Mythistoria

No word on my maybe employment for next year, but seeing as my contract died yesterday, and there is not a new one forthcoming (yet), I applied for unemployment. Fun times. Of course I am still working on Tasks Yet Unfinished* from the job-now-known-as-former, because if there IS a job next fall, then said task must be finished. Behold my optimism. And if I hear before said Task is complete that no, indeed, no job--then fuck it. I'm done.

And so, in all likelihood, is this program. (Which is not to say I, personally, am the most important element, but rather that I, and the others like me, are necessary to the program's basic function, and without us, there will be no oversight, no administration, no mentoring, no curriculum development, and many fewer classes. Also, I will not be able to teach my Human Consumption: Zombies and Vampires class this fall. Quelle tragedie.)

I am now composing cover letters. Not my favorite genre. And looking for private health insurance, since the graduate student plan here is over-populated by Randian assholes pretending to be Marxists single people reluctant to extend dependent benefits. Plus de tragedies.

There is the possibility I will get a reprieve and an offer in the next week or so from Old Job. There is also a possibility I will find something else (more stable) and move out of teaching. That sucks. I love teaching. Thrive on it. I'm good at it. But the uncertainty of the part-time (read: no benefits) adjunct's life is not for Primary Breadwinner, especially in this economic climate.

There is an upside. I am going to take my enforced vacation and read books, paint little tiny model horses, and write things other than cover letters for large parts of the day. And do a lot of pilates. Fear my washboard abs.




*which should have been some time ago, and would've been, had it been up to me**, and about which I have not spoken here, and will not, because that fucking thing gets enough of my energy.

**which it is on paper, and is not at all in practice.

Job's on the chopping block. Budget problems. This is irrespective of (unpaid) hours worked, or (unpaid) extra duties, or the (unpaid) activities, which, were I still in secondary school, would be known as "extracurricular", but as I am not in secondary school, are instead called "professional development." There is no room for merit or effort in the cold cold world of numbers on spreadsheets.

This is why I am not grateful for the job. I am lucky. We shall see if my luck holds.

Once, when I was 17 or 18 or some age where drama seems a lot more appealing, my beloved and I had an argument. One of us--I don't even remember which, but it was probably me--decided to storm off in mid-argument. The other, predictably, had to chase her down. I think the intended effect was, "See now, I'm offended, come make much of me. And bring your apology." I suspect that's what happened, sadly enough. I remember reading, hearing, otherwise absorbing, a phrase shortly thereafter: If a woman stomps off, she expects to be chased. And I realized that's what'd happened.

Which is, mes amis, total toadshit. It's manipulative. It's dramatic. And it doesn't anything to solve the original problem. Somewhere in my evolution from drama!teen to no-drama!not-teen, I developed an acute intolerance for the other party storming away in an argument. If you're so pissed off you have to go cool off. But then you come back, and we resume working our shit out. If you leave an argument--or, my real favorite, announce that something has offended you, goodbye--and hang up, log off, slam doors, whatever--do not expect either pursuit. When you're ready to be rational, we can talk again. Also: never ever ever storm off and then say, oh, I was sick, I didn't feel good, I was upset about X, or otherwise roll out the excuses. That sounds like a cheap plea for sympathy, and as we all know, I am woefully short of that.

(That's totally unconnected to the job thing. It's just something else that's been pissing me off at odd moments over the week. Someone I'd thought better of pulled it on me. I hate surprises. The job issues are not a surprise.)

And to complete the trio of random: silk scarves. To whit, the acquisition of one earlier this week, which is an amazing combination of wildfire orange and a vivid, saturated olive green. I'm not much of a scarf wearer, but this one's big enough to be a wrap. nous_athanatos stared at it, and made that oh you can't be serious face, but he was too wise to mock it aloud. He's got an electric lime green club shirt with magenta flames and lighter green skulls on it. And y'all thought we just slouched around in black all the time.

