tarigwaemir

Durant Avenue on Holy Saturday

Decided to just undelete my account since (as usual) I found other ways to massively procrastinate instead (i.e. pretty much spend a lot of time looking at people's new journals at Dreamwidth, update Twitter compulsively and add new feeds to Google Reader). Sigh.

Will make no attempt to catch up on friends list though, in the interest of not spending the rest of the day clicking back through the entries.

What's new with everyone?

Yours &c.

Post-script: Dreamwidth account under troisroyaumes! Thanks to bohemianeditor, who kindly gave me an invite. ^_^ Current plan is to cross-post here under lock, with disabled comments and a link to the post on Dreamwidth.

I have no invite codes yet but will let you know if I receive any to give out. ^_^

Durant Avenue, on the Feast of St. John Climacus

In an unproductive slump at the moment, so I decided to make a post pointing out that imaginarybeasts' latest issue, Carnivale, is out.

worldserpent has a poll up about getting a Dreamwidth account, since Open Beta launches at the end of April. I think I've pretty much made up my mind to move there; hopefully I'll get an invite code and then upgrade to a paid account in November (which is when my last payment to LJ expires). The only question is what to do about my remaining LiveJournal. To import or not to import? To cross-post or not to cross-post? I think I probably will cross-post, since I don't think many on the friends list plan to move (feel free to tell me otherwise!), and perhaps that will negate the need to import previous entries. I do think that at some point I want to go back and lock down entries that are information-deficient (e.g. those early entries back in 2002 and 2003 when I had whole posts devoted just to online quiz results, for which most of the graphics don't even show up correctly anymore). However, I also said a few years ago that I would one day finish systematically tagging all my previous entries and haven't gotten around to that yet, so who knows if I'll ever face the daunting task of sifting through 1015 entries?

(Only 1015 entries over the course of 6.67 years? Well, I suppose I do tend to write long entries and almost never post more than once a day.)

I have a fun idea for blind_go, but I need to limit the premise so it will end up being self-contained and make some decisions about how many characters to include. Anyone willing to discuss it with me over email? Not asking for a beta but for someone willing to listen to me ramble and to tell me when something is boring. It will have to be over email since I can't really talk productively about writing over chat.

Have also been brainstorming in an attempt to write something for the next issue of imaginarybeasts. Steve said I should write about technocrats of the future who build a New Jerusalem exactly according to specifications of the book of Revelations and have it descend to earth on a giant revolving platform--the story would be about the aftermath and how Things Go Wrong. Really, I just think it's a shame that Steve has no interest in writing fiction because he's obviously 1000x better suited to coming up with plot than I am. (I probably won't use his idea because it requires too much research, but I want to read this story. >_>)

Has anyone watched the Glass Mask J-drama? I watched the first series via streaming video last week and adored it. The links to the sequel are broken, alas.

Yours &c.

Post-script: Ah, I meant to add that my Yuletide Santa wrote a sequel to my Yuletide gift, In the God's Hands: Conquests New.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of Blessed Charles the Good

Oops, sign-up deadline for bibliophages passed by without my noticing. >_< Er, please recommend books about "places that don't exist" here? For that matter, I should remember to go and compile a list myself.

I haven't been posting in any of the usual venues because I am currently trying to prepare for my qualifying exam (which is coming up in about a month and a half). Illustrative of my general deterioration when you consider that despite the fact that the actual amount of stress in my life has decreased with the years, my ability to handle stress has probably decreased at a more rapid rate. Although preparing for this exam is actually less work than, say, writing my undergraduate thesis, I've still managed to have two panic attacks (for the first time in my life, though they were admittedly caffeine-induced), spent several days "working at home" to avoid having to tell my advisor just how little progress I've made (it's so sad how graduate student life turns out to be exactly like Ph.D. Comics), and in general failed to break out of the sense of paralysis in the past several weeks. I've spent copious amounts of time procrastinating in the past few weeks (finishing all four seasons of Blackadder on Youtube, reading Sense and Sensibility on Project Gutenberg, watching the 1995 movie adaptation, catching up on scans of various shoujo series, watching Fawlty Towers on Netflix, rereading The Truth for the fifth time, and now finally finishing up watching Hong Gildong which I started watching over a year ago). -_- Oh well. At this rate, I might even write fiction.

So, good time for a meme! Tell me five things you associate with me and I will post about them (eventually) and upon request will tell you five things I associate with you (especially if you've done this meme and I've failed to comment on yours due to general flakiness).

(Or just sign up for bibliophages! ^_^)

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of St. Gildas the Wise

Meme from magicnoire: The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!

My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

• I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
  
• What I create will be with you in mind.
  
• It'll be done sometime this year (2009).
  
• You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be something written, some physical thing made, could be anything at all, but I will make it myself. It's entirely my choice what it is. No quibbles, no refunds.
  
• I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch?

Oh, the catch is that you put this in your journal as well. If you don't, you don't get anything.

