Those who will be eaten first
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| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 |
captainlucy
|
6:45a |
Oh Sir, Boxing???
"There's nothing wrong with boxing. It's one of the great working class escapes, is boxing. It's just sport, like any other. Two highly trained athletes at the peak of physical perfection, trying to outwit each other in a ring of combat. In fact, at its best, it's not a sport, it's an artform."
"Female topless boxing???"
- Lister and Kryten, Red Dwarf "Last Day"Not that it's a sport I usually go in for, but I found last night's world heavyweight boxing fascinating. Not because there were two massive blokes pummeling each other with sledgehammer rights and lefts, but precisely because they weren't. And quite rightly, given the contenders. Challenger David Haye (6ft3, 15stone8/218lbs/98.7kg, reach 78ins) against the giant Nikolay Valuev (7ft 2, 22stone8/316lbs/143.1kg, reach 88ins). Unsurprisingly, Haye did not want to get caught by the larger man, as chances are one good blow from Valuev would have ended the match there and then. So he used something sorely lacking in most heavyweight fights I have seen - speed, grace and cunning to stay largely out of the other's reach, coming in only occasionally to land a cheeky body blow or a light jab which his opponent may not even have felt but which would have got marked by the judges. And every now and again, he did manage to land a telling blow which obviously affected the larger man, such as in the 11th round when Valuev was visibly wobbling and only just managed to avoid getting caught with a flurry of blows. Compared to classic heavyweight matches of the past, it wasn't much of a fight, but as an example of the tactical side of the sport, Lister's "outwitting each other in a ring of combat", it was absolutely superb. Current Mood:  contemplativeCurrent Music: Chemical Brothers, "Block Rockin' Beats" |
stillsostrange
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1:04a |
This subject line was eaten by a grue.
The Bone Palace84023 / 100000 words. 84% done! The winner of the costume/story contest is ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) desperance, since I used a good chunk of his idea. My version--as well as an excellent example of how I avoid naming things as long as possible--goes like this. In Selafai, brides wore red--the color of life and life's blood, virgin's blood, the blood of childbed, blood comingled in children. A color of fertility and fruitful unions. Veils had mostly gone out of fashion, and those who wore them still usually chose gold or silver, or more crimson if their complexions could stand it. Black veils had been made famous decades earlier by the playwright Kharybdea, who chose the color for X in the tragedy Y, the priestess who was broke her vows for love of Z, only to be betrayed and abandoned on their wedding night, after he had stolen her temple's greatest treasure. She killed herself on her saint's altar, and haunted Z in revenge, driving him to madness and finally death. It was probably the most relentlessly miserable story Savedra had ever seen on stage. It took a woman of morbid or vicious humor to dress as X for a masque; that three had done so tonight would surely be called an ill omen.Now if someone wants to name X, Y, and Z, I'll be all set.
I've had anxiety dreams the past two nights. First I was trying to find a dress in a store full of hundreds of gorgeous dresses, but none of them fit, and the store was about to close, and my friends had already bought theirs. Then last night assassins broke into my apartment and I had to fight them off with a kitchen knife, then was stuck in the apartment with their not-quite-dead bodies waiting for help to arrive. (I got in a surprising amount of violence, since my dreams are the slow-running, crawling-through-peanut-butter kind, with any physical action muted and completely non-tactile.) Yes, subconscious, I know we have a deadline. Anxiety dreams won't make it any better. Current Mood:  exhaustedCurrent Music: Dragon Age |
naomi_traveller
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6:47a |
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009 |
rivka
|
10:44p |
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kevin_standlee
|
6:59p |
Quiet Is Good
After the controlled chaos of last weekend's World Fantasy Convention, having a weekend where I did nothing more exciting than walking to the Centerville Farmers' Market and later going shopping and browsing through Borders Books without buying anything suits me just fine. Besides, my back is still not really at 100% -- more like maybe 90% -- and the rest will do me good. And on top of all that, I expect to be traveling almost continuously between Thanksgiving and New Year this year, between family, SMOFCon, a possible business trip to Columbus OH the day after SMOFCon (flying straight from Austin), and Christmas in Oregon. Current Mood:  sleepy |
| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 |
captainlucy
|
2:46a |
To those who gave all... everywhere...They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. Current Mood: contemplativeCurrent Music: Reap The Wild Wind |
sbisson
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2:01a |
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009 |
rfmcdpei
|
7:34p |
[FORUM] What are low-prestige accents or dialects in your speech community?
