| Ronni's book meme |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|11:45 am] |
Don’t take too long to think about it.
Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you.
First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
Copy the instructions into your own post.
These aren't the *first* 15, but they're the ones I thought best fit the other criteria. In order of them appearing in my head.
1. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.
2. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
3. His Dark Materials (not going to attempt to separate the books, they're important to me as the trilogy) by Philip Pullman.
4. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett.
5. The Lord of the Rings (again, the whole darn thing) by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Yeah, not in the first spot, weird I know.)
6. Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan. I will forever use these books as an example of why just anyone shouldn't have their YA fantasy series published.
7. Jingo by Terry Pratchett.
8. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
10. The Seedling Stars by James Blish.
11. Fire and Ice: the US, Canada, and the myth of converging values, by Michael Adams. Yes, it's nonfiction.
12. Sabriel by Garth Nix. The other two too, but not as much.
13. Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
14. The Gunslinger by Stephen King.
15. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.
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As many of you know, last week I had a very awesome weekend full of stories and adventures. The problem with posting them is that I want to record it in much finer detail than anybody should have to read, so writing up a post for here is secondary to a private journal entry somewhere. So, I might tell you all about it, or it might go the way of my second Notacon post and never appear on the real internets. |
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| And more |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|12:49 am] |
Sometimes you get people who don't beg to be messed with. This is the best conversation about human nature I've had in many years:
( City folks' values )
I'm still not sure if it's sad or poetic that these are just chance connections and I'll probably never interact with this person again.
As a corollary to that, just now in IRC:
Imperiopolis> I feel bad for this guy.
Imperiopolis> He's been searching for three days
Imperiopolis> for someone he got disconnected with
ally-> aww
Imperiopolis> I tried to explain to him that the odds were he'd never find them again
Imperiopolis> but he insists on keeping at it
ally-> :(
ally-> poor guy
Imperiopolis> he said they talked for 5 hours
Anoria> awww
Imperiopolis> then the thing asploded
ally-> and they didn't exchange info before that? damn
Imperiopolis> Yeah :(
Imperiopolis> He wouldn't stay to chat.
Imperiopolis> Had to keep hunting.
This has got romance story written all over it. |
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| Omegle wagon |
[Jun. 8th, 2009|09:51 pm] |
I was bored and a bit lonely this weekend so I decided to finally try Omegle. My first non-asl conversation was a lot of fun even though I really don't have much in common with Brazilian uni students studying management.
I got sick of just disconnecting from people looking for cybersex though, and decided to try to mess with some people. Here's a log of the best one so far.
( Wherever men or women are from, it ain't Neptune ) |
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| A good cause |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|09:18 pm] |
I'm reposting this straight from my friend E's Facebook notes. A little bit of the audience will overlap but I'd like to let as many people as possible know:
A Call for Gently-Used Formal Wear
Here's a project in which women around my age are uniquely able to participate:
Women at Risk, International, a Christian organization that fights to end the exploitation of women around the world, is starting a "Garments of Praise" rental shop in the Dominican Republic. There, needy women will be trained with marketable skills, including tailoring, and then employed to help customers find and be fitted in formal dresses for special events.
They are asking for donations of gently used prom and bridesmaid dresses to stock the shop (please, only dresses from the last ten years). This will greatly lower their start-up costs. Many of us have dresses that no longer fit but have been worn only once or twice - these dresses are great candidates! Imagine your beloved dress helping to lift another woman out of poverty.
For those of you already in the Grand Rapids area, the drop-off site is:
4345 Sawkaw Dr. N.E.
Grand Rapids, MI 49525
The post continues with her plans to collect dresses from her/my locale and do a mass drop-off in Grand Rapids. If anyone local is interested in contributing, let me know in a comment or email (and I'll try to coordinate things. If you're not local, the end of the note mentions that she thinks the donation is tax-deductible (which means the cost of shipping your dress(es) would be also), if you'd like to participate from a distance.
Part of the reason I'm reposting this far and wide is because I don't have any qualifying dresses to contribute. Most of the reason is it seems like a very good cause and not the usual kind of donation request.
