azurelunatic

7:04 PM 3/15/2010
Darkside to me: *tale of mistaken assumptions at a concert*
Me to Darkside: *howling with hilarity*
Darkside: *scowling*
Me to Dawn: *howling with hilarity*
Dawn to Darkside (via me): "YOU WILD MAN YOU, I NEVER KNEW"
Dawn to me: "Poor, poor baby." (About Darkside.)

7:33 PM 3/15/2010
Oh right, it was that conversation about the HAIL that got me thinking in the direction I was thinking.

In unrelated news, apparently "present her with the head" is insufficiently romantic/vengeful, and only the golf club will do.

4:33 AM 3/16/2010
So very madly in love and the tale of mistaken assumptions is still making me howl with hilarity in the morning.

7:55 AM 3/16/2010
Yep, still laughing.

A brief reminder, for people who inhabit the intersection of disability, kink, and having play partners: INFORMATION IS GOOD. Disclosures are sometimes necessary.

You needn't necessarily spill the whole list of Things What Mustn't be Done and Conditions, depending on the depth (or lack thereof) in the relationship, but a simple "I have some health issues; I know my limits and I'll let you know about them if I suspect they are going to come up or if something happens; in case of emergency, I have a card with information in my bag/pants pocket/with the person at the other end of that leash" is unlikely to be out of order. 99 times out of 100, 999 times out of 1000, that card may not be necessary. That 100th or 1000th time, depending on the situation, it could save your life by giving someone the right knowledge to assist you properly, or at least keep them from panicking and seeing that you get proper care.


In other generally related news, with the help of IRC I thought of a niche service that may well be going unfilled: housecall dominants for people with disabilities. Disability may be affecting a person's ability to go out and look for an appropriate partner, if they are not lucky enough to have one at home; people with disabilities need appropriate-to-them caring-for too. A dominant service that specializes in creative work to avoid causing assorted forms of failure and badness, and with side education in medical care to back that up (not only would the dom know kink, but know how a given disability is likely to affect a person straight out of the box, and how to learn each person's situation's quirks quickly), might actually be a really good thing for someone. (And why should homebound submissives and switches be the ones to get all the fun from this service? Why should not a homebound dominant have the enjoyment of ordering around a submissive who is also trained in personal care?) And apparently some correctly applied play is good for some sorts of chronic pain.

It's vaporware, but since it could be useful, I'm sending it off into the aether where it might actually be picked up by someone who could do something with it, make it happen, provide a useful service to people who could really use a little more fun. ;)

( sleep. )

4:21 AM 3/13/2010
Last night's silliness in IRC involved mistaking laptops and lollipops when typing. One cannot fit a laptop in one's mouth; one might be able to install something on a lollipop, given that it is crystals. Oh, #dw. <3

4:57 AM 3/13/2010
I was, much earlier in the day, and by "the day" I mean sometime yesterday, searching for http://xkcd.com/513/, the XKCD entitled "friends" that illustrates why certain classes of passive-aggressive courtship-via-friendship are just plain a bad plan. Now that I have it, I'm not sure why I was looking for it, but I found all sorts of other fun things on the way.

Connie's classes also include Vague Cultural Sensitivity (Sociology), You Took This Math in High School Right? (Algebra) & Try Not To Set It On Actual Fire OK? ("Computer Systems" (tear-it-apart-and-put-it-together class))
http://twitter.com/azurelunatic/statuses/10252401251

3:16 AM 3/10/2010
Drewface has been plotting meta. Pointed out that there are more layers than he thinks.

3:34 AM 3/10/2010
( In which I was Helpful. )

10:08 AM 3/10/2010
Have come up with classes for Raven and Mike; I will get them into a class schedule later. (I do not do this because it is important for the audience to know their class schedule. I do this because it is important for continuity that their class schedule be solid and sane, to provide an underlying structure of time-grounding and realism. You cannot just go fight demons: you have to actually attend class. Some of the classes may never be relevant to the plot and may never show up except for when Connie needs to mention a class she's doing homework for, or has a test in.

In keeping with the Connie-is-not-actually-me theme, Connie does not get the faceblindness, because it is one throwaway joke. In any case, Connie would have had less of an opportunity to keep the faceblindness; she was raised differently.

