Hello have a livejournal entry
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. (Please note: If you simply wish to comment on something I've said but don't want to participate in the meme, that is fine. I will only give you five words if you specifically comment with 'Words!')
So I got these from bell Lord Ivan the World's Loudest Cat is the greatest thing I have ever found on the street. Yes, even better than that five bucks. I found him near the end of March, when there was still snow outside, yowling loud enough one Sunday morning to wake me up at 6 AM after I'd been awake God knows how long (too, too late). I was still in law school at the time, and a few short months later I was very emphatically out of law school, unemployed, with no savings, and my parents on the other side of the country when Ivan got sick enough to require some expensive hospitalization, and I never regret taking the clumsy, loud, sometimes destructive, horribly shedding beast in. He's one of the most persistently affectionate, and ridiculously soft, cats I've ever met.
At the time I found him, I was in the middle of rereading Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, and his clumsiness, un-cat-like lack of subtlety and irrepresible personableness, even when randomly brought into a strange space with another, territorial, cat, caused him to be named after Lord Ivan Vorpatril, a favourite character not just for the humour he brings to the series, and for the foil he serves to cousin Miles, but because how /perfectly/ Bujold develops him. Primarily comic relief and a certain dimwitted annoyance, Ivan doesn't so much /evolve/ as Bujold slowly begins to reveal greater depths to the character, culminating in a drunken grieving for his dead cousin in Mirror Dance that speaks more through actions than any words (and adds a certain bite to the role he plays in the main conflict later, in A Civil Campaign.
I could talk about Ivan, and Bujold's sublime skill with character development, and how it compliments world development, societal development, familial development, but I am pretty sure I bullshit enough about Bujold on a regular basis to tangent off quite so drastically now.
Videogames are not my preferred medium for storytelling, but they are, without question, my favourite - or perhaps easiest - social-related form of experiencing stories. Possibly one of my favourite ways to socialize with people when I'm around them in person. I can only assume this dates back to when I was a very little girl and my father would sit me in his lap as he played King's Quest and Space Quest and Hero's Quest Quest for Glory, reading the dialogue boxes to me and explaining what he was doing, getting me excited about invading Baba Yaga's cottage or avoiding the randomly marauding witch. My little brother and I would often, if not play games together as we got older, hang over each other's shoulder during parts of game, offering advice and ideas. I can remember doing similar things with my older cousins, and my father showing them, with no little smugness, Wolfenstein 3D while all four of us gathered around the little computer screen, in awe. I don't actually /get/ a lot of what I really want from most games these days, especially with most of my focus going to consoles, but I get /something/. An alternative form of storytelling, sometimes something really quite good, and even, when I'm lucky, the chance to experience some of that with a friend, either offering commentary or experiencing the story together or puzzling through how to shoot Jesse James' severed hand.
And a new Monkey Island game is coming out /this month/ - a definite step on the way to more of what really does it for me in the realm of games that are not board or card.
Shakespeare is one of those things that a lot of people think is 'ruined' by high school. I tend to think a lot is just lost in the reading (although being taught by incompetents surely doesn't help). Shakespeare can't be filmed, it doesn't read well, and a lot of performances are mediocre or merely adequate. But sometimes, you really do get to witness something amazing - which, of course, can happen with any theatre, but there's something about Shakespeare, when done just right, that reminds you /why/ it's still performed, even though so many people are exposed to it at such levels that they have to question it. /I/ was skeptical about how good Shakespeare really was, until I was blown away by The Tempest. I think my little brother was, too - not a great lover of literature, my brother - but God knows he was enraptured by Hamlet (although that season he preferred The Importance of Being Earnest).
I own five T-shirts with Shakespeare quotations on them [for The Merchant of Venice (the caskets), A Midsummer Night's Dream (lord what fools these mortals be), Henry VI (first thing we do is kill all the lawyers), Twelfth Night (some are born great), As You Like It (all the world's a stage)] which is probably a sign there is something wrong with me.
Snark you know, I'm not sure there's anything to say about this, really? It seems like a word very much associated with what I used to do, in a vain attempt to make the internet like me, which never worked - bitch and mock things I didn't particularly like or found ridiculously flawed. I don't know. It's a word that seems co-opted a lot by wank communities and the like, which ... aren't, really. Not anymore. I don't know.
