Same · as · a · Wildcat
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Storm Takes Steep Toll on Destitute Tribe; Thousands of Downed Power Poles Leave South Dakota Sioux Reservation Without Heat, Water; Melting Snow to Use in Toilets They've apparently been asking for a new water system for years, from the US Government which has legal and moral obligations to provide such things to them. Guess how that has been going. The Cheyenne River Sioux website is here: http://www.sioux.org/ Most of the information there is for local coordination, but they have set up an online donation link here: https://secure.piryx.com/donate/0oFFsK8 ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} erzebet mentioned being worried about people in Pine Ridge; it seems from my Googling that they aren't as hard hit but I could be wrong about that. Can you provide links for them?Pass the word along...The reasons they are so vulnerable and this is such a disaster are of long standing and a national disgrace, but addressing that is a long-term project. They need some help now. |
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I think people need to get over the expectation that every single holiday needs to be about them. Their parents probably bought them presents on other people's birthdays so they wouldn't feel "left out." I know being alone sucks when you don't want to be. People, including me, have done all kinds of idiotic things in the name of Not Being Alone. But the problem there isn't that there are holidays celebrating romantic love, people. The problem is being afraid of being alone, or internalizing the idea that being alone is a judgment on you as a person, to the point where you will do really stupid things. Like, say, public whining. And peeing on parades. Making other people feel guilty for having fun does not place you in a position of moral authority. It makes you an asshole with a particularly malignant sense of entitlement. I feel exactly the same way about people who declare smugly that they don't give presents, or they won't take their child trick-or-treating, or that Mother's Day is really about everyone who can be construed to take care of/nurture another human being (OR PETS, Jesus help me) at any point in their lives, as if that isn't a minimal expectation for being human. God forbid the people who actually raise actual children get the idea that we're doing anything special. Like I've said before, any holiday which features stylized female genitalia as its primary symbol is a holiday I can get behind. |
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I have a thought brewing in my head about false rebellion and why it irritates me so deeply. Everything from the term "feminazis" and railing about "political correctness" to shit like making a joke based on a turn that is Witty and Unexpected only, you know, not, to "alternative" culture* to Help Help I'm An Oppressed White Guy! ~ *Back when I and my friends and our counterparts around the country invented the Goth look, before there was a word for it, it was original and possibly subversive. Now there is a mall store for it. If you can buy it in the mall, it is by definition not alternative any more. I am personally ok with being middle-aged and having my stripey tights move into the mainstream. What I am not ok with is having the mallrat gothlings glare at me as if I am moving in on their turf. Au contraire, my little pasty-faced darling. Au contraire. |
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Janelle Monae is a big ol' freak. I'm not quite sure I get everything she's doing, but I like something that's complex enough that I have to puzzle it out and there are new things when I look at it again. Anyway. This is...research, sort of. Anybody know more about her and Wondaland Arts Society, let me know. |
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No air cars as of yet. However, I did drop my kid off (at 5:30 am, God help me) so he could go with his school's Robotics Club to attend a robotics competition. He is wearing his steam punk goggles. |
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I can prove it: I'm currently sitting at Big City Bread drinking a cappucino and eating an omelette. Gazing mournfully out at the patio which is full of cold rain. Earlier I was amusing the employees thusly: BCBE: "How are you?" Me: "It's COLD and WET out there." BCBE: "I'm sorry." Me: "You didn't do it." Unfortunately the hilarity of this exchange cannot be conveyed in print. |
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All in green my love went riding by: e.e. cummings All in green went my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling the merry deer ran before. Fleeter be they than dappled dreams the swift sweet deer the red rare deer. Horn at hip went my love riding riding the echo down into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling the level meadows ran before. Softer be they than slippered sleep the lean lithe deer the fleet flown deer. Four fleet does at a gold valley the famished arrows sang before. Bow at belt went my love riding riding the mountain down into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling the sheer peaks ran before. Paler be they than daunting death the sleek slim deer the tall tense deer. Four tall stags at a green mountain the lucky hunter sang before. All in green went my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling my heart fell dead before. |
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~"It's like being trapped in a hotel with five thousand wallflowers." ~ "I think we have progressed to the point where merely being gay is not a sufficient excuse for writing a memoir." ~ "Every time someone writes another novel about middle-aged middle-class white people fucking up their relationships, God kills a kitten." |