Many of the people who meet me are surprised that I don't speak with very much of a Prince Edward Island accent, or with a Prince Edward Island vocabulary. I was born on Prince Edward Island, they reason; I presumably have a long heritage on the Island (I'm fifth-generation, actually). Why, then, would I speak in a manner not indistinguishable from that of urban central Canadians? There are reasons for this. Perhaps the most important reason for this, the one that underlines the others, is that I'm glad not to speak that way. Why? It's a non-standard version of Canadian English, not the variant that's spoken in prosperous and culturally not-quite-dominant urban central Canada. A week after I moved to Kingston in 2003, in fact, I finally realized that one thing that had been nagging at me was the fact that I was in a place where the people spoke the way that they do on Canadian television. They speak--we speak?--the variant of English that's the public face of Canadian English, the way that the people in power speak. Prince Edward Island English? Not nearly so much. It's one of many non-standard dialects of English spoken in the Maritime provinces never mind the very unique English of Newfoundland. What marks these dialects? Unusual accents, unusual vocabularies, and their speakers' association with poverty and isolation and a general lack of cultural capital outside of very narrow bounds, like the folkloric or the anti-modern generally. Take the English of Tignish, in the region of West Prince westernmost Prince Edward Island. Tignish has one of the most distinctive location–specific accents and original eastern Canada. It is often etymologically described as a blend of English, French, and Scots/Scottish English, and there are many actual English words that possess a unique alternate definition in Tignish, such as "slack". Some of the time a comma, and the word "too" is added after some terms (i.e. "slack, too") to provide emphasis. While English–speakers in nearby towns such as Alberton and O'Leary have an accent and dialect similar to many other communities across the Maritime provinces, Tignish dialect is often described independent from this dialect, and is sometimes not even comprehensible by non–locals. It's worth noting that the people of West Prince with their English are the subject of jokes told by other Prince Edward Islanders, much like the "Newfie jokes" told about Newfoundlanders, often founded in a genteel-sounding bigotry about these strange people who seem to be generally incapable and stupidly literal-minded, at least in part because they don't speak "proper" English. I'm not at all sure that other Canadians really distinguish that much between Newfoundland English and a similar-sounding Prince Edward Island English, at least insofar as these speakers' being able to be taken seriously. I quite like being taken seriously. So, at least in large part because of my very strong interest in things and cultural products and events outside of Prince Edward Island, perhaps because of the tendency of women and gay men to have their speech conform with standard norms, and perhaps because a Charlottetown that's home to migrants from across Canada doesn't have as strong a traditional accent as Tignish, I speak something pretty close to standard Canadian English and, I believe, am taken seriously. There's a few people who joke with me about lobsters and potatoes and Anne of Green Gables, I joke about the family of tourists ritually sacrificed every May to ensure a good tourist season and the death fight versus giant lobsters that all adolescent Islanders must do to demonstrate their right to live, and the (hopefully) low likelihood that I'll be taken as an unserious yokel is diminished accordingly, and I get to define myself the way that I want. In an ideal world it wouldn't be this way, but my relationship language-wise with the current unideal world works for me, too. This sort of thing is common to every speech community, of course, with some accents and dialects being privileged about others. Penelope Eckart's 2005 paper goes into this phenomenon in detail and breadth. In smaller scales, think Received Pronunciation versus working-class language forms in the United Kingdom, say, or standard French against the langues d'oïl of northern France, or Putongua over China's regional languages. I'm sure that you can think of many other examples. In fact, that's what this [FORUM] post is about: what speech forms in your language community are low-prestige? Are they common or relatively rare? Are they diminish or remaining stable, seen as embarrassments or as representing a regional pride? Discuss. |
rivka
