So, I have been quite sick for the past 6 weeks. Enough so that, for the first time in about 15 years, I actually took an entire week off to try to recover. And yet, I still feel like death warmed over.

However!

I schlepped home from the train station last night to discover a mysterious BOX on my doorstep. My spirits brightened immediately when I realized it was addressed to ME! Seems that the stealthy, all-knowing, and thoughtful tea fairy had come by while I was at work and left me tins of these amazing TEAS!

Ti Kuan Yin
Dragon Well
Osmanthus Oolong

Don't you all wish that you had a tea fairy too? ;-)

Thanks luthien. I ♥ you muchly! *hugs*

ETA: PSA time...the dr. gave me some amazing prescription cough, er, pellets that worked even better than the codeine cough syrup. For those of you who often get persistent coughs with your colds, you might want to ask about these. If nothing else, they're a hell of a lot easier to schlepp around than a bottle of cough syrup! :-)

Just one for today, but oh, what a one!

Miss Pole Dance World 2009. Utterly amazing athleticism and grace. Click and be wowed.

What the fucking fuck, Amazon.com?
Amazon Follies. On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books...See a round-up of links discussing this bullshit: here. They're also targeting non-fiction books with GLBTQ themes; see the LA Times blog here and the current list of known titles de-ranked here. Also, see a google bomb strategy from the folks over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Sleep broom
Sleep May Prepare You for Tomorrow by Dissolving Today’s Neural Connections Sleep may be a way to sweep out the brain and get it ready for a new day of building connections between neurons, according to two new studies of fruit flies...Depriving flies of sleep leads to ever-greater levels of synaptic proteins, the researchers show. Levels of the proteins decrease as the flies sleep

Pr0n goes all AIG and shit
Porn Hedge Fund Founder Refutes Fraud Claims. “Priapus’ only asset is iPorn.com, which cost about $250,000, yet $3 million is missing,’ the former investor says. The investor also alleges that a related firm, Adultvest Events, a conference company that seeks to bring investors and adult industry insiders together, did no business, and that all of its cash was stolen.

Oh, snap!
Iowa Supreme Court Eviscerates the Right Wing Talking Points. via browngirl.

Pretty in print
8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography In Your Designs.

I have promised myself that I would post more often; we'll see how that goes. :-)

For today, I have a link that might interest those of you who have been following the global financial meltdown and/or various internet discussions about privilege. While reading this article this morning, I was struck by the familiar pattern I saw running through it...

In the Economic Fail & Patterns of Privilege Department, I bring you: Prophet and Loss, Brooksley Born warned that unchecked trading in the credit market could lead to disaster, but power brokers in Washington ignored her. Now we're all paying the price. (AKA: In which Alan Greenspan and friends fill up a bingo card).

ETA: Check out this interview with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout. (Transcript also available at that link.) Born gets a special shout-out about 13 minutes into the interview.

Click the cut to see the patterns that I spotted. Can you spot more? ( Join in and play the home game... )

To luthien!

I hope that you're having a wonderful day :-)

I've been meaning to write a post on the infamous Life/Work Balance, and to solicit your ideas for how achieve this mythical state, since I am demonstrably utter fail at it myself. Instead, I've decided to write this post, one which has been monumentally unpleasant to contemplate, let alone actually type out, and one whose potential consequences are very opaque to me.

I'm not much for personal disclosures and such in my LJ. When I do post, it's usually more light, fluffy, or link-y with a distinct lack of Self-Disclosure, Personal Revelations, or Serious Topics™. However, I'm going to make an exception with this post.

In it, I am not my usual moderate self. Click or not accordingly.

( Read more... )

Have any of you noticed that, the less frequently you update your LJ, the more difficult it is to write an update, leading to yet more infrequent updating?

Anyway. I promised myself that I would make a post this weekend, so here it is, typos and bad grammar and all!

I am so. very. tired. I recently took a new job that is awesome, which I love, but that also leaves me virtually zero time to do anything except for work. *sigh*
( Read more... )

My commute is a bit long these days, so I've had time to read several books on the train.
( Quick book reviews )

I am determined to do something other than work, dagnabit in the upcoming months. If I can just get this latest work project complete...

( Fanfic )

Finally, here are a few URLs to make you smile. It's quite sad, I don't even have time to find freaky URLs for you guys lately...

