It's Mrs L-K's birthday today! She deserves lots of presents.
I've been lucky enough, for the last seven-and-counting years, to have someone so smart and fun and cool who's willing to be my best friend. May she never feel the need to grow up.
You're the kind of girl
Who fits in with my world
I'll give you anything, everything
If you want things
(Love you, babe. Many happy returns.)
August 25, 2004
August 19, 2004
"I see you are using Bonetti's Defense against me!"
I'm thrilled - thrilled - about the news of Mariel Zagunis taking the first U.S. Olympic gold for fencing in a century, and how it's been making the rounds of late. As long as I can remember, I've been peeved that fencing seems to be one of the most overlooked Olympic events; maybe this stylish victory will generate some much-needed new interest in the Art of the Defence.
I'm most assuredly not thrilled, however, at the dumbass piece NPR ran yesterday on Zagunis, wherein Tom Goldman seemed to think that the most important point to make straight off is that a 19-year-old athlete in the flush of victory may not be the very exemplar of articulacy.
(One hesitates to assume, but one can't help but wonder if Goldman thinks the gold medal might be worth more if it wasn't tainted by Girl Cooties.)
Y'know, if I were Goldman, I think I'd be a little less, well, cavalier in dispensing snark about a woman who's so obviously at ease with having a yard of cold steel in her hand.
I'm most assuredly not thrilled, however, at the dumbass piece NPR ran yesterday on Zagunis, wherein Tom Goldman seemed to think that the most important point to make straight off is that a 19-year-old athlete in the flush of victory may not be the very exemplar of articulacy.
(One hesitates to assume, but one can't help but wonder if Goldman thinks the gold medal might be worth more if it wasn't tainted by Girl Cooties.)
Y'know, if I were Goldman, I think I'd be a little less, well, cavalier in dispensing snark about a woman who's so obviously at ease with having a yard of cold steel in her hand.
August 18, 2004
Pink is the New Black
Belle Waring has done what few dare: ventured into the dark lands in the Right of the blogosphere and dredged up horrors.
(Read the comments, too. Priceless, priceless.)
Sigh. You know, I really wish I understood how "blurring the role of the sexes" is going to sound the death-knell of Western Civilization and bring fiery ruin down on all we hold dear. Mostly I think folks like this Ryan Thompson fellow (and this genius) just hate the thought of having to share the train with metrosexuals and swishy girly-men, and they really hate the thought of all that sober masculine boys' club stuff they want to take for granted getting Girl Cooties all over it. This is the nasty condescension underlying the idea that women (oh, sorry, "females") are "special in a moral sense": that special is a license to set aside, exclude, and ultimately to punish if the "female" in question doesn't live up to the angelic standards of chastity and propriety. He can talk all he wants about "different but equal," but I don't buy it. Once you make a big enough deal out of "different," you've made damn sure "equal" hardly gets a word in.
It deserves repeating here: Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. It's placing "equal" in a more important place than "different," if that's even a useful word (and it rarely is). Being on a pedestal may seem like a grand thing, until you realize that once you're up there you can't go anywhere else, and half the people who seem to be gazing admiringly on you are only trying to look up your dress.
(And gentlemanliness? Rest assured I'm all for it; people in general should be kinder, politer, more gallant, more gentle than they usually are. Fabulous idea, right up to the point where "being a gentleman" translates to "taking every opportunity to treat an adult woman like a spoiled child.")
(Read the comments, too. Priceless, priceless.)
Sigh. You know, I really wish I understood how "blurring the role of the sexes" is going to sound the death-knell of Western Civilization and bring fiery ruin down on all we hold dear. Mostly I think folks like this Ryan Thompson fellow (and this genius) just hate the thought of having to share the train with metrosexuals and swishy girly-men, and they really hate the thought of all that sober masculine boys' club stuff they want to take for granted getting Girl Cooties all over it. This is the nasty condescension underlying the idea that women (oh, sorry, "females") are "special in a moral sense": that special is a license to set aside, exclude, and ultimately to punish if the "female" in question doesn't live up to the angelic standards of chastity and propriety. He can talk all he wants about "different but equal," but I don't buy it. Once you make a big enough deal out of "different," you've made damn sure "equal" hardly gets a word in.
It deserves repeating here: Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. It's placing "equal" in a more important place than "different," if that's even a useful word (and it rarely is). Being on a pedestal may seem like a grand thing, until you realize that once you're up there you can't go anywhere else, and half the people who seem to be gazing admiringly on you are only trying to look up your dress.
