HSU IT Department

Star Trek...it's all about apple juice...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:19:30 GMT

...and I feel that somehow I should have known this all along. Warning: Do not view this while in an altered state of consciousness. It might actually make sense.

One dystopia, two irresponsible networks, a Renaissance bureaucrat, and several nightmares

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:00:29 GMT

Another catch-up post with bunches of books. I meant to do this last week but the past week has been, to put it mildly, a steaming pile of poo. "The devil farts in my face once again, Percy" about sums it up. I'm starting to feel semi-human again, so here we are. Following are some goodies I highly recommend.

Ugly War, Pretty Package = an in-depth analysis of how Fox News and CNN packaged, presented and sold the Iraq War as a "high-concept" film, complete with heroes, a soundtrack, special effects, and a catchy narrative. It's amazing, fascinating, and very creepy. The creepiest part is that -- Fox's loud protestations notwithstanding -- the two networks basically sold the exact same narrative, slavishly following the government's and military's "party line." Read it; you'll never watch television news the same way again.

It Can't Happen Here = dystopian America in which a populist loudmouth (who sounds frighteningly like Sarah Palin) is elected and sends the US into a spiral of totalitarian terror and oppression. Although written in 1935, it's almost eerily prescient in its portrayal of a media-created candidate, and Berzelius Windrip and his second-in-command Lee Sarason (who runs everything behind the scenes) are scarily like Dubya and Cheney. I could easily picture Cheney engineering a coup.

Wolf Hall = Henry VIII's divorce from Katherine and marriage/beheading of Anne Boleyn, told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. Booker Prize winner. Interesting -- written in the present tense, which took some getting used to, and in a style less narrative than poetic. Interesting to see a sympathetic portrayal of Cromwell, as a talented bureaucrat who just wants the country to run smoothly, and a very unsympathetic portrayal of Thomas More as an unbending fanatic willing to torture those who don't see God his way.

That about gets us up to speed. Oh no, one more -- Volume 2 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman tales, The Doll's House. VERY cool indeed. Love the spectacle of Morpheus having to track down and kill or recapture escaped nightmares, the idea that Desire and Despair are twins, and the story of Hob Gadling which poses the theory that Dream could be lonely and want a friend. The Cereal Convention was brilliantly creepy, and Morpheus' older sister Death makes an appearance. So far no glimpse of the Library of Dreams, though. Still waiting for that.

So. There it is, then.

Geek chic

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:47:52 GMT

OK, this is geeky but I have to share: I made myself a mouse pad at zazzle with this design on it (see icon). Why is it totally geeky? See here.

Heeeee....

The Ketchup (catch up, get it?) Council

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:07:34 GMT

OK, I'm VASTLY behind on book reviews so will have to sum up ("Let me explain...No, there is no time -- let me sum up"). So: four tonight and (if all goes well and the goddess of motivation smiles on me) four tomorrow.

Nightlights, a Twilight parody. Meh. Hilarious bit at the beginning spoofing Bella's klutziness -- which was a major gripe of mine in the first book, it was made such a major deal I assumed that at a minimum she would turn out to have some degenerative neurological condition -- and a very funny bit where she thinks she's meeting Edvart's parents but he turns out have some kind of address dyslexia and went to the wrong house. Other than that, not very clever.

No Blade of Grass (U.S. title), a revisit but just as good on the fourth or fifth re-read as the first. A British (therefore stiff-upper-lippy) post-apocalypse novel, in which the Chung-Li virus destroys all grasses on the planet and a small band of friends and family must fight their way from London to an idyllic (defensible) valley in Wales. Not quite so I'm-the-man-and-I-will-save-you as Alas Babylon, but more intense in that the effects are immediate rather than remote. Alas, Babylon has a very unrealistic view of survivable nuclear war; Grass gives us a world that's truly dead, no arguments, no way to stop it, and very impersonally since it's a virus. I can't believe they haven't made this into a movie yet, it has all the elements of a fantastic high-concept SF flick. They'd have to do something to update the female roles but other than that all the pieces are in place.

Bible Stories for Adults by James Morrow. Not bad but didn't wow me. The first story (unless I've missed something) seems to suggest that the Chinese are descended from a diseased whore who escaped the Biblical Deluge. I can only hope I've misread that one. The rest are quite fun -- quirky, irreverent, pointed critiques of religion which I always love (being a pagan or possibly an atheist, depending on the news). Asimov would like them, I think, as several of them employ robots to prove the essential inhumanity of mankind. I especially liked 'Spelling God with the Wrong Blocks," in which a bunch of Creationist robots burn Darwinian heretics at the stake and await the Great Genital Coming (no pun intended, I'm sure). Morrow also wrote Towing Jehovah, in which God dies and his body gets towed south by a barge, and Only Begotten Daughter, in which Jesus has a sister, both of which I highly recommend.

Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint. Sadly, this disappointed me. Not entirely -- not in the writing or characters (Grace the grease monkey, love her!) which are both elegant as always, and the resolution (involving Mexican bruja traditions and faith in the saints) was appropriate and well done, as I've come to expect from Monsieur de Lint. I liked the idea that Grace and John (not to mention the evil witch in the penthouse) have to learn to let go of some things, but the fact that Grace had no interest in moving on until John dies in a car accident?? Not right. This clinging of the dead to the living is proved to be wrong within the story itself -- it's precisely that reluctance to move on, to let go that has trapped Grace and everyone else in this kind of Twilight Zone. If Grace had fought her fight before John died she would have had more...integrity. She and John both would have achieved their epiphany, their release. As it stands, because he dies she ends up resolving things so she can join him, not because she realizes she has to give him up. It feels like a cheat, almost. So it's OK, but not his best.

Wow. I'm tired now.

oops, bad coding...better now...

Hermione/Snape fic for hp_art_tales!

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:37:25 GMT

Getting this online so I can sub it for hp_art_tales -- it started out light-hearted and fun but took an unexpected turn to the Dark Side at the end.

Summary: Hermione's reaction to Ron and Lavender, combined with a rediscovered childhood charm, leads her to try a dark and dangerous experiment.

Victus fabula

I. Hermione Granger was never bored. This was remarkable for a nine-year-old girl, but to Hermione it was simple: as long as she had a book to read, boredom was an impossibility. Her favorite books were books about magic. She devoured anything that opened the door to a world where spells worked and conjuring was a science, not a dream. She never actually tried any magic, because after all, everyone knew magic wasn't real -- if it was, her father would just spirit people's cavities away, or add magical protection to teeth so they never got cavities in the first place. But it seemed real when she read about it.

Late one rainy afternoon she was curled up in a chair in the farthest (and therefore quietest) corner of the library reading for the fourth or perhaps fifth time one of her favorites: Half Magic, by Edward Eager. The yellowed pages had a dry, spicy smell that she always thought of as the smell of magic. She'd always loved Half Magic, because Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha were ordinary people just like Hermione, who suddenly found themselves able to do magical things. It gave her a sneaking hope that maybe, just maybe…

Jane had just made her first wish on the magic nickel. "If you have ever had magic powers descend on you suddenly out of the blue, you'll know how Jane felt," Hermione read. She sighed and shifted her position in the chair. A scrap of paper fluttered out of the book to the floor. Hermione, who was a very neat little girl, leaned over to pick it up, noticing as she did so that the paper was unusually thin yet stiff, almost like parchment. She sat back and examined it. Written on the creamy paper were words in a neat but tiny script: I can do magic.

