The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Arete:

I'm an irredeemable packrat: books, fabric, yarn, anime, manga... Yeah, I like to collect things. Strangely enough, the things that I *value* I didn't even take with me to college, they stayed in my bedroom at home, waiting for me to come back.

1. My Bub-bub (yiddish for grandmother) made myself and my sister matching bedsit dolls - you know, the plastic dolls with the crochet dress, petticoat and apron? The way to tell the difference is our initials on the apron. I liked it growing up, but it was only in the last year it has meant even more to me: I found the pattern she used, and decided to make one for a second cousin my family dotes on. Spending the time making hers... I realize what time my grandmother spent on mine. As she died nearly two decades ago, I can't tell her that... but I hope she knows anyway.

2. My senior prom dress. The two piece, bodice with boning and a full skirt, style was big when I was a senior, and I very much liked it. Unfortunately, while we (my mother and I) could find dresses that fit... they were in colors that I both hated and thought I looked horrible in. My mother had me find fabric I did like - ice blue and a transparent darker blue fabric that had silvery dots on it - and made me the dress I wanted. I love that dress, and if I ever lose enough weight, it would still fit. I still thank her for it, and remember how I felt beautiful in it.

Johan@29, I think it might depend on when the training was given - I've had that situation. At a live action roleplaying event, I was in a 'battle' when I tripped, hard. The 'sword' (pvc wrapped in padding) stayed in my hand as I did a somersault fall - not really it's name, but the judo fall where you use your arm to create an arc that you guide your roll with, till your shoulder rolls on the ground, and then point of contact goes diagonally on the back to the opposite leg, and you stand up. Which I did, to a massive double-take from onlookers and myself (impressing 15-yr olds boys for the win!). I was twenty at the time, with the judo training beginning when I was fifteen till I was eighteen.

Hmm, a bit older is Transmetropolitan, what I usually describe as a political satire. First half is clearly Nixon, the second is almost a complete satire for Bush... except that it was mostly written before Bush took office. Nevermind, it works on it's own. Science fiction political satire as seen through the eyes of a Hunter S. Thompson type reporter. Very very good, humor in large doses - offensive humor to some extent, but I don't like potty humor and I find Transmet hilarious. Poignant too, but if I say more, I'll spoil the plotline.

Altogether, there's sixty issues total, with a couple of outtake issues I think...(checks wikipedia) Ten trade paperback volumes with two "special" issues that are a good introduction to the characters, even if you have no idea who they are - handed one of the specials to a friend at a party happening in my apartment, he surfaced 45 minutes later and demanded to borrow the books.

A lot of the people who are talking about having college students armed are not currently students, either by being in the professional world or by being professors, so let me just offer this current (going for a masters in library science) student's opinions on us having guns:

No. Way. In. Hell.

Last night I played a variant of table-top D&D were the 20 yr old DM wrote on the whiteboard in the room (we use rooms in the student center) "DM am sleep-deprived; forgive the silly!" And another player was going on 48 hrs with no sleep. Personally I was running on 5 hrs, 3 hrs less than I prefer. We were barely coherent enough to play our role-playing game, and somebody wants to arm us with weapons?

Next week is what we call Dead Week - traditionally the week before finals when no unexpected assignments can be given, but in practice, we're dead tired studying and writing final papers. I expect to be fully strung out by next Friday, and I know I won't be in the minority of students.

I'm very happy the University of Kentucky has a no gun policy on campus, I like living, thank you.

Another person here with the belief that my seatbelt saved my life. Also, warnings that the story to follow may not be suitable for people like Theresa whose overactive imaginations immediately go to the worse: no one was even injured beyond moderate bruising, but yes, the way the probabilities go, I should be dead.

I was going south in a '95 Camry in late 2001 along a major highway between eleven and midnight on a Saturday night, in an area that had no lights along expressway, where the only illumination was my headlights and the headlights of the semi beside me in the left lane - and I do mean right beside me - and the semi right behind me in the right lane, there being only two lanes. Suddenly, lights turn on about a quarter to a third of a mile up the road: a pickup truck was pulling from the right shoulder into the right lane.

