In other news, I was entirely too happy when I got the notification from Amazon.com that my 2-disc copy of Star Trek was shipped today. Which means I should have it tomorrow.

Whee!

http://www.geocities.com/sita.a/funstuff/riddles.htm

A useful tool for learning verbs: http://www.comicdisbelief.com/default.aspx

Go watch this cartoon. Right now. You'll thank me for it.

It's really good...

...kiddies.

Poll #1437459 Define this word
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

Today's Typo of the day: "evoloved." Please define:

scendan just posted the following:

Thanks, State of California

Well, we just lost one of our biggest State contracts.  Not just us.  Everybody did.  Domestic Violence funding in the State of California just got the plug pulled.

Wish us all luck, everybody.  This is going to be really bad, no matter how it shakes out.

Anybody feel like donating to a worthy cause, our website is here and all of us who do this work... may not be soon.  I will give details if or as I know them.

http://www.trivalleyhaven.org

Even if you can only spare a little, believe me, it helps.  We are the only secular domestic violence and homeless shelter in our area, the only rape crisis center, and one of only a few food pantries. 

scendan

Feeling:: sad

And yeah, I'll do a vacation recap at some point but I'm not in the mood right now.

For those who are interested, I posted a new fanfic at ST_Reboot. It's very, very PG.

And, shockingly, they didn't screw it up.

Very cool.

Also, the kid who played Chekov in ST:XI? Very, very talented mimic, and I look forward to seeing him act in more things, hopefully playing characters he can set his own stamp on.

Here's the first in the set:


Which is actually chronologically last.

Here's the last in the set:

Yes, it's blurry, and yes, I'm kind of peevish about it. I did get other, more in focus pictures of lizards later the same day.

Here's a random shot from the middle of the set:

Dead tulip bud, but I kind of like it.

There are lizards, poppies, unidentified flowers, aphids, and one lady bug who wasn't very cooperative in the rest of the set. Enjoy!

(Yes, I am going to beg. Comments and feedback are welcome. Yes, I am going to purchase more lady bugs to try to deal with the aphid problem.)

Something I just randomly remembered:

We went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for my mother's retirement dinner, and my sister and I had the following conversation:

Sis (upon getting an answer to what Dad was going to order): He's having pasta with fungus.
Me: Fungus and flesh.
Sis: What about you?
Me: Mizithra and meatballs
Sis: Oh, so you're having mold and flesh with your pasta. I'm having fungus and mold with mine.
Friend stuck sitting between us: It sounds better when you read it from the menu.

Random Internet Discoveries:

http://foxloft.com/store/tagua/pendant/Coyote

Pretty!

Wolverine...well, Hugh Jackman had his shirt off, and Liev Schriber devoured the scenery. That's about all I have to say about that.

Star Trek. I am pleased. Send more Bones. Also, it was nice to see that J.J. Abrams attempted to avoid tokenism in the casting; I saw Starfleet members of pretty much all races and even a mixture of ages, which was nice. A little more body-shape diversity would have been nice. I will probably go see it again in the theater once more on my own and will make sure my local family see it.

I miss having my clan around me for these sorts of movies.

Also, I need a good Bones icon, for my only two Star Trek icons are this one and one of Spock Prime labeled "Bitch, please."

Like free rice, this allows you to donate vaccines while answering word-use or Medical Terminology meanings:

http://www.givevaccines.org/home.php

This is not a poem
This is a series of words,
to say that I am tired;
my back is sore,
and my knee feels
like someone rammed a
knitting needle (blunt)
into the joint. The neighbors
are being noisy,
and I'm going to bed.

Another poem prompt: Why We Don't See Paintings of Venus Knitting

I'm going to bed. I tell you, though, if the precipitation remains at this level and turns into snow (which it's predicted to do, but we'll see), tomorrow's commute is going to be ug-lee.

Because I have been intrigued by Nine Things About Oracles that I've seen going around, here are mine:

( poem back here )

This is the sort of thing that I'd normally put on my poetry filter, but since I'm also going to share it with elisem I sort of can't do that.

