claudia@81: Sometimes I really think the universe lacks a sense of poetic symmetry.
Whoops, I forgot the toast part.
To walls. May they fall, and people on either side rush towards each other in joy, and dance in the streets.
Sgt. Pepper told the band to play?
All kidding aside, I remember it. I was a tween at the time, but I remember geography classes covering East and West Germany, and East and West Berlin, which always seemed frankly bizarre to me. "Wait... there's a little island of East Germany in the middle of West Germany? Um, okay." It was a while before I could wrap my mind around why the East Berliners didn't just up and leave.
Mostly, what I remember about the time was how sudden it all seemed. One day there was East and West Berlin, and Checkpoint Charlie (which I used to think was a person) and everything, and then, all of a sudden, it's gone, and there are all these families running to each other and crying. It was tremendously powerful, and I knew it was one of those momentous events that would turn up on a list of "Ten Most Important Events of the Twentieth Century", even if I was too young to really appreciate the massive, massive political upheaval that had just been wrought.
We kids had always been told that there was this Cold War on, and it had lasted for a while and was probably going to last for a while... and then, "Hey, the war's over! We win!" Us kids: "Hooray! World peace!" The grownups: "Um, actually..."
I probably should have bought one of those ubiquitous Chunks O' Wall to commemorate the occasion, but I was eleven and short of pocket money. Oh well.
Gah. This sort of reminds me of Kristi Yamaguchi, the Olympic figure skater from 20ish years back; and Michelle Kwan, from 10ish years back, whom the media decided weren't real Americans. (They are from Fremont and Torrance, respectively.)
One of them--Kristi Yamaguchi, I think--was being interviewed in one of those morning shows, and at the very end was asked to repeat something the anchor had just said, but "in your own language". So she just repeated it in English.
Possibly the last thing I have to say about chicken feet: in the soup, the feet probably contribute gelatin to the broth, which would improve mouthfeel.
The thing about the deceased "having too much fun to come back" made my jaw drop. What an appalling, insulting thing to say to people in mourning.
fidelio@506: My veggie friends tell me that smoked paprika does a great bacon impression. Another veggie friend uses lapsang souchong tea as her secret "smoky" ingredient.
Serge@509: If we ever do get around to doing Lumicon, the food will be terrific.
Paula Helm Murray@565: steamed coconut-paste covered sweet bean paste dessert balls that I would die for.
Oh my, yes. I love those. Actually, I love most all dim sum (Sweet! Salt! Fat! HOORAY!), except for the chicken feet, which I've never been able to figure out just one does with. I was at a dim sum brunch with a group from work once, when someone ordered the chicken feet. I suppose I'd been subconsciously expecting them to be... well, to have some sort of food content on them, but no: actual chicken feet, lying on a serving dish in front of God and everybody. I had no idea how to even begin eating such a thing.
eric@574: Uhhh.... do they have some sort of early intervention available to prevent him from turning into a diabolical criminal mastermind? Because wow, he's GOOD.
chris@683: I do--and to some extent, did, even then--know that, but I was also being childishly picky about what kind of history I wanted. Specifically, I wanted the European Middle Ages: castles, ideally, but also old churches or anything similarly old. (Roman edifices or ruins would also have been acceptable.) That these were not present in Northern California was not Northern California's fault, but knowing that didn't stop young me from idly wishing for a catacomb or two to explore.
Hari, Hari Seldon
Hari, Hari Seldon
Hari, Hari Seldon
Thena@199: Does that mean we can host the Making Light Con there? It sounds like it has all that's necessary. :)
Re: woo
Recently I've been looking into Tarot cards. Not because I genuinely believe they can tell the future or interact with the spirits or any such rot*, but because I like them--a library of usually beautiful pictures, rife with symbols just waiting for a mind to find meaning out of them. In my case, it seems to help punch through psychological denial: examine your thought processes as you shuffle, draw, examine; learn to notice what you dread seeing, and why; learn to recognize that sinking feeling of "DAMN, the cards are good" as the first solid hit of a wrecking ball against a wall of denial. Not a message from the cosmos, but a message from yourself.
And that is my experience with woo.
*I identify as an atheist, with vaguely pagan leanings--much like Xopher, evidently, I like rituals. I'd say credo consolans, I believe because it's comforting, but even that's not right: I tell stories to myself in the dark, because the alternative is being alone in the dark.
ConnieH@91:"Sometimes an 'expert' is someone who's gotten away with a really stupid thing a couple of times."
A most excellent point. "C'mon, I've done it tons of times!"
Lori Coulson@107: That one had 2 dozen people on its emergency staff -- EMTS, MDs, and RNs, plus a psych contingent.
This. I can totally see the value of spending a few bux to experiment with fasting and/or other states of altered consciousness in an environment like this, where qualified people are around to look after you and exercise judgment when you aren't able to.
But nearly $10K? And forless than competentcriminally negligent supervision?
fidello@114
You are free to imagine how someone like that would have dealt with the notion of paying big-timecashmegabucks for a weekend of badly-mixed superficial woo.