He was not going fast enough, and there was too little distance for a crash not to happen, especially with the semi behind me - I've been aware the distance a semi has needed to fully stop since a tv news magazine report vividly showed the force a semi in motion carries. Those are the thoughts I remember as I made the decision to hit my brakes to at least minimize some of the force of the accident; the brakes immediately locked up from my slamming on them.

The back of the car swerves right and then left in to the semi beside me - you know that bar that usually hangs off the back the trailers? The back left corner of my car latches onto that, pivoting on it to spin my passenger side into the semi that had been - and was still - behind me.

The last conscious memory I have of those brief moments until my mammalian brain decided it was okay to start recording again was knowing I could do nothing as the car turned; my seatbelt was on, and I pulled my forearms to be parallel to my chest, but up covering my face, hoping my jean jacket would protect my face from flying glass. Coming to, I found my car in the ditch to the right side of the road, which was now on *my* right: the car was facing back the way I had come, passenger side down in the ditch, driver's side up in the air, and the top of the car perpendicular to the road.

I remember saying help, but even then, I knew I was in shock because I was saying it - I couldn't get myself to scream. A father and son rushed up to pull away the shattered front windshield - my dad had had the car tinted, and the glass shards had continued to stick to the film, even after the window itself had broken. I unbuckled my seatbelt, put my feet where the front passenger window had once been, and walked/climbed out of the front window.

The rest of that night is a blur, but several memories stick out: I borrowed a cell phone from one of the semi drivers (who both were extremely worried about me, they were both gentlemen who deserve that title) to call home - I was 18 at the time. My sister answered the phone. "Rach, put Dad on. Now." She told me later she knew something bad had happened. Dad got on. "Dad, I'm fine." No tears, just a leveled tone from being in shock. I had always heard that the car is not important - I am, and never forget that. In shock, I still knew the car was replacable, I was not. He asked what had happened, told him I wrecked with two semis, but I'm fine, come pick me up.

Another memory: the cops didn't was to believe I was the only passenger, was somebody else in the car? From what other people had mentioned, I now understand why they were so insistent on making sure there was nobody else who had been thrown out of the car, at the time, it just felt like they thought I was lying. Also, they told my father (but not me) who told me later, with that type of crash, "We expect to pull out a corpse."

Final tally of injuries and damage? My breasts were black, blue and purple from the shoulder harness. A cut on my right shoulder, that I didn't discover till the next day when I was shaking out the glass shards from the jean jacket and found a cut in the fabric that I then found corresponded to the cut on my shoulder. I felt like I had slept wrong for the next two days. My Camry was utterly destroyed - only two parts were salvagable for other cars off it: the driver's side passenger door and the spare tire. Oh, and I utterly destroyed the brand new 2002 semi cab that had been behind me: we found a shard of blue fiberglass a hand wide and 18 inches long (my car was apple red, no way it came from mine) in the wreckage of my car. I kept that piece of fiberglass for a few years, as wells as TOYOTA thingy from the back trunk - the raised letter sign they put on the cars. I eventually tossed both of them, but it was proof I had survived.

I never saw the car after that night - my parents (likely completely right) refused to let me see anything but pictures of it afterwards. The most damage had been done to the passenger side after all, and that had been hidden in the ditch, on a dark night.

I grew up wearing my seatbelt - my parents never had to tell my younger sister and I to put them on, as there was never any question of the car moving until we did. I saw what happened to my loose stuff that had been in the car - it went all over the highway; I did not.

My seat belt made sure I was not another corpse they had to pull out of the car.

(And to that father and son who pulled the window out because they were afraid a fire was starting in the engine block: thank you! I never got your names, and I can't remember your faces, but you help me keep faith that even strangers will help strangers in emergencies. I will always remember that.)

I'm not sure whether that ruined the original for me forever, or whether it made it just that much better.

Einstein was definitely not conventionally Christian - he was Jewish.

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