The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Captain Slack:

Or, perhaps more relevantly: "The third movement was a lower pitched, the flute as if it represented one person and the orchestra a few others, the harsh tones and the melancholy feeling that felt as the orchestra with its brass section the cymbals and the strings all expressed a very angry and vengeful melody." It certainly reads more like what your students "write".

@Fragano: "Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. [...] He expired in 1827 and later died for this."

I don't think that helps me figure out what the story is - I'm pretty sure I've never read it

Probably not. The series is OYRNPU, ol Abevnxv "Gnvgb" Xhob (nxn XHOB Gvgr), naq gur punenpgre vf Vffuva Xhebfnxv, sngure bs frevrf znva punenpgre Vpuvtb.

- but it does resolve my puzzlement about why the description apparently began in first-person and then changed to third, for which I thank you.

Yeah, I was wondering if anyone would have that problem. S'why I-the-poster put a dot after I.'s personal-name initial.

A hint: #401 is based on something the original author said was his plan for I.'s occupation, of which the character's love of black suits survives into canon. And, speaking of such behind the scenes stuff, Wikipedia quotes one of the creators of Qrngu Abgr nf fnlvat gung, vs Elhx unqa'g qebccrq gur Abgr naq/be Yvtug Lntnzv unqa'g orra gur bar gb cvpx vg hc, Yvtug jbhyq'ir sbyybjrq uvf sngure vagb cbyvpr-jbex jvgubhg nal uvqqra ntraqn, riraghnyyl sbyybjvat fb sne va uvf sbbgfgrcf nf gb orpbzr urnq bs gur ACN. (Bar jbaqref vs ur jbhyq'ir qbar fb va gur lrnef ur riraghnyyl ybfg jura Elhx jebgr uvf anzr va gur ercynprzrag Abgr...)

All I can think is, for #369, Wnzrf Oenapu Pnoryy'f Whetra (as in Whetra: n pbzrql bs whfgvpr). My own small contribution is from a medium I hadn't previously noticed MLers were into, but in fact I find this specific series mentioned in at least one post, so here goes:

* * *

If I.'d followed his first impulse and become a mortician rather than a doctor, he might never have met M. They certainly wouldn't have fallen in love; she was too full of life, and just that little bit too traditional, to love a man who worked with the dead.

She gave him a reason to stay in Japan, a life where his former employers would never think to look for him, and a son and two daughters. How much of that was in the shopkeeper's plan all along, he's never known for sure.

On consideration, even the synergy between them would probably not have penetrated if it weren't for that year at New College (in sunny Sarasota), where I acquired a copy of The Book of the SubGenius at the university bookstore. This led to me acquiring Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob", which contains William S. Burroughs' essay "Sects and Death" as a BehindForEverAfterWord, empowering me to scent the cultic vibe coming off the Limbaugh-Peikoff axis.

I know I've told this story on bellatrys' LJ, but I don't think I've ever gone into this much detail:

During the 1992-3 school year, reading The Way Things Ought to Be in snippets on a college bookstore shelf, while getting the Second Renaissance Books catalog (published by, or at least on behalf of, the Ayn Rand Institute) in my university mailbox, and realizing three important things:
(a) Rush Limbaugh was an asshole to whom lying about the Left came as naturally as breathing;
(b) the only difference between his rhetoric and the Objectivist blather in the 2ndRen catalog, particularly when it came to their characterization of their common ideological opponent, was that he invoked God and Saint Ronnie to justify his rhetoric, while they justified theirs by the Grace of Reality and the Nature of Life.

(Also, I noticed them selling a book about Michael Milken which basically argued that, because there were no laws against the kind of fraud he committed, it not only wasn't immoral but wasn't actually fraud. At least, that was how they sold it. They also sold a biography of Sam Walton as if his success story were prima facie proof that Wal-Mart couldn't be maintaining its position the way its detractors said. To put it in terms they'd have related to, it was like Jim Taggart putting on a wig and a dress made them mistake him for Dagny.)

