Horses:
When I was learning to ride, at age nine, one of the horses there was an old while pony misleadingly named Dash. She would very seldom go faster than a walk, and never faster than a trot. When the riding teacher unhitched her and led her towards a student, she would drag along behind, rolling her eyes, and I used to think "Whither thou goest, I will go."
Forgivers are called full of grace;
But to forgive takes time and space,
More than some have who for so long
Have suffered cruelty and wrong.
They also bring forth grace and light
Who simply try to make things right
- Including things and people curled
In one's own corner of the world.
But when there is no right to make,
And some still cannot have, or take,
The privilege to quite forgive
They have much grace who simply live.
I am lucky enough to have a copy of Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman's Ghastly Beyond Belief, which contains abundant examples of awful prose.
Peggy thought longingly of the fat sexual slug that lay curled in a beautiful bird's-nest in the crook of his thigh.
Fiona Richmond, Galactic Girl.
'The important thing,' he said, 'is to lay the Brains by the heels.'
Sydney J Bounds, The Robot Brains
They were featureless and telic, like lambent gangrene. They looked horribly like children.
Stephen Donaldson, The Wounded Land
RiceVermicelli @ 55: that's the Keats sonnet Abi mentioned.
When I tried signing up for Second Life, my net-name was deemed unacceptable. It took me a very long time to work out why, since their error message implied that the name was already taken, not that there was something offensive about 'Vass'.
On the subject of songs:
Mum's out, Dad's out, let's talk rude
Pee, po, belly, bum, drawers.
Dance in the kitchen in the nude,
Pee, po, belly, bum, drawers,
Let's write rude words all down our street,
Stick out our tongues at the people we meet,
Let's have an intellectual treat,
Pee, po, belly, bum, drawers.
- Flanders and Swan
536: Bpgnivn Ohgyre, Krabtrarfvf gevybtl
If anyone's looking for an offline reference, I really love E.O. Parrott's anthology How To Be Well-Versed In Poetry, published by Penguin. It has examples of different feet as well as forms.
Pete @ 3: Melbourne's the same. Strange weather even for Melbourne. Rain all over the place, and muggy-hot at the same time. I'm sitting here at three in the morning, sweating.
I can't get over how long the days are. I guess they must have been the same length this time last year and every year before that, but it's still a surprise.
I remember a teacher telling us about the Challenger, and that there'd been a teacher on board. I can't remember if that was at the time, or later, though. (No, wait, it couldn't have been at the time - Wikipedia says the launch was in January, and school wasn't in session.)
In 1990 my grade four teacher taught us about glasnost and perestroika and global warming, and I drew horses all over the margins of my integrated studies notebook and paid no attention at all.
I remember the Gulf War from around that time too: I can remember a younger kid at the after-school programme asking the teacher if there'd be bombs here (Australia) and if it was going to be world war three.
I was going through a big Agatha Christie kick at the time, and I remember someone at the dinner table asking me what I was reading (probably immediatly prior to confiscating it: no reading at the table!) and I said "They Came To Baghdad", and my older brother burst into ironic laughter and said "They sure did." I didn't get it: I didn't connect Baghdad in the book with the place where the war was happening.
Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (graphic novel) and also her continuing series Dykes To Watch Out For. DTWOF has been comfort-rereading for me for a long time, and Fun Home is a powerful, literate, clear-eyed work of biography.
Lea Hernandez's Texan Steampunk books are beautiful, and the first one, Cathedral Child, is available online under a Creative Commons license.
I just googled to check. Apparently Australia does have a Vial of Life programme, or at least some local councils have made noises about it, but it doesn't seem to have taken off at a national level yet.
And I have a vague memory of seeing it mentioned in Tom Reynold's blog 'Random Acts of Reality', unless I'm conflating that with something else; which would mean it exists in the UK too.
Lanaia, do you like reading? What sort of books do you usually read? Who are your favourite authors? Who publishes them? What do you like about those books?
I'm asking this seriously.