I did not love Terminator: Salvation. I did not love it profoundly, in the same way I did not love Chronicles of Riddick. Which is to say--I wanted to, but couldn't. It took me awhile to realize that this world on the screen bore little resemblance to the one from previous Terminator movies, that hinted at some dark and apocalyptic future. I mean, in a world where marauding robots are out to get everyone! right! now! -- I was a little puzzled by the huge aircraft hangars full of military surplus, and the casual use of ammo and equipment, and the ready scrambling of A-10s (and people trained and capable of flying them!) and the even more puzzling communication ability of what should be a ragtag resistance. Global satellite communication? Cool! ...but not particularly terminatory.

I could've lived with that, though. It's like expecting Star Trek to have real science in it. That's not why we watch. You come here for the characters. And that's where T4 failed utterly, for me. ( come with me if you want spoilers )The whole movie was not a story so much as an excuse to move characters from one exploding set to another. And I love explosions and cool CGI. That's why I like Transformers so much. But that is not why I like the Terminator franchise, which is supposed to have characters and actual human tension. We're supposed to be, you know, hunted and desperate. Didn't get that much. They should retitle the movie Terminator 4: How Connor Got His Scars and pretty much cover the most important contribution of T4 to the Terminator arc.

Which is not to say I hated the movie. It was entirely entertaining. I just didn't think it was very good Terminator. It's fine for your basic CGI-and-explosion fest scifi dark future story, in which the important parts are not plot, characters, or continuity. But I'm supposed to believe John Connor's the person who's responsible for saving the world from the machines--then I gotta say, man, we're fucked.

*muttered by nous_athanatos somewhere during the second motorcycle terminator scene, which was a bad place for me to giggle

I'm taking one of those--wait, what's the word? You know. That thing you do when you're not working for a little while, before you go back to it again? B..brr.... break! Right. That's it.

I'm taking a break. A coffee break, even.

And because I do not smoke (which, if I did, would be a solitary, brooding event), and there's no one else to be social with (cats: asleep. nous_athanatos: ostensibly disserting. various chat buddies: MIA), I post during said break, and try to avoid spilling coffee on the keyboard.

I rediscovered Pink Floyd last Friday. The venue at which we saw Opeth was playing it before the show. Mostly they were playing The Wall, which was a major staple of my angsty high school existence (so was Dark Side of the Moon and it's arguably a better album, but it didn't resonate as much with me--read: I don't know the words to every fucking song on Dark Side). I owned both of those albums on... cassette tape. Ouch. And while I managed to acquire Dark Side, Division Bell and Momentary Lapse of Reason on CD, I haven't gotten The Wall in a 21st century format yet.

This will not do!

And now I am wondering why some of the tracks on The Wall cost 1.29, while others cost .99, over at iTunes. I suspect a CD would actually be less expensive, which offends my spoiled-brat need for immediate gratification. I shall cogitate upon the economics of patience. I shall almost certainly yield to patience, because I am a miser who just canceled a somewhat lucrative, if mind-numbingly boring, commitment because I'm too stressed to deal with travel right now. I can't afford to be profligate just now.

[This coffee break interrupted to report yet another fucking earthquake. Have I mentioned yet how much I hate those things? No? --I hate those things.]

And speaking of lapses of reason, I can't say I am surprised that The Sarah Connor Chronicles were canceled. Disappointed, sure, but not surprised. Ah well. It lets us put off a DVR for another several years, or until someone coughs up a show we give a damn about. Given the offerings I've seen so far--it'll be a while.

And finally, since we're kinda on the subject of things from my youth... Star Trek: The Total Reboot. Saw it with trepidation, not because I'm a purist or a hardcore TOS fanatic, but because... gods, the last few movies were so awful. And the last few series, for that matter. And So, with the Rat's report ("It's not Wrath of Khan, but nothing is, and it's better than the whales... just see it") firmly in mind, we went. Gods help me. I liked it. There were plot holes as big as the Enterprise, and some wicked-ugly science (something I try not to notice in scifi, but sometimes it's just too fucking obvious to ignore), and I hated the student-teacher romance, not because of who it was, but because students and teachers fucking each other is... bad. Not sexy. Just bad. Also--what I see as an essential character violation, for at least one half of that couple. But even with all that--I liked it. Didn't hurt that the Kirk actor reminds me of Ben Browder. It got the essence of the characters right. And I don't mind one whit about the reboot. I just wish we could get the women out of miniskirts. For fuckssake, people, it's a military. Can we dress like it?

