Return of the memes and poems
Oh hey, it's Terry Pratchett's birthday! (Tumblr has handily taken over the duties of informing me of important world events, now that LJ has gotten so quiet...) So, yeah, happy birthday to Sir Terry! In honor of the occasion, the Discworld meme goes first today:
Discworld Meme:
Day 11 - Favourite actor (both TV and the official stage adaptations?)
I really liked Marc Warren as Teatime in Hogfather. I'm calling him out as favorite because this was one portrayal that made me appreciate/enjoy his character more than I did just from reading the book (and I can't think of another case like that with Discworld adaptations).
I also liked Charles Dance as Vetinari in (what I've seen of) Going Postal, though the gingerness was a source of constant double-taking, I have to admit. But mainly I liked him because of the opportunity for this icon (made by lunylucy for meeee):
Day 12 - Favourite actress (both TV and the official stage adaptations?)
Michelle Dockery as Susan Sto Helit in Hogfather. She was great, and also, as with Teatime, she actually made me care about Susan more (I'm one of the small minority of Pratchett readers who do not naturally fangirl Susan, apparently).
Vorkosigan Meme:
Day 11: Who would you ship with yourself?
Embarrassingly, I've had an answer to this for a really long time: Duv Galeni. No, shut up, we totally have tons of stuff in common. I noticed a long time ago that IRL all my closest friends (including B) are people who are between cultures or from more than one culture in one way or another -- first generation immigrants who came to the country where they grew up as children, or second-generation immigrants from families where the "old country" culture was dominant -- so Galeni's background is just right. He's got a dry sense of humour I adore (my favorite quote is something he said, after all), is very erudite (a history professor before he embarked on a second career), is deeply passionate about something I could find pretty interesting, and is definitely someone you could count and rely on. Also, while I wouldn't want to live there because of the domes and Barrayaran occupation thing, I do really like Komarran culture -- I think it appeals to me most of the three main planets we've seen, so that would be another positive. And there would be no annoying mucking about with traditional romantic gestures and what-not. On a more serious note, I think part of what attracts me to Galeni, both as a character and as a potential fictional mate (shut up, these are vital questions, OK) is the way he handles adversity. The role he's chosen to play in Komarr-Barrayaran relations is something I can admire, and I also think that of the numerous characters who've dealt with personal issues and trauma in the Vorkosigan series, Galeni is the one who's dealt with them in a way that, while maybe objectively not the best (if there's even such a thing when it comes to human psyche and dealing), is the one which I find most understandable and most compatible.
In short: lunasariel and ikel89, you need to read Brothers in Arms already so I can introduce you to my fictional husband, OK?
Day 12: Favorite moment in the series!
This is hard! It's hard not to default to SHOPPING, because it's a moment that basically defined CMoA (but also, with Vorkosiverse subtelty, acknowledges more than just Cordelia's badassity, but also the human cost and the wonderful interpersonal relationships involved, between Aral and Cordelia, and even Piotr. So, it's a great moment.
But my favorite, I think, is probably the dinner party in A Civil Campaign, especially the exact moment when Miles realizes what Mark and Ma Kosti have him feeding his guests, because it's a moment that makes me laugh out loud, and then all hell breaks loose, but everyone involved is still very much themselves and very human and there's poignancy underscoring the hilarious hijinks.
Dragaera Meme:
Day 11. Favorite narrator
Definitely Vlad. Paarfi can be fun, but mostly in small doses. And while they are both unreliable narrators, and I love that aspect of the series, I find that I tend to question Paarfi a lot more (probably because I started reading Vlad before I figured out the unreliable narrator thing, but Paarfi came much later, so I was much more on the lookout for it), which means I feel more removed from the story. And also I just like Vlad's first-person smartass and conversations with Loiosh.
I must also say that I didn't really mind Savn's POV in Athyra (though I did keep wondering who was narrating it, as I did with Tiassa 2), and also didn't particularly love Kiera's in her sections of Orca.
Day 12. How did you come to read the Dragaera books?
For the Vlad books, I don't remember the exact time, but I remember where I found them -- it was in the Ortega library, because I have a very clear memory of the sci-fi paperback rack -- these were still the rectangular black wire racks, not the round turn-y things that eventually replace them -- picking up a copy of Jhereg (or possibly Taltos), being a bit skeptical about the assassin protagonist thing -- and giving it a shot. I think I was in high school, mostly by the process of elimination, because I vaguely remember this trip to the library involving a walk, and if I'd been in middleschool still it wouldn't have, since the library was right across from my school, and when I was in college (well, year 2 of college and beyond) and hanging out with B, I was mostly frequenting the Parkside library next to his apartment. So, this must've been some time between 1992 and 1997.
