Captain Kidd against the Black Pearl

No update for you!

Actually, it's more that there is little to update you on. My life is much the same; though I do now have an office again at work. This makes it easier to do therapy with people. It also means that the three years worth of collected Stuff For Work that I have, that was residing in my house, is now out of my house. YAY! The most important thing of the last three months or so is that I have finally consented to let myself use the awesome Bread and Badger octopus soap dispenser in my bathtub.

The woman behind Bread and Badger said that she was working on a steampunk design. I am all about that. As soon as that comes out, I'm getting a steampunk spice shaker and a moustached spice shaker. I will have So Much Fun pretending that scary steampunk things are coming out of the steampunk spice shaker. Like, um, victorian engine poison. I don't know, it seems cool in my head. Fortunately for my wallet, I think it'll be a while before she completes it.

Okay, Meme. ( Comment and I give you four fandoms. You repost and list your favorite character from each, with explanation. Just in case you are wondering whether or not you want to click, there will be no surprises here. Only not-surprises and rambling. )

As promised (months ago), notes from Maria Tatar's talk from Harvard Book Store.

( Notes behind the cut. Be warned, I kept copious notes. )

********

Maria also spent time answering questions. This was my favorite:

Q: With the kind of immigration we have now, are there children's stories around migration, displacement, immigration, or refugees? [The man asking the question tells us he is an Indian (not Native American) who grew up on stories of colonialism.]
A: “Literature makes immigrants of us all. A child setting out in stories is often imperialist, master of all they survey.”
Q [greatly paraphrased]: No, really. Are there stories SPECIFICALLY for immigrants?
A [even more paraphrased]: Oh. Um. Not that I know of. But there’s always a shock effect; they can still use these stories to think about how to navigate the real world.

I can write out my notes from the rest of the question/answer session as well, if anyone is interested; but I found it less interesting than the talk, and I feel this is as much of an information dump as one LJ entry can handle.

Stolen from shprintzah. Choose your favorite author for each letter of the alphabet and a favorite accompanying book (or series).

A--Asimov, Isaac: I, Robot
B--Baldwin, James: Sonny's Blues
C--Courtenay, Bryce: The Power of One
D--D'Aulaire: D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
E--Eddison, E.R.: Worm Ouroboros
F--Fadiman, Anne: Ex Libris (Ed. note: Go read this. Now.)
G--Gaiman, Neil: Neverwhere
H--Hyde, Lewis: Trickster Made This World
I--Ibbotson, Eva: Which Witch
J--Juster, Norton: Phantom Tollbooth
K--Kushner, Ellen: Swordspoint OR Korman, Gordon: Son of Interflux
L--Le Guin, Ursula K.: Paradises Lost, or else Language of the Night
M--McKinley, Robin: Deerskin or (I know this is cheating, but shprintzah did it) Montgomery, L.M.: Anne of Green Gables OR (dude, everyone's an M) Milton, John: Paradise Lost
N--
O--Oaklander, Violent: Windows to Our Children or Hidden Treasure: A Map to the Child's Inner Self
P--
Q--Quinn, Julia: The Duke Who Loved Me
R--Ragan, Kathleen: Fearless Girls, Wise Women, & Beloved Sisters
S--Sayers, Dorothy: Gaudy Night
T--Tarr, Judith: Alamut
U--
V--Valente, Catherynne: Orphan's Tales
W--Woolf, Virginia: Mrs Dalloway
X--
Y--Yolen, Jane: Sister Emily's Lightship or The Wild Hunt
Z--Zelazney, Roger: Amber series

Still thinking about N, P, U, and X.

I need your help. I want to buy myself a game for my birthday... but, having gone to the Games Store nearby, I am having trouble figuring out what to get. I don't want a duplicate of the most common ones, ie:

Settlers of Catan (awesome as it is)
Apples to Apples
Scrabble
Boggle
Fluxx

or Royalty or Mystery of the Abbey, as I already own those.

Any suggestions?

Can you make it stop? Please? I just want to stop shovelling out my car.

You can blame chanaleh for this.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

( Cut for Big Read Meme and Entertainment Weekly Meme )

And thus we learn that I prefer books to movies. :) Or at least, classic books to classic movies.

On the wall of a school I visit for work:

"IF YOU CHASE TWO RABBI
BOTH WILL ESCAPE."

So if you could have any superpower, what would it be? Right now I think I would choose to know a large (but not infinite) number of languages. I reserve the right to change my answer if one of you is more inspired.

Unrelatedly, if you felt like posting to LJ and yet had nothing to say, what would you post about?

I got my bank statement Thursday. This did not stop me from spending undisclosed amounts of money on myself today. The less expensive purchase was a CD by the Burnt Earth Ensemble, which is an instrumental, fusion-type group (Celtic, African, Middle Eastern, and jazz) that plays solely on clay instruments made by one of their members, Barry Hall. It's worth looking at the site, or the liner notes of my CD, to see the instruments. They have: globular horns, flowerpotophones, didjibodrans and -- my favorite -- conundrums. The instruments that I don't suspect were invented wholesale are also cool to see.

When I finish Anne Fadiman's At Large and At Small I will probably post quotes, but until then...

Have a meme!
Gacked from ayelle


Post a list of seven TV shows you love (current or canceled).
Have your friends list guess your favorite character from each show.
When guessed, bold the line and write a little bit about why you like that character.

1. Red Dwarf Not that anyone is still looking, but navelofwine has guessed, correctly, Cat. CAT IS SO COOL! Don't tell me I need to explain why he's the best?
2. Firefly I thought my favorite was someone else, but navelofwine has reminded me, by her guess, that Saffron is super cool. I'm tired, and no one is going to look at this, so I will not elaborate further.
3. Gilmore Girls
4. Stargate Atlantis As guessed as possible by dashieff, who said McKay. McKay is huge amounts of fun to watch, which is unexpected. I don't usually like the obnoxious characters at all, let alone this much. But he's great. Sheppard caught up with him partway through Season One, by dint of -- I don't know. Symmetrical features? Charisma? Sarcasm? Having an interesting friendship with McKay? Certainly the third. So they are jointly my favorite character.
5. Rome Marc Antony, guessed by lynnoxford. I am predisposed to like Antony from 6th grade, when a guy I had a crush on played Antony in his class's performance of Julius Ceasar. But there's just something about Antony. I suspect this is the looks and charisma thing, actually, because now that I think about it more, I generally prefer Octavian on the actual show.
6. Homicide: Life on the Streets
7. Muppet Show rymenhild informs me, quite correctly, that Rowlf is my favorite. I had forgotten. I thought Zoot was my favorite, for reasons I can't quite pin down (but then, Zoot is difficult to pin down in general). But, you know, Rowlf. I think it's his sense of humor.
8. Fraggle Rock. Belatedly guessed, after some prompting, by rymenhild. Cotterpin Doozer! She's cool and rebellious and nerdy and passionate about what she decides she wants to do. And she makes up her own mind, and doesn't let silly things like convention or what other people think affect her. Mostly, anyway. I could be misremembering parts of episodes.