Okay. Break's over. Back to work...

This is not so much of a news-post as a "not dead, no really" post. And a "woke up with the same headache I went to bed with and it didn't even buy me breakfast" post, combined with a "just waiting here for people to give me clearance and go-ahead on projects already behind deadline" post. I even tried to file an out-of-network claim with insurance, only to discover that the receipt I need is the only one missing from the sheaf of papers the optometrist's office gave me. I need to go back over there anyway to pick up contacts. Not the end of the world. Minor annoyance. One more thing I can't do because of shit beyond my control at the moment.

There's a lesson in here someplace. Maybe "start drinking earlier in the day."

Segue in a phrase I've heard frequently of late, that is on its way to becoming a new pet peeve: You Should Be Grateful(tm) You Have A Job, usually followed by some comment on the current economy, etc. (usually uttered by my mother, whom I love, but who has not had to hold down a job outside of the home for 38 years. One gets tired of hearing "how things are" in the job market from someone that far removed from said things). And you know what? I feel lucky to have a job, but not grateful. Grateful is for things unlooked for and undeserved. You know. Like gifts. My paycheck is not one of those things.

Had fire-safety apartment inspections the other week. Apparently, candles (and incense) are contraband now. As are grills on the deck. If you have a ground level patio, though, you can have a grill. You just can't use it fewer than 25 feet from the buildings. Of course, everyone who lives on the first floor, who keeps a grill on their patio, is diligent about walking out that 25 feet. Right? Right. Furthermore, these rules are only for campus housing that does not belong to faculty or professors. Grad students, no matter how old, or how many offspring, or how many years living on their own--count exactly the same as undergrads. The housing office, who knows very well that we're all grown ups, more or less, figured--give the residents a list of what's forbidden, and the residents will make sure the inspectors see nothing in violation. Which is what nous_athanatos and I did. Forty-five minutes to hide all candles and shift the grill into the closet. Two minute inspection. Another twenty minutes to shift everything back out again. Tonight, we shall have steak. On the grill. And burn candles. I feel so transgressive. --Actually, I was pretty pissed off at the time for having to play this stupid game. In retrospect, I'm kinda amused. Besides. Having contraband in my dorm apartment makes me feel young(er) again.

Final irritant to report: a binding issue with a recent paperback purchase. This is galling because I so rarely impulse-buy novels in brick-and-mortar bookstores. So anyway, nab the book and its sequel, start reading, and then lo! I discover on page 249 that the next 33 pages were missing. Bookstore's going to do an exchange as soon as the replacement book comes in. I kept reading anyway, and I'm a little sad to report that the missing bits don't seem vital to the plot progression so far.

And to end on a happier note: I have basil and yellow bell pepper seedlings in full sprout mode in pots on the deck. They're very cute. And very heliotropic. And they don't seem at all bothered by the contraband grill.

...that I love nous_athanatos: he has an amp. It's not a big amp, but it does not need to be. This is a smallish apartment, and the walls are thin.

More proof: This is the week after we got our "fix it ticket" from the CHP for tinted driver/passenger windows. We got this ticket in part because we (read: I wasn't driving) passed the CHP. GRANT that the cops have this tendency to go under the speed limit to freak people out, and we honestly did not think we were speeding. And we did not get a ticket for those whole 8 miles over. No. He nailed us for the window tint. Because of the tint, if you want my opinion on it, which you do or you would not be reading my LJ. The car look(ed) badass. The CHP must've thought we, the driver and passenger, were equally badass. Imagine his disappointment when he saw that no, it was only two middle-aged white people in varying stages of flu. Seriously. You could see the "aw, crap" look on his face. So we came away with this fix-it ticket, after the officer seemed to fail to grasp that we got the fucking car in another state, from a dealership (used, but still) with that very tint on it, and that no one in California had bothered to tell us the car was illegal. So we fix, we prove it, we don't pay a fine.

So now my car has naked windows. It makes me sad. He likes it better. Something about "seeing better at night" and "better visibility all around." Men. I tell ya. Concerned with practicalities instead of aesthetics.