Hermione's heart seemed to stop and then start up again, very fast. Carefully, holding her breath, she read it again: I can do magic. She flipped to the front of the book to see the name of the last person who had checked it out: Luna Johansson. "Luna" was a strange name, the kind of name a magical person might have. Hermione turned the paper over. On the back were written, in the same hand, two words: Victus fabula.

Hermione frowned. She looked again at the words on the front, then the back. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching then, feeling foolish yet wildly hopeful, her hands clenched so hard on the book the spine creaked in protest, she closed her eyes and whispered, "Victus fabula."

Nothing happened. She opened one eye, then the other. Still nothing. "I knew it," she whispered, angry at herself for her foolishness. "Humph." She flopped back in the chair and reopened the book. “ ‘I was just wishing we were all on a desert island,’ said Mark.”

And a hot wind blew sand stinging against her cheeks.

She sat bolt upright, eyes wide, looking around. Someone was playing a trick on her. No, no one there. She turned back to the book. "Desert there certainly was...mile on monotonous mile of it...” Sun beat on her head, she heard the hissing of tiny sand grains tirelessly scrubbing each other in the burning wind. She slammed the book shut: the scratchy fabric of the chair, the rhythm of rain on the roof, the rich dusty smell of hundreds of books. Was it...could it be...? She tested it once more. “It was then that the caravan appeared. It was a rather shopworn looking caravan, only three mangy camels with one ragged Arab driving them." The ripe odor of camel filled her nostrils. She heard the creaking of the harness, felt the heat of the desert baking up through her shoes. She wasn’t imagining it. Book closed: library. Book being read: an Arabian Desert filled all five senses. She couldn't change anything, just experience it, but still -- it was real. No, even better -- it was magical.

Hermione took a deep ecstatic breath, thinking of Tolkien, of Stewart, of McCaffrey and Haggard and L'Engle. All the books. Hundreds of books, to be read. To be lived. She didn't know how long it the magic would last, but she intended to savor every moment.

*****

II. Hermione Granger was bored. Harry was off at Quidditch practice, Ron was doing lines in detention ("I will not make the house-elves bring me chocolate pudding in the library"), her homework was done, and she'd read everything the library had on offer. The other Gryffindor girls were piled on Lavender's bed squealing over some silly Muggle fashion magazine. Hermione rolled over and leaned down to see if perhaps the underside of her bed needed cleaning; while not thrillingly interesting, at least it would give her something to do. A small rectangular object sat there. Hermione reached for it warily, in case it was The Monster Book of Monsters – her copy had gone feral after their Care of Magical Creatures course two years ago and she hadn’t seen it in several weeks.

It wasn’t. Hermione blew the dust off the cover. Half Magic, by Edward Eager! Hermione had read it almost to tatters as a child; not only had she loved the story of regular children with magical powers, it had been the words written on the scrap of paper she had found tucked inside it – Victus fabula – that had given her the first inkling that magic was real. More than that: that she, the daughter of a dentist, could do magic.

She opened the book, smelling the spicy odor of the yellowed pages that, for her, would always be the smell of magic, and the memories flooded back. Starting in her ninth summer she had spent the next eighteen months whispering Victus fabula over the covers of all her favorite books and experiencing them – not reading them, but living them. She had fought the pulsing power of It with Meg and Charles Wallace, walked the Dry Lands of Earthsea with Ged, tasted the water of the Ents, felt the soaring sensation of flight on dragonback...

The spell operated, she realized now, something like a Pensieve: she could experience all the physical sensations in the narrative – see, hear, smell, touch, taste – but could not interact with any of the characters. The more characters in the narrative, the more diluted the sensations; one main character meant more intense experiences, with those written in the first person the most intense of all. But in the excitement of receiving her Hogwart’s letter and all that followed, she had forgotten about this simple but powerful piece of magic.

All my favorite books. She ran her fingers gently over the cover. All my favorite fantasy novels, she amended.

She sat up abruptly. Fantasies. Books about magic. Would the spell work on, well, other kind of books?

She got up, ignoring the giggles from the cluster of girls on Lavender’s bed, and retrieved from the common bookshelf a copy of Pride and Prejudice. She took it back to the bed, sat down, closed her eyes, whispered “Victus fabula,” and opened it at random. “More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park, unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy...” Hermione inhaled deeply, smelling morning-damp grass; heard the twitter of birds in the hedges, felt the swish of long skirts against her calves. She flipped forward a few pages. “ ‘In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’ ” Hermione felt her cheeks flush and a shiver ran up her spine as dark eyes found hers – still arrogant, still proud, but oh, just wait until chapter 58!

Hermione fell back on the bed, giddy with the possibilities opening before her. Rhett Butler. Cyrano de Bergerac. Mark Darcy. Ivanhoe. Lancelot. Max de Winter. The Count of Monte Cristo. Aragorn (to whom she had paid scant attention four years ago!). And if she ran through all of those...

“Lavender? What’s the name of that woman you read all the time? The English one, with the fluffy white hair and the fluffy dog. Writes books like The Dangerous Duke and The Renegade Rake.”

“Barbara Cartland.”

“How many books did she write?”

“I dunno. Like, six hundred?”

Hermione closed her eyes in bliss. “Can I borrow some of them?”

*****

III. Hermione Granger had an idea. It was a dangerous idea – a spell of unknown origin, combined with a text of known provenance but unknown power, and intended for results of dubious propriety. It was also a seductive idea – the opportunity to taste not only heights and depths, but even venture around corners and down holes (metaphorically speaking) into areas never before explored.

Wrapped in a dark cloak, clutching a scroll of parchment in one hand and her wand in the other, a tiny ball of lumos casting a flickering light over the stone walls, Hermione crept down the seventh floor corridor until she reached the hanging of Barnabas the Barmy and the dancing trolls. Her heart hammered in her chest and a strange combination of terror and excitement pulsed in her veins. What am I doing? she thought wildly. This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy... She took a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she walked back and forth three times before the tapestry, holding an image clearly in her mind. She opened her eyes. The blank wall now held a door of dark wood, paneled and carved with intricate scenes; a quick glance raised a blush on Hermione’s cheeks – surely those slender intertwined legs and muscular buttocks weren’t actually moving? She pushed the door open.

Inside was a small wood-paneled room. A fire burned in the fireplace, glowing on the dark red and gold velvet hangings that softened the stone walls. Candles flickered on the mantelpiece and a tendril of scented smoke drifted from a lit stick of sandalwood and rose incense. Cushions of black velvet were heaped upon the floor, and a single crystal goblet stood on small side table beside a bottle of dark wine whose contents glowed like a ruby in the firelight. One would have had to look very closely to see that the shadows might have hidden other small details: metal rings driven deep into the walls, perhaps, or a whip coiled on a hook.

Hermione sank down on the cushions. Her body felt heavy, slow, almost drugged, as though warm honey ran in her veins instead of blood. She reached for the glass of wine, tilted it to her lips – rich berry flavors mingled with pepper and spices – and laid her wand and the scroll on the table. Victus fabula, she thought. The spell she had happened upon at the age of nine, on a scrap of paper that fell out of a library book, that had shown her magic was real. The spell that, murmured over and over that summer, had let her fall into her favorite children’s books, sharing every physical sensation the characters experienced. The spell that, in their fourth year, had made her lips burn with Rhett’s caresses and Max de Winter’s passion. The spell that made any and every book a kind of Pensieve, but far more vivid and intimate: she did not witness the narrative, nor could she interact with it or alter it – she simply experienced it. Lived it. Every smell, every taste. Every touch. Books with a single main character were more intense; those written in the first person created the most intense sensations of all, nearly indistinguishable from real life.