But I'm just so pleased with this image that I have to share it:

( It's not super huge, unless you click through )

I added another couple of photos to my flickr photostream as well as this one. Nothing spectacular.

emmacrew, thank you so much! I will love it and hug it and kiss it and call it George.

Well, okay. Maybe not that second paragraph. But thank you!

The first issue of 42 Magazine has been shipped to the printers! I would pimip this anyway, as it's being run by a friend of mine (waves at serenejournal), but I'll confess that I'm also pimping it because I'm the featured poet!

So, you know. Go. subscribe, or buy a single issue. I am 100% certain it will be worth the money. :)

Clueless white guy ends up in the middle of Chinese legends and cultural conflict; manages to save the day anyway.

Netflix has quite a few of Hitchcock's classics in their "Watch Instantly" section.

If no one hears from me in the next 24 hours, please send someone to make sure I haven't keeled over from forgetting to eat/sleep/drink/urinate.

This is a joke, yes. But it's still a bad discovery for me.

I think this might even trump Giant Cerulean Wang.

That link manages to be worksafe, just barely. And is undoubtedly funnier if you know who "Bert" is.

I thought, since I was so tense, that I would come home and take a nice, leisurely, hot bath.

Wrong.

The stopper in my tub doesn't stop.

Sigh.

Things that keep showing up since I attended the Museum of Jurassic Technology (including items or concepts in the MJT but nothing "spoilery"):

1. Cat's Cradles
2. Systems of logical argument
3. Madelines and Proust
4. The How of Memory
5. Eating mice

I'm pretty sure there was something else, too, but my brain is under the influence of ambien and I can't remember. The Proust and Madelines thing gave me a profound moment of confusion becuase when I re-encountered some information from MJT in "Proust was a Neuroscientist" (A book I recommend), I suddenly understood the point of the exhibit at the MJT. And don't get me wrong, I love those moments. It isn't so much that I wave at them as they go by, but rather I can tell, somehow, that I'm thinking differently because of that trigger.

And that's why everyone can go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. So you all can try to figure out how any or all of it is related. Because I still don't think I understand. And I'm still pretty sure I want to go back.

Also, the Cat's cradle thing was getting freaky there for a while.

Espeically since I have to get up early tomorrow, but.

I thought I would post this bit of art I made for myself first. I guess it's art.

( A box with a quote )

Please let me know if the pictures don't work, though I won't have a chance to change the settings until later. Also, if they show up they will all show up as links, but the links won't work. This is because the flickr TOS requires me to put a link when I post the picture.

I need to figure out how to drill out the clip so I can put an actual lock on the box.

And now I am going to bed.

Feeling:: creative

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

Not on purpose, mind you, it's just been one of those days.

I turned my desk around in the office so that it is no longer facing into the corner. This is only a temporary fix, as I need to decide where exactly in the office it should go, but it's a start. In the process, I made the area between the desk and the file cabinet a little too close, and there was whangage of the toes against the legs of the desk. Later, I was downstairs and managed to slip on a dryer softener sheet, which I don't understand either. Also, I managed to step on the corner of a VHS tape that had fallen on the floor.

Then, a few minutes ago, I was in the bedroom putting on my pajamas and in the process managed to bring my foot down, hard, on the lip of the bedframe. That one still stings, and I suspect will be bruised tomorrow, making walking around amusing if painful.

I don't know what I have against my feet tonight, but I'm kind of glad that the day's almost over.

In better news, I also made myself some Peanut Butter cookies, and they were exactly what I wanted.

Understand: This is a Big Exciting Weekend in the Coyote's world.

Includes the story "Terminus" co-written by ashenseraph and me.

Joss Whedon to direct a horror film "Cabin in the Woods".

Just because.