And still more proof: he is getting his (first) tattoo Real Soon Now, having made his consultation appointment. Our artist has moved to a place that does piercings. Maybe I'll pass the long inking wait by getting some more holes in my head. I'm out of earlobe, but I have still have cartilage. ...EAR cartilage, people. Getcher heads out of the gutter. I don't pierce below the neck.

And this has nothing to do with Nous, but! Rosetta Stone, the mighty learn-it-with-our-program foreign language people, does not have Finnish. Why Finnish? Call it current research interests (which have, in the past, gotten me literate Latin, barely functional Irish --teaching yourself is hard, and the program was not Rosetta Stone -- and tolerable French). And a deep curiosity to understand the stage banter from Amorphis and Swallow the Sun when they're at home (or, for that matter, the table chat from Swallow the Sun when/if we end up sitting next to them in the bar before their show again).

Alors. C'est tout. Time wasted, fingers warmed up, time to write something.

I have to wonder why it is that a self-proclaimed nation of Christians, who purport to worship an individual whose message was, among other things--love people, be kind to people with less than you, do good without expectation of reward, etc--has produced so many people without basic compassion or any sense of community.

Either they've got a different version of the Bible--one in which the "give unto you a new law" bit has been replaced with "Think of yourself first"--or, as I have long suspected, following what JC actually said is really hard, and most people aren't very good at it.

Which would be fine, if they could, like, admit that, but they're so convinced of their own righteousness, and so committed to their other beliefs--many of which aren't compatible with that JC fella's own words, or deal with issues that JC never actually covered--that they end up pretending that JC said things that he did not, and that they have some moral mandate to be unkind. Uncharitable. Vengeful, even, with a dash of smug.

Jesus wept, indeed.

And so here I am, indulging in a little scriptotherapy before I go back to the rest of my life (or give up and go read a book; I am as yet undecided).

Pooka's toes have gone grey, like he got caught in the overspray from a spray-painting project. He's got silvering on his chest and hips, too. Nothing you can see from a distance--from there, he's still blue-black--but up close. No. That's a bunch of little grey hairs. When he was maybe 8 months or so, his back quarters looked frosted. That hair fell out, blue-black grew in. Now he's coming back to frosted again. He turns 13 in June.

He is also the feline responsible for half the cat fur in this three-cat home. Double coat. Quite the shedder, especially in the SoCal warmth. His favorite place to discard this excess appears to be on the three little Afghan carpets (I don't think they're prayer rugs, but they might be), which require the handbrush attachment on the vacuum. I think I could weave a skein with what I just pulled off of them. Or little birds could build nests. Many little birds. Whole cast of that Hitchcock flick, in fact.

I know this because I just vacuumed, which I usually don't, in favor of letting nous_athanatos take care of the closet thing to a powertool that we own. But today, my turn. When I am particularly stressed out, I like to clean. It's my way of imposing order on the universe. Gaining a little measure of control of my surroundings. Getting away from the frelling computer for awhile, too. Obviously, though, I am back. My love for imposing order cannot match up against the accumulated dust from the construction across the street, three cats, and the end of the quarter's neglect. No way, man. That's what spring break is for.

Which is far too distant in my future. Between here and there, and not in this order... final projects, final grades, all the administrivia that goes with my job outside of my students, and a conference in SF, to which we are driving, and for which, as far as I know, the department will only pay partial expenses. There is also a wedding in Colorado to which we are not going, for a great many reasons having to do with time, money, and winter driving, for which Talyn is no longer equipped. But we'll still have to find some kind of present, card, and get it all mailed out in something like good order. This would be simpler if the couple in question were not a little closer to conventional than they are, which is to say--registered anywhere. It's a first wedding, and they're both very young, but the families are... how to say it... unconventional.

Mind, I like unconventional. My wedding was unconventional. The Rat was my maid of honor and she did not wear a dress. Trousers. Velvet vest that buttoned from waist to collar. She would have worn a dress, if I'd asked it, but that only proves the depth and strength of our friendship.