5:18 PM 3/10/2010
Inbox looking a little more tame.

Not entirely diurnal today either, nope.

5:32 PM 3/10/2010
I am consumed with giggles at the name of shareandsharealike, which is a comm for fic/meta with consensual non-monogamy. I would guess that definitely one, maybe two, possibly three of the people reading my journal know why that's so.

5:59 PM 3/10/2010
I think the "kinkmeme" format fic festival has done a lot to encourage new authors. Why? Because there are no expectations that any given person will do something (no pressure), and no need to sign your name to something unless you want to.

The format here:
A kind fan creates a journal specific to the kink meme, and allows anonymous commenting, and sets out rules for the party, including what fandom(s) and theme(s) are allowed. Often this is for a Great Big Movie that's just been released. The rules include people leaving prompts (within the bounds of the themes allowed by the rules), anonymously or under their own names as they choose, people filling the prompts (again, anonymously or not), and people thanking the authors.

7:01 PM 3/10/2010
I am ow, just a bit. Lacey mentioned ... something. Or other. I think it was hot tubbing. But that sounds like a wonderful, wonderful plan right now.

9:10 PM 3/10/2010
Thaaat went well. (Already told Twitter and IRC about this) So I got to the hot tub, and the key that I thought was supposed to be the hot tub key? Didn't work. And the crash bar didn't respond to hopeful prodding over the top from my cane. Disappointing. Will be going to the office tomorrow to inquire about the key.

This would have been, what, the second time I'd attempted to go to the hot tub while living here? The first time, I was having key troubles but the people already in there let me in and said that the lock was a lemon. This time, nobody there. :(

10:17 PM 3/10/2010
Aiiigh, meat-juice-leak in refrigerator. :(

11:23 PM 3/10/2010
The more I look at the world of the strongly-gender-binaried, the more I realize how ever-loving miserable I would be in that world. [The remainder of this ramble got long.] This lengthy epiphany is brought to us by that icon meme on DW (which I really have too many icons for) and the examination of Connie's life.

3:04 AM 3/11/2010
(but I don't have any messages) So sometime during the writing of that long screed, I checked my voicemail. Hello, Best Buy. What's that you say? The hard drive and RAM on Disaster Area are proper fucked? Great. D:
What's that you say? They're not actually covered by the manufacturer's warranty? And not a year after I purchased it? And the cost to replace them is going to be upwards of $200?
exor674 provided a sanity check, for which I am very happy, saying that actually that's a pretty reasonable estimate for a replacement 2.5" SATA HD and netbook-sized RAM.

At the very least, they have tested it for me, and confirmed that it's not just the hard drive. I FEEL FANTASTIC, WHY DO YOU ASK?

3:20 AM 3/11/2010
I don't think I'm going to ask what else could go wrong, because many things could, and I do not think that I would like to know what they are.

6:19 AM 3/11/2010
Hmm. I seem to still be awake! Perhaps today is a good day for the farmers market!

( Verbing Dreamwidth and the 'smart' alarm clock )

1:19 AM 3/10/2010
Back from A Local Habitation release party, which was also a Tricky Pixie concert. I was running a bit later than I strictly wanted to, so I got off at the sooner-stop rather than the later-stop, even though it's a bit farther to walk. ( Detour for herbs. )

I showed up at the bookstore pretty well pleased with myself. I got a copy of the book, cooed at Ripley ("Whooooo looks like a little thornless rose goblin?"), got the book signed, then attempted to commence with the Crappy Cellphone Livecasting of the concert to zarhooie. It did not work so well. I then settled down in a table-bearing corner out of the worst of the crowd with the notebook paper I'd brought with me, because the characters, man, the characters are walloping me pretty hard. (Slightly uncouth to be writing at someone else's book release party, but I am *not going to argue* with the characters.)

Someone whose name I did not catch, but who was wearing a pretty awesome corset, was fiddling. Yay the fiddle!

