azurelunatic

It's a community kind of night; this was also just seen at accessibility_fail.


If you are out clubbing, and you see someone with whom you would like to dance, and lo, she is boogeying most righteously, more power to the both of you.

If you see that in addition to her righteous boogeying, she is incorporating the use of a cane, hey, there is a noble history of the use of canes in dance, from tap to Egyptian dance. Even though her cane looks more like it came from Walgreen's than any sort of dance supply establishment.

You may even be so bold as to take her free hand, if it's the sort of establishment where one touches one's fellow dancers, and she does not seem opposed to the concept.


One does not grab the hand with the cane.


One does not lift the hand with the cane from where it's been keeping the cane in fairly close contact with the floor.

Yea, even though she may be boogeying most fucking righteously, do not make the mistake of assuming that because the cane is not actively holding her up all of the time and she is stepping about in a sprightly fashion, that she does not actually need that cane for things like keeping her balance, catching herself in the event of sudden knee pain from a misstep, and the occasional bit of active-holding-up as she burns through her stamina.

Dancing like crazy with a cane and complete confidence is, after all, a much better option for her than hobbling around caneless and being stymied by stairs, and fearing to walk further than a block in case her knees should betray her. This is, after all, the weekend club scene in the city, and who the fuck willingly drives in San Francisco when there are other options?


One does not repeatedly yank the hand with the cane around.

One does not engage in an arm-wrestling match for control of where her hand (with the cane) is.


Even though she might not have immediately slapped you silly, this is still not okay. She might have been too shocked and appalled, and too unwilling to start shit on the dance floor when she was having fucking fun and out actually dancing for the first time in fucking years, and the first time with a cane, in celebration of her increased mobility.

In fact, this may be the first time that she's ever had to deal with someone being an appalling creep about the goddamn cane, and she may not be used to setting boundaries like that, because it's never come up before.

Because the vast majority of people are not drunk as fuck assholes who arm-wrestle you for control of your fucking cane, you idiot.

Abney Park came to town again, this time at the DNA Lounge. Having taken a shine to them last year, I was determined to go this year. My determination took a bit of a dive when I spent the better part of the morning miserably ill, and my walk with my aunt did not reassure me that I was up for even walking there, but I decided that I'd have a bit of a lie-down and see how I felt.

I felt all right. So I spruced up and went.

I hadn't really made costume plans, so I had a bit of a panic. I eventually went with my normal long black skirt, black top, black jacket ... but added the overskirt from my ren gear, and did my hair in a knot under the hair cage with the bundle of curled braids hanging down below it, and wore fishnet stockings (visible in that six inches of leg that occasionally showed despite the overskirt, which opens at the front) and fishnet gloves, with a ring on over the pinky finger, and my cameo collage and the lovely white-beads-and-freshwater-pearls choker I had redesigned and modified myself. My head still felt naked (naughty me!) but this fantastical feathers-and-sparklies clip soon put a rest to that.

There was a long line by the time I showed, and I was unsure whether anyone I knew was even there; the usual crowd had talked about the concept when we heard of it, but not since, and JD was disinterested. (It turned out that obadiah and his wife were there; I saw them on the dance floor later as they were departing.) I got in, had a few near-collisions on the dance floor, and eventually washed up upstairs leaning against the rails with a fellow named Chris, and a Matt, and a young lady with a key necklace, glasses, and goggles, and some other guy. There was general hilarity. Matt recounted how he had, upon coming in and the opening band coming in, hollered "FREE BIRD" -- and the opening act played it! The place was decked out themed like a mad teaparty, with cards and chess pieces strung off the railings, and no few people dressed up like Alice in Wonderland characters as well as the usual steampunk costumes.

tiferet will be pleased to note that their taste in opening bands has improved, although the band was ... odd. At least they were singing music of interest to a steampunk audience (more drinking, less political/radical), and very enthusiastic. There was also another group with a puppet show, wherein one puppet had killed a prostitute (again), and his friend framed a third friend. Very weird.

At length, Abney Park came on. There was rocking out, jumping up and down, the audience was throwing horns at several points (the opening act had instructed the audience to do this for one song), and general hilarity.

Robert introduced the song where Nathan would be playing the mandolin, wisecracking, "I just heard someone shout 'Mandolin is fucking metal', which may be the only time those words are heard in the DNA Lounge." Roar of laughter and approval. Nathan plucked a few exploratory notes -- or so we saw. We didn't hear. Some mimework and shouting ensued, and it transpired that the mandolin's general setup was not working as advertised. "We're going to have to play some songs without the mandolin until we can get it working," was the verdict, and there was a rapid set-shuffle.

(Later, a guitar string blew, so there was set-shuffling for violin until the guitar was fixed.) There was, at one point, while Nathan tinkered and tried to get stuff going, an impromptu moment where Robert and the backup singer started in with "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", completely unrehearsed; this ultimately broke down into giggles.