(Thanks for reading <3) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 26th, 2009|09:00 pm] |
The other section of my Notacon post stayed in the edit window for many days before I accidentally closed it for some reason or another. I didn't finish it, surprise. It's saved on my desktop which is where lj posts and to-do lists go to await final judgement and the potential of an afterlife. That was a month and a half ago.
Stuff I actually want to write about now:
- Weekend was wonderful. Visited maternal grandparents on Saturday (listened to rare stories of Grandma's childhood and rather worrying stories of step-grandpa's time in the army reserve), planted parents' vegetable garden Sunday (which involved using the rototiller for the first time and learning that my dad is glad I've got his family's gardening gene), went to the city parade Monday (which was long and ill-planned but still good, both for the actual military presence and for the marching band nostalgia), and spent some quality time at Brother Eldest's desk learning about mosfets, LEDs, potentiometers, and other such neat stuff.
- Bus ride home was a comedy of errors. It all worked out fine, but there were three individual mishaps (I assumed AJ would be able to drive me to the station and he couldn't, I discovered five minutes after Jake dropped me off at the station that I'd forgotten to pack my ticket, and five minutes after Jake came back with my ticket the scheduled bus that arrived was already full and we had to wait for the backup) and then the long... [vulgar term implying group sex but which actually refers to a tangle of mishaps which is painfully amusing in its magnitude] that was the actual bus ride with a driver who had never driven on the highway between Lansing and Detroit.
- I keep thinking of stuff I need to do and then forgetting about it when I have time to do it. It's getting rather annoying.
I know there was more, but if I try to think of anything else to write I'll think of a million things to write and then not want to post until I've addressed them all, i.e. I'd never get this posted and I need to.
Happy Day After Towel And Lilac Day.
I keep having dreams about characters from Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. I think I'm in love with at least five of them. I must get my own copy of that book. |
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| Notacon impressions |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|12:26 pm] |
Sitting at Notacon. The first set of talks doesn't include anything I'm dreadfully interested in, so I'm sitting on bench next to the registration desk people-watching. Planning on keeping this going as kind of a whatever-I-think-to-type entry mostly for my own record, but which will be posted publicly because some of you may be looking for ways to procrastinate studying or other responsibility and I'd like to help you out there.
( Things. ) |
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| Happy Easter |
[Apr. 12th, 2009|12:24 pm] |
Whether you believe in the resurrection of a human god, or the renewal of life as spring returns to the northern hemisphere, I hope you have a wonderful day full of hope (and chocolate, if that's your thing).
(I'm alive. I'll start posting more when I have less homework. Love to all.) |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 8th, 2009|11:31 pm] |
So I just got back from seeing Watchmen with an old friend. I think they adapted the comic quite well. Most everything that they took out, I could understand why and appreciate how they worked with what they had. Even when they mutilated the ending, they did quite a good job at stitching the pieces back together.
Little stuff I liked:
- The newsstand and the kid who showed up in the background of a few scenes. I understand why they took the sub-comic storyline out, but I'm very glad they left the characters in.
- Jon's voice. You'd think Dr Manhattan with the power to manipulate quarks would have this ominous booming voice, but instead it was quiet and gentle and so at odds with his power and significant of his conflicted human/god nature.
- To compliment that, Veidt's voice was deep and booming, at odds with his slight figure and metrosexual appearance.
- The flamethrower at the end of the successful sex scene. To a slightly lesser extent, the whole thing. That's the first sex scene I've watched in any movie where I didn't just feel awkward and want it to end. I more wanted to cheer.
- The faces on Mars.
- The final "ink" blot.
Little stuff that I didn't like:
- There was no mention of the Gordian Knot lock company. That was such a good clue in the comic.
- They moved dialog around a little bit so that Dan's "I think we should spring Rorschach" wasn't as awkwardly timed. I really liked the awkward timing, it's one of the reasons I <3 Dan so much.
- They also completely downplayed the Laurie-staying-with-Dan bit of the story. "Hell and damnation" was another one of my favorite lines. I have a feeling you're starting to see who my favorite character is.
- There was probably more, but I wasn't keeping notes.