I must've been sufficiently intrigued to read a cuple more books. I know I read Taltos and Teckla and Phoenix, and I'm pretty sure I skipped Yendi at the time, unless I managed to forget it very thoroughly. I was still following the series 10 years later, in that "when I come across a book" way; once I started on LJ, it became much easier to keep track, so I know I read Issola in 2004 and Dzur in 2007 (causing me to reread Taltos and Phoenix), and then I caught up on Dragon, and then in 2009 I went on a reread of the earlier books (and reading Yendi for probably the first time) and read Jhegaala, and then 2011 kicked off my current obsessive levels of fannishness (2.33 years and counting) with reading Iorich, and then the Paarfi books, and then rereading everything basically.
But an interesting thing is, back in 2007 I was apparently convinced that my exposure to The Phoenix Guards came first. That I remember happening in high school for sure, because it was one of the books I started reading when hanging out in the Crown Books that was on the way between school and home for me, where I would go to hang out for a couple of hours when walking back. That was how I read The Princess Bride, and where I first saw the ASOIAF books (though I bypassed them, because the "funny English" approach to names and things like "ser" turned me off at the time). I started reading The Phoenix Guards there, too, though I didn't get very far. I was grabbed by the Three Musketeers conceit, but then I got to the random Russian phrase that Pel says -- so completely and utterly random XD -- and that was a bit too weird and I quit there.
*
Project: Greetings from the Myriad:
Today's poems are a thematic rather than time-based compilation. Quite frequently while studying something in science I would be moved to song doggerel, either for the purposes of relieving the boredom of studying or because I genuinely liked the concept or... whatever. So here are some of those, in chronological order:
42 (Entropy Song)
I'm neither negligent
Nor plain messy - no!
But somebody intelligent
Once made up a law.
This is not a simple verse,
It's a scholar's rhyme:
Entropy in the universe
Increases all the time!
No matter how one tries
To clean up and organize
To sort his life by shelves and bins --
Order loses, chaos wins.
Burn, my friends, agendas, schedules,
Minutes, planners -- yes!
Crackle! crackle! and let's head, y'all,
Into a splendid mess!
This is not a simple verse,
It's a scholar's rhyme:
Entropy in the universe
Increases all the time!
On the first day two cells fused,
Things got awfully confused,
But one rule has held true since --
Order loses, chaos wins!
Merrily, merrily, into the jungles!
Dance and leap and laugh and play!
Our world's a grand old jumble,
Getting jumbler every day!
This is not a simple verse,
It's a scholar's rhyme:
Entropy in the universe
Increases all the time!
From Big Bang to Bigger Boom
One thing just we may assume:
Universe-roulette wheel spins --
Order loses, chaos wins!
9/20/95
As you can tell, this came about when I first learned about thermodynamics (in AP Physics, I guess? I thought it would've been AP Chem, but the dates don't work out). The Second Law has always been my favorite, and that was the first expression of my fondness for it. The "42" in the title is, of course, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
Later, when we got to Electricity and Magnetism, I stopped enjoying physics quite so much, but somehow that ended up translating into a country-western song:
E&M Country-Western Song
I been walking a circuit
Where capacitors lurkEd
And where savage potentials jumped,
Where in loops dark and damp
Wriggled slimy li'l Amps
And the various things that go bump
In the circuit
Through tornado and torrent
I went chasing the current
Though it split to confuse up its trail
Dunno why I shoulda cared,
But by Coulomb and by Farad,
I will track it down and ride on its tail
Through the circuit
So ignoring the vistas
I been scaling resistors,
Jumping clear 'cross capacitors' gaps.
Ain't planning to quit
Till the Emf seat
And I could go further perhaps
Through the circuit
Round me circle them vultures
But I follow the voltage
Far away from my folk and my home
If the current won't stop
I will saddle it up
And its rear I will brand with an ohm
In the circuit!
Spring 1996
Lest you think I matured any in the next 3 years, here's proof to the contrary:
Catalyst
Not in dark and dreary forests,
Not in castles swathed in mist --
In pellets microporous
There dwells a catalyst.
It has no need for languor,
Its character is firm,
It bravely scaled the Langmuir
Adsorption isotherm.
It does not graze on clover,
Out in the pasture field,
And each time it turns over,
It multiplies our yield.
It does not sleep in hallways,
But labours for our bliss.
Remember, children: Always
Respect the catalyst.