Tricky Pixie started off with "Pixy Can't Sleep", and followed up with a song about scary things that go bump in the night. "Mushroom Song" was in there somewhere, and the round part of that had grabbed me hard last time; I will at some point when I know that it will be sung, bring the lyrics with me so that I can make a third part of the round. Tam Lin, of course. Seanan's mom wanted Alligator in the House, and the request was granted. There was more. There was always more. (There were several breaks in between, but I'm lumping all the music together.) It was the first performance of a song about the King of the Cats, especially for Tybalt. ♥ Alec played "He of the Sidhe" later in the evening (I was glad of my handkerchief), and lost a lot of bow hair and got interstitial applause. Seanan finished the music with "Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves".

There were door prize drawings. There was cheering after pretty much anything Seanan said. There was patter about US Customs, and some things that make them look at you funny, like buying ~$100 worth of gum, and bringing stuffed Ebola into the country. Hint: when bringing stuffed Ebola into the country, list it as "crocheted science doll" or some such other thing, not as "Ebola", and when you are asked your plans for the Ebola you have, "Oh, I'm going to give it to my friend!" makes Customs look and you and say, "So ... you have Ebola, and you're planning to give it to a US citizen!?"

Songs that did not make an appearance tonight from the band: The Notorious Salad of Doom. It did turn up in conversation, as did the "monkey brains" Calvin & Hobbes comic. Adding "OF DOOM" to any foodstuff automatically makes it more awesome. "If you don't eat your green beans of DOOM, how are you going to grow up to be a Dark Lord?" This, from the bald guy with the 21-year-old daughter, the guy with the "Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil." shirt.

The café pretty much ran out of food because of the crowd, and entirely out of pastry. The only reason they hadn't run out of bread was that someone had gone out into the rain and got more. The evil bald guy ordered a "surprise me" meat and cheese plate (causing an evil laugh from one of the kitchen staff); I decided in favor of the same, given that I didn't know how much of what they had left. I was rewarded with pepperjack! Apparently this is not a regular menu item. The mustard was horseradishy and hot, and ever so tasty.

Ah yes, the rain. It started during the party, and I don't believe it's let up yet.

At one point a conversation started up (starring Seanan, of course) involving giant prehistoric dragonflies eating puppies. I overheard, and popped over to put in my $0.02 (to some guy who is apparently named Sean, as Seanan had burbled merrily off) that the dragonflies would prefer airborne prey, such as flying squirrels and pigeons. Tif put in that the giant sea scorpion in your swimming pool? One electrical cord later, you don't have as much of a problem. I wondered what would happen if you crossed a giant sea scorpion with an electric eel. "This is why you shouldn't genetically engineer things without a license," Tif decided. I wondered what would happen with raven vs. giant prehistoric dragonfly. Epic, I decided.

( Converting passerby! Writing! )

Conveyed various greetings from people on the internet to people who were there.

Honey is many things, but is NOT LUBE. (Yes. I went there. At the party. The evil bald guy was attempting to pour the crystallized honey, and, well... from "it's good on garlic bread", and "it's good on everything", it's not that far to "I know something it's *not* good for!" "What?" "Lube.")

As do all things, it wound down eventually.

( Read more... )

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(But still giggling over "At least it didn't say 'Drive door is open on partition C:\ '!!")

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8:11 PM 3/7/2010
Hair has now dried. Even with the ~2" chopped off, hair is looong. Hair is wavy.

8:37 PM 3/7/2010
Via beckyzoole: http://beckyzoole.dreamwidth.org/50480.html
A small, bizarre set of middle-class Western gender assumptions quiz:

( Read more... )

9:19 PM 3/7/2010
"Existential door errors" (drive door of volume c: is open) (This is a thing between the best friend and Kat and me.)
Purple hair problem: "I do not like you because you have purple hair." (But the person is actually a blonde.) It is, I supposed, a variety of existential door error. (This is a Seananism.)

9:51 PM 3/7/2010
Kat briefly stopped speaking to me when I proposed the concept of "synchronized watersports" (like, you know, *swimming*, she protests innocently) for #dw Olympics.

12:07 AM 3/8/2010
Found an IKEA string of tiny battery lights, decided that they were going to become part of some interesting steampunk hair accessory. Looked around in accessory closet to find something to pair with it. Found an antique bronze-tone button on a safety pin and an ivory lace sash/scarflet from the fabric-by-the-pound shop back in Phoenix. Gathered the lace on the pin, with the button as a centerpiece. Fixed a hairpin on to clip it to some part of my person, using a spare twist-tie. The little lights don't fit into it anywhere, but it's still very pretty. I can use it either as a token hat (as a woman of European descent, going completely bareheaded in a steampunk scene strikes me as rather more bold than I actually am, not quite to say obscene, but...) or as the female equivalent of the necktie.