(And gentlemanliness? Rest assured I'm all for it; people in general should be kinder, politer, more gallant, more gentle than they usually are. Fabulous idea, right up to the point where "being a gentleman" translates to "taking every opportunity to treat an adult woman like a spoiled child.")
August 13, 2004
Triskaidekaphilia 2
Just like we did the last time the calendar aligned like this, here's a witch's dozen of the highlights of the week:
1. I get a new experience tomorrow - going out to get measured for my first tux, something I'd probably be able to avoid forever if not for a very good cause. I'm nervous, because when you're a portly Mediterranean sort of fellow the whole formalwear thing can really go either way; fingers crossed that this one makes me look like a pulp supervillain and not, well, a big fat dork.
2. Okay, so, the dome light on your car probably doesn't suck up that much juice, except that if you leave it on all weekend you will not be able to start your car on Monday, and you'll have to call AAA and their Edgewood driver will be mysteriously MIA, and you'll be stuck at home waiting for many hours with whatever you've already got in the fridge. On the plus side, you'll have an unscheduled day off work, which will be nice. But I'm just sayin'.
3. Great post from Maija the other day relating one poor bastard's conversion into the fold of Buffy fandom, a process I've seen in action a couple of times in the last year. Hey, there's a reason it's got such a fanatical following, and it's not all because Alyson Hannigan is goddamn nine kinds of fine. (Still two months until Season 7's released on DVD. Grr. Argh.)
4. Note that the egolinks to your right now include a working page of some tunage. I'd been delaying making that public until I had a proper page up with lyrics and stuff, but gods know when that's going to happen, so there you go.
5. Note as well new folk on the blogroll. Go say hello.
6. So I finally broke down and started a LiveJournal. I got an account a while ago, mostly to join a couple of LJ communities and comment on other people's pages I liked, but it seemed a shame to not do anything with it at all. I'm not really thrilled with LJ's functionality, which doesn't let you tinker with the settings like Blogger does (at least not if, like me, you're way too friggin' Scotch to get a paid account), but it may become something interesting anyway. It's going to be a different sort of thing than this blog, though. More thematic. Watch and pray.
7. Why I love John Scalzi.
8. The lovely spacewaitress has a post up about the relationship between education and employment, and how it's not what it's cracked up to be. (And it's true; not only is a college degree no guarantee of a good job these days, but the ones that supposedly do require a degree are increasingly stupid and banal. My position requires a bachelor's for reasons I've never really understood, since I'm convinced you could train a reasonably bright mandrill to do document imaging - folks, it's photocopying, just with better toys - with a pretty fair degree of success. And he'd probably screw around on the internet a lot less than I do, too.)
9. Early in the week saw the first three pages of Adeptus #2 claw their way out of my head, which wasn't something I quite intended, but the damn thing was keeping me up nights, so it's just as well.
10. Well, okay, this is more than a little to blame. I've been reading it a bit at a time over the last couple of weeks, and it's as good a crash course in the art of making comics as you're likely to get.
11. Speaking of which, I've gotten in the first couple of inked pages of the Adeptus preview, and they're good. Really good. They make me excited to be making comics, and very excited to see the whole thing as it comes together. (See, this is me going on public record as saying this. So we'll have no more of this Doubting the Work nonsense, eh? Yeah, that's what I thought.)
12. As a followup to yesterday's post, I note that Elizabeth Bear, in a thread on Electrolite, has suggested a googlebomb. I'm game. So: Those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
13. Finally: had the absolute best curry for lunch today. I talk a good game about Art, but in the end, it's the small pleasures that count.
1. I get a new experience tomorrow - going out to get measured for my first tux, something I'd probably be able to avoid forever if not for a very good cause. I'm nervous, because when you're a portly Mediterranean sort of fellow the whole formalwear thing can really go either way; fingers crossed that this one makes me look like a pulp supervillain and not, well, a big fat dork.
2. Okay, so, the dome light on your car probably doesn't suck up that much juice, except that if you leave it on all weekend you will not be able to start your car on Monday, and you'll have to call AAA and their Edgewood driver will be mysteriously MIA, and you'll be stuck at home waiting for many hours with whatever you've already got in the fridge. On the plus side, you'll have an unscheduled day off work, which will be nice. But I'm just sayin'.
3. Great post from Maija the other day relating one poor bastard's conversion into the fold of Buffy fandom, a process I've seen in action a couple of times in the last year. Hey, there's a reason it's got such a fanatical following, and it's not all because Alyson Hannigan is goddamn nine kinds of fine. (Still two months until Season 7's released on DVD. Grr. Argh.)
4. Note that the egolinks to your right now include a working page of some tunage. I'd been delaying making that public until I had a proper page up with lyrics and stuff, but gods know when that's going to happen, so there you go.