The lyrics of an old alternative rock song ran through Hermione’s head in a nervous loop: I’ve got one, two, three, four, five, senses working overtime, Trying to taste the difference ‘tween lemon and lime, pain and pleasure and the church bells softly chime... She took a deep swallow of the wine, picked up the scroll, and began to write.

“The last of the students left, the door closing silently behind them. The classroom was empty now except for Professor Snape. Slowly he came towards me, his robes swirling like black water, until he was so close I could feel the heat of his body. His dark eyes, inscrutable as pools of ink, seemed to see through me, through my clothes to my very skin. It burned at his glance.

“ ‘May I help you in some way, Miss Granger?’ he asked softly. I opened my mouth but before I could speak, he seized my arm in a rough grip, jerking me hard against him. Pressed against my thighs his cock felt like an iron rod beneath his robes. I shuddered, but did not pull away. “Or perhaps,” he whispered, bending forward until his lips grazed mine, “You would like me to...help myself?’ ”

She wrote for two hours, at the end of which, though she had paused to refill her goblet from time to time, the bottle of ruby wine remained as full as when she began. Because this was, after all, the Room of Requirement. Laying down her quill at last, she skimmed the final paragraph. She hesitated over a few words. Bound. Bruised. Screamed. But Ron was in love with Lavender, so she bowed her head, whispered “Victus fabula,” and began to read.

Looking for unique Xmas prezzies?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:50:32 GMT

Look no further! The Interstitial Arts Foundation is having their annual auction, and there are some stunning pieces. Faves: Berry Moon book, a gorgeous print called Visual Fiction, and this intricate foldy-origami-book-wallet thing.

Go. See. Buy.

Catching up on books books and more books

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:00:43 GMT

A catching-up post:

Overclocked by Cory Doctorow is awesome, especially "When sysadmins ruled the earth," a dark post-apocalypse short story on the power and risk of the internet(s), and what really matters when you come right down to it. On a related note, Doctorow has an interesting recent essay on science fiction as "radical presentism" -- in other words, what speculative fiction is really about is the tensions of the present, extracted and highlighted by projecting them into a [ ] near [ ] alternate [ ] distant (pick one) future. "Science fiction writers don’t predict the future (except accidentally), but if they’re very good, they may manage to predict the present...Science fiction is a literature that uses the device of futurism to show up the present."

Pastorialia by George Saunders. Clever and entertaining but not his best. Most of the stories are written in the same breathless, stream-of-consciousness narrative, meandering about from hither to yon -- the fun is in the trip; the destination isn't always that great. I liked "Sea oak" (nothing like zombie ~~grandmas~~ aunties to really make a point) and of course the title story with the characters stuck playing cavemen in a human zoo, which somehow manages to evoke office politics and the cubicle farm despite the sheep carcasses and the mutual social lice-grooming. Both Civilwarland and The brief and frightening reign of Phil were better. In persuasion nation of course was fabulous and still my favorite (that might have been the one that got him the Macarthur Genius Grant).

Beauty by Robin McKinley -- seriously ho-hum. Not bad, just ho-hum. Another fairy tale retelling, obviously, but so much like the Disney version I had a hard time swallowing it. Since this was published long before the Disney version it's entirely possible Disney got ideas from her, or maybe they both used the same source text (Perrault, maybe? It has a definitely French flavor to it), but it's lamentably simplistic even given that it's published under HarperTrophy, a children's imprint. (I have a hard time with HarperTrophy books anyway because I always think of "hypertrophy" -- not what they were going for, I'm sure, but there it is.) For this particular fairy tale I still have to name Tanith Lee's short-story version in her Red as Blood collection (ignore the horrifically cheesy cover and trust me -- it has sexy alien leopard cats, woohoo!) and Sheri Tepper's Beauty.

Let's see, this leaves me...three more, one of which is the Harvard Lampoon's spoof of Twilight. Will do those tomorrow.

Creepy Ian McKellen (2)

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:53:42 GMT

Watched the rest of The Prisoner. Don't get it. Anyone who does, feel free to leave a comment clearing things up for me.

"Crivens!!! Whut aboot us, ye daftie??"

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:07:38 GMT

Picked up Wintersmith from the "Just in" shelf at the library and it confirms my opinion that Terry Pratchett is a god. This is one of his best, right up there with Mort, and Hogfather. The witches are in it -- Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Miss Treason -- as well as the Nac Mac Feegles, whom I hadn't met since I hadn't read the two previous Tiffany Aching adventures. The Feegles are...well...the nearest I can get is that they're like Smurfs with a Scottish accent: small, blue, not very bright, and they drink a LOT. Favorite Feegle: Wee Dangerous Spike. Favorite Feegle quote: "'Hooses, banks, dreams, 'tis a' the same to us,' said Rob Anybody. 'There's nothing we cannae get in or oot of.' 'Except maybe pubs,' said Big Yan. 'Oh, aye,' said Rob Anybody cheerfully. 'Gettin' oot o' pubs sometimes causes us a cerrrtain amout o' difficulty, I'll grant ye that.'"

At one point Tiffany witnesses the Dark Morris, a sort of anti-morris dance done in silence, all in black, at midnight in winter (Pratchett says one of his best book-signing moments was when he got to see this performed at a bookstore in Chicago!) She thoughtlessly leaps into the dance which brings her to the attention of the Wintersmith, who thinks she's the Lady of Summer; this makes him try to be much more human than he ought to be (he's an anthropomorphism of a season, after all) and confuses the natural progression of winter and spring. In addition to the hilariously funny moments the book has some quite poignant ones; Pratchett's books (two of them in particular) are the only ones I can think of that have made me both laugh to the point my ribs hurt and also leak the occasional tear, all within the same story.

Have now added the Wee Free Men andA Hat Full of Sky to my bulging to-read list (294!! I will never finish!!!!!).

Creepy Ian McKellen, aka The Prisoner

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:28:59 GMT

Watched the first two parts on AMC last night. I know nothing about the original but the remake is weird as hell. Who knew a Knight of the British Empire could be this damn creepy?? I read that he had a hard time getting into the part until they found him the white suit; apparently with that, something clicked. He looks like a serial-killer ice cream salesman (I was always suspicious of ice-cream truck drivers -- that mindless repetitive music, those windowless vans, y'know?). Ick. Eek.

Kafka, Jews and teeth

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:38:43 GMT

OK, Kafka was a Jew, so technically the first two terms are redundant. But I don't much care at this point. I've fallen rather far behind in getting down my thoughts about what I've read due to various real life interferences (conference travel, work, dog illness [it's intestinal, don't ask me to go there], and the all-important BETA-ING of some brilliant pieces which have yet to be posted but will rock the world of fanfic, see if they don't).

Anyway. Here goes my initial attemp at trying to catch up, starting with a quote from Kafka. I ran across this somewhere in my past, because I remember bits of it, but encountered it again recently and it stuck with me:

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books [ok, I take issue with him that, but on we go...], and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are the books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

An ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. F**king awesome. Can any of those perpetual NYT best-seller-list hack-denizens do that? I doubt it. Stephen King maybe, erratically. Danielle Steele or James Patterson: I highly doubt it. We read those to numb ourselves, to comfort ourselves, or to distract ourselves, not to challenge us or awaken us. They're pompoms, not ice axes.

I love the ice axes.