I have yet to figure out what, exactly, will get the lights.

( Oh, Lacey, did you see tonight's XKCD? )

Ganked off a bored person on my friendslist. Mine features a lot of R.E.M. lyrics.

This is called 50 FIRST REACTIONS. Type what comes to your mind FIRST whenever you see these 50 words. Don't think, and don't go back and change. Doesn't matter how random it is, just type it!

Repost it for all of your (bored) friends.

1. Beer: ew
2. Food: potato and bacon soup with sourdough bread, in a refrigerator near me!
3. Relationships: never
4. Your CRUSH: I've got my mind I've got my orange crush
5. Power Ranger: THE EVIL GREEN RANGER IS THE MOST POWERFUL
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8:59 PM 3/2/2010
GlaDOS voice now on Riddle. Sorry, Rich, but your properly-speaking voice has been bumped off. ;-P

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11:46 PM 3/2/2010
[from a comment elsejournal]
On good days, I can go to something crowded like the Folsom St. Fair, which has crowds large enough it's difficult to move more than two steps at a time in some places, and only have the casual worry that means I need to check to make sure that I still have my handbag in my shoulder tote every fifteen minutes to half-hour, and be secure in the knowledge that if someone tries something, I can turn around and deck them.

On bad days, I do not make it out of the apartment to the car or dumpster or mailbox, never mind actually to the fair.

If it becomes a bad day while somewhere out in public, I go null-state as much as possible (sensory overload, dull all senses as much as possible, don't-react to any stimulus, don't attempt to process stimuli); I will have lost words some minutes previous. If I am lucky enough to have someone with me, I hope that they will know what to do (get me to a quiet place, get me some water, check my blood sugar). If I am not, I go the last place I was programmed to go, or maybe have the presence of mind to find a place.

[You] have a more paranoid agoraphobia than I do. I have a more sensory overload and aphasia one.

2:32 AM 3/3/2010
"Wireless" router/cablemodem has been duly moved and duly plugged into the bleedin' UPS. Shall see if the wirelessness of it is still on strike -- later. Though perhaps I could even visit it directly, provided I still remember its IP. (Though I can look that up.) (Darlings, it is a good idea sometimes to affix a piece of masking tape or something to the router and write its current IP on it, and occasionally its other vital information like passwords, given that the thing is physically secure.)

2:57 AM 3/3/2010
Mark is now at least occasionally "starfish". Make a note of it. (There is no context for this.)

3:11 AM 3/3/2010
A Rule of the Internet: Content not under your control is ephemeral. Except when it's content you wish was not on the internet, then it is eternal.

3:34 AM 3/3/2010
Fun discovery of the month: the apartment complex expects me to keep the apartment at 60°F or warmer, to cut down on the chance for mold and mildew and general damp. They also pay for fireplace gas. (Previously I'd thought that that was on me.) I will probably be using the fireplace more often, and being the happier and warmer for it.

3:51 AM 3/3/2010
So we're eccentric, right. Just emailed best friend, playing oneupmanship games with Floor (he and I have similar untidy-bachelor habits when left without contact with our respective mothers for too long); asked him to convey my greetings to gaming group (as they hailed me when I called Sunday evening) and my love to his usual cranky necromancer D&D character.

( Writing (good); power (bad). )

12:09 PM 3/3/2010
There is a certain sort of predator about on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth: when "Can I talk to you?" is the start of a bad, bad conversation: http://thedivinegoat.dreamwidth.org/15930.html

( Fic links and such. )

1:08 PM 3/3/2010
Oh, rb, I haven't put it in the thing because Google Docs is not nice with slow computers, but the other night my brain started revising a particular bit of Circle of Fire, the Introduction of Distributed Computing bit, to something that made more sense, and I'm getting it written down!