Someone has to hold the violin for "Airship Pirates". This time it was a little girl dressed as Alice who did it, and she was SO DAMN ADORABLE YOU GUYS. She'd been hanging out on the stairs at the side of the stage all night long, pure front row awesomeness, so excited, and then THIS. :D :D :D The whole audience was a-squee. The backup singer grabbed her hands and danced around with her during the violin solo.

At one point, Robert quizzed the audience: "How many of you shouted 'Free Bird'?" A good third of the dance floor raised their hands. "How many of you would like us to NEVER PLAY THAT and play something else?" This got about 90% handraising, and a lot of screaming.

At your average concert, you get fans screaming, screaming the band name, screaming the band members' names ... at this concert, there was a lot of screaming, but the chant that broke out time and time again? MANDOLIN! MANDOLIN! MANDOLIN!

The eventual solution was to lower the backup singer's mic, and have Nathan play into that while Robert and the backup singer shared Robert's mic. This was done. It was epic, and indeed, I daresay, "metal".

The concert was over too soon (and Robert was out of rum anyway), but the DJs remained, and soon a glorious mix of music (Rammstein, NIN, "Mad World", "White Rabbit", "Juke Joint Jezebel", and g-d knows what else) was floating out. I repaired myself downstairs as the crowd thinned out, as the music was sounding good and I didn't want the night to end just yet.

I have been recovering more stamina, and my cane is sometimes optional again. This proved handy on the dance floor, as I could actually dance, at first despite, and then, happily, *with*, the cane.

( I danced a lot. With men. )

Things were starting to shut down somewhat before 3. I was contemplating staying until they kicked us all out, but I was starting to get weary, and wanted some energy for the walk home. It had started raining in the interim, and me without an umbrella. Without any waterproof items on me, I feared for my feathers, and ultimately stuffed them in a pocket.

( Bus hijinks )

By the time I actually got home, it was 6. It's no longer 6.

I brought the old camera (smaller, easier to use, less of a power hog, no flash, takes rapid-fire sets of pictures, which can be handy in some circumstances) with me instead of the new one. Many of the pictures aren't much good, and I haven't unloaded most of them, but I did take the time to pull this here.

icon @nathanfhtagn with his mandolin. MANDOLIN IS FUCKING METAL.

whole group Due to failure of the mandolin pre-amp, Nathan has hijacked the backup singer's mic for a FUCKING METAL mandolin solo. MANDOLIN IS FUCKING METAL.

'70s: We are two heterosexual men who love each other in deep and ineffable ways and need some way to express this. Shall we shag?
'80s: We are two men who love each other in deep and ineffable ways and need some way to express this. Are we gay?
'90s: We are two gay or bisexual men who love each other in deep and ineffable ways and are pretty sure how to express this in private. Shall we come out?
'00s: We are two gay or bisexual men who love each other in deep and ineffable ways and are pretty sure how to express this. Are people going to accept our True Love, or will they bully us if we come out?


Unspoken but hopefully understood: the legal, social, mortal dangers of getting caught in the 70s and 80s, still the danger of coming out to the wrong person in the 90s (my own mother told me it wouldn't be a good idea if the wrong person heard I wasn't straight in the 90s), the certainty that there will be at least one jackass giving grief in the '00s despite protective laws. You can sometimes tell what decade someone grew up by how much of a big deal it is to even consider the feelings, consider one's basic orientation, consider coming out, consider letting a specific relationship be public knowledge.

This gets really surreal when I'm reading fic set in the mid-70s and the primary conflict is "but will people pick on us if we show our True Love" -- YES, it's the fucking *70s*, you could be BEATEN LEFT FOR DEAD RAPED AND MURDERED for being gay, and you're worried about HIGH SCHOOL HAZING?!

I've been having trouble writing. (This is not new. This has not been new for a year. Between everything, and the slightest suggestion that I oughtn't to be writing to my passion, that I haven't the authority to be doing so, and my self-protective function declares that I shan't do that in public, then.)

In the absence of eloquence of the written word, my pen hasn't stayed still. At chicken camp, I started doodling. I started sketching the chickens, because it had been too long since I'd been in the presence of chickens to draw them, and I'd forgotten basic facts of chicken anatomy, like the eyebrows, and exactly where to draw the ear.

I started, and I found myself unable to stop. Soon enough our trainer had started putting some of them into the presentations. I was drawing again, and it was wonderful.

I went to court to watch history for myself, because you never do quite get it right in your own head when you've had it through a filter, not just exactly so, not unless you know the quality of the lens that the observer's bringing to bear and how to run the transform algorithm to skew it back to true. I brought along the sketchpad on a whim.

I showed you what happened. The creativity went WHAM again, and took me bowling along with it.

Today was the last day for the witnesses. It'll be a month before closing arguments. Tonight was the President of the US's State of the Union speech. I watched him on my little computer screen, streaming CSPAN, and my fingers twitched. There, that angle of head, that quirk of mouth, that moment, that one, that repeated pose. Capture them. Make them mine. I didn't fetch my pen and paper, but I wanted to, and given more time I might yet have.