Spring 1999
I really loved my Kinetics class, but the professor (the one I'm half convinced Elxa Dal in the Kingkiller Chronicles is based on) gave killer exams, so I spent a lot of time studying for the final, and the ditty above was one of the side-effects. I actually wrote it out and either slipped it under his office door (anonymously) or pinned it to the corkboard outside his office, I forget which. I just remember than my friend VT (who was taking the same class) felt left out and wrote a kinetics-based haiku and did the same with it.
The last example comes from my summer internship at Company the summer between my junior and senior years. The department I was attached to had gotten an automatic titrator, and it was my job to set it up, calibrate it, train the permanent lab techs in its use, and write up some work instructions, stuff like that. This meant I was in the lab by myself for hours at a time, and I've always found that an empty lab, like the shower, is a place conducive to poetry. So, I wrote a really long poem about an autotitrator:
On an Autotitrator
I.
Poison palette, lollipop bright.
Liquid petals brimming
primly
in the confines of their plastic sheaths --
a wreath
of acid cider:
bromide mint,
cobalt blue and pink,
twinkling, the tint
of cotton candy
puffs,
buffers the color of cough
syrup, permanganate
ripening to pomegranate,
the warm brandy
of iodide
II.
Decarapaced.
Naked tentacles tangle and twitch,
slurping and spitting by turns;
the downcast eye
burns
red;
blades blur
into a circle of sound,
rising in pitch.
Each
bound, auxiliary stalk
exhilirated by its usefulness to the opaque
tethered shaft,
grafted into the dazed,
distant brain,
straining to taste
the sampled universe with its delicate glass nose,
entempled in the scepter of the Teflon triclaw,
beaded with dry
dew,
flaw-
less, geometrical rose,
milky blue, like a mollusk's eye.
III.
emptiness
drips
into the sliding stillness,
steeps,
and fills
invisibly;
with a
trigger-sweep --
the tide
rises;
hollow eyes,
nestled like mushrooms on the gliding plate,
breathe
frog-like, dilate and
contract;
transparent worms
writhe,
undulate
downward
through the viscous air,
sketching and stretching marvelous forms,
refracted in curved
glass,
then
fade
down here,
where light dares not pass
the walls of the amber cocoon;
the dull braid,
a steel bole,
rooted in deeper soil,
recoils,
in soft, silent fall,
then surges
upward,
slide
by striding
slide, vainly
straining
to purge
itself, but never draining to full
emptiness
Summer 1999
Because I am a crazy person, I showed the poem to the engineer who was in charge of me, and probably other people in the department. They recommended me for hire anyway, so I guess it worked out.
Discworld Meme:
Day 11 - Favourite actor (both TV and the official stage adaptations?)
I really liked Marc Warren as Teatime in Hogfather. I'm calling him out as favorite because this was one portrayal that made me appreciate/enjoy his character more than I did just from reading the book (and I can't think of another case like that with Discworld adaptations).
I also liked Charles Dance as Vetinari in (what I've seen of) Going Postal, though the gingerness was a source of constant double-taking, I have to admit. But mainly I liked him because of the opportunity for this icon (made by lunylucy for meeee):
Day 12 - Favourite actress (both TV and the official stage adaptations?)
Michelle Dockery as Susan Sto Helit in Hogfather. She was great, and also, as with Teatime, she actually made me care about Susan more (I'm one of the small minority of Pratchett readers who do not naturally fangirl Susan, apparently).
Vorkosigan Meme:
Day 11: Who would you ship with yourself?
Embarrassingly, I've had an answer to this for a really long time: Duv Galeni. No, shut up, we totally have tons of stuff in common. I noticed a long time ago that IRL all my closest friends (including B) are people who are between cultures or from more than one culture in one way or another -- first generation immigrants who came to the country where they grew up as children, or second-generation immigrants from families where the "old country" culture was dominant -- so Galeni's background is just right. He's got a dry sense of humour I adore (my favorite quote is something he said, after all), is very erudite (a history professor before he embarked on a second career), is deeply passionate about something I could find pretty interesting, and is definitely someone you could count and rely on. Also, while I wouldn't want to live there because of the domes and Barrayaran occupation thing, I do really like Komarran culture -- I think it appeals to me most of the three main planets we've seen, so that would be another positive. And there would be no annoying mucking about with traditional romantic gestures and what-not. On a more serious note, I think part of what attracts me to Galeni, both as a character and as a potential fictional mate (shut up, these are vital questions, OK) is the way he handles adversity. The role he's chosen to play in Komarr-Barrayaran relations is something I can admire, and I also think that of the numerous characters who've dealt with personal issues and trauma in the Vorkosigan series, Galeni is the one who's dealt with them in a way that, while maybe objectively not the best (if there's even such a thing when it comes to human psyche and dealing), is the one which I find most understandable and most compatible.