In other news, I decided to stop following the recent "debate" on racism and cultural appropriation. I put debate in quotation marks because it started off being one, but now I feel like people who were listening aren't listening anymore, and that's not a debate by any means. I made my first reaction post on my Tumblr, but I felt the need to say something here.

( Personal rambling on the subject )

Anyway, if you skip the above, what I really wanted to say was:

If I ever say anything unintentionally offensive out of unconscious privilege (race, class, biological or social gender, sexual orientation, etc.), please let me know. I promise to bite my tongue and keep any defensive comments to myself until I've understood why what I said could be offensive to another person. My friends are always free to call me out on my mistakes.

In other news, ficcraft is wrapping up its first round soon, and there have been a total of zero posts. At the very least, it would be nice to get some discussion on the challenge; aishuu made a very good comment, but she's been the only one. Fic of any length, including drabbles, are welcome. Heck, post your old fic, if need be. I know it's not a large forum but it would be nice if the community didn't die in its first month...

Yours &c.

Blair Hall Apts., on the Feast of St. Stephen

Received a Mask of Apollo fic for Yuletide: In the God's Hands. I made some very specific requests, so I was awfully pleased that the writer managed to cover all of my details.

I didn't manage to finish my Yuletide assignment; I defaulted early enough to be excused, but I was still harboring hopes of turning the story in as a Treat. Looks like that's going to have to turn into a New Year's Resolution fic. I actually like the way the fic is going but it requires more thought to develop properly.

Haven't had time to read other fic, either for Yuletide or for fifthmus, unfortunately, but I hope to catch up later.

Is there any point in still keeping a fandom tag when every entry is going to use it from now on? -_- Well, we'll see.

Yours &c.

Durant Avenue on the Feast of St. Andrew

Oops, I forgot that I also intended to put up a holiday cards post. Please leave your (preferred) name and mailing address in the comments! (All comments are screened.) This time, I really do intend to send them out, although I'm not going to include any drabbles. Instead, I'll either include a random book quote or a favorite poem or something else that you can specify in your comment. ^_^

If you're silvermuse89, petronia, tsutanai, jaebi_lit, lucathia_rykatu, datenshi_blue, kitsune_jade, magicnoire, aiwritingfic, uminohikari, sub_divided, or tryogeru, you're automatically getting a card from me (since you requested last year and I failed to send out any cards), but do let me know if your mailing address has changed since then.

Yours &c.

Durant Avenue on the Feast of St. Albert the Great

Nothing accomplished today other than listening to songs on Blip.fm from sub_divided, petronia and worldserpent. Which in turn reminded me of my long-neglected 8tracks account, so I also uploaded the two mixes I had up on Muxtape before the site went down and made ghetto cover art for each mix. You can listen to them here. Also, my Blip.fm account is here.

I make mixes the way I dress: monochromatically.

I've made several impulse purchases lately: The Truth (because I had a craving for Pratchett and wanted to reread this book), The Rest is Noise (book on 20th century music that I've been wanting for ages), and this skirt in black (wanted something else to wear to performances although I suspect I should have restrained myself). Resolution: no more extravagances until next paycheck! Especially since I need to save up for Christmas presents next month.

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of St. Josaphat

I signed up for yuletide this year. Somewhat chagrined by my assignment: it's for a fandom I know well but requests a character that I hadn't anticipated on writing. (The hazards of just clicking "Any" for all the fandoms I offered...) Anyway, it'll be a challenge! I'll need to review the canon at some point though. My recipient doesn't have a LiveJournal though so I've been stalking the Yuletide letters post in hopes of getting more details about her preferences.

My letter here:

( Dear Yuletide Author )

Real-life news: final fellowship application sent last Friday. Finally, I can return to just juggling teaching and research. Need to sort out the recommendations though...one of the professors I requested a recommendation from never actually sent in his recommendation (which completely invalidates one of the applications), and I need to first talk to him to make sure he'll write for the third one and also arrange for a backup. -_-

Yours &c.

Durant Avenue on the Feast of All Saints

jaebi_lit tagged me for this meme:

Where Would Your 8 Homes Be?

List them. You don’t have to list your reasons, but if you do at least for a few of them, it would be more fun. And remember that the only rule is: the homes must be within the borders of the United States of America or else, within the borders of the country you live in, so as to utterly emulate the McCains. When you’re done, tag 8 people, so that they may join in the self-indulgence, forgetting about the crappy property market and the equivalent of The End of Pompeii on Wall-Street. You could spend your time hammering your doors and windows shut in preparation for the apocalypse instead, but it would be much less fun.

Uh, the idea of having eight homes kind of sickens me to my stomach as horrible extravagance. (Insert long rant here.) But eight possible places that I would like to live in:

( Eight cities )

I limited my answer to cities with good public transportation systems because I refuse to live in a place where I need a car to get around.

I haven't written about elections much, but I am planning to vote next Tuesday. For those of you who live in California, I think Proposition 8 is receiving a lot of publicity already, especially in fandom circles, but jaebi_lit wrote an eloquent post about why you should vote no here, with some links at the bottom to what you can do to help.