In general I enjoyed it a lot and it was a good evening overall and I hope Arthur makes it back to Ypsilanti alive despite issues with headache, caffeine requirements, rain, darkness, and a hyper dog.
I should go to bed now. I'll write up why I'm leaving for Florida in 12 hours after the fact so I don't jinx things. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 8th, 2009|01:34 pm] |
"Those who point and whisper and gossip and pick? They can take a flying leap. The people you want around are the ones who don't notice, or the ones who notice and don't say boo. It's good to be human, after all. Your imperfections make you real, and make me just a tad more comfortable with mine. Ain't that the truth."
- The View from Mrs. Sundberg's Window
I enjoy Mrs Sundberg's wisdom, even if I can't quite tell whether she's fictional. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 12th, 2009|11:25 pm] |
Okay so I just checked livejournal for like the third time today and suddenly my default userpic was of some random person playing hockey. The keyword and description of the picture were the same and my other two userpics hadn't changed.
I deleted that picture and decided it's time for a change anyway (big change, different ship from the same game, but yeah...) and changed my lj password. Anybody else having problems with this? |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|07:29 pm] |
I have the most supportive boyfriend in the world. He knows exactly what silly things to say to get me out of one of my "ugh I suck at life" moods. Things like, while I'm sitting on my bed hiding from everything I have to do: "Do you know why you're sitting on your stuffed fish? He's trying to take all your pressure away and deal with it himself. Because he's got scales, and he can take it. So any time you feel stressed, just let Fishy handle it."
<3 |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|11:24 pm] |
Whoever decided that the weather is only an appropriate topic for small talk must not have grown up around here. February thaw, baby! It was 60F, bright and sunny and windy today. I celebrated the weather by wearing a skirt - not one full or short enough to be a nuisance in the wind - and carrying my sweatshirt jacket over my arm as I walked around campus drinking in as much vitamin-D-producing UV as I could. It felt glorious.
It even smells like a February thaw. There's no hint of anything in the ground starting to grow, but once in a while in the right places there's still a slight lingering scent of old leaves, made snippid by the snowmelt. And there's been a lot of snowmelt. The river is above its usual banks, up to the bottom of the little stone bridge on the green by the parking lot. There's still ice covering almost half of it, and up here it's mostly one big chunk. Down by the dorms there are kind of piles of miniature fluvian icebergs. (Webster says "fluvian" isn't a word, but I think it should be, and should mean "of rivers." So I'm using it.)
Everyone was pleasant today. I smiled at a lot of passersby and greeted all my bus drivers (which was a lot today, I had a lot of places to go and not enough time to walk to them all, unfortunately on that last bit). Oh, that's the other thing. If I hadn't already written it out in a notebook which I'll have to transcribe later so I can turn it in electronically, I'd go into a lot of detail about my first shift at the Refugee Development Center today. But I do, so I won't. I'll summarize: I was moved and inspired before I was there half an hour. I worked with two people, an older woman who was writing the story of her life as a refugee as an exercise for her English teacher (the center does ESL classes for adults) and a high school student who seemed to be learning everything you learn in K-12 school at once. I stayed 15 minutes beyond the end of my two-hour shift helping him with his last math problem before turning him over to another volunteer for the language portion of the homework (the exercise was ordering at a fast food restaurant: word recognition, conversation, reading an organized list of things, adding up prices, figuring change with subtraction. Very diverse.) and it was all very... ideal. If teaching could be like that every day, there would be a lot more teachers in the world.
I had Penny's side of "My Eyes" from Dr. Horrible going through my head after that. To be fair, I'd had the entire song going through my head before the volunteering shift, since I watched my birthday DVD last night and was blown away yet again by the love and win demonstrated therein. During a few minutes before campus band tonight, I figured out how to fit that melody to clarinet keys, which was quite satisfying. (And then my stand partner started talking about theramins. I like her.)
I thought this would be a quick entry. I'm procrastinating homework, you see. I kind of skipped a week of thermodynamics and now our online homework is due in about three hours, and I'm not at all motivated to actually do it. Tomorrow is a review session for our exam anyway, I'll learn everything I need to know then, right? We even get to make note sheets. So maybe I'll just go to bed and hope I test well.