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All of the reasons I can think of that a person might want to create a clone are bad. They range from "Narcissist wants a child JUST LIKE HIM" to "Grieving parents want a clone of dead child"* to "Hey, let's see if we can!" All of these are bad because they are inherently about the desires of the parents/medical personnel, to the absolute exclusion of the interests or identity of the child. People project all kinds of egotism and dysfunction onto their children as it is, of course, but...this would be much, much worse. Much worse. There are naturally occuring clones. They are called "identical multiples," ie twins or triplets, usually. There is nothing inherently wrong with cloning. Just with people. *It has been speculated that being named after his dead older brother was part of why Vincent Van Gogh was so very messed up. |
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So, my kid went to ChattaCon last weekend. While he was there, a woman in the art show asked him his name. She thought he was named after a comic book character. He explained that no, he was named after a trickster deity (that's my boy...) She came up patted him on the shoulder, and said in condescending tones, "Remember, there's only one god. All others are fakes." *snarl* Do I march up to little Christian children and tell them that they are being suckered by a patriarchal brainwash that will ruin their sex lives and turn them into smug self-satisfied intolerable asshats? No, no, I do not. That is not necessarily because I don't believe it's true, at least for some people. It is because I have manners. ~ EDITED FOR COMMENTARY FROM THE ISHTAR IN MY HEA |
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Feritradition.org appears to have been hacked. At least, I'm assuming they are not sending out phishing e-mails on purpose; it's the typical "there are problems with your account, follow this link to fix them. " Except I've never HAD a log-in account on that site. So if you get an e-mail from them, don't click on the link. I don't believe in the punitive misfortune theory of how the world works, and I can't know for sure that Storm and Chas' really terrible site design had anything to do with this. Viruses and malware can happen to anybody. Perfectly nice people can carry the plague. But it's awfully metaphorical. |
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Someone posted a link to an article they wrote on two Pagan comms I am a member of...one of the communities is about writing, so arguably legitimate, but the other one doesn't have anything to do with the topic of the article. I am refraining from making any comments, because none of the ones I can think of are at all nice. The article isn't offensive, or painfully stupid in that "The ancient Irish did magic with potatoes during the Burning Times!" kind of way. It's just really, really unoriginal. And kind of vague. If the article were turned in to me as a Freshman Comp paper, I would give it a low B. It rather reminds me of my students' writing, actually, complete with awkward rhetorical questions. But I get paid to read their stuff. |
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~ "High John de Conquer came to be a man, and a mighty man at that. But he was not a natural man in the beginning. First off, he was a whisper, a will to hope, a wish to find something worthy of laughter and song. Then the whisper put on flesh...The sign of this man was a laugh, and his singing-symbol was a drum beat. No parading drum-shout like soldiers out for show. It did not call to the feet of those who were fixed to hear it. It was an inside thing to live by." --"High John de Conquer" by Zora Neale Hurston |
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The tornado warning sirens went off a little while ago. The storm has moved on but it's still pouring rain and the lights flicker every so often. |
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I am bored in a twitchy way that makes me dissatisfied with any of the things I normally do to amuse myself. Wrote a little bit, but need to think about what is happening next. I am in the Middle Which Always Sucks, and that is *never* any fun, especially since I am at the beginning of the middle so there's a lot of suck in sight. I decided it was time for another explosion, and there was an explosion, and I know where the story is going and what the next calamity will be, but it's not quite fitting together right. And I don't know why I just spent three paragraphs on a minor character bitching about how things are done. My characters seem to stand around talking an awful lot. I had a good weekend, though. thewonderboy was off at ChattaCon having fun and mtn_hermit was here having fun with me :) |
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I need someone who can speak Gaelic. Preferably Irish. Specifically, I need someone who can cuss in Gaelic, for one of my characters, and a response for another character along the lines of "I see you speak the mother tongue" and then whatever snarky thing the first character might say in response. |
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According to the Brian's Scale of Writerly Fame. Maybe a Trout and a half. I've been paid more than once, but not by a pro market. I've won awards, but not in SF. Actually there's an awful lot of room between Trout and MegaTrout. You could publish some poems and stories and chapbooks (if you do that sort of thing, which SF mostly doesn't but Small Beer Press surely does) in between publishing anything at all and getting a novel out. |
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