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Why? Because mere mention of my instant covetous lust for Laura Joh Rowland's new The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë prompted him to order it for me off of Amazon. It just arrived.

B.) Laura Joh Rowland is TOTALLY AWESOME. I mean, I've read a lot of her Sano Ichiro novels (I've fallen behind in recent years as my time for discretionary reading dwindled), but this is just gorgeous. I'm on the second paragraph, and Rowland has just completely captured Brontë's voice.

I have sworn to take the secret to my grave, and to speak any word of it would bring censure, scandal, and disgrace upon myself and betray a sacred trust. Still, my knowledge burns inside me like a fire, a pressure that must find release or shatter the fragile vessel of my being. I cannot bear that the most singular episode of my own history should go untold.

Is she cribbing notes from Stephanie Barron, who first inserted Jane Austen into the realm of historical crime fiction? Maybe, but that franchise has to come to an end, soon. Barron's Austen will soon be feeling the effects of Addison's Disease too acutely to continue on in her sleuthing ways. Rowland's work comes along at a good time, and, at least so far, the quality of it is such that it's completely sucked me in.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Home
Current Music: None--anyone got suggestions for mood music?

From NPR's pop culture blog, "Monkey See" on the topic of male gazing and The Big Bang Theory:

The pilot is terrible. The pilot is really, really terrible. And while there are many reasons for that -- Leonard and Sheldon are too similar, their odd-couple dynamic isn't firing yet, Sheldon's quirks aren't cranked up to heaven yet, and the writing feels very "pilot-y," for lack of a more precise descriptor -- the biggest problem is Penny, the only woman in the core cast, played by Kaley Cuoco. Penny lives across the hall from physicists Leonard and Sheldon, and while she's now Leonard's girlfriend and well-integrated with the guys and their friends, when the show started, Penny was not a person; she was a prop.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Home

Okay, so I belong to this community called

brigits_flame. It's a nice writer's community which has a monthly contest that I haven't gotten my act together enough to participate in yet. Every day there's a "chatter" post which gives general updates for the day and also has little things that make you go hmm. Not fully blown writers' prompts, but something to get the old juices flowing.

Today's made me think of my friends list in particular. Here it is, as written by

tigerstriped86:

I really like the idea of Nerdy Personal Ads. It tailors itself to the notion that not only are nerds surprisingly social creatures, but that we share a lot of the same habits. When I finished hearing his list, I thought about making a list all my own. And I kind of came up with what I wanted.

Original Blue Power Rangers seeks Yellow or Red ranger to discuss favorite Sondheim songs, break out into classic Disney tunes, and debate the merits of the Whedonverse. Green Rangers and dessert sharers need not apply.

I think that pretty much sums up a lot about me, but it leaves a little bit to be desired. I think variety is great in a relationship, so here are a couple of other things to know about me:

-Family Guy is a guilty pleasure
-I enjoy a good game of Clue
-The first book I bought for myself in college was a Poe anthology
-I like dogs
-I liked the movie “The Truth About Cats and Dogs”
-I love performing Dreamgirls at karaoke
-I watch Friends reruns when they are on
-I sing in a church choir
-Anthony Bourdain on Deadliest Catch would be the most awesome show ever!
-The music in Glee makes me happy

So that's my ad and a list of things that you'd probably learn about me on the first date. What about you? Even if you're in a relationship, think about this as a fun exercise in learning about who you think you are! Give it a try!
What would your nerdy personal ad say?

The italics are mine, because I think that the original ad gets lost in the list of other stuff.

I'm still working on mine, but what would your nerdy personal ad say? And make it an actual ad, not just a list!

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Home

I'm... kind of stunned, but also kind of not. To quote Opus, it explains a whooooole lotta nagging questions.

I had to understand that the audience only wanted white, straight, male leads. I was assured that as long as I made the white, straight men in my scripts prominent, I could still offer groundbreaking characters of other descriptions (fascinating, significant women, men of color, etc.) – as long as they didn’t distract the audience from the white men they really paid their money to see.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Home

I did.