There are other issues on the ballot too, which Cat sums up nicely here, including Proposition 4, which would mandate that parents be notified if their teenage daughters want to get an abortion.

There are several propositions for the city of Berkeley as well, including one about medical marijuana use (why am I not surprised). I feel really ignorant of local politics: the mayoral elections are taking place this year as well, but I have no idea who the candidates even are. (I still have three days to educate myself though, right?)

Steve and I bought a subscription to the opera this season. ( Opera reviews )

I'm still not finished with my fellowship applications, so back to essay-writing I go. Also, need to write up post about The Mask of Apollo for bibliophages.

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of Ste. Teresa of Avila

Exams were handed back today. Quite possibly as unpleasant for me as it was for the students: one of my sections did very poorly compared to the class average. Although everyone has reassured me that I haven't done anything wrong, looking at the list of students who are in the D/F range and realizing that this particular section has more individuals in that range than any other section was rather demoralizing. I've been comforting myself with the thought that my other section, which gets more or less the same material, had a mean comparable to the overall class.

Anyway, I contacted the students who are doing poorly, and some of them have asked to meet with me to discuss how they're doing in the class. Thank goodness Berkeley undergrads aren't shy about talking to their TAs!

Progress in research has slowed, in part due to the teaching workload and in part due to my own fatigue/lack of motivation. Had talk with P.I. about my project and what I should focus on to be ready for quals. She kept telling me that I needn't feel pressured to take the project in a direction that I didn't find interesting, which made me think that I must be looking remarkably unenthusiastic. Admittedly, experiments haven't been going well, but when do they ever go well?

To comfort myself, a list of pleasant and cheerful things, in reverse chronological order:

1. The lab is going bhangra dancing on Saturday night. Plus, will be meeting up with jaebi_lit to hang out.

2. Made some progress on fellowship applications today.

2. Steve stayed over the last two nights and cooked me a cabbage-and-chickpea stew plus kugel. Yum. Also a relief since I've run out of fresh produce in the fridge.

3. Went to karaoke last Thursday with Steve and his friends. Realized that being a karaoke addict has enabled me to sing backup for the major Britney Spears hits. Sigh. Didn't try any new songs, although admittedly I haven't been following K-pop lately so I wouldn't have had many new songs to try. It was a good group of people for karaoke: people were enthusiastic and uninhibited. ^_^

4. Prior to that, I got to eat okonomiyaki for the first time! It was delicious.

5. Had lunch with tokyofish last Thursday where we ended up talking for nearly three hours. Cathartic ranting plus commiseration plus sheer fangirling = very relaxing.

6. Read a lot of Georgette Heyer ebooks. So far, not a single male protagonist other than Freddy from Cotillion has met my approval. They are either arrogant, condescending rakes--Alverstoke from Frederica--or violent, amoral rakes--Avon and Vidal from These Old Shades and The Devil's Cub--or rude, tactless rakes--Carleton from Lady of Quality. I think the most appealing male romantic lead so far has been Charles Rivenhall from The Grand Sophy, who is rude, arrogant and prone to belittling women but is puritanical rather than rakish. (Carleton is pretty much the same as Rivenhall except with a reputation for womanizing.) Would approve of the Earl of Rule in The Convenient Marriage for his laidback nature but alas, he too has a reputation for rakishness.

I understand that the whole appeal of the rake is that he reforms himself for the heroine; she is the exception that causes him to change. But the fact that the rake often becomes possessive and jealous isn't flattering; it's a double standard. Also, the excuse that the rake will never ruin a lady of Quality is also offensive. Anyway, courteous and slightly dumb Freddy is much more likely to win my heart than any romantic hero who seems "mysterious" and "dangerous" from the hint of scandal attached to his name. ::rolls eyes:: I wish there was a romance novel convention featuring Preternaturally Intelligent heroes, à la your favorite genius strategist/go player/absent-minded professor, but I suppose they won't pop up in Regency romances in any case. (Is there such a convention? Maybe I should be reading Heyer's mysteries instead.)

On the other hand, I was very fond of the practical, no-nonsense Frederica who is so very good of taking care of her younger siblings (plus, Felix and Jessamy stole the story in that novel), and Sophy, in her breezy disregard for English conventions, was also refreshing (especially when she trod down Cousin Charles' attempts to belittle her).

7. Picked up CDs from a pile of random free albums left out on the street next to Amoeba. Mostly unknown indie bands distributing free samples or demos to the record store. Rule of thumb: when rifling through CDs whose artists you don't recognize, look for interesting cover art. Apparently similar visual aesthetic = similar musical aesthetic.

8. Saw The Dark Knight (finally) with Steve two weeks ago. Went in with overblown expectations for Heath Ledger's acting; was a little surprised to realize that the Joker was actually a fairly standard sociopath. Also disliked the unambiguous moralizing of the ending. But the movie was still great, and I ate a Cinnapretzel and a whole box of Sour Patch candy (while stealing sips from Steve's giant Icee). How's that for artificial sugar intake?

Yours &c.