And I have another serious question for you: you say you've done nothing wrong, so your career continues. If you had done something wrong, would it have to stop there?
Have there been times in your life before when you have done something you think was wrong? I'm not asking this to suggest that you're a bad person - everyone sometimes does things they'd rather not have done. What I want to know is what you did afterwards.
If you did something wrong, what would you do when you realised it was wrong?
G. Jules @ 26:
It strikes me as a bit like assuming that real pirates, after having robbed and burnt their way through several merchant ships, would be put off burying their treasure on a particular deserted island because of the "No Trespassing" sign.
I seem to have seen (performed in, actually) a comic opera to that effect. Let me see, how does it go again?
SERG. To gain a brief advantage you've contrived,
But your proud triumph will not be long-lived.
KING. Don't say you are orphans, for we know that game.
SERG. On your allegiance we've a stronger claim --
We charge you yield, we charge you yield,
In Queen Victoria's name!
KING. (baffled) You do?
POLICE. We do!
We charge you yield,
In Queen Victoria's name!
[Pirates kneel, Police stand over them triumphantly.]
KING. We yield at once, with humbled mien,
Because, with all our faults, we love our Queen.
POLICE. Yes, yes, with all their faults, they love their Queen.
ALL. Yes, yes, with all their faults, they love their Queen.
[Police, holding Pirates by the collar, take out handkerchiefs and weep.]
1985: the last year before I started primary school. I spent it overseas: my parents, my older brother and I were travelling in Europe and Asia.
I remember small, vague details: that they had grape flavoured Fanta in Indonesia. The pineapple drinks they make there, and in Singapore. The smell. The cartoon sheets on one bed. Getting a little souvenir model of the Eiffel Tower.
Being, for some odd reason, scared of the emblem of Indonesia's national airline: Garuda, the phoenix. The little in-flight things airlines give to four-year-olds. Tiny wooden clogs from the Netherlands - blue with flowers on - and poffertjes.
How I trimmed my fringe because it was getting in my eyes, and cut it too short, and my parents insisted I get the rest of my hair cut short to match, and how upset I was. Hapi-coats and pretty cotton pyjamas, and a Chinese doll with its own baby doll, both in silk pyjamas.
How the culture of Indonesia generally is extremely supportive of and affectionate towards small children, and how, as a very stand-offish child, I was freaked out by all the strangers who wanted to pat me and talk to me. My parents coaxing me to at least say "terimakasi" (thank you.)
Not having to deal with other children - it was a nice break from that, between creche and school. There was my brother, but he was fifteen, not as bad.
It was syzygy!
Kathryn from Sunnyvale at 15: something similar happened to some people at my university too, only in their case it was Australia's domestic security agency, ASIO. This was before 9/11. It was for the annual scavenger hunt, an event a lot of fannish people took part in: one of the items was "Get your name on an ASIO file." So, one of the teams looked ASIO up in the phone book and phoned them. Before they could ask about having a file opened on them, they got a sharp, shocked "How did you get this number?" in reply. And a file opened on them.
Re the main topic: I'm creeped out too. And that's coming from someone in a country where I'm pretty sure my entire prescription history was in some government agency somewhere - after all, they paid for (well, subsidised) it.
Pat Greene at #17: I have the same problem with the belt riding up to my neck. It's very uncomfortable, and seems to result from, uh, the difference between a woman's bust and that of a crash test dummy.
You can buy things called 'seatbelt comforts' that wrap around the bit of the belt that touches your chest, so that you're being chafed and/or half strangled by a bit of padding, not the edge of a nylon strap. Sometimes this even helps it stay where it's meant to be. It won't stop the seatbelt from doing its job. It worked for me.
Yes. And it makes me catch my breath in either language.
Oh, him. I read one or two of his Star Trek tie-ins back when I was reading Star Trek tie-ins. I didn't like them enough to go looking for his original fiction.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 7 |
| 2007 | 13 |
| 2006 | 15 |
| 2005 | 54 |
| 2004 | 25 |
| 2003 | 16 |
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