The Rat also writes fanfic for a fandom that shall remain nameless. Well. She wrote a fanfic, on the order of an alternate universe novel. I tell you this because she gets international fan mail about it. When that email happens to be in a language I know, I get to translate it. I was also the linguistic consultant on the main and chapter titles (Latin). Oh, the fame. Anyway, my favorite of her fan mails so far was the young man who wrote her in Latin. Not good Latin, mind--straight out of the dictionary looked this up and slapped it together Latin--but still. Latin! His tone was cute, too. Very authoritative. He wrote a second email in which he did a translation. She, by that point, had passed it on to me, with a plea to help her write a response. I am her Latin expert, which is not saying much. I got to pull out my dictionary and pretend that two years of graduate school skills can apply in some useful way and confirmed that yes, suspicions correct, young man's Latin was not very good. We wrote him back anyway, in Latin. I had fun trying to resurrect my own rusty syntax, but I am confident my mistakes went unnoticed. I am actually waiting for some classicist to read her story and go off about the errors in the story title or chapters, but then I remember that any classicist who reads in that fandom can't be too much of a purist. Anyway. She's being translated into Russian at the moment. Someone made her a book cover, too. Very bodice ripper-ish, even though there's no sex in the story at all.

And I have gotten not one, but two notices from fanfiction.net, to which I have not posted in a very very long time, saying that someone has designated one of my stories as one of their favorites. Two separate someones, two different stories. Which on the scale of the universe is a little thing, but it still made me happy.

I hereby designate that as a counterweight to Pooka's grey toes. Now, coffee in hand (because Scandinavian studies have shown correlation between 3-5 cups a day and a decrease in dementia, and hey! that's as good an excuse as any), I rule in favor of the book. Coffee is hell on (and in) a keyboard.

...it takes a special kind of arrogance to imagine that one knows better than a pregnant woman what is best for that her health and well-being.

...it's not about "convenience", and never has been, and to pretend otherwise is either disingenuous or willfully ignorant.

...it's about health, and about rights over one's own body.

...it takes a special kind of barbarism to treat a pregnancy as a consequence or a punishment.

...one's particular revelations concerning religion and the nature of the soul are not universal.

...anti-choice is not about children or fetuses, it's about women having sex, and who gets to control when that happens, and for what purpose.

...pregnancy is dangerous and expensive.

...birth control fails.

...men rape.

...there is something wrong when we think an all-volunteer military is good, because that's better for morale, the troops, etc, but we don't extend that same logic to motherhood and children.

...women are not criminals.

...every child should be wanted.

...it's been 36 years which should tell you just how fragile and new this concept of "women are also people" actually is, and how far away we are from this thing we call equality.

Sold a story that I really love, that had been crawling through revision after revision for 2.5 years and 2 hard drives. It took me that long to get it right, so that the narrative in my head matched the one on paper. Short stories are hideously difficult for me to write. I have five that are worth a damn. I have now sold three. Eventually I will have to write more of them. There are already two gelling in fragments and images that might be ready in... oh, 2011.

Got a letter (a real letter!) from a friend I thought had disappeared into the wilds of the great Northwest. She sent very cute homemade catnip toys for the cats. It was Louhi's first catnip. She rubbed and rubbed her face on her toy. Pooka drooled and chewed on his. Pixie just licked hers like a dirt-covered kitten with this look of intense concentration. Stoned cats are fun. I now owe her a return letter, but I am LJing instead.

My students argued today about Frankenstein and whether or not the monster is natural, and what constitutes natural vs. unnatural, and then we ran out of time. I love it when they argue with each other. I love it when they're engaged. I hope that holds for Friday, too.

Louhi is purring on my lap. She's small enough to fit between the top of my thighs and the bottom of the desk. I see ears and a tail. The rest is purring. I read once that the frequency of a cat's purr has some effect on pain/fear and increases one's sense of well-being. I think that must be true. Les anglais sont ici and she is better than Advil.

I have the new Cyteen book. It's not as massive as the first one, which makes me a little sad, because that means it won't last as long. It's already unfolding into what I loved about that first story. Complex. Political. Layered. I love how it explores (and explodes) our ideas of an essential Self, and how those ideas interact with other people's ideas of who we are, and how we come to be who and what we are.

So yeah, on balance, life is pretty damn good.

No, this is not about Scandinavian death metal bands.