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6:03p |
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elinor
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11:02p |
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peteyoung
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7:45p |
Miles-blogging #5
   Miles is now a little over three months old, and because I've been working from the UK I've only been able to see him on Skype for the last few weeks. It ain't ideal but it's certainly the best solution possible; we can keep that free video link going all day if we want, and reassuringly he certainly recognises me on screen. This kind of continuous remote interaction would have been impossible just a couple of years ago and it helps keep me from feeling separated from the family, even though of course I'd much rather be there with them in person. Many Thais who meet Miles say his eyes show wisdom beyond his years (or strictly speaking, fractions thereof), reckoning he has an 'old soul'. We're almost inclined to agree and these pictures show that aspect of his personality well, each taken at one, two and three months old from left to right (the third is a Skype screencap from a couple of days ago). As reincarnation is a widespread Buddhist belief I expect I'll hear more theories on his past lives in years to come. As for his Thai nickname, Tanat, this seems to have already fallen by the wayside as everyone prefers the way 'Miles' sounds like the English 'smiles', and that's how they address him. I wonder if it will stick... time will tell. Sprog's Masterclass: Miles now has less hair on top than he was born with but it's growing back, very slowly. I won't worry about it for many more months. Instead, as a confirmed science fiction fan at just one month old by virtue of getting a mention in September's Ansible, I'm just reassured that for the time being he's doing a great Stephen Baxter impression. |
nmg
|
7:12p |
Dispatches from the War on Clutter
Since we had our loft boarded and smartened up a few years back, we've been merrily using it to store away the things that we don't need from day to day, or which don't belong in the library. Unfortunately, it's starting to get a bit full in there (what with ias's sewing stuff, my tools, Xmas decorations, the garklet's baby clothes, our suitcases, and so on), so we've been planning on putting some of Mr Kamprad's fine modular shelving solutions up there (specifically the GORM range).
Now, I could just have gone up there with a tape measure and an old envelope to note down how many of each item we needed, but the space is confined enough (and our need for storage great enough) that I am going to have to cut shelves down to fit. Version 1 of the plan was on the back of an envelope, but didn't have accurate measurements. Version 2 was in Illustrator - great for the plan view, not so good for working out whether it will all fit under the roof.
Version 3 is in Google SketchUp, complete with models of the shelves (rather than just bounding boxes). Fortunately, I stopped short of modelling everything in the loft so that I could plan how to fit things on the shelves.
In other news, we took the garklet to the cinema this morning - Harbour Lights (and some other cinemas in the Picture House chain) are screening episodes of In the Night Garden to get the little ones used to sitting quietly in a darkened room. He liked it greatly, and was so well-behaved that I'm toying with the idea of taking him to see Up.
Finally, I've also managed to get around to reading Brundibar to the lad - a Sendak-illustrated version of the Czech children's opera that was first performed in Theresienstadt in 1943. The story itself is charming, but Sendak's illustrations add another layer on top of this (Brundibar is pictured with a toothbrush moustache and side parting, for example) which make this more than just a children's book. I'm still quite surprised that Portswood library had a copy. Highly recommended. |
vulpine137
|
1:43p |
Glorious Saturdayness
Yay for Saturdays, I'm over at
Amythest's place, watching tv
and keeping her company while she works on school foo. Been a good
day, got up this morning kinda late, I forced myself to sleep in a bit.
Got up, got showered, got bacon. Then I headed out for my first walk
since Monday. Legs are still less than thrilled with me for the
labors on Thursday. So it was a short walk, but nice. Pretty day here
in Texas. Then I headed over to the Lair of the Amythest :)
Tonight I'll be hanging out with friends, gaming night of some kind.
Should be fun. Beyond that, I plan on just vegging out and catching up
on history shows. Yeah, I'm a geek, and I love it.
