronto Star and the entrepreneurial press. This is the woman with the comfy chair clinic, where you go to nap in any number of La-Z-Boys (no, that's not la-zed-boy, though most of the world reads it that way); and she manages to stick needles in my shoulders in such a way that I can lie down on them afterward, without pain. Go Ash!
Hooked up my new CD player last week, and so could play all the CDs that the old boombox wouldn't, like Onitsuka Chihiro, and thus found myself in 2002, where actually I had no desire to be. So played Loreena Mckennitt, and went back to 1996, which really wasn't that much better. Looked up back entries in Lj and found me reading those Woxin fics from 2009, and that was no good either. I conclude that time travel has little to recommend it. Except that this morning I woke up early, went to the bathroom and then, unusually, back to bed, and even more unusually, drifted for a bit; and thus remembered what mornings were like pre-loss of hormones: the happy warm fantasy world under the covers that lends such depth to the waking world outside the window.
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Sat Feb 4th, 2012
| 05:35 pm - Up and down Huazi Hill/ 上下華子岡，
Up: I have seen a Lion Dance, finally. A small lion (2-man) in a small venue (foyer of a downtown library) from a non-optimal location (3rd floor balcony of same) but very satisfying nonetheless. The foyer of course was crowded with small children and their parents and I got to watch toddlers trying to reach the drum, to be pulled back by five year old older brothers, and other toddlers trying to get in under the lion's skirts, to be pulled back by their mothers; and a small 3-year-old by the looks of it, break-dancing to the drum beat. Followed by a kung fu demonstration from a personable young chap who works in a bank by day and bar by night, who demonstrated how to deal with rowdy customers in the latter, if not the former, venue.
( Read more... )
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Thu Feb 2nd, 2012
 | 09:35 am
Last night disappeared in a tin of tonic with gin to match. Not sure why that laid me out at 10 pm; perhaps it was the muscle relaxants from earlier on.
( January reading )
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Tue Jan 31st, 2012
| 10:37 pm - Mail
1. i_am_zan, your utterly beautiful New Year's card arrived. Thank you so so much. I shall keep it forever, as I do kickinpants' happy Christmas rabbit from oh a decade ago or so.
2. tammylee, got your card from Thailand-- after you got back, as is ever the case. Thanks for the reminder that the sun shines somewhere.
3. I received 248 spam messages yesterday, all of them in Russian. This is why I'm never changing my provider. Their spam capture service got them all.
4. February is The Month of Letters. I like the idea but it's so not going to happen here. I handwrite almost slower than I type, which is very slow indeed, and tears of computer use (ETA: a typo, but let it stand for truth's sake) has killed the internal editor that can compose fluently as I go along. Longhand notes from me now require drafts to make sure I've said what I meant to in the space provided.
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