( Some URLs of the Day )

Bah. It's late; I must be off to bed.

As you can see, I've been collecting links to Bingo cards. Anyone got any others? I'm sure there's got to be more. Link me and I'll add'em and give a shout out to their creators and/or reccers. :-)

Big List of Bingo Cards

Libertarian Troll Bingo. (also here) (via Punk Ass Blog)

Concern Troll Bingo III, Concern Troll Bingo II. (via Unfunny business)

Anti-feminist Bingo I and Anti-feminist Bingo II (via Hoyden about town)

Anti-Feminist Bingo (via Science Professor)

Fat Hate Bingo (via Hoyden about town)

Post-feminism Bingo (via Hoyden about town)

Fantasy and Science Fiction Bingo, No Racism in Fiction Edition (via Alas, a blog)

Transphobic bingo. (via Arionhunter)

MetaFilter Anti-Sexism Bingo, (via MetaFilter)

Invisible Illness Bingo, (via Ham Blog)

Catechism's Bingo Bookmarks, (via catechism)

White Liberal Bingo, (via I Dreamed I Was)

ETA: some new ones as of 01/16/09

Cultural Appropriation Bingo, (via elusis)

Avatar Racefail Bingo, (via Dead bro walking)

ETA: Liz Henry's collection at Flickr: 03/21/09
BINGO!

Tilda Swinton's Reign.

FTA: “All the girly stuff is not relaxed for me. It’s hard work.” Seeing images of herself transmitting unruffled strength on the digital monitor, she comments, “That I can do. I can give you that. It’s all that girly stuff I can’t do.” Similarly, when the photographer says she looks a bit too much like a boy in one of the pictures, several hours into the shoot, she leans in and, as if letting him in on a secret, stage whispers: “That’s kind of who I am.”

Go. Be deliciously overwhelmed by her unfettered awesomeness. ♥

via ONTD

Weight Watchers as an RPG. Interesting; huh.

3D Printer. "Shapeways is a spin-off from Philips' Lifestyle Incubator. On one side, it's a website where you can upload your 3D models—which can even have joins—or use an online 3D creator with access to everyday models. The online 3D creator is extremely easy to use, so anyone can modify them without any technical or product design knowledge." WANTS! :-)

Bizarre historical "cures" for homosexuality: Brief History of a Recurring Nightmare, by Timothy F. Murphy. My personal WTFF fave: "up to 150 hypnosis sessions as well as consumption of large amounts of alcohol and subsequent visits to brothels." O RLY?

On the USian politics/health insurance front, here's this gem from the dude who helped craft McCain's healthcare policy:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort..."So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime. The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved." Teh St00pid; it burns!

In the wake of Usain Bolt's world record breaking 100 and 200 meter dashes, scientists are again asking the question, How fast will man eventually run? Will he ever run the 100 meters in five seconds flat?.

Finally, Lloyd's TSB proves that All Your Passwords Are Belong to Us: Man's 'pants' password is changed. "A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not"." *facepalms*

In closing, I leave you with a book review and a vaguely worded question.

One of my fave sites, Pajiba did a review of Jhumpa Lahiri's book Unaccustomed Earth. Now, I haven't read this particular book, though I have slogged my way through other short stories by Lahiri, and Sherman and I shared the same "Ho hum meh" response. I was deeply bored by Lahiri's work. Granted, I like plot, and plot is thin on the ground in Lahiri's work, but still, I couldn't even work up enough give-a-shit over her characters to care about their yawn-inducing tragic endings. But then, since I don't like very much literary fiction, I wasn't surprised.

However, I was a bit surprised and intrigued by the reaction to Sherman's review (see the comments' section on the article). First off, I was puzzled by Erman's comment that Sherman should have done research about Lahiri before reading her book. As antibutters says in response, most people don't do research about the book before they sit down to read it. Or, at least, that's usually how *I* do it. I roam around the book store (or Amazon), read book jackets, then pick something based on the blurb (or sometimes based on the author if I've read them before). What about you guys? Do you go off researching writers before you take a crack at their work, or do you just dive into something that looks interesting?