Finished:
1. Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
2. Peter Walsh, It's All Too Much
3. Neil Gaiman, Coraline

In Progress:
1. Bill Bryson, * A Short History of Nearly Everything
2. Robert Gilmore, Alice in Quantumland
3. Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Secularism

In my to-read Stack:
1. Joshua Palmatier, The Vacant Throne
2. Jim C. Hines, The Stepsister Scheme
3. Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos
4. Jonah Lehrer, Proust was a Neuroscientist
5. Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

Part of the reason that I haven't finished A Short History of Nearly Everything is that I'm in the section on cellular biology and also Darwinism, which (oddly) doesn't hold my interest the way the geological and chemical stuff did.

I enjoyed The Name of the Wind. I may post a longer review later.

No, I am not a monogamous reader. I'm sure there are more books in both the "In Progress" and "To Read" stacks, but these are the ones I'm sure of.

HarperCollins has put fully-browsable copies of Coraline up (according to Neil, so that people can read the book before they see the movie).

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

So, as part of my "give me suggestions for Holidailies" post, I was given "Coyote's Commandments." After asking for clarification, because you have to admit that's a little vague, I was told that the person in question wanted to know about living with "Coyote," what the Commandments are or I perceive them to be, those sorts of things. Great, I think to myself. An easy topic.

Sigh.

Truth be told, though, Coyote-as-presenting-to-or-from-me isn't exactly the Trickster God most people think of. Coyote is not Webster Kitchell's Coyote, anthropomorphic and Warner Brothers-influenced in a purple zoot suit. And in any event, and other people's posts aside, that Coyote isn't really the sort to hand down Commandments. Coyote-as-presenting-to-or-from-me (hereafter "Coyote" because I'll get tired of typing all that crap) does in fact have four feet and fur (and, as a side note, is usually female). The communications we have had, inasmuch as we have had conversations, have all involved me speaking and Her responding through body language (including typical and easily recognizable canine body language such as play-bow). So, definitely not the type to give Commandments, and they would be Commandments that I would have to interpret, anyway.

I took a break from writing this to go run an errand at lunch (two more payments and my car is MINE! Woo Hoo! But not too much woohoo, since that money will be going to my Student Loans next and no, ashenseraph, I can't put my loans off because I'm not a full-time graduate student), and I suddenly realized what Coyote meant by nudging the cub to me in the "vision" I had during the guided meditation. And it wasn't what I thought. Way to take ten years to understand what my guide is trying to tell me.

Anyway.

So, not the sort of divinity to be giving Commandments. That's where I was. Now, as I've mentioned before, I've done my research into Tricksters in general and the Trickster I've been saddled with in particular, just to see what I can learn. I've also done a lot of nature reading about coyotes to learn what I can about them. And that's largely where I take lessons from. Coyotes (the animals) are an awful lot like humans in some of their underlying instincts (not in an anthropomorphizing sense, although what I'm about to do is anthropomorphize to a certain extent).

( Some things I've learned from studying books about other people's studies of coyotes, and also from my own occasional encounters: )

The purpose of most (but not all) Trickster Tales seem to be to point up where the boundaries are:  don't be too proud, or you'll trip and find yourself in the dirt.  Pretending to be someone or to know something you're not could lead to your death.  Don't stretch your penis out to have sex with girls on the other end of the pond, or it'll get lopped off when one of them thinks it's a snake.*  The Trickster steps over the boundaries, and sometimes gets away with it, but most of the time doesn't.  So I guess the message I take away there is mind the boundaries, even when you're crossing them, or else be really inventive about your reasons for crossing them.

Then, finally, there's something mentioned around the web and in books I've read about Coyote Wisdom being Everything is sacred, and Nothing is sacred.  Everything is "worthy of respect or dedication," and nothing is "worthy of respect or dedication." This resonates with me, in ways that I just cannot adequately explain, ( but I'm going to try )

*This is now going to be the take-away message from this post for 95% of you, I just know it is.
Also, I cross-posted this to Radical Daffodils, and I may yet move my "religious" musings over there.

Feeling:: Look! I have a navel!