I can't really say whether I'd have stayed in my comfy center-right Sensible Serious glibertarian cocoon if I hadn't read those writings and come to that realization about their authors. But I know that the reading made it impossible for me to stay on the same side as these people, like a reverse of the thing with David Horowitz and the Black Panthers.

Belatedly to BruceB @#61:

The real secret of the conservative movement is that they've learned how, via environmental stimuli plus dietary manipulation, to reunify the bicameral mind.

It's called Pentecostalism (like the Assemblies of God, Palin's church). "The Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates is the cult of Asherah." — Hiro Protagonist

@Heresiarch (#32+1 due to the deletion of the spam comment): At that point, I guess there'd be no choice but to declare a benevolent dictatorship and appoint your daughter Secretary of Education.

And make sure nothing happens to Thorley. (Should I be more ashamed of how long it took me to grok the reference, or that I remember the books in the first place?)

@Remus Shepherd (#41+1): Obama gets assassinated. The right-wing media hounds howl 24/7 about Clinton being to blame, with Vince Foster and her known thirst for power as 'evidence'. McCain wins the presidency in a walk.

...it's a sign of the sad state of this nation that I suspect they've already discarded that plan because they fear the Masses still have enough of a gag reflex to resist swallowing bullshit that blatant.

giant Stalinist crabs

RIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RACER!

"This is magic, this is what magic is:
Grief too terrible to be borne."
— "A Holiday in the Park"

"The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on.
The train may stop
But the line
Goes on."
— "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"

It's a song of assassins
Ringin' in your ears
We got terrorist thinking
Playing on fears!

...

I don't think there are any Russians
And there ain't no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin' with tanks
— The Call, "The Walls Came Down"

But if you wish to view those parenting styles as exactly morally equivalent, then trying to point out the obvious and substantial differences would be a waste of my time.

Greg, dude, you took the words right out of my mouth in a way that left friction burns on my tongue.

I want these insane, pointless regulations rescinded. How do we go about doing that?

Every answer I can think of would be illegal to advocate, Juli.

My dad tells a story about his mother being unable to understand how four such nice young boys could create such horrid music. I think of it when he's (for instance) objecting to bands I like such as Garbage or Tool, or to KRS-ONE's "Get Yourself Up" blasting out of my CD-alarm this morning to wake me up.

Yngve skrev:
If aliens landed, they'd hear the same thing: "Well, immigration's been a good thing UNTIL NOW, but we can't have these aliens come and ruin our country with their foreign ways and steal our jobs!"

That story's been told, yeah.

o/` eet ek nas naj, na sus ga nil pa et eet ek nas naj o/`

"There are facts that suggest that what I am saying is not actually true. What is my response do that? 'What-ev-eh.'"

We saw another example of this in Saturday's Mallard Fillmore strip (yeah, I know, the Fckd Duck demonstrates his contempt for fact-based argument, film at 11), where his response to somebody suggesting he was basically talking out his tailfeathers was "Gee, it must be nice to live in 1958." (It's better than living in 2003, when the "patriotic T-shirt" flap to which he was devoting four strips actually fckng happened. Why did it take the Freepers so long to get up in arms about it?)

I like Tolkien's term "Secondary World", myself.

And Misty? (May I still call you that after all this time? Austin Loomis here, veteran of several Coastcons.) Is your fic on the CoH forums? And what server are you mainly on? (Due to an underpowered graphics card that can't handle large numbers of mobs, I've lately been concentrating on Baron Cimetie, my necro/dark MM on Victory.)

This boy lacks insight into his own condition.

Such a lack of insight is itself part of that condition.

Is it bad that, when I saw protected static's question about PYGMIES & DWARVES, my first thought was that the link would go to "a mountain, trees and a midgit [sic]"?

If you fear the madness of King George, you have no recourse if you've given up the checks and balances that you inherited and that were meant to protect you.

"And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?"

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