In short: lunasariel and ikel89, you need to read Brothers in Arms already so I can introduce you to my fictional husband, OK?
Day 12: Favorite moment in the series!
This is hard! It's hard not to default to SHOPPING, because it's a moment that basically defined CMoA (but also, with Vorkosiverse subtelty, acknowledges more than just Cordelia's badassity, but also the human cost and the wonderful interpersonal relationships involved, between Aral and Cordelia, and even Piotr. So, it's a great moment.
But my favorite, I think, is probably the dinner party in A Civil Campaign, especially the exact moment when Miles realizes what Mark and Ma Kosti have him feeding his guests, because it's a moment that makes me laugh out loud, and then all hell breaks loose, but everyone involved is still very much themselves and very human and there's poignancy underscoring the hilarious hijinks.
Dragaera Meme:
Day 11. Favorite narrator
Definitely Vlad. Paarfi can be fun, but mostly in small doses. And while they are both unreliable narrators, and I love that aspect of the series, I find that I tend to question Paarfi a lot more (probably because I started reading Vlad before I figured out the unreliable narrator thing, but Paarfi came much later, so I was much more on the lookout for it), which means I feel more removed from the story. And also I just like Vlad's first-person smartass and conversations with Loiosh.
I must also say that I didn't really mind Savn's POV in Athyra (though I did keep wondering who was narrating it, as I did with Tiassa 2), and also didn't particularly love Kiera's in her sections of Orca.
Day 12. How did you come to read the Dragaera books?
For the Vlad books, I don't remember the exact time, but I remember where I found them -- it was in the Ortega library, because I have a very clear memory of the sci-fi paperback rack -- these were still the rectangular black wire racks, not the round turn-y things that eventually replace them -- picking up a copy of Jhereg (or possibly Taltos), being a bit skeptical about the assassin protagonist thing -- and giving it a shot. I think I was in high school, mostly by the process of elimination, because I vaguely remember this trip to the library involving a walk, and if I'd been in middleschool still it wouldn't have, since the library was right across from my school, and when I was in college (well, year 2 of college and beyond) and hanging out with B, I was mostly frequenting the Parkside library next to his apartment. So, this must've been some time between 1992 and 1997.
I must've been sufficiently intrigued to read a cuple more books. I know I read Taltos and Teckla and Phoenix, and I'm pretty sure I skipped Yendi at the time, unless I managed to forget it very thoroughly. I was still following the series 10 years later, in that "when I come across a book" way; once I started on LJ, it became much easier to keep track, so I know I read Issola in 2004 and Dzur in 2007 (causing me to reread Taltos and Phoenix), and then I caught up on Dragon, and then in 2009 I went on a reread of the earlier books (and reading Yendi for probably the first time) and read Jhegaala, and then 2011 kicked off my current obsessive levels of fannishness (2.33 years and counting) with reading Iorich, and then the Paarfi books, and then rereading everything basically.
But an interesting thing is, back in 2007 I was apparently convinced that my exposure to The Phoenix Guards came first. That I remember happening in high school for sure, because it was one of the books I started reading when hanging out in the Crown Books that was on the way between school and home for me, where I would go to hang out for a couple of hours when walking back. That was how I read The Princess Bride, and where I first saw the ASOIAF books (though I bypassed them, because the "funny English" approach to names and things like "ser" turned me off at the time). I started reading The Phoenix Guards there, too, though I didn't get very far. I was grabbed by the Three Musketeers conceit, but then I got to the random Russian phrase that Pel says -- so completely and utterly random XD -- and that was a bit too weird and I quit there.
*
Project: Greetings from the Myriad:
Today's poems are a thematic rather than time-based compilation. Quite frequently while studying something in science I would be moved to song doggerel, either for the purposes of relieving the boredom of studying or because I genuinely liked the concept or... whatever. So here are some of those, in chronological order:
42 (Entropy Song)
I'm neither negligent
Nor plain messy - no!
But somebody intelligent
Once made up a law.
This is not a simple verse,
It's a scholar's rhyme:
Entropy in the universe
Increases all the time!
No matter how one tries
To clean up and organize
To sort his life by shelves and bins --
Order loses, chaos wins.
Burn, my friends, agendas, schedules,
Minutes, planners -- yes!
Crackle! crackle! and let's head, y'all,
Into a splendid mess!
This is not a simple verse,
It's a scholar's rhyme:
Entropy in the universe
Increases all the time!
On the first day two cells fused,
Things got awfully confused,
But one rule has held true since --
Order loses, chaos wins!
Merrily, merrily, into the jungles!