Secondly, I was disheartened by the "You ignorant plebe" response by butters. I'm used to getting called all sorts of names because I rarely find the profundity in lit fic that others do, but wow, is it really just not done to say that a book was boring? That the elements that other people rave about (e.g. Lahiri's endless descriptions of minutia) just don't work for you? I mean, the author of the review took great pains to explain that she thought highly of Lahiri's word crafting skills, even if the content that Lahiri chose to write about bored the living crap out of her.

Is it really such a bad thing to say, "Why did these stories need to be told? What justifies the use of the paper they’re printed on?" with the implication that pretty words and lush descriptions simply weren't enough of a reason for the reviewer? What to you all think? What makes a book or story "meh" to you--the storytelling? The content? The characters? What stories have you walked away from with an overwhelming feeling of "Meh"?

Freaky and fun tentacled plush toys by Lana Crooks.

Academic Productivity. A great site to boost your productivity, even if you aren't involved in academic work!

Related to the link above, you might want to check out: Rescue Time. I haven't tried it out, but it looks interesting.

Ugly is the New Beautiful. Too 'ugly' to model? Not according to one talent agency in New York City. "Ugly," founded in 1969, looks for unique models who are not considered traditionally beautiful. According to agency founder Simon Rogers, "beauty really does come in all shapes and sizes," and in the modeling industry, there's room for all.

I call "WTFF???" on this one; especially for the women. None of the women are even remotely average in looks. (Tattoos & Piercings != Ugly *shakes fist*) Is this what we've come to as a culture? *weeps* Reads this article and *weeps again*.

Superbugs: The new generation of resistant infections is almost impossible to treat.

Scared yet? Yeah, me, too!

Spam Architecture. "The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures." Brilliant stuff!

The Biggest Hole in the World. Located in Mirna, Russia, the gaint hole is actually a diamond mine in Eastern Siberia. It is 525 meters deep and 1.25 km in the diameter. It has been known to suck in helicopters, so flying over it is now prohibited. O_o

Finally, folks interested in feminism and gaming might want to check out this blog: Feminist Gamers!

For the ritually gifted amongst you, I need your assistance: I need to create a (relatively simple) ritual to cleanse a room of bad memories.
( Read more... )
Any ideas would be very much appreciated!

In fact, it's been so damned long that I almost forgot how to make a post.

You know sometimes, it seems like you've lived three days in 24 hours? Well, yeah, I've had an entire freaking year exactly like that. Some truly awesome stuff happened (for which I thank all of you who sent positive vibes my way), and then some really craptastic shit went down, too (for which I thank all the lurkers who have supported me through it in email--♥s you all to the max!)

All of which is to say that, yeah, I've finally undeleted my browsers and plugged my internet connection in again, and I'm back. All my fic projects that were on indefinite hold are now back on my List of Things I Can Actually Contemplate Doing Rather Than Pathetically Pining Over, which is very much yay! Maybe I can get that especially irritating SG1 story finished, finally (shifty eyes at mogwai_do). Plus, somehow (I'm genuinely not sure how) I've managed to make some progress on the original project that I've got going (thanks josanpq!) *boggles* In other fannish news, my Witchblade DVDs arrived, so maybe I can finally get to that SG1 crossover that been lurking in my lizard brain for like 5 years now (shout out to gryphonrhi!)

I see that many of you all are off to Terminus--so, have a fantastic time! And I'll catch y'all around more frequently now. I've even been thinking of re-upping my paid membership on LJ again' I've been heartened by the changes that they've made. Took them a damned long time to do it, but perhaps, better late than never? *still mulling* Not to mention that InsaneJournal apparently hates my IP address since it's totally 50/50 if I can actually login and/or load my flist. *sigh*

Oh! And I owe cluegirl, cathexys, and arsenicjade phone calls. Please, pretty please don't hate me too much you guys! The friendship fail has been strong with me lately. :-( *hugs*

Note: photos may contain spoilers for the new SG1 Continuum Movie.

( Read more... )

Due to RL drama, I've been AFK more than not for the past two months. Alas, I have had little time to collect cool URLs. However, here are a few that I've encountered that y'all might find interesting:

1. MagCloud, a Publish On Demand Magazine press! Very cool idea. Maybe something that former (print) fanzine publishers would like to check out. :-) Read about the project from one of the founders, here!