OK, I haven't actually been reading Kafka (he's best in the original Klingon, by the way). The quote was the lead-in to Chaim Potok's The Promise, which I did read and which I enjoyed very much (not an ice axe but perhaps an ice pick?). The central story of Reuven and Danny -- their friendship, their relationships with Rachel and her cousin Michael -- is OK, but far more than that I loved the theological debates, the intricate windings of Jewish law, the delineation of the conflict between the orthodox Jews who came to America after World War II and the more open ones like Reuven's father, who want to apply textual criticism to the Torah, like archaeologists trying to dig down to the truth buried under later accretions. Although I've read a good bit about WWII I knew very little about its impact on the Jewish faith -- that it would spawn a fierce orthodoxy among those who survived the concentration camps, unable to accept any challenge to Judaism, even an internal one done in the spirit of respect for truth, had never occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense: millions of Jews died for their faith; if any part of the Torah is wrong then they died for a lie?? Heresy!!! I ended up with a strong sympathy for the most unsympathetic character in the entire book (Rav Kalman), and not a little impatience with Reuven for being a bit dense, making no effort to understand him. But perhaps that was Potok's goal (if so, well done!)

The character of Abraham Gordon, trying to (paradoxically) formulate a way to be a good Jew without the theology -- in other words, respect for the value of tradition but minus the concept of a personal God -- is a precursor to the Jewish secular humanism movement (which I was marginally familiar with, as I have a colleague whose partner is headmaster at a JSH school; it was invented in Detroit, how weird is that?). So now I have to go read the book I picked up on our trip to Ithaca in June, on the Midrash :)

Here's the really weird bit though. My experience has been that books -- not all of them, but some of them, the ice-axe ones -- come to you for a reason, at the time you need them. I'd checked out The Promise six or eight weeks ago as one of my Random Book Experiments (I go to a shelf, close my eyes, pick a book at random; it helps to expand my horizons). I'd read the first chapter or so, not enough to have any idea where it was going, and set it aside as it failed to catch my interest. Then near the end of September, I discovered that someone I know and love (i.e. family) had for a long time suffered from depression (and still carried a good bit of anger, due in part to certain things in his relationship with parental units). The next day I picked up The Promise, read it through to the end, and lo and behold the main subplot involves an adolescent boy suffering from depression, anxiety, and anger due to problems with his parents.

It's not identical to the family situation I learned about, but very similar issues and dynamics. "When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come," or so they say. Books have always been my best teachers and I've learned to listen to them.

On a completely different note, I foresee Epic Phail with NaNoWriMo. I've done zip, zilch, bupkus, nada, niente, or as a long-time friend would put it, "King Zippy Nada." Pfffft. Oh, and I chomped down on a handful of peanuts when I got home from work and a back tooth cracked in half and fell out.

Not so good there.

I think I'll have another glass of wine and go to bed.

Humungous suckage

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:06:39 GMT

Am completely disgusted by the Democrats caving in to pressure and allowing the evisceration of the reproductive health piece of the health care reform bill passed last night.

"Earlier, the House passed an amendment to pending health care legislation that prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option and in the insurance "exchange" the bill would create."

Great. So now not only are the women in our military denied a choice, so will be anyone opting for (or forced into) the public option, or who shops through this "exchange" (whatever THAT is). For anyone interested in objecting, Planned Parenthood has a petition/form letter here.

The Demon's Lexicon (on a Kindle!)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:10:29 GMT

Not that it's any different from The Demon's Lexicon as a real book with pages and all. But now I can say I've read an entire book on a Kindle and talk knowledgeably and at great length about how Real Books Are Still Better. Which I think they are, in most cases, though if I were going on holiday I admit I'd rather take one Kindle loaded with sixteen books and my subscriptions to the New York Times and the Economist, rather than lugging 10 lbs of books around with me and having to find a news-stand for the paper every day. Two things struck me about the experience. First, the book seemed to go really fast (though that could just be because it's a YA book therefore a quick read for someone in their forties!). Second, good as the Kindle's technology and interface are, I found it harder to "get lost" in the story. Mainly I kept getting distracted by the little progress bar at the bottom that tells you what percentage done you are. That was weird. That never entered my mind before, in my entire reading life -- I guess you kind of notice as the bulk of the pages slowly moves from the right-hand side to the left-hand side, but only because the weight shifts and you have to hold it differently so it doesn't fall on the cat. It isn't something that stares you in the face, not to mention updates each time you turn a page (will this page get me to 75%? No...maybe the next one?)

I didn't like the percentage bar. I wanted it to go away. I resented it sitting there smugly measuring my progress. I get enough of that in my life. Reading isn't supposed to be measured in percent complete but in the joy and pleasure it gives, and the goal isn't to hit 100% but to enjoy the trip. (Will teachers start making assignments that way? "For tomorrow please read the first 10% of the book" ??)

So, 'nuff said about that. The book itself? Well, it's tough to say; perhaps the most concise summation is that her fanfic roots are still showing. The book suffers from a lot of the problems that fanfic -- even some of the good stuff -- does: logic problems, erratic behavior, thin characters, etc. None of the characters act their ages consistently, shifting from teenage to much more mature seemingly at random (or at authorial necessity?). On the other hand, the world she's created of demons and magicians has real potential, and she drops a couple of big twists -- one about halfway through, which I wasn't expecting, and then another right near the end, at which my eyebrows shot so far up they nearly fell off the top of my head -- which do serve to explain some of the oddities in the earlier part; the problem is when you come at it for the first time, it's a little hard to tell that those oddities are intentional and not just a result of the author not paying attention. I nearly gave it up about a third of the way in (at 39%, according to the Kindle's progress bar -- aha, there's a use for it!) As is too often the case with YA books (and fanfic), the characters are tad underdeveloped and the final confrontation is a bit of a fizzle, though still WAAAAAAY better than the pathetic limping finale that is Breaking Dawn LOL!! There are some wonderful bits that I wish could have been much expanded (the Goblin Market, for instance) and she has moments of really excellent wit and originality, so I have hopes that she'll improve as she goes along.

Oh, and the title doesn't seem to have any relationship to the story. That always bugs me.

Writing -- not so much

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:10:26 GMT

Have been doing lots of writing but all of it, alas, work-related >:P Got my crits in to my online writing group for October -- barely, on the 31st -- but one got short-critted so it won't count (grrrrrr). I did sign up for NaNoWriMo; current word count is a big fat '0' (hiss boo). I slavishly followed the rules about not starting until 12:01 am Nov 1 to the point that I didn't even have a plot, which put me a bit behind. Saturday night I came up with something at the symphony (Beethoven really does make you smarter, as does Rachmaninoff apparently) but haven't had a chance to BIC-HOK-TAM yet. Why, you ask, am I not doing same at this moment? Excellent question.

On the reading front, I've had a few tasty things to beta (why is it 'beta' in the world of fanfic? why not 'proofread' or 'edit' like it is in the entire rest of the writing world?? why???). I also finally finished an item that's been on my currently-reading list for yonks: Preludes and Nocturnes, volume 1 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Mostly I wanted to read it because of Morpheus' Library of Dream, which contains never-written books by real authors (e.g., Road Trips to the Emerald City by L. Frank Baum and Alice's Journey Behind the Moon by Lewis Carroll). The Library hasn't turned up yet but I enjoyed the stories -- they reminded me of the old Mystery Comics Digest I used to devour as a kid, crammed with swamp monsters, witches, ancient Chinese curses, possessed drums and all manner of creepinesses. Morpheus is a strangely sympathetic character, rather like Elric of Melniboné. I shall proceed with the next volume and hope the Library makes an appearance.

