Category: Connections

April 24, 2006 /

I kind of wish we’d had Facebook lo, those many years ago when I was referring to coeds by pseudonyms (note that I’d already learned to fear Google).

I read Dr. Weston’s post above and was a little startled to note that people are using a pretty new website to provide that kind of (subjectively) important social function. Then I’m like, what were class rings? What were letter jackets? They weren’t totems, magically created out of pure student ardor; they were business items co-opted by people seeking to fill exactly the same gap.

April 19, 2006 /

Right now people searching for breakdancing videos still comprise the vast majority of my bandwidth users. That’s just not right, and we should fix it. But how, you say? By shooting breakdancers. The end!

Oh, and also: Jon’s got a new EP out, and you can download it! It’s called West State Line and it’s amazing to hear his music finally given the pro treatment it deserves. There are snares and backing vocals and even a little bit of string! Let’s listen to it together! I’ll make popcorn! I will also make calf eyes at you.

My favorite parts so far are Ghost Town, especially the bridge, and Meg White, which needs to be an indie anthem.

You can spell cataloging with or without the U

April 14, 2006 /

Hammering on the theme of my inability to escape YA literature, LibraryThing has apparently added a new statistic: the average publication year of your books. I haven’t catalogued everything I own quite yet, but still, did it have to be 1996?

When I get a chance to sit down and do it, cataloging on LibraryThing is one of my favorite, most meditative activities. I compare it to Scrooge McDuck taking a swim in the Money Bin.

April 13, 2006 /

For probably fifteen years I’ve been haunted by the image of a man falling down a flight of stairs, falling apart at the bottom to become just a coat wrapped around an IV stand, hung with dozens of tape recorders. I knew this image was from The Tattooed Potato, a bleak and frightening book I’d read (exactly once) in elementary school. Last week, while in the library, I suddenly had to go check it out and read it. (It is not actually very bleak or frightening now, and in fact that exact image isn’t in the book.)

As per NFD policy, I’m going to wait a little while before I write any more about the book–I only finished it ten minutes ago. I will say this: it’s one thing to realize that one still reads for the things one first found in middle school. It’s another to understand that the nature of names, protagonism, surreality, pacing and imagery in one’s own writing all basically derive from an author one read in fourth grade.

April 5, 2006 /

Two bumper stickers found on neighboring cars in the Kroger parking lot on Bardstown Road, lent interest only by said proximity:

all people are equal members of one

HUMAN FAMILY
I need a

SUGAR DADDY

April 2, 2006 /

Sometimes, awesome things happen! One such thing is Mr. Andy H.’s timeline of the Holly stories, which is really more complete than it should be. I consider it totally canon (your personal canon may vary), with one minor exception: Holly and Rose aren’t trying on bras, exactly. More the opposite.

Thanks, Andy!

Hey, look, I found a good way to link books!

March 23, 2006 /

John Joseph Adams asked what are your top ten SF-F books not written by white men? Actually, he asked it in two parts: a top-ten list of nonmen, followed by a top ten list of nonwhites. Like everyone else who’s responded so far, I can do a list of women easily; embarrassingly (and typically), of the SF-F authors whose race I actually know, almost all of them are white (the late Octavia Butler seems to be a common exception). I might be able to do a nonwhite list, but it’d be almost all comics creators.

Anyway, my top-ten-women list demonstrates a pretty strong pattern.

  1. The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
  2. Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
  3. Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
  4. Tehanu, Ursula Le Guin
  5. The Homeward Bounders, Diana Wynne Jones
  6. A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L’Engle
  7. The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
  8. Lioness Rampant, Tamora Pierce
  9. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
  10. Tie: Deep Wizardry, Diane Duane, and The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Is it usually this obvious that my literary development halted in middle school?

Brendan Talks About Things He Doesn’t Understand

March 9, 2006 /

Reading Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun, finally, I came across this sentence:

“Beauty is found in the tension between our expectations and reality.”

Which contrasts interestingly with Rebecca Borgstrom’s assertion that suffering is the disconnect between desire and reality (which, as I vaguely understand it, is derived from viparinama-dukkha and sankhara-dukkha).

That’s not to say that together, they imply that suffering is beauty; in fact, Borgstrom (who I think would not disagree with Koster’s statement) has specifically denied as much. Whatever I’m fumbling at here is more subtle than that. So why not crush the subtletly beneath our old friend proof-by-analogy?

According to our premises, beauty is derived from expectations and suffering is derived from desire. Sumana has said that hope leads to expectations, secret or otherwise; I believe that. I also believe that desire invariably produces hope. So desire leads to suffering and hope; hope leads to expectations; expectations lead to beauty; beauty leads to desire. Insert ASCII diagram here. Suffering is the byproduct of the desire-hope-expectations-beauty loop.

Or make up your own better diagram, and tell us about it.

March 7, 2006 /

Volscian made picture of Rita! And it’s awesome! So awesome that I blew up!

I really like the idea that Rita has tired eyes and a kind of round face–no Carrie-Anne Moss here. I hesitate to pronounce the picture canon only because I’m pretty careful about when and how I state that any given character is of a particular race; it’s perfectly valid to assume Rita is white, but also valid to assume she isn’t. Still, if I were ever to print out the Rita stories or anything, that would make a pretty great cover.

Yeah, you can tell I’m not famous because I obsess over fanstuff.