This is about a pair of critters on the crosspiece of a sword found in a 11th century woman's grave in Suontaka, Finland. The sword has been called the Finnish Princess (gag) and the Valkyrja (eyeroll) sword--apparently it's quite a small thing, and there is some debate about whether or not the woman sharing the grave with it was a warrior (since weapons were typically buried with warriors) or, since swordswomen were uncommon, if it's some sort of ceremonial offering.

Because we're dealing with the 11th century, the critters are themselves in the Urnes style of knotwork, which means long and skinny and ribbon-like. There are two on the crosspiece, but they do not match. Some places call them wolves, some dragons, and actually, if I had to guess, I'd say one was a wolf, and the other a boar. Let's just call them Beasts.

In any case, an incarnation of them now lives on my right arm:

This is the top two-thirds or so.


This is the bottom third, where the piece cuts around my bicep.



For scale: the left shoulder's very definite wolf, 10th century Irish Viking, either Jelling or Mammen style.



I hadn't planned to go that big, but the artist suggested it. He also suggested keeping it blackwork, partly because he loves blackwork and partly because he said color would take for. ev. er and you can always add it later. Adam's really, really good (the whole shop is), but the only work I'd seen in the flesh of his was color (my friend next door has more tattoos than a bar full of Hell's Angels). Still. Here is what I learned with my first tat (I hadn't planned on color, much less oranges and yellows): If an artist tells you he likes and is good at a particular style--for the gods' own sakes, let him do it.

Total time: just under 4 hours. Estimated time: 3 hours ("last time I ever try and guess on knotwork, I know better!"). He took photos after, which makes me wonder if I (or my right arm) will end up in a portfolio somewhere someday.

I was going to write about this study's shocking findings about how kids who take virginity pledges are exactly as likely as their non-pledging counterparts to have sex (which is to say, really damn likely), and far less likely than said counterparts to use condoms or any other kind of birth control, and about the epic fail that is abstinence only sex-ed, and that if we really want to reduce teen pregnancy we should not prohibit and mythologize sex, and instead promote real education and birth control (like the rest of the civilized world).

But it is the last day of hell 2008 and that means I've had 365 and a fraction days of battling futility already. I think I need a break.

Besides. It's foggy out, of the sort that leaves the streets slick and erases the world beyond a few meters radius. You go out in it, and it collects on your skin, your hair, beads up on your lashes. It's fantastic (not in the woo-hoo! sense, either). Unfortunately the construction across the street is making noise in what would otherwise be ghostly quiet, but the fog has also rendered the bulldozers into loud shapes in the mist, indistinct, and I have chosen to imagine that they are dangerous beasts or dragons or something far cooler than bulldozers. Dragons with severe laryngitis, maybe. Or indigestion. But dragons, nonetheless, haunting the skeletal ruins of a lost civilization.

Speaking of ancient civilizations... we ordered an ancient Roman coins kit for Yule. They promise you five old coins, a brush, a magnifier, some solvent and de-corroder...and a CD with a database of coins on it (which is the really valuable part of the kit). We have had entirely too much fun so far soaking and scrubbing tiny disks of metal that are somewhere around 1500 years old. They do not promise a) good coins or b) rare and valuable coins, which is good, because I think we have a couple of slugs in the mix--but a 1500 year old slug is still pretty cool. We need to sit down and pick at the remaining dirt, at this point. Maybe tomorrow, while we are watching the Katatonia Live DVD Nous got me/us for Yule. (It was the Doom and Death Metal Yule, both for the soundtrack--pity the neighbors--and the proliferation of new CDs from doomy and deathy Scandinavian bands.)

And speaking of Scandinavia--am I not just so f-in' clever, what with the segues--spoken Finnish is baffling and sexy at once. I want to learn this language. Swedish is not baffling, but I want to learn it, too, and it will almost certainly be easier, being Indo-European and heavily influenced by German.

And now that the yellow orb of death is rendering my dragons-in-the-ruins back into bulldozers, and my loaves of pulla are on their second rise, I am going to haul myself and Nous out for a little hiking before we settle down to drink too much glögg and play GoW2 or Halo until midnight.

Happy New Year, everyone.

If you see one vampire movie this year, see Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in).

It's radically understated, utterly unsentimental, and morally ambiguous. It's about outsiders, and the special cruelty of children, and friendship, and revenge. It's sweet, and horrifying, and intimate, and unsettling.