Spindle's End

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:26:52 GMT

Another reinvention of a fairy tale, Robin McKinley's Spindle's End takes a new approach to "Sleeping Beauty." Rosie, the princess-in-hiding, is definitely a new spin on the main character -- totally uninterested in clothes, dancing, or any other highbrow stuff, it turns out her true calling is as a "horse-leech," a job made much easier by the fact that she can talk to animals. The talking-to-animals was a nice addition to the story, and I loved McKinley's characterization of the "voices" of the different species: cats are elliptical and always talk in riddles, bugs speak in a kind of clicking code, foxes "generally wanted to talk about butterflies and grasses and weather for a long time while they sized you up," dogs bolster their conversation with lots of physical action, etc. Especially wrenching: Lord Prendergast's best stallion (used as a showpiece and stud, and never allowed to run or get dirty) and the huge white bird that lives in the rooftree of Woldwood, when they speak to her of their yearning to be free of the constraints they live with day in and day out.

Her writing style is unusual. I was struggling with it a bit at the beginning, I kept having to go back and reread paragraphs because I was getting lost in the sentence structure. She favors long sentences with lots of clauses and parenthetical digressions. Then, at some point about halfway through when I was playing online, I ran across this piece from Ursula K. LeGuin, where she draws an analogy between story and movement. There's the running kind of story, where you put one foot down after the next because you can't stop because you're leaning forward, rushing ahead -- page-turners. Then there's the walking story, where "you fall into the flow of the gait and cover ground while seeing everything around you, scenery you may never have seen before; and the walk may end up somewhere you've never been." And finally the dancing story, where you're led on for the simple joy of movement and things might seem pointless but beautiful, "and yet if the dance is true to itself, all the movements are connected and every one follows from the last, not predictably, but inevitably." And there was my problem: I was reading Spindle's End as though it were a running book and clearly it was a walking book. Or she's a walking writer.

Unfortunately the book was marred by a couple of places where there was no good reason for something to happen other than that the plot required it. For example, the fact that the animals Rosie needed all managed to shake off Pernicia's spell. Why?? There was no reason they should have been any more special or immune than the rest of the animals in the castle. Narl's resistance is explained by his being a fairy-smith -- highly unusual -- and working with both magic and cold iron, but the animals have no such protection.

I also took issue with the nature of the ending -- I don't object to happy endings, but the way they achieved it dissatisfied me, and the more I think about it the more dissatisfied I am. Basically Rosie's "princess-ness" is removed, like a kidney, and transferred to Peony in some kind of royalty transplant. It's not plausible and feels just too convenient. First off, I don't think you can do that with princess-ness; it's not a "thing" in that sense. More importantly, it makes the whole ending based on a lie, making the queen (and everyone else) think Peony's really her daughter when she isn't. That seems not only cruel but unjust, to get one's happiness out of dishonesty and, basically, a trick. I would have preferred it if Rosie had simply stood up for herself and said, Sorry, I'm going to stay here and marry Narl, you can have Peony if you like, or just give the crown to my younger brother, and Rowland had said, I'm going to marry Peony anyway, I don't care if she isn't a princess..

The idea of baby-magic (very young children unable to control their powers, therefore a bit of a trial to live with) was clever and cute, like a nicer version of the theory of poltergeists being generated by the pangs of adolescence. I also enjoyed the whole magic-thick-as-chalk-dust ambiance of the place, so that mugs spontaneously turn into frogs and people spend a lot of time asking things to stay what they are (laptop, stay laptop...). The story never explains why the country's that way, though, when none of its neighbors are. There was also no explanation of the roots of Pernicia's vengeful nature -- is she just a Bad Hat, or was there some conflict behind it? A simple insult like not being invited to a christening might suffice for a Disney villain but in a full-length book I expect a little more meat to a rage and fury that's been festering for centuries.

I'd like to try more of McKinley's books to get a better sense of her as writer; one of my colleagues at work has The Blue Sword and one of our interns was a big fan of Sunshine, so maybe I'll give them a try.

Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion visit Jean-Paul Sartre

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:19:46 GMT

A long lacuna in posting, partly due to being very busy with regular day job, partly due to some freelance deadlines, and last but not least, partly due to some very intensive beta-ing of the latest chapter of Downloaded, an excellent and intriguing Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica crossover fic.

And oh joy!! This week IFC Channel is doing a six-day Monty Python-a-thon -- a new documentary with interviews, Life of Brian, Holy Grail, episodes from the series, etc etc etc. I'm in heaven. Because John Cleese doing his silly walk really is the funniest thing ever done by a human, and quite possibly by any non-human as well, not excepting any yet-to-be-discovered aliens.

If you like Hermione and Snape...otherwise, move along

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 05:22:09 GMT

Another one done for the hp_uk_meetup, about the price we pay for getting our heart's desire. Enjoy :)

A Price Beyond Rubies (HG/SS, PG)

Hermione yawned and looked at the clock on the library wall: nearly midnight. She rotated her shoulders, feeling the twinge of muscles too long in the same position. Time to get to bed, definitely. She stood, gathered her books, and shoved them into her bookbag. Hopefully the other Gryffindor girls would be sleeping; she really didn’t want to listen to any giggling or whispering. Or answer any questions about herself and Ron. She left the library heading for Gryffindor Tower, but as she approached the last turning she heard a voices: a boy’s teasing, a girl’s laughing.

“Oh, Won-Won, you’re so funny!”

She stopped dead, disgust curling in her stomach like a slug. Oh no, not again! Another session of the Ron and Lavender Lovefest would be worse than a Crucio spell. She glanced around the empty hallway, desperate for something to hide behind. A few yards back a doorway beckoned; she ran towards it, slipping through just as Ron and Lavender rounded the corner. Slowly, wary of rusty hinges that might creak, she pushed the heavy door closed until the voices were muffled beyond recognition.

Sighing in relief, she leaned her back against the oak panels. The room was dark, lit only by shafts of moonlight coming through the an arched window on the opposite wall. Motes of dust circled slowly in the air, sparkling in the silvery light. To the left, dim sheet-draped forms loomed in the shadows; to the right stretched a bare grey wall, with a single tall oval shape in the center. Curious, Hermione picked her way towards it until she was close enough to pull a corner of the sheet aside. Something reflective glimmered beneath it. She shifted to one side so as not to be directly in front of whatever it was – you never knew with mirrors, and it was better to be safe than sorry – took a firmer grip on the sheet and gave a sharp tug. The sheet cascaded to the ground with a shushing sound, throwing up a cloud of dust that made her sneeze and revealing a smooth oval of glass in a frame of dark wood. Around the edge words were inscribed: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

Hermione’s eyes widened. The Mirror of Erised! Harry and Ron had talked about their encounter with it when they were First Years, but Dumbledore had moved it, no one knew where. Yet here it was. What would it show me? she thought, a little bitterly. Two months ago she would have seen herself and Ron as a family, maybe with two or three red-haired children, but now… Did she dare look? When she herself didn’t know her heart’s desire?

Oh, why not? What harm could it do? She stepped in front of the Mirror and looked hesitantly into the misty depths. Fog swirled across its surface; for a moment she saw Ron beside her, then briefly Viktor Krum – Viktor? she thought, oh please! – and, even more briefly, Harry, before the fog closed in again. Apparently even the Mirror of Erised was having trouble discerning her heart’s desire, she thought with a tinge of self-mockery. Then the shifting grey cloudiness parted, revealing a tall pale-faced figure with black hair and dark eyes, vaguely familiar but not clear enough to recognize. She peered closer, trying to identify him…she could almost see…

“Miss Granger.” The silky, condescending voice was like a bucket of cold water dumped over her.