2. George Carlin fans (like me) who have HBO rejoice! HBO is running a series of his performances over the next few nights. (for those without hbo, i have no doubt there are torrents someplace for the eps! not that i would be condoning or encouraging illegal activities, you understand)

3. Organization fiends and DIY Planner fans (like me), y'all know about Ygor's dynamic planner template software, right? Also, check out the user submitted templates, too. There are some lovely new patterns there.

4. Thinking about creating a DIY book cover illustration? Illustrator P J Lynch has a step-by-step guide showing how he created one such illustration; from photo-ref to finished product.

5. Zombie and/or art enthusiasts might want to check out Rob Sacchetto's Zombie Daily blog, featuring a new zombie illustration every day! Great stuff here, folks.

6. More cool art: A forensic artist's BFF gallery. "I'm drawing 64 facial images of composite friends. Then I'll draw a series of composites from the composites; 32 drawings combining four faces each, 16 drawings combining eight faces each, and so on until finally there is one drawing derived from all 128 faces (see diagram below)."

7. Gold Toothpick Doubling as Earwax Spoon Found. "Experts found a tiny gold combined toothpick and earwax spoon, believed to be more than 385 years old, during the search for a shipwrecked Spanish galleon off the Florida Keys." O_o

8. Everything is better with bacon! Including cookies.

9. Move over crop circles! Make way for Rice Paddy Art!

10. Large format photo fans, have you seen The Big Picture blog at Boston.com? Gorgeous photos, many different topics. Perfect for wallpapers.

In the neat web tools department: page2rss, "It is a service that helps you monitor web sites that do not publish feeds. It will check any web page for updates and deliver them to your favorite RSS aggregator. You can add a button to your browser's bookmarks toolbar that will create Page2RSS feed for the page you are currently viewing. This is an easy and convenient way for you to create feeds for pages you are surfing."

Knowledge managers and educators might find this paper interesting: Minds of Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 (PDF). "The most profound impact of the Internet is its ability to support and expand the various aspects of social learning."

Comics fans might be interested in this blog post: The Objectification of Women in Graphic Novels, by Broken Mystic.

Bundle wrap your clothes to save space when traveling!

Having a bad day? Thinking that people suck? Read this story; it'll cheer you up a bit: Cabdriver Thanked for Returning a Stradivarius.

In the "Where's my jetpack, dammit?" category: Fusion Man Rossy and his personal wing. WANT!.

For all you fabric arts folks out there: Amazing felt embroidered typewriter and felt hand grenade. More amazing objects here. Go and boggle!

I spent a lot of time on the bus again in the past few months, hence, you all get some original fic reviews :-)

( this way for the reviews and no spoilers... )

ETA: Fans of the pirate series Brethren: Raised by Wolves (reviewed here), make sure that you mark May 15 on your calendars. That's the date that the next installment, Treasure: Raised by Wolves Vol. 3 will be available for purchase on Amazon.com!

Social science & humanities academics on my flist, check out this new journal:

The Journal of E-Media Studies: "is a blind peer-reviewed, on-line journal dedicated to the scholarly study of the history and theory of electronic media, especially Television and New Media. It is an inter-disciplinary journal, with an Editorial Board that is chiefly grounded in the methodologies of the field of Film and Television Studies. We welcome submissions across the fields and methodologies that study media and media history."

Especially have a look at Toward a Visceral Scholarship Online: Folkvine.org and Hypermedia Ethnography in the first issue.

Somewhat in a similar vein, check out A Million Penguins, a wiki novel. The concept (a collaborative novel) pretty much never gets old, but OMG the writing is scary. And not Good Scary, either. For decades, fanwriters have been doing way more with impromptu round robins, believe you me! :-)

For wiki fans, there is an interesting analysis of the experiment here: "The object of this research project is to perform an analysis of the cultural text that is "A Million Penguins" in order to derive some guidelines for future attempts at mass, collaborative authoring. The main focus of the research will be on the people who contributed to AMP: not just the staff of Penguin but a wide range of those involved. I want to know how they got involved, why they got involved, what they did and how, looking back, they feel about it."

Risking It All to Find Safety, by Kai Wright. A very powerful multi-part article on the challenges facing queer teens of color. In this case, in NYC.