I'd not been seriously drawing since high school, since the doodles at the call center.

If I can't write, I'll draw. Creativity must have its outlet.

I shared the following review of Anathem with the denizens of the Mortal Instruments discussion list. Given that the target audience of that list is the same demographic as the target audience for Twilight (though I feel that Ms. Clare is a far better writer), I couldn't assume that the list was already familiar with Neal Stephenson.

---

I just finished up Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. This was a first-time read. I had fun reading it, and will read it again, but I wouldn't recommend it to absolutely everybody.

This is a typical Stephenson piece in many ways, and the author mentions the fun he had in building a consistent vocabulary for the world in the introduction. The paperback, with glossary and various addenda, comes up just short of 1000 pages. There would be footnotes citing the real science and philosophy that he used to build things, except this is a work of fiction and those don't have footnotes[1], and it would throw the reader out of the fictional world.

It is an alternate universe adventure, about a world where most of the world's philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists have settled themselves in enclaves roughly similar to cloistered monasteries. Fraa Erasmus, an Avout about twenty years old, last had contact with the Saecular world when he was about 10. His first Apert (the 10 days between periods of cloister the Avout have contact with the outside world) is coming up, he'd like to see his family again, he's trying to figure out girls (but not with much success, given that the suur he has a thing for is interested in somebody else), and what in the universe could possibly cause them to close the Starhenge for so long? Erasmus never intended to be an action hero saving the world, but he just might have to turn into one. (I mentioned the *alternate universe* part, right?)

Erasmus is a typical Stephenson hero: fantastically smart, but surrounded by people who are smarter and more driven than he is, and often seems to be pushed around by circumstances. Occasionally he struggles to captain his own fate, but ultimately gives in to the tide of the world (and the plot). Erasmus compares favorably to Daniel Waterhouse (from Stephenson's Baroque Cycle) and Lawrence Waterhouse (Cryptonomicon) despite having what I felt was nearly interchangeable personalities, because Erasmus is well-suited to this original universe rather than being an uncomfortably jammed in observer for the narrative to follow, brushing shoulders with the influential scientists of the day but stepping as lightly as a time-traveler so as not to change history. (If your only prior experience with Neal Stephenson is Snow Crash or Zodiac, both Hiro and Sangamon Taylor are more effective and driven than seems typical for the rest. They still don't quite know what to make of women despite being interested in them, though.)

Also in typical Stephenson style, there are lengthy bits where the characters get into philosophy, science, and math. Some of the lengthy asides have been summarized and stuffed into the back where you can read them or skip them at your pleasure. If you like Dan Brown but wish his books were longer and a bit more intellectual, you might like this. If you like the idea of ancient secrets, and philosophers and monks being kickass action heroes, but hate Dan Brown because his characters have occasionally had their brains replaced with sacks of gravel and the books encourage the conspiracy theorists, you might also like this.



[1]: Except for when it's written by Terry Pratchett, who can get away with it because he's Terry Pratchett and knows how to make them work. Neal Stephenson recognizes that he's not Terry Pratchett and doesn't even try.

afuna suggested to me that perhaps a single-comment freeze was not necessary. It turns out that you can (on both LJ and DW) freeze a thread, then go down the thread and unfreeze lower portions of the thread. It's awkward and you may have to refresh in order to see the right controls, but it can be done, so it's a viable moderation tool.

So yes, if there's one comment that's turning into a problem, but the threads below it have become productive, you don't have to choose anymore: you can just freeze the thread from the problem point, then refresh and go thaw out the productive discussions.

I have 169 interests on DW. Most overlap with LJ, but DW lets me have more. Right now DW is having a bit of interest funkiness, and in order to avoid this I am making a backup of my current interests. I will also explain them all. (See, I was just going to post the block of interests for backup, but I decided to explain them all briefly too, for less boringness and skippable cut entry. Everybody wins!)

( The big block of interests, for backup. )


!!pleh, !pleh?? -- there was this epic support request.

"my cocks(?) is down" -- epic SpinVox transcription fail.

#dw, #lj_support -- I love me some IRC.

$lj::will_not_work_without_steam_radiator -- The translation system is hell and I am witty as all fuck.

alaska -- everybody comes from somewhere.

( Read more... )

Kink meme:
Fanfic readers demand smut and crazy scenarios to suit their twisted and deviant imaginations, and fanfic writers follow through with smut perverse beyond the readers' wildest dreams.

Anonymous kink meme:
The same, but in a dark alley.


In case you can't tell, I highly approve of anonymous kink memes, and ought to try my hand at writing in one someday. :D

(The following pun is both bad and insensitive.)

So there was a problem going around among Firefly fanboys a few months ago after high school and college let out. They've been staring at River Tam, taking themselves to their bunks, then reporting their peripheral vision starting to go before becoming unresponsive.

( So what's it been called, then? )