She whipped around in shock, her heart pounding. “P-professor Snape,” she stammered. “I – what are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same thing.” She stepped back involuntarily as he came towards her, his black robes swirling around him. His dark eyes studied her incuriously, like a potion that had failed to resolve properly. “Students – even Gryffindor prefects – are not permitted to wander the corridors after midnight.”

“I know…I was just studying and I didn’t realize how late it was…and then –” she stopped. There was no reason to tell Snape about Ron and Lavender. He wouldn’t understand; even if he did, he wouldn’t care.

“And what is so seductive that you linger here?” His eyes flicked towards the glass. “Ah. The Mirror of Erised.”

“Yes.” She waited for him to go on, to make some cutting remark or take fifty points from Gryffindor. But he was silent, his eyes fixed on the Mirror. His pale face wore an expression she had never seen before; the mask of scornful dislike had fallen away, exposing regret, sorrow, and – could it be fear? He looks so tired, she realized with a sudden unwilling pang of sympathy. So alone.

A sound from the corridor outside awakened him from his reverie. He closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head once sharply, then turned to her. The angry sneer was firmly in place again. “As your friends have no doubt informed you, the Mirror is a dangerous magical object, Miss Granger. It is not a toy to be casually meddled with.”

A sudden surge of anger gave Hermione the courage to answer back. “What’s dangerous about your heart’s desire?”

“The heart’s desire does not always bestow happiness. And there is always a price for gaining it. Sometimes one pays in Galleons, sometimes…” his eyes went back to the Mirror, “in self-respect.”

“I don’t understand.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Is it possible?” he asked mockingly. “The brilliant Miss Granger does not understand something?” He waved an arm dismissively “Get out. Don’t let me find you here again.”

“Thank you, Professor.” She hurried to the door, unable to believe he was letting her off so easily. She grasped the iron handle, then glanced back.

Snape stood gazing into the Mirror, transfixed. Loss and despair were plain on his face, and moonlight glistened on the silvery drops on his cheeks.

xxXXxx

For a week Hermione stayed away from the Mirror. What would be the point in looking into it? Besides, her mind was occupied with the puzzle of Snape. What had he seen in the Mirror? And what had she seen in his face, in that unguarded moment: the man he had been years ago, or the man he was now? She took to planning her way through the corridors so she would encounter him, all the while wondering, pondering. His face and demeanor were as arrogant, as cold as ever, and he gave no sign that their conversation had ever taken place, but a new perceptiveness whispered to her that the vicious anger he directed towards everyone arose not from hatred, but from pain. Was it possible? She had always defended him against Ron and Harry, who persisted in believing “once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater,” but now her defense took on a new tone of conviction.

And the memory of him standing hopeless before the Mirror, like a man condemned by his own heart, would not leave her mind.

Ten days later, Hermione found herself in the fourth floor corridor once more. The door stood half-open as it had before and she slipped inside. The Mirror was draped again – Snape apparently had covered it before he left – but she went straight to it and without hesitation pulled the dust sheet off it. The glass gleamed like a pool of water held vertical; it shimmered faintly as she placed herself directly in front of it and looked into the depths.

This time the mist cleared almost at one. A shape coalesced behind her in the Mirror: a man, tall, with long dark hair and eyes black and fathomless as a starless night. She felt no surprise when she saw the familiar face, only a sense of rightness. He stood close behind her reflection, his hands resting gently on her waist. Black robes hung in silky folds from shoulders broader than she remembered. His face was pale but calm, without the tension and venomous wit she was accustomed to, but it was unmistakeably...

The door slammed behind her, startling her so that she whirled and almost fell. “Professor Snape!”

He stood by the door, black robes and pale face almost camouflaged by the moonlight and shadows of the room. “I believe I instructed you not to return here,” he said coldly. “Perhaps you feel your intelligence or your friendship with...certain people...places you above the rules, but I assure you that is not the case.”

Did he see? she wondered in sudden panic. No, other people couldn’t, Harry and Ron had said so. Thank Merlin for that. “No, Professor, I –”

“As a teacher at this school I am responsible for the well-being of all its students, even those whom I personally dislike. I think perhaps I should know what this desire of yours is that keeps you wandering the halls.” Snape came forward, robes rustling like autumn leaves, until he stood directly in front of her. A scent of sandalwood came from him, and something else, something spicy, a tantalizing melange of vanilla and pepper and smoke. It was, oddly, not at all unpleasant. “Turn around and look into the Mirror.”

She wanted to speak but somehow her tongue wouldn’t cooperate. “You can’t do this,” she managed to croak. She cleared her throat. “I mean, Professor, you can’t see what other people see in the Mirror.”

“You are impertinent. And you are incorrect. Now turn and look.” His voice cracked like a whip.

She obeyed, reminding herself even Voldemort hadn’t been able to see what Harry saw. He was bluffing. Fixing her gaze on the Mirror, she watched as the fog cleared and the tall black-robed form of Snape appeared behind her, a smile with no cruelty, only a trace of gentle self-mockery, on his lips. She felt a moment’s disorientation as the Mirror-Snape placed his hands on her reflection’s shoulders in a caress, while the Snape behind her remained motionless. He can’t see, he can’t see, he can’t see, she reminded herself, even as a surge of desire rippled through her.

Then she heard him say, in a low voice, “Legilimens.”

Stunned, she snapped her eyes closed so he wouldn’t see, but it was too late. The memories were there, open to his view. All of them. She felt him stiffen in surprise, heard a quick intake of breath as he gripped her shoulders so tightly it was almost painful, uncannily echoing the actions of the Mirror-Snape. She braced herself for the knife-edged wit at her expense, the cutting sarcasm. But when he spoke after a long moment, his voice was hoarse, disbelieving.

“This is what you desire? Despite all you know of me, of my past service to the Dark Lord. Despite the suspicion in which your friends – and many of my colleagues – hold me. Despite my bitterness, my anger, my cruelty. Despite everything.”

“Yes,” she whispered. Her nerves tingled with a strange combination of cold and heat where his body pressed against hers.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered harshly, urgently. “Let me see.”

She looked. She met the eyes of the Mirror-Snape, sensing the real one looking back at her through her own eyes, a reflection of a reflection, a longing and a loneliness that echoed her own.

“I have given you no reason to trust me, and every reason to hate me,” he said slowly. “And yet…”

“And yet. Yes.” She shivered involuntarily, her body responding to what her eyes perceived, as the Mirror-Hermione tilted her head and the Mirror-Snape bent his own to brush his lips across the sensitive skin of her neck...and then she felt breath warm on her neck as life became a reflection of the Mirror and he began to kiss her, and then there was nothing but love born of perfect trust, and the passion of a condemned man momentarily reprieved.

xxXXxx

Six months later…

Hermione stood with Ron and Harry, watching the phoenix rise singing into the sky over the white tomb of their staunchest defender and most powerful protector. Though the other two could not know it, her tears were not only for the white-haired wizard who had died, but for the dark-haired man who had, unbelievably, killed him. For love and for loss. For all that had gone before, and all that would come after, and all that would never be the same.

There is always a price for gaining your heart’s desire.