Current Mood: goodCurrent Music: Show on Etruscians on TV |
rhionnach
|
6:18p |
A slight oregano emergency
I've made a large pot of vegetarian bolognaise sauce which is simmering away on top of the cooker. Once it's ready it will be portioned up and put into the freezer for future meals. My very own convenience food. I've used a bag of Asda's veggie mince, which may actually be vegan as there appears to be no dairy or eggs in it, according to the ingredients on the label. I began by frying onions and garlic in olive oil, then I added chopped celery, red peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms along with red wine and balsamic vinegar. Everything was going well until I discovered that I had run out of oregano! I had plenty of basil, which is what I usually run out of, but this time it was oregano which meant a quick dash to the local shops. Oddly enough, the Coop didn't have any oregano but the wee shop round the corner did. Whew, problem solved. You can't have bolognaise without oregano! This is the first time I have made bolognaise. It was something that tanngrisnir would occasionally make and I used to come home to a big pot of it simmering away, smelling wonderful. It occurred to me when I was last making my spicy veggie meatballs that with a few tweaks to the recipe I could make my own bolognaise. And so I have. At least, I have something approximating bolognaise in a pan, cooking. I'll find out soon enough if I have actually succeeded.  |
rfmcdpei
|
11:18a |
[PHOTO] Some Thursday Leslieville photos
Thursday afternoon with my friend Erin was spent on an enjoyable photobloggish stroll along Queen Street East through Leslieville, an east-end Toronto neighbourhood on the far side of the Don from the downtown that's slowly gentrifying but retains a pleasantly quirky individuality. Here's some of the trip's photos. This Chinese puzzle cube is available for $C 8 at the fantastic Ethyl ( 1091 Queen Street East), a furniture shop with a very Mad Men theme that has an excellent owner-manager to boot. Talk about cute ways of attracting people to your electronics store. Who remembers the pumpkin where we're done using it? Meat on the Beach ( 1860 Queen Street East) looks interesting from the street. |
digitalraven
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2:03p |
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rivka
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7:12a |
Feeling much better this morning, but really really tired. It was a fast, violent illness. The active phase lasted about four hours for both me and Michael, leaving us weak, nauseated, and utterly exhausted afterward. During those four hours, I actually wished that I would die - and it seemed plausible that I might. Once the active phase was over, it gradually dawned on me that (a) I wasn't going to die, and (b) that was a good thing. acceberskoorb is the most fabulous person in the whole world. She came over with takeout sushi for Alex, fed both kids, played with them, and helped with their bedtimes. Man, we are lucky to have the friends we do. I am really tired this morning. Colin did an unusual amount of overnight nursing. I'm guessing that I was dehydrated and not making as much milk as usual, so he had to nurse a lot more. |
supergee
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6:46a |
|
supergee
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6:41a |
Shakesville discusses Bernard-Henri Levy's latest defense of Roman Polanski. Everyone says Levy is the intellectual heir of Jean-Paul Sartre. I guess you start with excusing rapists and work your way up to excusing gulags. |
cuddles_batcave
|
10:52a |
Library visit
Kids books are long over due (24th October). Even Xavier, who loves reading, didn't finish his. Probably because they are all obsessed with playing Olympic table tennis on the Wii! Anyway, I'm watching the sky with growing unease: it was beautiful this morning but it is quickly greying and no doubt, (more) rain is not far away.
Current Mood:  melancholy |
feorag
|
9:20a |
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nwhyte
|
8:16a |
Riddle me this
The book I am reading right now begins by describing the heroine as "Blond and ovately willowy". Poll #1481960
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 74 If you are writing about a fair-haired woman, which is correct: Can a thing or person which is ovate also be willowy? If you think you know what the author meant by "ovately willowy", please explain to me in comments. Extra points if you identify the novel in question. (I am about to get on a twelve-hour transatlantic flight from Istanbul to New York so it will be a while before I can respond.) |
nwhyte
|
8:05a |
November Books 6) Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
No actual plot, just a series of very short vignettes of cities each of which embodies some aspect of human social interactions, told as a set of reminiscences by Marco Polo to his ruler / leader / captor, the Great Khan. Some of them are pretty vivid; they would have been more memorable if I weren't on a red-eye flight reading them.  |
| Friday, November 6th, 2009 |
stillsostrange
|
11:01p |
Tell me a story...
I need a costume to be worn at the solstice masque in Bone Palace, and I need a story to go with it. The costume itself consists mainly of a red gown with a veil. (I know, I know, this is just like the Mara costume in Kushiel's Chosen--I'm going to pretend it's homage.) The veil is important because three different women will be wearing it in a shell game to catch an assassin. And, yanno, veils and masks are a leit motif in this whole series. So, tell me a story about a veiled woman in red that could become the sort of myth that engenders Halloween costumes. My favorite story wins an ARC of Bone Palace, whenever those happen. And, of course, my eternal gratitude. Current Mood:  thoughtfulCurrent Music: The boy playing Dragon Age |
theweaselking
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10:09p |
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