Perhaps all the Frazz I've been reading lately has caused Caulfield to be a bad influence on me.
Fat chance, but I figured I'd put it out there.
<3 Frazz lots btw. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 6th, 2009|04:49 pm] |
The best thing about Michigan winters? When they slack off a bit and suddenly it feels really good to walk around without a coat on a sunny 33F day.
Thank you for the birthday present, climate :D |
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| Things past |
[Feb. 5th, 2009|01:18 am] |
One day in the late spring of 2004, I wrote an entry in this journal which was full of angst about a boy I liked who would never like me back the way I wanted him to. As he was a year ahead of me, he was about to graduate high school, and even though I knew I would never get anywhere even close to a romantic relationship with him, I was very sad to see my last hopes disappearing as all the seniors left, mostly never to be heard from again.
I mentioned in that entry that I knew I was being melodramatic, but I was just going to have to feel that way until a few years had passed and I could look back on the whole thing and laugh.
A few years have passed. I'm laughing now. As much as I respect the smaller world that my younger self lived in, and how much things like a classmate's attention mattered to me and most other people of that age, I'm glad that I grew up, and I'm glad that as far as I know I've grown out of that. At least, I never think wistful thoughts about that guy. He left and I got over him, and I realized somewhere along the line that he was pretty much a dick and I was better off when he left, because at least then he stopped playing with my mind.
So. Self of many years ago, your prediction came true. Thanks for putting up with all that teenage angsty crap so I can be the happy person I am today.
P.S. Can you tell I'm supposed to be doing homework right now?
P.P.S. For a long time I've claimed to be a happy person most of the time, but then occasionally had episodes where I thought about my life and my opinion of myself due to certain things and felt like I wasn't happy at all, and I was just deceiving myself and the world around me when I said I was happy. When I wrote that sentence in the entry above, I remembered this and stopped to think: am I really happy with myself and with my life?
Since the events chronicled two posts ago, I can truly say yes. It still feels good. |
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| Political views quiz |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|08:07 am] |
My Political Views
I am a centrist social libertarian
Left: 0.26, Libertarian: 3.95
Political Spectrum Quiz
Yeah, just about. I wish there had been an option for "this is a terribly worded question with several sides to it, not all of which I agree or disagree with equally." Like abortion being a "responsible" choice in case of teen pregnancy. Teen pregnancy itself is not responsible, so... yeah.
Or "A person's morality is between that person and God only." I agree that the government shouldn't dictate morals, but obviously neither should society dictate which god or lack of such you get your morals from.
Ah well. Good way to distract me from copying over my homework.
Damn, I bet I missed another reading quiz last night. |
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| Forgiveness. Redemption? |
[Jan. 24th, 2009|07:42 am] |
So, the thing I was feeling really good about last night. It's a lot to type out and I already explained to a friend on Facebook, so I'm going to paste a lot of that straight, editing and adding bits from other conversations I've had in the last few days. That's the nice thing about the internet: recycling.
( Long post is loooooong ) |
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| SF/F Guardian books |
[Jan. 24th, 2009|12:22 am] |
1000 SF/fantasy books list
The Guardian has come up with a list of 1000 novels everyone must read. (well every Guardian reader anyway). This is the Science Fiction & Fantasy component.
The ones in bold I've read; the ones that are underlined I loved; the ones that are in strikethrough I hated; the ones in italics I intend to read. This is probably a meme, since I got it from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dolorosa_12.
Note that my intentions are not solidified at this point and I hope to read many more than just the ones I've italicized. I'm just being a bit realistic.
( That's a lot of books )
Okay, so I haven't read nearly as much as I should. For a long time in high school and uni I was spending all my book time on the internet, though, so I guess I'm kind of behind. Back into things now though :) It would be nice if The Sparrow were on that list. It's pretty amazing.