HP drabbles, (were) free to good home

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:23:04 GMT

Well, now that the hp_uk_meetup is over, I'm allowed to post the flash fic -- aka drabbles -- and also the slightly longer pieces (resulting from my inability to control my wayward Muse) that I contributed for their edification, jollification, and delectation. Herewith, my G and PG offerings; I have a couple of R-rated ones but will save those for tomorrow. And can I just say, I had huge amounts of fun with this? Thanks nursedarry for inviting me to play!!

Irresistible (RL gen, G) for lazy_neutrino

Remus Lupin was trying to resist. He could hear their siren call, close his eyes and recreate their every curve, every line. When the wind was right he swore -- even in his human form -- he could smell their seductive scent. He needed to stay away from them, he knew that, but the torment was almost past bearing.

He twitched the curtains open. A slim crescent moon sparkled innocently above the Whomping Willow, reminding him it would be three more weeks before he could run free as a wolf once more. If he were a wolf, of course, he wouldn't agonize this way -- he would simply take what he so badly desired. Being a werewolf had its rewards, he thought ruefully: simplicity, single-mindedness. Unrepentance.

A low growl came from deep in his chest, transformed strangely by his human lungs and throat. He was losing the battle. They were so close, so tantalizing, so...accessible. He could already feel the nausea that would seize him if he gave in. But he couldn't stop himself.

He lunged towards the cupboard, opened it, and seized the half-empty bag of Snausages.

Editor's note: snausages.

Social Grooming (RL/SB, PG), for pingrid

"Ow! Remus, that hurts!"
"Don't be such a baby, Sirius."
"Well it does."
"Sit. Be a good dog."
"Shut up, asshole."
"Look, it's not my fault you went wandering into the woods during tick season last time you animagusized yourself."
"I couldn't help it. There was this rabbit..."
"Sit still, damn it! Do you want Lyme disease?"
"Nobody names a disease after a fruit. You made that up."
"No I didn't. It's painful and incurable. Much like your sense of humor."
"Ha very ha."
"Merlin, you've got a lot of hair -- why couldn't your animagus form be a chihuahua? This would be so much easier if you could turn into something that was bald and weighed six ounces."
"But I'd have such a tiny little --"
"Oh stop. Ok, your back's done. Roll over."
"I love it when you say that."
"Yes, well, time enough for that when we've gotten these little suckers off you."
"I know what I'd like to have sucking on me..."
"Sirius -- wait --"
"I can't. I can't wait any longer."
"Mmmmm…"
"Mmmmmmmm…"

Whiter shade of pale (HG/LM, PG), for chthonya

She thinks about it all the time. She tries her best not to, but the most unexpected things remind her: milk pouring from a pitcher; clean sheets spread over a bed, their whiteness gleaming in the sun; the fur of an Arctic fox at the London Zoo. Spiderwebs. Shafts of silvery moonlight arrowing nightly across the darkness of her bed in Gryffindor Tower.

Brushing her coarse, bushy locks in the Gryffindor common room in the mornings, her fingertips tingle at the imagined sensation of long, silky strands sliding through them. She overhears a voice: "Oh yeah, he’s here to see Draco." A laugh. "Making sure his arrogance is up to the Malfoy standard, I expect." A shiver sweeps through her; she closes her eyes and grips the edge of the porcelain sink, but the sensation of cool smooth whiteness so exactly corresponds to the image haunting her mind that she opens her eyes with a gasp.

Picking up her bookbag she slips out of the room, determined to take the less-used corridors to remove any chance of encountering him – surely he won’t stay long – and hide out in one of the small sitting rooms until he leaves. She opens the door to the first one she finds; a cursory glance around the small room confirms its emptiness, so she enters, closes the door behind her. A fire burns on the hearth; a tall chair facing it sits beside a small table, an oval of lace draped over the back, and –

She stops. No. Not lace. A pale hand rests on the arm of the chair and now she hears it, the slow, even breathing of sleep. She drifts closer, more silent than one of the Hogwarts ghosts. Without consciously willing it, her hand stretches out towards the long hair flowing like molten white gold over the velvet upholstery, the tingling in her fingertips now an ache that throbs in time with her heartbeat. She runs her palm over it lightly, then carefully, gently, gathers it into a rope in both hands; it’s more sensual than she could possibly have imagined, fine and thick, and it runs across her fingers like quicksilver. She closes her eyes, inhales its cool spicy scent, imagines it shimmering across naked skin...

The sleeper shifts in the chair. She leaps swiftly back, putting her hands behind her, and the hair falls back into place, more like a liquid than a solid. His head turns, revealing closed eyes, the crescent of silvery eyelashes brushing the aristocratic cheekbones, the sharp planes of his pale, proud face. She stands frozen as he awakens, opens his eyes, looks at her coldly.

"Miss Granger," he says with unmistakable contempt. "What an unexpected...pleasure."

"Mr. Malfoy," she manages to stammer out. "I was...looking for...just leaving." She darts from the room, and as she half-walks, half-runs down the hall, her mind fills with snow and white silk and moonlight, and she knows that nothing will be enough for her, ever again.

Lunacy (LL gen, G), for pot_of_coffee

Luna drifted down the stairs, humming a song about goblins. It was quite a nice little song, and the tune was catchy, so she wasn't surprised that the Wrackspurts had left it for her when they passed through her head earlier that morning.

She hopped on one leg down the first three steps, then on the other leg down the next three, then went backwards down the last seven. You had to do that on days that fell on a full moon and were a multiple of 8, otherwise the Sloons would eat the toes off all your socks leaving you useless tubes of wool. Of course, then you could turn the tubes into sweaters for Eccles Worms (the ones whose tongues poke the holes in Eccles cakes). But that was a chancy business, as the worms didn't really care for any color but purple, and Luna had very few purple socks.

Still humming, thinking about pudding for lunch, she skipped down the hall and around the corner, running BANG into Harry and knocking them both to the ground.

Harry lay there blinking for a moment. "Ow."

"Are you all right?" Luna asked.

"Yeah, sure." Harry rose and brushed off the seat of his trousers. "Are you OK?"

"I didn’t knock your shadow off, did I?" she asked anxiously.

Harry raised both eyebrows. Accustomed as he had become to Luna’s strange statements, this was a bit much. "My...sorry, what was that again?"

"They keep coming loose, I know," Luna said sympathetically. "I have the same problem. My father had a friend who completely lost his once – it got knocked loose during a Quidditch match and he didn’t stop to pick it up, so it got away. He had a terrible time with crows for the rest of his life."

Entirely at sea, Harry stared at her. "Crows? Why crows?"

"Because your shadow’s where you store all your memories of black things, of course. So when a crow flew by, he didn’t know what it was. He used to get very frustrated with himself. We told him over and over, but with nowhere to store the memory he couldn’t keep it in his head. He had the same trouble with watermelon seeds, but since he didn’t like watermelon he didn’t run into them as often."

"Ah, right. I should have known. Obvious, really." Harry paused. "So, just out of curiosity, what does one do when one’s shadow gets knocked off?"

Luna gazed at him in mild surprise. "Sew it back on, of course. Just there, on the soles of the feet. I learned how from my great-grandmother, Granny Wendy. She had had quite a bit of practice with a boy she knew when she was a little girl."

Harry grinned at her. He couldn’t help it. She was completely mental, of course, but great fun. "You’re wonderful, Luna, you know that?"

She turned slightly pink. "Thank you, Harry."