I used to write a lot. I'd spontaneously analyze the latest Lois McMaster Bujold novel, or write about politics, or religion, or racism, or something. I used to write fiction at the drop of a hat. I used to be out there, man.

Unfortunately, given a recent multi-year bout with depression and a daughter who just does not ever stop moving unless she's sleeping, my writing has gone the way of the dodo.

One of the things I want to do with this shiny new journal is write more. Write like I did in the earlier days of my LiveJournal. This is my resolution, albeit a couple of weeks early.

Oh, and yes, "A Room of One's Own" really took on worlds more depth for me once Herself (as I refer to my daughter online) got upwardly mobile. I intellectually understood it at 18 and 25, but WOW when every piece of food that goes in your mouth is shared, and your personal space has dwindled to nil, does the idea of a room of your own where you can go in and OMGCLOSETHEDOOR and no one will disturb you swiftly become your idea of paradise.

And now, since another of my resolutions is to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, I shall away.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Home

Here's the very speedy reply I got to my support message last night...

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. We understand that gender is not binary, and intend to respect that understanding for our users.

At this time, the code you reference is not live on the site, and will not become so in the future. We know that you, and many other users, have serious concerns about any requirement to specify gender, so we'd like to take a moment to explain events and our position further.

The intention of this code was to change the sign-up process to include a field for the selection of gender; that the code would completely disable the "Unspecified" option at the same time was deemed unacceptable. While the code in question had gone to our beta (testing) server, it had not gone to our production server, and will not do so due to this problem. Furthermore, we'd like to clarify that code posted to the changelog community is not always final, as such code must then go through the beta testing process and can often be changed before actual implementation.

Additionally, some erroneous information has been spread regarding the potential public display of the gender field. We would like to clarify that gender is not currently publicly displayed on the profile, nor anywhere else on the site, and there are no plans to change this behavior.

Regards,
LiveJournal Community Care Team

That being said.... I got a Dreamwidth invite. And I'm using it. I will still be cross posting between the two for the foreseeable future (especially since I just reupped my paid account), so don't panic about me disappearing. But, while I initially understood the need for ad revenue--hey they need to make money, right?--having gotten a taste of directed marketing over at Facebook, I'm kind of nauseated. And LJ's headed in that direction if they're not there already. It just makes no business sense for them not to do it. Also, over at Dreamwidth, I get to be

icewolf. Just

icewolf. No numbers, just... me. Which is honestly kind of cool.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Home

Okay, LJ is getting into major Gender!Fail.

Long story short, in the next code push, probably, LJ plans to a.) remove the ability to choose "unspecified" for gender (meaning you have to pick male or female, and that's it), and b.) You HAVE to choose a gender. Source.

This is just getting silly. You can leave feedback, and I encourage you to do so civilly and politely (the first line of defense is actually on the users' side on this one, so be nice).

However, while I've generally been happy with LJ as a blogging program, and been reluctant to move just because of the sheer size of my archive, I'm starting to seriously consider jumping the fence to Dreamwidth. The most likely reason for the change is the ability to target ads with more precision, and I detest all the diet and Barbie ads I'm getting over at Facebook. I sure as hell don't want to look at them here. Not to mention the whole leaving trans/questioning/etc. folks out in the cold, and yanking a level of camouflage some women use to avoid online predators (not to mention day-to-day creeps).

So, if anyone were to find a dusty old invite in the back of their virtual closets, I'd make good use of it...

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Location: Home

My friend,

commodorified, just posted this:

It's just that now I'm outraged, shaking, nauseated, and Not Crying.

If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

But that is not this universe.

Peter Watts is a friend of mine. Not a close friend, necessarily, but a good one; I try my best to see him whenever I'm in Toronto. I'm appalled and furious and worried and generally incapable of writing a good post about this. I'm not sure I could say anything I haven't already said at one time or another about people I do NOT know who were subjected to this kind of treatment, and I probably said it better then. So I will let other people speak for me right now.

David Nickle, via Boing Boing:

The charge is spurious. But it's also very serious. It could mean two years in prison in the United States, and a ban on travel in that country for the rest of Peter's life. Peter is mounting a vigorous defense, but it's going to be expensive - he's effectively going up against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and he needs the best legal help that he can get.