*Ray poofs into existence at Socrates feet at the School of Athens, ~2500 years ago.*
Ray: Hey, Socrates! So I'm having a life-changing philosophical warrior's retreat next week, and I've come back in time just to tell you that I'd be totally honored if you'd come by. It'd be a big draw; plus, you could work on some of your own issues, eh, big guy? *chuckles* We're all going to dress up and pretend to be Spartan warriors, which will enable us to go all Spartan warrior on our problems! *mimes imaginary sword moves* It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dynamicize your life and realizate your destiny! Only a year's wages, which I know you'll agree is damn cheap for finding enlightenment!
Socrates: *shock at the realization that this guy comes from the future*
*despairs*
*kills himself*
Western Civilization: *vanishes*
KeithS@47: One of the things I was thinking about earlier was why this sort of thing piggybacks on a distortion of someone else's culture.
Yes! That's more like the idea I was aiming to articulate. Simple exoticism doesn't seem to be enough--it has to be a distortion, and specifically a distortion that brings teh sexxay.
He doesn't focus on American or European warriors, it's Japanese Samurai, Peruvian secrets, Native American sweat lodges. Perhaps Europeans and Americans never developed their own mystical traditions? I think we have plenty of people right here who will say that's not so.
Exactly. I'll submit the romanticized "Celtic" culture as seen in bad fiction as Exhibit A.
Going back to my YA novel*: if you're going to write about the adventures of a ghost-hunting teen, why NOT set it in France? Haunted castles! Haunted abbeys! Angry spirits GALORE! So it's not a question of the author only being able to tell his stories in the millieu of the American West, it's specifically (or seems to be, anyway) that he set out to tell stories that required his distorted America as a setting.
*FWIW, the series is called "Peggy Sue et les Fantomes"; and it's--interesting cultural windows aside--not that good.
To address one eensy little portion of TNH's essay, above; to wit: the appropriation of Native cultures because they're sexxay.
My mother is French; immigrated 40-odd years back. As a lass, reading up on French history instilled in me a deep envy of French kids, living in this enchanted countryside full of castles and Gothic churches and ancient villages and just general history, so much history that it seemed like it'd be a force of nature... whereas I lived in northern California, where there was no history.* It seemed most unfair. I hoped the French kids appreciated their immense good fortune.
The most recent time I was in France was last summer, for a cousin (and dear dear friend)'s wedding. As I do whenever I'm in France**, I scoped out the used bookstores, and happened upon a young adult novel written with the same envious yearning to be from somewhere, anywhere more interesting than wherever it is that one happens to be from: it was a fantasy novel about a young American girl who could see ghosts and whose mission it was to fight them, and whose woes were mostly due to a succession of Indian curses/magic/graveyards/etc. Where I had envied the French their history, their deep-set roots, the audience of these books envied a supposed American way of life: wandering (the protagonist's family lives in a camper van, though they are in all other respects middle-class) the wide unpopulated spaces of the American West, with extra cool danger coming from exotic and poorly understood cultures.***
The point I'm fumbling towards here is not as trite as "the grass is greener"; something uglier and less easily resolved, something where "everyone, learn to appreciate your own cultures" doesn't even begin to address the issue. Should we demand that even light escapist reads be culturally sensitive? And what does that even mean?
* I was wrong about this--of course California has history, but it wasn't White history, so it didn't count--but that's a different essay for another day.
** Or anywhere else, come to think of it.
*** I also saw a bande desinee (comic book in the Franco-Belgian tradition), about a Native American princess and her tribe, that featured teepees AND primeval forests AND totem poles. My cousin was ashamed on behalf of France for producing it.
Mary Aileen@23 - depends on what I end up doing with it. I've added to it significantly since posting, and it's now approaching lap-quilt size. I'm getting a little sick of making the damn templates, but I've got plenty of fabric left... maybe I'll see if I can't get it up to bed-sized.
It looks kind of cool the way it is now... sort of a roundish blob shape. If I leave it natural-edged, though, I'll have to figure out how to put a binding on.
Blast. How's this?
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/GfWflBNcksoUaj2GR-1tFA?authkey=Gv1sRgCLin2oLC5vOCiQE&feat=directlink
Ooo, Fibbonacci quilt FTW! I loves it so; good job!
As it happens, I'm working on a math quilt of my own:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=2587346&id=576136283&ref=nf
(hope that works)
It's a quilt version of a Penrose tiling (rhombus version, as I can't figure out how to make paper templates of the kite-and-dart version), and it is aperiodic: the pattern will never repeat. I guess I'll keep going until I run out of fabric or get bored.
Ginger@88: Hee. :) Seriously, though, _Curse of Chalion_ would be great for someone who thinks his life is over and is prepared to consign himself to retirement at 35. A special case of midlife crisis, I guess.
Michael Roberts @ 27--I like to think that _To Say Nothing Of The Dog_ isn't in any danger, as copies have *also* been squirreled away under "Humor", "Crime", and "Historical Fiction".
(I heart TSNotD.)
For all those interested in long-term financial planning, may I suggest "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe"?
I dunno... wouldn't a terrorist watch be sorta useless? I mean, it would just count down to zero.
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