5. Note as well new folk on the blogroll. Go say hello.
6. So I finally broke down and started a LiveJournal. I got an account a while ago, mostly to join a couple of LJ communities and comment on other people's pages I liked, but it seemed a shame to not do anything with it at all. I'm not really thrilled with LJ's functionality, which doesn't let you tinker with the settings like Blogger does (at least not if, like me, you're way too friggin' Scotch to get a paid account), but it may become something interesting anyway. It's going to be a different sort of thing than this blog, though. More thematic. Watch and pray.
7. Why I love John Scalzi.
8. The lovely spacewaitress has a post up about the relationship between education and employment, and how it's not what it's cracked up to be. (And it's true; not only is a college degree no guarantee of a good job these days, but the ones that supposedly do require a degree are increasingly stupid and banal. My position requires a bachelor's for reasons I've never really understood, since I'm convinced you could train a reasonably bright mandrill to do document imaging - folks, it's photocopying, just with better toys - with a pretty fair degree of success. And he'd probably screw around on the internet a lot less than I do, too.)
9. Early in the week saw the first three pages of Adeptus #2 claw their way out of my head, which wasn't something I quite intended, but the damn thing was keeping me up nights, so it's just as well.
10. Well, okay, this is more than a little to blame. I've been reading it a bit at a time over the last couple of weeks, and it's as good a crash course in the art of making comics as you're likely to get.
11. Speaking of which, I've gotten in the first couple of inked pages of the Adeptus preview, and they're good. Really good. They make me excited to be making comics, and very excited to see the whole thing as it comes together. (See, this is me going on public record as saying this. So we'll have no more of this Doubting the Work nonsense, eh? Yeah, that's what I thought.)
12. As a followup to yesterday's post, I note that Elizabeth Bear, in a thread on Electrolite, has suggested a googlebomb. I'm game. So: Those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
13. Finally: had the absolute best curry for lunch today. I talk a good game about Art, but in the end, it's the small pleasures that count.
August 12, 2004
Admitters of Impediments
Oh, California. I hope you're happy now.
This would be a big old rant waiting to happen, but as luck would have it, Kip Manley's already gone and done it for me:
Yeah. What he said.
This would be a big old rant waiting to happen, but as luck would have it, Kip Manley's already gone and done it for me:
Defend marriage? You pathetic, deluded fools. Same-sex couples have been getting married all around you for decades, and they’ll keep on doing it, long after you’ve passed your little amendment. Men will kiss their husbands as you clap yourselves on the back, and wives will continue to feed each other cake, whether you will it or no. They’ve always had the love and the cherish and the honor, and the recognition of their friends and family, and nothing you can do will take that from them. Nothing. All you’ll manage to do is rewrite the tax code. Make it more of a grinding hassle to deal with insurance and wills. Keep loving families apart at times of illness and accident and death. Condemn children to needless, nightmarish legal quagmires. You will tarnish all our rings, and when we open our mouths to take our vows, we will taste ashes. —In order to save marriage, you will destroy it. Fools.
Yeah. What he said.
Motley's the Only Wear
This has been making the rounds for a while, but I'd be remiss if I didn't note it here.
About damn time, too.
About damn time, too.
August 07, 2004
Sanriomancy
Oh, man, I totally need a set of these.
This officially makes Jill Thompson's manga version the second cutest Death.
This officially makes Jill Thompson's manga version the second cutest Death.
August 05, 2004
Means "Bloody Peculiar"
Today I revived and brushed the dust off an old blog of mine, one I'd intended to use for some freewriting and stream-of-consciousness weirdness, but which I'm breathing new life into as a general writing blog. I'm putting stuff up there for public scrutiny, in the hopes of... well, go read for yourself.
Most significantly so far, I've put up the text of "Heartwood, Heartblood," the story I wrote for the SSXI auction table. In the future, I plan on posting additional stories, diversions, and possibly bits of of works-in-progress like novels and scripts.
So, welcome to the Eldritch Cafe. Sip carefully...
Most significantly so far, I've put up the text of "Heartwood, Heartblood," the story I wrote for the SSXI auction table. In the future, I plan on posting additional stories, diversions, and possibly bits of of works-in-progress like novels and scripts.
So, welcome to the Eldritch Cafe. Sip carefully...
August 03, 2004
What's He Building In There?
Frightening moment of the day: seeing paperwork cross my desk from these guys.
You know, I went to the site, and I still have no frickin' idea what they do. Or at least none that my mind cares to dwell on.
You know, I went to the site, and I still have no frickin' idea what they do. Or at least none that my mind cares to dwell on.
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