Go. See it.

Louhi finally won the long running battle with the tree. After her clandestine raids on the ornaments she could reach from the arm of the loveseat (cruelly plucked and left to languish on the treeskirt), she finally launched a full-scale assault last week. Came home to a tree not quite supine, but only because the couch had caught it halfway down.

Many ornaments on the floor. None broken, but only because we a) didn't put up many this year (having some inkling that this might happen) and b) most of what is there is Swedish straw, and thus fairly sturdy. The light strands, however, took damage. No broken glass--this is why one makes daily offerings to the house spirits--but instead, great ropes of darkness in the middle of the upper strand. Ah well. There's been a long-running short in the lower strand for years (fixed by wiggling), but no amount of wiggling, twisting, pulling, untangling, or arranging could resurrect the dead lights. It wasn't a burned out bulb. These strands stay lit even with burnout. Just all dead, man.

Nous was all for ignoring it, but not me, oh no, can't have a big swath of darkness on the tree. The damn thing's up for maybe a month, I want my sparkly lights. So off to Target, which is already clearancing their holiday stuff. Acquired the bright white LEDs to replace the incandescents, and home we went. And then I learned why you put the lights on first, and how difficult it is to unstring dark lights in dark branches while dodging garlands and little tiny trolls (it's a Scandinavian thing. They look like garden gnomes) on their little tiny strings that insist on tangling around cords, branches, and fingers.

I'm proud. I didn't swear, although I did think unkind thoughts at a certain orange-eyed kitten who wisely stayed across the room and watched the proceedings without once attempting to help.

She's probably plotting her second assault already.

Me: "Scandinavian blend makes a nice coffee. Really mild, without being weak. That seems very not-Viking, though. Nice. Mild."

Nous: "That's because it's Swedish. Be glad it's not Viking. That means it's not pillaging your mouth, raping your tongue and dragging it back to Norway."

I find myself without anything that must be done right this minute. I also find myself with a damn-near blinding headache, which argues against using these free moments to work on a syllabus, reread Frankenstein (for said syllabus), or trying any sort of creative endeavor. Besides. I'm a few hours from seeing Lamb of God at the Grove. While Lamb of God is not my favorite band ever, I am in a very deathmetal-ish mood. End of quarter and all, see. There's a lot of things what need screaming about.

The weather, however, is not one of those things, nevermind that it's trying to rearrange my sinuses into a Gordian knot. Rain is good. Cold Cool is good. Grey is just awesome. I have this little tiny hope that the promised lows in the 30s, combined with the promised Rain of Epic Dumping, will yield some (oh, dare I say it) snow. We saw flakes last year. They died before hitting the ground, but there were swirling white bits coming out of the sky. The neighbor from Montana and we stood on the porch together and marveled.

I miss snow. And I don't wanna hear any "oh yeah, you can come have ours" from any of you who live in a climate that gets it. I would love to have your snow. I miss the smell before it falls, the absolute silence as it's falling, the glow bouncing off it at night. I love winter. I love cold, grey, brutal weather. I like knowing that going outside could kill me, if I'm stupid.

Mad rains are pretty awesome, though. Grey sheets blowing sideways, battering the glass and startling Louhi, tiny torrents cutting through the lawns and boiling down the gutters. If I can't have snow tonight, I'll take the downpour and dance in it.

polgaramalfoy and mattshortforbob, this is for you...

So. Finished The Life of Pi. I'm not sorry I read it. I knew, going into it, that it was an allegory, and that I wasn't supposed to take the events literally. One reads an allegory in levels... the actual-historical, the allegorical-typological, the moral-tropological, and the anagogical. All right. I read and loved The Faerie Queene, I did medieval stuff, I love a good allegory.

( Cut to spare those who do not care about lit-crit, and who don't want the book utterly spoiled )

I'm angry today.

Back in 1996, Colorado passed Amendment Two, which was billed as "no special rights for homosexuals" by the proponents. It was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court--that's the happy ending. But in the election leading up to its passage, those proponents --in the name of their religion, and let me tell ya what, it wasn't radical Islam-- passed out pamphlets and ran commercials playing on the fears and the disgust of the populace. Icky Gays! See what they do? And truly, some of those pamphlets were vile. Not only for what they said, but for the sheer unapologetic mendacity.