Also from Color Lines, check out: Becoming a Black Man, by Daisy Hernandez. " Louis Mitch ell expected a lot of change when he began taking injections of hormones eight years ago to transition from a female body to a male one...What he had not counted on was changing the way he drove. Within months of starting male hormones, “I got pulled over 300 percent more than I had in the previous 23 years of driving, almost immediately. It was astounding,” says Mitchell, who is Black and transitioned while living in the San Francisco area and now resides in Springfield, Massachusetts."

Amazing and awesome Phone Cord Sheep sculptures.

Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain: Deep within our subconscious, all of us harbor biases that we consciously abhor. And the worst part is: we act on them. Interesting article from Scientific American on unconscious bias.

Bad news for folks who suffer from migraines:

It's not all in your head, "Migraines linked to higher risk stroke and heart attack".

I've been working flat out lately and had pretty much no time for link spelunking, let alone writing a post with actual content. *sigh* But, I finally get a break after Wednesday. Yay! In the meantime here are some links to tide you over.

First up in the EPIC FAIL department:

Magic Trick gets teacher fired. "I said, well Pat, can you explain to me what this is? Can you say anything to me at all? You've been accused of wizardry." Way to go, Florida!

For the various humanities and social sciences folks on my flist:

The Modernist Journals Project: "The MJP is a multi-faceted project, which is intended to become a major resource for the study of the rise of modernism in the English-speaking world, with periodical literature at the center of this study. As such, its historical scope has a chronological range of 1890 to 1922, and a geographical range that extends to English language periodicals, wherever they were published. With magazines at the center, the MJP also has a generic range that extends to the digital publication of books directly connected to modernist periodicals and other supporting materials for the study of these periodicals. At this stage of the MJP's development, however, the chronological range of periodicals extends only from 1904 to 1922."

Also...

Zine: not dead, just retro.
"Tim Brown has a post in Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle, about the “death of zines,” claiming, as though no one had heard the idea before, that zine culture is dead and has been replaced by the internet. There’s something a little bit too obvious and common sense about the idea, and like much that is common sense and obvious, easily disproven by a closer look at reality...A zine scene exists, just as a punk scene exists."

And finally:

Getting married for health insurance. "Seven percent of Americans say they or someone in their household decided to tie the knot in the last year so they could receive healthcare benefits, a poll finds.

On the flip side of that: Unhappily ever after: The 'nondivorce'. "Potentially big legal fees, health-insurance needs and the expense of separate households cause some couples to stay under one roof even when their marriages are all but dead."

ETA: more about the magic story here.

From the article:

"The trick requires a toothpick and transparent tape. A sleight-of-hand maneuver causes the toothpick to disappear then reappear. At least, so it seems. In reality, the toothpick hides behind the performer's thumb, held in place by the tape.

"The whole thing lasted 45 seconds," Piculas said.

He said the students liked the trick. He showed them how to do it so they could perform it at home.

One student in the Rushe Middle class apparently took the trick the wrong way, Piculas said. He said he was told the student became so traumatized that the student's father complained."

(via unfunny business)

Placeography. "Placeography is a wiki where you can share the history of and stories about a house, building, farmstead, public land, neighborhood or any place to which you have a personal connection."

A while back, I mentioned the algae-to-oil technology in a previous URL of the day. And lo:

First Algae Biodiesel Plant Goes Online: April 1, 2008. "PetroSun has announced it will begin operation of its commercial algae-to-biofuels facility on April 1st, 2008. The facility, located in Rio Hondo Texas, will produce an estimated 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million lbs. of biomass per year off a series of saltwater ponds spanning 1,100 acres. Twenty of those acres will be reserved for the experimental production of a renewable JP8 jet-fuel."

PSA

Many of you may already know this but, if not...If you're using FireFox, you can completely turn off animated GIFS and stop blinking text by doing the following:

about:config, set image.animation_mode to "once"
about:config, set browser.blink_allowed to false

Thank the gods, I say! I can websurf in peace and comfort now. Next time I shall endeavor to RTFM :-)

Internet book piracy will drive authors to stop writing. "Book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales." The sky is falling OMG! *eye roll*

Owl Cam @ Thompson Rivers University. Hours of live, wildlife watchin' goodness! Also, visit the Barn Owl Cam. I ♥ owls. :-)

ETA:

Haven't had your daily dose of WTF? Let me fix that for you:

The School Crotch Inspector, "Fighting the Advil menace, one strip search at a time." *boggles*