( Writing commentary, and new characters )

3:15 PM 3/3/2010
Dude is going to get electrical problems checked out. (The simultaneous flickering from bedroom and desk lamps with bathroom lights means something other than a faulty ballast. Plus, the bathroom lights are incandescent, and the fan speed drops simultaneously with the flickering. The main building breaker may in fact be b0rked.) Meanwhile, I am in the apartment complex common room, having monopolized the comfy chair and the little glass side table as a laptop desk, headphones in ears and music on. We'll see if the on-a-roll continues.

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2:27 PM 3/1/2010
My solution to too many problems: "Hire a dominatrix." Even/especially the sorts of workplace problems caused by too many people meekly going along with what the boss says, even if what the boss says is completely insane. See, the dominatrix should go to the work meetings, and stand up on behalf of the client who cannot stand up for themselves, and possibly flog the boss. (Apropos of the workplace of someone with whom I was chatting this afternoon, and chatting about the workplace and problems therein. So if you suspect that this is your workplace I am talking about, you are wrong; if you know that this is your workplace I am talking about, because you were just chatting with me in capslock about kicking people down the well, then yes, this is your workplace. Though if you feel that your workplace could use this, by all means go for it.)

( agoraphobia. )

2:10 AM 3/2/2010
Have returned from Operation: Target! rynia mentioned the Gorillaz, so I'm listening to "Clint Eastwood", which is one of the songs that will inevitably take me back to 2001, newly in love and learning peace of mind. [Insert here, if you will, dear reader: my earwormhole entry.] Tif managed to get songs in my head with a few key phrases ("E Bow the Letter" ("I don't get it") and "Love Shack" ("headed down") ) and we had the usual sort of hilarious time, complete with assorted texting at Fairlight and random calls from MissKat.

Chatted with Tif about writing and characters. Lovie is *appalling* and insane. Mike is just mouthy. :D (Anyone who feels like they should recognize Lovie and/or Mike but is a little shaky on that front, or doesn't feel like they should but wants to, refer to that "characters" link.)

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(The icon would probably be appreciated by any number of the book's characters, rather than being commentary on the book itself.)

Finished reading cmpriest's Boneshaker earlier. Now that's an effective use of viewpoint-protagonist-not-telling-us-everything, masterfully done. (I speak, of course, of ( spoiler ) not sharing the full details of ( spoiler ) until the very end. It's not some piddly little detail; it's IMPORTANT, and it's also the sort of thing that one might not allow one's mind to dwell on, and it's also the sort of thing best served up with proof. Read and learn, young writers.)

For those who haven't read Boneshaker, I have a few questions.
1) Do you like alternate histories?
2) Do you like steampunk? Particularly, steampunk of the sort that doesn't try to hide the grime and the fact that the times we're speaking of were horribly racist and their alternate versions would likely not be much better? (I felt that there was a decent balance of not-making-the-modern-reader-cringe-too-badly, showing how it surely would have been based on how it was, and showing that the modern author did not approve. Though I'm not sensitized to these things; YMMV particularly if you are.)
3) Would you like to poke about an alternate Seattle that had become a Gold Rush boomtown? Would you mind it horribly if Seattle got slightly destroyed?
4) What are your thoughts on zombies?
5) Are you willing to accept the premise of the ( Blight )? Without expecting to know its exact chemical nature or why it has the horrid effects it has? (Chemistry folks may have to suspend some serious disbelief.)

Two stories interlock throughout the book. Zeke Wilkes struggles to come of age and redeem the name of his reviled father. Meanwhile, Briar Wilkes fights tooth and nail against any force of man, nature, or the unnatural that gets in her way in order to find her son and keep him from getting his fool self killed ... or worse. The story is framed with an investigative reporter/historian who just wants to know the truth, honest.

One of the other reviews out there sums it up as basically an action movie (steampunk plus zombies) in book form, with some dangling ends, insufficiently explored motivations, and not overmuch suspense due to the interlocking plot threads. I can't disagree, and some more attention to those things would have been nice. Good thing both that other reviewer and I like action movies! I'll be re-reading this one.

(It also leaves the door wide open for a sequel; I would dearly love to hear about the continued adventures of ( spoiler ). And I'm happy to see that my instincts for these things are not leading me false: there seem to be more planned, though I've no idea what they'll actually explore.)