He's got that help, courtesy of one of the top criminal lawyers in the State of Michigan. We, Peter's friends and colleagues here in Canada, want to make sure he gets the help he needs financially to come out of this nightmare whole.

The need for that help is real. While Peter is a critically successful science fiction writer, he is by no means a best-selling author. Without help, the weight of his legal fees could literally put him on the street by spring.

We can't let that happen. So there's going to be fundraising.

Donate (and read some of Peter's work) here.

And - I don't normally say things like this. But in the words of coffeeem:

Don't tell me Watts should have known better. He's a free, law-abiding citizen of a free country, who has a right to believe in the rule of law and reasonable behavior in the nation right next to his. If you tell me he asked for it, he deserved it, what happened to him was justified by his actions, I swear I will ban you from this goddamn journal. Because that could have been any of us.

Me? I'm just turning off comments. But please, if you can't in good conscience help, then for once I'm asking you to just be quiet. I've dropped $20 Canadian into the fund, and it cost me $19.38. Or buy one of his books--I understand they're very good. Very dystopian, but very good. (I haven't read them, and don't plan on it because I have issues enough with my mental state without reading the worst possible answers to "What if?")

Current Mood: angry
Current Location: Home

If you'd like a Christmas card from us, drop your address in the screened comments. Unless I already have it, that is...

...with the Queen Bee!

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: Swedesboro, NJ

The car's been recovered, and the detective is coming to pick us up now. Now to see what kind of shape it's in...

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Home

At least ten, if not eleven, years ago, I joined the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list. Before I jumped ship before drowning in 600+ messages a day two to three years later, I made a friend. That friend is

commodorified.

About three or so years ago, I noticed a friend of hers,

angevin2, when browsing her Friends List. I seemed to have a lot in common with her--an interest in Shakespeare, medieval English kings, an obsession with what happens when you cross the streams of history and literature--and friended her accordingly.

Then, about a year ago, I noticed a really neat icon

angevin2 had. It had been made by

poisoninjest. After poking around her journal, I friended her, even though it didn't seem as though she had updated in a while.

Well,

poisoninjest eventually came back, and we turned out to have a lot in common, so she friended me back.

On Sunday evening, after my house was broken into and my car stolen, I got an email from her asking for my USnail mail address.

Then these showed up today:

(And isn't my lack of chin just disturbing? Stupid Smith gene pool.)

There were also a lovely pair of amber and pearl earrings as well.

The enclosed note read:

Sorry to hear about your car. Hope these cheer you up. I noticed you had them "hearted" on Etsy.

So thank you,

commodorified, thank you,

angevin2, and thank you most of all to

poisoninjest. Also, if you like them, you should absolutely check out her Etsy shop, Idol Ceremony.

What did we do before the Internet?

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Home
Current Music: Tinkerbell the Movie

So, my darling daughter finally got unfettered hold of my glasses last week and completely destroyed them. Snapped the little plastic cords that hold the lenses in place, bent the arms at 45 degree angles, the whole bit.

This is not quite the tragedy it sounds, as I have had those glasses for going on six years. I bought them using the NYC teacher's union vision plan at the glasses-in-an-hour place in the Staten Island Mall. The prescription was still right, but the lenses were getting pretty scuffed up.

The good news is that I just had my vision checked last April and don't need to get my eyes checked. And I'm pretty sure I want to stay with the Laura Ashley design line. The down side--of course--is that I would like your input!

Edit: Wow, are those pictures big. Inserting a cut for the sanity of your layout...

Also, I know I need to try them on. But this'll help me figure out what direction to go in. To see more Laura Ashley frames, you can go here.

( Help Icewolf decide on what glasses to get! )

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: Swedesboro, NJ

*shifty eyed look left*

*shifty eyed look right*

OkaysoHerselfhasbeengoingdownfornapsandbedtimewithoutfussinganditsawesomeandshe'ssuchagoodbabyandI'msoproudandrelievedandI'mgonnashutupnowbeforetheKarmicParentinggodshearmekthanxbye.

*innocent whistling*

Uh, no, I didn't hear anything. Why?

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Swedesboro, NJ