The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Kate Nepveu (attn: comment spam from "Rosenbloom Phil":

Thank you!

Avram, someone on LJ pulled out the program data into text form, including CSV & tab delimited: http://community.livejournal.com/anticipation_09/86878.html

Belatedly--

1) Boskone did a zombie panel last year. Reports.

2) Tobias Buckell's latest, _Sly Mongoose_, has zombies that are a hive mind bioweapon. They stop being "groaning, stumbling, dumb-as-fuck, old-school zombies" after coverting sufficient numbers. Review.

Kimberly @ #22, I don't know if flu shots are _required_ here in NY, but SteelyKid did get one at her six-month checkup and will be going back for the follow-up one. And Chad and I both got ours, even though he hates needles.

I hope that _The Onion_ never has opportunity again to do as painfully well as it did in its September 26, 2001 issue.

Sympathies and best wishes.

* * *

I am currently typing one-handed in my PJs, holding a freshly-bathed baby in the other hand. I was supposed to be on my way to a court appearance 3.5 hours away. But Friday I came down with a stomach bug, and yesterday I was still sufficiently weak that getting on the road at 5:30 in the morning seemed not just undesirable but actively dangerous. (It still does. After SteelyKid's next meal she's going to daycare so I can sleep undisturbed.) As much as I hated to do it, I had to ask a colleague to take the appearance for me. And he, bless him, said that of course he didn't want to go, but equally of course it was we did for each other so he would.

I hope to remember that statement and apply it as appropriate in the future, from both ends.

At 10:30 here outside of Albany, there was no wait at all, but I forgot to look at my number because the nice women working the polls were all cooing over SteelyKid.

I'm home with SteelyKid today, which is demanding enough that I hope my fretting will be minimized. I foresee a lot of cross-stitching tonight, though.

And yes, between a paper ballot and the lovely *clunk* of the old lever machines, there's no contest in which really _feels_ like I've voted.

People I like need to stop going in the hospital.

Best wishes to all.

Julie L @ #140: We saw the nude saxophonist statue in Himeji, too! I was going to say that you couldn't miss it if you took the train to Himeji and went to the castle, but I suppose if you didn't walk on that side of the street . . .

Chad posted a poll, whether it or the naked boy riding a carp in Takayama was more distressing.

Catherynne Valente @ #39 talked about visiting Hase-dera.

We also visited Hase-dera on our trip to Japan last summer--wonderful, and enhanced by a genuinely informative English-language map and pamphlet. All of Kamakura was great, actually, despite the pouring rain in the morning.

But the thing I remember best about Hase-dera, better than the Kannon statue washed up from the sea, or the thousands of Jizo statues, or the huge racks of sutras that, if turned by hand, earn one the same amount of merit as reading the contents . . . is the koi.

Practially every ornamental body of water in Japan has koi, of course, and the ones at temples are quite used to being fed by visitors. We'd been doing heavy tourism in Japan for more than a week, and no longer remarked on seeing koi cluster near pathways. Except these koi were so thick that they were stacked vertically, only their gaping mouths visible above water.

They were my second-favorite demanding animals in Japan. My favorite was the turtle at a small, exquisite temple in Kyoto (Konchi-in) that really wanted food and was willing to stare at me expectantly for as long as it took for me to produce it. We stared at each other for a good long time, as I waited for a special tour of the temple's inner rooms--on which Chad and I were joined by another American couple, who we kept seeing at other tourist sites afterward--including with the deer at Nara, my third-favorite demanding animals in Japan (being land animals, they were a lot more demanding).

What am I making these days?

I am very close to finishing a ten-year-old cross-stitch kit, pretty much on principle, since I don't actually like the design any more and am not sure what I'll do with it when I'm done.

I am preparing to resume making blog posts on a chapter-by-chapter re-read of _Lord of the Rings_.

But I suspect that the truest answer to "what I am making these days" is "milk for SteelyKid."

Hooray on getting out! May everything go smoothly from here!

Get well soon, Teresa, and take care of yourselves too, her friends and family.

SteelyKid is five weeks old today. Last night she stared admiringly and at some length at two of the three cross-stitched dragons I made for her nursery. Today we got in some quality smiling-adoringly-at-each-other time, and I'm cuddling her now as she dozes off and as I type one-handed. My father-in-law is painting the house, my mother-in-law is doing heroic baby-calming, cooking, and laundry duties, and I just talked to Chad on the phone and he'll be home tomorrow, hooray.

A quiet domestic day, here.

Hmmph. No Daniel Craig as Bond preview in my theater.

Xopher, I'm not sure how *realistic* any of the violence in _The Dark Knight_ was--very little blood, for instance--but it was definitely a very intense movie and there were points where I thought I might want a pause button. So probably a good call.

(Here are my spoiler-filled thoughts. Non-spoiler version: intense, gets a lot of points for engaging with difficult questions, did better than I expected with a couple plot elements.)

For instance, here I am, a non-white person who is not bothering to try to talk to albatross! In case albatross doubts Scraps' comment @ #527.

Scraps @#424 and a bunch of other people too: Thank you. I had stopped reading this thread because I did not have the energy or patience to engage with the discussion as it was going, and I am heartened and grateful to see your comments.

(I have some bookmarks on race, rhetoric, and the "tone" question saved on delicious, which may be of interest.)

Warning: something of a tangent, but I don't think I have anything to add to the thorough discussion of the content of Sanders' letter, and I think ML's conversation protocols will not take this as an attempt to derail the discussion of racism.

As Patrick points out, "rejection letters are business communications." Much of the criticism I'm seeing about posting Sanders' letter seems to be based on the assumption that it was _personal_ correspondence, which it's rude to post without permission.

Combined with my personal experience of SFF fandom, which often has an IMO admirable tendency to play down distinctions between pros and fans--

How likely is it that a category error is contributing to the reaction of Dozois and Williams, for instance, that the letter should not have been posted at all? Is there some problematic conflation or confusion here over business and social boundaries? Or is the more likely explanation--as a general matter, and not specifically about Williams and Dozois, who I don't know other than those posts--a variant of the stages of denial when racist behavior is pointed out?

Here's the download link for the Discovery Channel song.

TNH @ #30: I haven't even seen Iron Man yet

FWIW: I am apparently the only person in the world who found _Iron Man_ boring, but I did. The only thing that I didn't see coming a mile off was that a character _wasn't_ revealed to have done something. And that's not even getting into some of the not-very-subtext.

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