http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif -- if I send this anonymously to the entire North American branch of my company, would that be bad?
http://www.morningstar.nildram.co.uk/A_New_Sith.html
http://community.livejournal.com/note_to_asshat/347097.html -- Admonishment to the Lords of the INTARWEB
http://dduane.livejournal.com/100340.html -- ficlet from dduane, "Invictus". Death, life, and religion on the shortest day of the year.

dduane was asked to write a tribute.

Filk circle Friday night wrapped up early, because (in the words of cadhla) we were all zombies. This led to a filk bunny starting its merry journey around the inside of my head, featuring the theme of a filk circle -- filled with zombies!

Unwilling to go to bed quite so early, I wandered around until I found that the anime room was still open. So I wandered right in!

A guy wandered in slightly after me. But for the darker, more elegant eyebrows and the increased height, he was still close enough to a match for Darkside that my hormones went "Hello!" He could have been the guy's stunt double, maybe. I made serious effort to make saving rolls, and actually managed to avoid propositioning him.

I did, however, make bad puns in his direction. The anime of the moment was Naruto, and there were exploding tags (google it if you want; that's what they're called...) so I did the eyebrow thing and scribbled in the back of my notebook. "Like this?" I asked, showing him the notebook.

<explode> stuff </explode>

He made a groan of appreciation and shared my notebook with the guy next to him, who said that I was depraved.

Then I noticed that the ceiling was dripping. It had evidently been doing that all day (condensation from the pipes) but it was worrisome enough that an engineer eventually came. Somewhat after that, everyone was getting very tired and there was sleep to be had.

By the time the con is over, all the clothing that I put in the drawer will be either on me or in the laundry bag that I packed along. My backpack will be completely empty save for whatever I can find that will fit in it. I am debating the merits of unpacking the laundry bag directly into the washer once I get back home. Just grab soap and change, go out to the car, bring it back to the laundry room, and let 'er spin.

I was paranoid for about an hour that I'd parked Vash in the wrong spot and he'd be towed. I eventually decided that there was nothing I could do about it at this hour of the night, and I'd check in the morning. No tow! I'll be sure to inquire at the front desk about where the fuck I should be parking before bed this evening.

I woke up around 11 in the morning, and grabbed applesauce and clothing, then bumbled out to see what was happening. I was about a half-hour late for the start of the "meet the GoHs" panel with dduane and petermorwood; I slipped in the side and found a seat near lord_maahes and her geekboy. (Geekboys make the world happy. There should be more of them.) The panel was hysterical. Some choice quotes:

"...and the Death of Mad King Ludvig. We were trying to get them to do do CSI: Bavaria." -- dduane, on a chat with German producers. On the next Door Into, if there's going to be one: "There is going to be another. I'm just not old enough to write it yet."

"A house with two writers tends to look like an explosive mine combined with a half-demolished bookshop." -- petermorwood, on the necessity of cleaning before housesitters arrive, and the truth that life with writers is. He also had many stories of airplane travel: the previously-mentioned anecdote, and a yelp he made about not being allowed to carry a bottle of water onboard: " 'It's just water! It's not even heavy water!' And then you learn that's not a funny they needed to hear."

( Oh, is that your wee starship? )

The panel wrapped up as there were rather frantic motions at the door involving us, the gesticulator, and some hotel staff with stage paneling. The Filk GoH Concert was to be in the same room a half-hour hence. Fen and pros and all, we were out the door.

cadhla came by, munching a tomato the ruby/purple/brown color of half-dried blood. Conversation ensued as the knot of people with me wanted to know what strange alien fruit this was. A string of tomatogeekery followed. Then there was concert! We are evidently the Horror Movie Love crowd, as the Black Death song and "You Get the Tickets" both got immense amounts of cheering. I attempted to capture photos. There was stripping onstage. Glee.

I got hugged post-concert -- well, the shoulder-bump that serves as a substitute for hugging when hands are full. I'd evidently been looking a little under-the-weather at the start of it all. No surprises there -- I rarely look all the way on in the morning, and after Friday, I'm still recovering.

sithjawa, I need to know where to find your current mailing address. Heh, heh.

I bought the tiny portable computer Allegra from dduane a while ago; I got it a NIC a while later. Tonight I tried installing said hardware.

It is unfortunate that the external CD drive (which is a slim model that's nonetheless about 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the actual machine) seems to not function (perhaps damaged in shipping?) and we are forced to rely on the floppy drive.

It is fortunate that I have a floppy drive (external USB) for Thalia.

It is unfortunate that I have not yet gotten the NIC to work, though it says it's installed. There look to be conflicts. Joy. NIC does not want to admit that it can use TCP/IP. It wants to use IR.

*facepalm*

The problem with pretty much any book of philosophy is that unless it was extremely well-researched, and had a team of people looking at it from all sides, there are blind spots. It's the sort of blind spot that leads to dangerous untruths, mistaken assumptions, and things that the author thought were of-course that got glossed over. [Edit for clarification: this is only a hazard to people basing actual real-life magical training off the books, in the same way that one can learn to ground & center along with Talia the Herald.]