So, in other news, I feel really good about things. I think tomorrow I'll paste the explanation I gave in a Facebook forum conversation about why. Don't quite feel like posting twice in a row after so much silence. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 3rd, 2008|08:07 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  amused | ] |
Yesterday, when I had some extra time in the absence of my afternoon lab (hooray!), I stopped by the fun little used book store just off campus to see what I could find. It's one of those stores that smells like an attic full of paper, with shelves almost to the ceiling all crowded and full and a basement filled with old magazines, mostly science fiction collections. I've never been to the comic book floor, which is upstairs.
Anyway. I didn't find the copy of Ender's Game that I was looking for - really not surprising. Instead, I found a beautiful hardcover copy of Jo's Boys, the sequel to Little Men which is a companion to Little Women all by Louisa May Alcott. They're wonderful books, and my mom is particularly fond of them, but I don't know if she's read this one yet, and I know we don't own it. The dedication in the front is dated 1919. I just have to decide whether giving it to my mom as a Christmas gift would be too much along with the hat I'm still planning to make for her.
The other book I found is the one I really wanted to talk about, though. It's a collection (published in 1975) of seventeen short stories by Ursula K LeGuin, who has been a favorite author of mine for years and a favorite author in general for decades. I was particularly reminded why by the beginning of a story called "April in Paris." The first three sentences:
Professor Barry Pennywither sat in a cold, shadowy garret and stared at the table in front of him, on which lay a book and a breadcrust. The bread had been his dinner, the book had been his lifework. Both were dry.
The entire story is thirteen pages long.
Good writing makes me smile. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 24th, 2008|10:03 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | people | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
The formerly questionably nerdy grad student is leaving to start his doctoral position across the country. This is his last week at our lab and today everyone went out to lunch and signed a card and that kind of thing. It was very nice.
While I'm working tomorrow and Wednesday, I won't actually be in the lab, I'll be at the greenhouse. So this was my last chance to see him. I got a goodbye hug and the feeling that facebook communication sometime down the road would not be unwelcome. So I'm happy that today went well. But the fact that one of my favorite people in my lab is no longer there is providing a very convenient distraction from the papers I'm supposed to be writing right now.
I thought maybe posting this would help me get that all out of my head. I wonder if it'll work.
edit: can one be nostalgic about stuff that happened in the last 6 months? I'm not sure. I was trying to get lj to erase the word that goes with the little thinking kitty anyway. |
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| wtf people |
[Oct. 31st, 2008|08:36 am] |
This is copied straight from Giant in the Playground's news page.
10/31/2008
As has been reported by a few other gaming blogs and news sites, the Charity Auction at this year's GenCon Indianapolis was held to benefit Gary Gygax's favorite charity, which I will not name here for reasons that will soon become obvious. The fine folks at GenCon raised over $17,000 for this charity, which helps starving children in impovershed areas of the world--only to have that money actually turned down by the charity. The charity refused due to the fact that the money was raised partly by the sales of Dungeons and Dragons materials, which as we all know, puts an irrevocable taint of evil on the filthy lucre that us demon-worshipping gamers might want to use to, say, donate to starving children. Not only is this a slap in the face to every gamer, but it is especially insulting to Mr. Gygax himself, who I understand donated to their cause many times over the years. Plus, I'm sure the children who would have gotten food or clean drinking water with that money would be sort of upset, too.
I bring this story to your attention not simply so that you might let the people at this charity know how you feel [this was a mailto link for algoddard@ccfusa.org] (especially if you have donated to it before, as many did in the wake of Mr. Gygax's passing), but so that you would be aware that there is an alternative charity that I would personally recommend (based on our own charitable giving) if you have a desire to donate money to help starving children. Plan USA is a worldwide charity aimed at helping those who live in poverty and/or have suffered from a natural disaster, particularly with monthly sponsorships of individual children. Since the money of D&D players is clearly not welcome at this other charity, I can't recommend Plan USA highly enough to those interested in giving anyway. At least if you choose to donate through them, there's no chance your generous gifts to the starving children of the world will be rejected due to your weekend hobby.
(Incidentally, GenCon was also able to find another worthy charity with an entirely different focus, the Fisher House Foundation, that was willing to accept the money given in good faith by GenCon attendees.)
---
Seriously. This is why, before I met some senisble ones who proved me wrong, I used to think all Christians were idiots. |
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