Disaster planning for life-impaired individuals

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:56:30 GMT

The University of Florida has a disaster plan for dealing with zombie behavior spectrum disorder (ZBSD). Or rather, it had one. Alas, college officials (who clearly have no sense of humor) yanked the file after it got national attention. Fortunately, like zombies themselves, internet postings never die, so you can still view it here.

Bread and circuses and Christians, oh my!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:40:06 GMT

Wow, talk about decadence. Just finished Anthony Burgess' Kingdom of the Wicked, about the Roman Empire during the first years of Christianity. (To give myself extra immersion, I also watched the old Masterpiece Theatre series I, Claudius in my spare time -- Patrick Stewart as a Very Sexy Evil Guy with hair!! Mr Ollivander as mad emperor Caligula!! Squee!! -- and tried to think in Latin. I am apparently a method reader.)

Anyhoo, the book was great fun. The history of Christianity as told by...perhaps P. J. O'Rourke? Or Bill Bryson? Here's a sample, about Paul and his efforts to convert the men of Ephesus, a hotbed of goddess worship. The craftsmen who make the little icons of Diana/Artemis are none too pleased with this idea:

So Demetrius and some of his fellow craftsmen held a meeting in Demetrius' workshop the following morning. This was a large shed full of fires, where some men poured molten metal into moulds and others cracked cold moulds open to reveal the smirking godlingess. Demetrius said:

"Look, friends, this is our trade. This is how we make our money."

"In your instance, a lot of money."

Demetrius ignored that. "We're all involved in the worship of the goddess, blessed be her holy name and sacred influence. This man Paul is telling everybody that there's no such thing as gods made by hand. Before we know where we are he'll have the damned temple pulled down and the traffic stopped."

"Traffic?"

"You know what I mean. The holy pilgrimages from all over Greece and Asia. This is our bread, friends."

"He's blaspheming against precious metal. So we --?"

"Stop him."

Thus it was that Paul and some of his fellow Christians were dragged to the Ephesian temple by the militant guild of silversmiths, aided by a rabble that did not need to be hired, for the gratuitous manhandling of foreigners is always both a virtue and a pleasure in provincial towns where, anyway, there is little to do in the evenings. Silas, fearful in the ruddy flare of the torches, seeing the mound of the goddess' huge belly threatening twenty feet above his eyes, panicked in the belief that they were to be sacrificed to her, Christian blood to be smeared laboriously over her polymastic or multimammial rotundity. He began to hit out...The mob, always suggestible, hit out too in the same directions, and one brawny lad shouted to Paul, "That's right, give to these impious Cretans or whatever they do be called!"

Heeeee. It's all (so far as I can tell) accurate historically in terms of events, but the dialog and attitudes were great fun. Not that Paul and the rest of the apostles aren't sincere, just that they're a bit muddle-headed; for example, everyone's puzzled when Paul starts to get suspicious of women (heh, go figure).

So next I'm going to tackle Gore Vidal's Julian, a historical novel about the Emperor Julian's changes to Christianity some 300 years later. With all this Roman stuff I feel I should be nibbling grape leaves. I have drunk a lot of wine lately, does that count?

Arachne Climbs Mt. Pope

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:10:19 GMT

Ha ha ha the Pope ha hehahaaa a spider ha heeh heeeee the music ouch it hurts I'm laffing...

Team Stephen King*

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:09:01 GMT

Squeeee! wicked_visions has done a new set of anti-Twilight icons. Go. See. Giggle.

* Because of his comment on J.K. Rowling vs. Stephenie Meyer (at end of 2d para). Hahahahaaaa!

Strangers (not on a train)

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:32:39 GMT

Strangers, by Anita Brookner. Another minute examination of character. She's good, of course, as always; brilliant at describing nuances of emotion to a microscopic degree, like fine pen-and-ink sketches. I enjoy her books because I often identify with their main characters: quiet, bookish women, observers of life rather than livers of it, baffled but admiring spectators of the more irresponsible, egotistic, demanding women around them, who seem to be almost a different species from themselves. (Although I must admit I meet fewer of those as I get older; perhaps they don't wear well...)

But this wasn't one of her best, I thought. For one thing, there's a man, Sturgis, as the central character and she's better with women. For another, Sturgis -- a man in his seventies, alone and occasionally lonely, meditating on what it means to grow old without family or close friends, who finally decides to strike out and try something new, even though he admits to himself it may be too late -- doesn't seem to have enough complexity to sustain such a lengthy exploration. He goes in mental circles quite a bit. Hotel du Lac, the one she won the Booker Prize for and which I still measure all her novels against, has Edith Hope, a very complex, self-analytical main character who learns some crucial truths about herself in the course of the book; Sturgis just doesn't seem to have the same depth, nor does he seem to come to any profound self-realization. It could be of course that I read Hotel du Lac at a B&B in Germany while my ex and I were on our honeymoon; that tends to lend things a romantic and satisfying aura. But I've revisited it several times and it's held up very, very well indeed. (Much better, in fact, than my ex...)

So meh; it's ok for a rainy Sunday afternoon but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. If you want to try a Brookner go for Hotel du Lac, or The Debut, or Brief Lives.

Whatever you do, don't...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:41:46 GMT

...spend your time reading The Book of God and Physics. What a complete waste of about four hours of my life (I skimmed the last 125 pages, very VERY quickly). I was eagerly looking forward to a good find-and-decipher-the-ancient-document page-turner and suffered a disappointment of colossal proportions. The book has the extra zing of being about the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious document which does in fact exist (it currently resides peacefully at Yale's Beineke Library after centuries of exotic travel with the Jesuits), and which has defied translation for five hundred years. You'd think that would make the book more interesting. Sadly, such is not the case. The reader is force-fed gobstopper-size chunks of exposition and AYKB, much of which is irrelevant to the plot; as if that weren't bad enough, the dialog is so stilted as to seem laughable, the characters as two-dimensional as paper dolls, and the logic trail so convoluted that Umberto Eco looks like "See Spot run" by comparison.¹

(Parenthetically, I feel compelled to observe that the intelligent and exacting Jesuits deserve better than the loopy protag in this book. This, for example, or this.)

The book is translated from the Spanish, and the most charitable thing I can say is that they should have sprung for a much, MUCH better translator; alas, even that I'm not sure would have saved it. Clearly William Morrow decided to publish The Book of God and Physics because they thought it had all the necessary elements for a U.S. blockbuster: a) a mysterious manuscript b) intrepid amateur sleuths criss-crossing Europe to follow obscure clues and c) a conspiracy perpetrated by religious power-mongers (in this case, fundamentalist Christians in the US). Da Vinci Code, anyone?

Two thumbs down and a resounding "Pfffffft" for good measure. And I bet they try to make a movie out of it.

1. "Q: What do you get if you cross Umberto Eco with the Godfather? A: An offer you can't understand."

Kissing the Witch

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:15:02 GMT

Wow. This was awesome. Got it on loan from a co-worker and tore through the whole thing last night and this morning. The subtitle is "Old tales in new skins" and boy does it deliver! Thirteen classic fairy tales stunningly reinterpreted, from "Beauty and the Beast" to "The Little Mermaid," linked together in a chain of stories. The female characters are clearly the stars of the show, and although they're not all heroines or self-rescuing princesses or even wise, some of them, they're most definitely three-dimensional, real, vibrant women. Like Tanith Lee's Tales from the Sisters Grimmer, it's as if someone shattered a book of fairy tales and created a mosaic out of the fragments -- shivery, sensual, disturbing, wonderful, frightening, exhilarating, and infinitely intriguing.