The dangerous thing I realized from the Young Wizards books was this: "Wizardry does not live in an unwilling heart."

It makes it sound as if wizardry simply evaporated when the heart or mind was no longer willing to bear the concept of wizardry, leaving, at worst, a nameless sorrow at the bottom of the soul, of the sort that Nita would have had if she'd ditched out her obligation to the Song of the Twelve in Deep Wizardry.

And that's how it may be in the Young Wizards universe. It's an author's privilege to write things as they should be in the universe, not as they are.

The books do cover what happens when a wizard is touched by the Lone Power and goes bad or mad. And that's as so. But in the real world where things aren't so tidy, there's a vast area between believing in the wizardry enough to do things with it and disbelieving in it enough and painlessly enough that it simply disappears as if it had almost never been there. Times it happens that the power, and the potential, are there, but the heart is so vastly unwilling or twisted that actual proper wizardry is nigh unto impossible. When inadvertent wizardry slips out around the cracks, the heart grows less willing to see it, for wizardry is impossible, after all. If an active wizard on errantry comes by and attempts to shake things loose, the results can be worse than Nita facing her Seniors telling her it was all RP, ah, wasn't it fun, little girl? Now go grow up... Much worse. Much, much worse.

And make no mistake, the wizardry will attempt to out. And it doesn't just come as bidden after taking the Oath. Sometimes it's born in. Sometimes it's woken far before any Oath. Sometimes it takes even a half-joking Oath as true and comes on full after the Oath is forgotten in childhood. Who could dream that the fantasy tales you played with your sister as a child could have repercussions in the Real World after you supposedly grew out of them? But no matter how it decided to arrive, it's there, and it's leaking around the blocks and baffles set up in the unwilling heart to prevent accidental magic. And every now and then, accidental magic happens, sometimes with personally or psychologically disasterous results.

In a makinglight thread a good long time ago, a thread started with two dreadfully clue-negative would-be Darwin competitors horsing around with makeshift lightsabres composed of flaming gasoline in fragile glass tubes, someone gave a well-thought "proof" that magic does not exist: namely, if magic did exist, there would be all sorts of people trying really damn stupid spells, and the results could not be disguised as any sort of mundane injury.

I had to laugh. I'm the sort of practitioner of magic who makes it my sworn duty to help mop up after and prevent beforehand just that sort of problem. Mercedes Lackey makes it very clear that Guardians-as-she-writes-them are a fictional entity, made up out of equal parts chivalry, fiction, and decent pagan-grouping research. On the other hand, it's a very useful and tidy way of phrasing something that's equal parts job description and Calling. On the gripping hand, even if she hadn't written about them, something of the like still would have invented themselves. Organization? One might as well herd cats, or computer geeks, or pagans. Call it coalition. Like attracts like, and can be persuaded to stay in loose contact every now and then. Hierarchy? 1337-spiffy magic-users? Competent and self-selecting in networking purposes, rather. And people who get dangerously riled up at the thought of being ZOMG EXCLUDED from any sort of group that may or may not exist that they want to be in are the sort of people who anything calling itself Guardian ought to be guarding against.

Magic as it exists is far more psychological and intangible than fantasy-based magic. Gods and demons work through the physical world, in the little corners left to them by chaos and psychology. That accident-prone drama magnet may well be victim of a self-inflicted Stupid Magic User moment, much like those Darwin competitors were left with nasty burns. It's a lot harder for the competent mage to hand out violation tickets on the highway of Darwin-Potential Magic when the Darwin-Potential Mage firmly believes that magic does not exist. At least you can whap would-be flaming gasoline-in-glass lightsabre duelists over the head with a goddamn physics textbook and arrest them for Doing Really Stupid Shit. It's a lot harder to call an end to the insanity when the person who just magically caused all manner of panic and disorder with a nasty emotional vortex and a 5-point blow to the love lives of all the people within a shout's range is flatly denying that they just did this and that the magic to do it at all, much less sense it, exists.

Talked with Darkside for 45 minutes. Indeed, work/geeking seems to be the best topics of conversation. He keeps me at least a little in the industry; I help keep him sane.

A Wind from the South is now on my warm little hard drive. I bought a second copy, so the copy in amberfox's Gmail is entirely legal & 100% piracy-free!

Darkside is concerned about me being sick. I guess he's not used to dealing with me this sick on a regular basis. I'm not, anymore. I've gone from 80% miserable to only 20% at the moment, and I intend to get back in bed and spend the rest of the night asleep and dreaming the strange but productive and repetitive dreams about packaging up sinus drainage and getting it out of my way. I can feel that it's not a serious illness, that all I need to do is rest and let my body take care of itself. Meanwhile, dishes aren't getting done...

... just plain exhausted. I wonder if I will be able to make it in to work this morning later on.

"In Life's Name and for Life's sake--" (Special Wizards at War spoiler edition)

A day of double blessings! First, the e-mail letting me know that Allegra's just about ready to be shipped, and the tracking number will be e-mailed later on today. Second, Rihannsu: The Empty Chair has gone to the publisher.

Can it get any better?