This was a shocker for idealistic little 18 year old me, in college, living with a girlfriend in the dorms. I thought, I mean--it's Boulder, right? It's safe. But what I learned that election year was that there are assholes everywhere, and there is nothing quite like an asshole clutching religion as the shield for bigotry (nor anything quite like the convolutions of logic and hypocrisy wielded by those who claim to follow a gentle anarchist whose only violence came at people who mixed money with religion...oh, the irony). I remember waking up the day after 2 passed and thinking "holy shit, more than half this state hates me! More than half this state thinks I should be fired, denied housing, or otherwise treated differently than everyone else because of the relationship I'm in!"

It was, as feelings go, pretty damn awful. I won't lie. It hurt. But I don't react gently to pain. I get angry. I fight back. I got angry, then. I got active.

The campaign for Prop 8 has been a little bit cleaner, in the sense of spreading absolute fear-mongering horseshit. But it has been no less disgusting for its new "honesty". It wants to protect "tradition"*. It wants to protect the children--I mean, your kids could learn that a prince marries a prince in some hypothetical fairy tale. The horror!

But my very very favorite bits have come from the tolerance concern trolls. Let me unpack. --The people who say that they are tolerant, oh yes, that it's teh gayz who are not, who want to force their terrible religion of gay marriage onto tradition-loving folks everywhere. --I hope you were wearing rubber shoes. It gets a little thick around here. Very stinky. Anyway. --These very concerned people don't want to deny gays any rights--they can get married! Just not to each other. But saying they CAN marry each other is just, you know, forcing their beliefs onto people.

This, they call tolerance. And the cries of "bigot" and the anger (and the hurt) from the other side, that's intolerance.

Fuck that noise. Separate but equal was shit in the '60s, and it's shit now.

Let us leave aside the actual examination of how two men or two women married threatens a het union. Let us also ignore the logical convolution of imagining that gays should content themselves with marrying heterosexually, if they want to be married. Let's instead focus on the tolerance angle. The left gets a pile of that flavor of accusation from the right--thought you were supposed to be tolerant, well SEE how you are when you don't get your way, not very tolerant are you, blah blah.

It's tiresome. It's stupid. It's kinda funny, too, coming from people who will snatch a tiny majority as an excuse to disenfranchise whole groups of people, or legislate their particular flavor of morality in the name of majority rules. No no, see, tolerance is reciprocal. I don't care if you tell your kids that teh gayz shouldn't marry. It's crappy, and it's indicative of your troglodytic nature, but that's okay! I have troglodytic friends and relatives, and we just don't talk about that stuff.

But. But. I care when you take steps to make sure that gays can't marry. That's not tolerance. That's legislation. Damn right I get angry. Tolerance does not mean "play doormat" or "let the other guy do whatever he wants." Tolerance is not, contrary to popular misconception, moral relativism. It's social libertarianism. Tolerance is reciprocal, and it is a courtesy, and I see no particular reason to extend that courtesy to a group that will not, given half a chance, extend it to anyone else.

I am not involved romantically involved with that girlfriend from college anymore, but she is still my best friend, and she has a partner with whom she is very much in love. As of today, they are not allowed to get married in this state. Yesterday, they were. All that's changed is a certain lack of tolerance.

She is, again, hurt. Her partner, who is one of the sweetest women I know, is hurt. And I am, once again, angry.

I am proud of my country for choosing a man promising change and hope. We'll see if he can deliver. But I am livid that more than half the people in my state, in choosing that candidate, spat on my friends' hope. And I will fight that. Fuck tolerance. I'm done.





*fraught term, that. Whose tradition? Which? When? That little nuclear family myth that lasted less than a functional decade? THAT myth? Surely not the biblical tradition...women, cattle, little difference. Or the original Christian tradition, which was don't marry! Sex is bad! The kingdom is at hand! And certainly not the tradition from the middle ages, wherein marriages are arranged for the sake of property and offspring (the production of, not the protection of). But there is no point in bringing up logic with these people.

Is a mandate.

Although it's a total bummer that the Colbert/Stewart coverage is over already.