Dance and leap and laugh and play!
Our world's a grand old jumble,
Getting jumbler every day!
This is not a simple verse,
It's a scholar's rhyme:
Entropy in the universe
Increases all the time!
From Big Bang to Bigger Boom
One thing just we may assume:
Universe-roulette wheel spins --
Order loses, chaos wins!
9/20/95
As you can tell, this came about when I first learned about thermodynamics (in AP Physics, I guess? I thought it would've been AP Chem, but the dates don't work out). The Second Law has always been my favorite, and that was the first expression of my fondness for it. The "42" in the title is, of course, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
Later, when we got to Electricity and Magnetism, I stopped enjoying physics quite so much, but somehow that ended up translating into a country-western song:
E&M Country-Western Song
I been walking a circuit
Where capacitors lurkEd
And where savage potentials jumped,
Where in loops dark and damp
Wriggled slimy li'l Amps
And the various things that go bump
In the circuit
Through tornado and torrent
I went chasing the current
Though it split to confuse up its trail
Dunno why I shoulda cared,
But by Coulomb and by Farad,
I will track it down and ride on its tail
Through the circuit
So ignoring the vistas
I been scaling resistors,
Jumping clear 'cross capacitors' gaps.
Ain't planning to quit
Till the Emf seat
And I could go further perhaps
Through the circuit
Round me circle them vultures
But I follow the voltage
Far away from my folk and my home
If the current won't stop
I will saddle it up
And its rear I will brand with an ohm
In the circuit!
Spring 1996
Lest you think I matured any in the next 3 years, here's proof to the contrary:
Catalyst
Not in dark and dreary forests,
Not in castles swathed in mist --
In pellets microporous
There dwells a catalyst.
It has no need for languor,
Its character is firm,
It bravely scaled the Langmuir
Adsorption isotherm.
It does not graze on clover,
Out in the pasture field,
And each time it turns over,
It multiplies our yield.
It does not sleep in hallways,
But labours for our bliss.
Remember, children: Always
Respect the catalyst.
Spring 1999
I really loved my Kinetics class, but the professor (the one I'm half convinced Elxa Dal in the Kingkiller Chronicles is based on) gave killer exams, so I spent a lot of time studying for the final, and the ditty above was one of the side-effects. I actually wrote it out and either slipped it under his office door (anonymously) or pinned it to the corkboard outside his office, I forget which. I just remember than my friend VT (who was taking the same class) felt left out and wrote a kinetics-based haiku and did the same with it.
The last example comes from my summer internship at Company the summer between my junior and senior years. The department I was attached to had gotten an automatic titrator, and it was my job to set it up, calibrate it, train the permanent lab techs in its use, and write up some work instructions, stuff like that. This meant I was in the lab by myself for hours at a time, and I've always found that an empty lab, like the shower, is a place conducive to poetry. So, I wrote a really long poem about an autotitrator:
On an Autotitrator
I.
Poison palette, lollipop bright.
Liquid petals brimming
primly
in the confines of their plastic sheaths --
a wreath
of acid cider:
bromide mint,
cobalt blue and pink,
twinkling, the tint
of cotton candy
puffs,
buffers the color of cough
syrup, permanganate
ripening to pomegranate,
the warm brandy
of iodide
II.
Decarapaced.
Naked tentacles tangle and twitch,
slurping and spitting by turns;
the downcast eye
burns
red;
blades blur
into a circle of sound,
rising in pitch.
Each
bound, auxiliary stalk
exhilirated by its usefulness to the opaque
tethered shaft,
grafted into the dazed,
distant brain,
straining to taste
the sampled universe with its delicate glass nose,
entempled in the scepter of the Teflon triclaw,
beaded with dry
dew,
flaw-
less, geometrical rose,
milky blue, like a mollusk's eye.
III.
emptiness
drips
into the sliding stillness,
steeps,
and fills
invisibly;
with a
trigger-sweep --
the tide
rises;
hollow eyes,
nestled like mushrooms on the gliding plate,
breathe
frog-like, dilate and
contract;
transparent worms
writhe,
undulate
downward
through the viscous air,
sketching and stretching marvelous forms,
refracted in curved
glass,
then
fade
down here,
where light dares not pass
the walls of the amber cocoon;
the dull braid,
a steel bole,
rooted in deeper soil,
recoils,
in soft, silent fall,
then surges
upward,
slide
by striding
slide, vainly
straining
to purge
itself, but never draining to full
emptiness
Summer 1999
Because I am a crazy person, I showed the poem to the engineer who was in charge of me, and probably other people in the department. They recommended me for hire anyway, so I guess it worked out.