Snow is one of those things that Canadians bitch about, even in areas like this, because every spring brings with it a focussed amnesia where Canadians forget they live somewhere where it /fucking snows/ which requires things like - shovelling, plugging in cars, wearing mittens, and not driving like a dipshit. I hate hearing people /bitch/ about a fucking meteorlogical occurrence that is easily predictable and expected almost as much as I like watch it come down, save and warm in my house.
I still don't think I could ever really envision somewhere that it doesn't snow. It's too integral to my understanding of my environment.
I finished House of Leaves today. Genre-wise, I would say it's post-modern pretentions bullshit horror which doesn't mean it's bad. Of course, I finished it and I also wasn't sure it was /good/, although I think that's not the real dilemma. I think it's more that it's /decent/ and hyped when what the hype really boils down to is that the author really feels the need to hammer home how unreliable the narrative is (which, if you have ever sat in on a university English class, you should know you don't need to hammer home, or even intend, for readers to start speculating on, especially if they're bored/high/desperate for something new academics-in-training) and fills his book with Easter eggs, which are nice, if you're into deciphering codes and finding hidden messages ... but which don't really seem to alter or enhance the /story/ (except for in one part where I seriously think a sense of dread/terror/fear/anxiety was broken up by the fact I had to constantly turn the fucking book around to follow the text - which did not enhance, it detracted). They're just ... there if you want to take the trouble to find them.
I'm not sure - I have to think on it more to formulate a solid opinion. I can't speak to it as horror novel - I don't read horror enough to speak to the genre - and I hate pretentious pomo bullshit with a significant number of being fibres that I can't really say how well it does or doesn't work on that level, either.
After finishing it, I went on to read BOOKS WITH PICTURES.
Courtney Crumrin and the Monstrous Holiday in which there are werewolves and vampires and art full of lovely solid blacks and some truly astonishing backgrounds (I really appreciated that - a lot of stuff, especially small print indie stuff like this, sort of shafts the background, but there are some parts, especially in the second chapter, where castles and hallways with glorious arches are laborously, lovingly detailed). It's a melancholy little book and while certain plot twists are so obvious to the reader they can hardly be called such, the narrative doesn't give the typical easy outs, and under the werewolves and vampires is a sad story about a lost girl trying to find connection and family with an old man who's just trying to figure out how to be /there/ for her, even if he's not very good at it.
Which was followed by volume one of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service which is /great/ and I resolve to get more. The story follows a group of students at a Buddhist university who are having trouble finding suitable entry-level monk callings. When Ao Sasaki, a senior student and computer hacker, finds out that protagonist Kuro Karatsu can speak with dead bodies, she uses him as the core to build the titular company, along with Makato Numata, a dowser - but one who can only find dead bodies, Keiko Makino, an embalmer, and Yuji Tata a ... dude with a rude sock-puppet on his hand.
In one volume, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service has proven both fascinating (the premise is interesting, and there are some fascinating and well-researched notes in the editor's end notes) and /really really gross/. Unless you would like to find a different word to describe a naked reanimated corpse strangling a man to death while the corpse's eyeballs burst from the strain. The art is clean and attractive, the premise is absurb and allows for seriousness and batshit horror movie insanity (and an evil insurance adjuster) and it is definitely a winner.
Which is a bit of a relief. I was worried that between Naoki Urasawa and Junji Ito I was broken for life. Luckily, I can still appreciate the wholesome adventures of some teenagers in a van hauling bodies around Tokyo.
So I got these from bell Lord Ivan the World's Loudest Cat is the greatest thing I have ever found on the street. Yes, even better than that five bucks. I found him near the end of March, when there was still snow outside, yowling loud enough one Sunday morning to wake me up at 6 AM after I'd been awake God knows how long (too, too late). I was still in law school at the time, and a few short months later I was very emphatically out of law school, unemployed, with no savings, and my parents on the other side of the country when Ivan got sick enough to require some expensive hospitalization, and I never regret taking the clumsy, loud, sometimes destructive, horribly shedding beast in. He's one of the most persistently affectionate, and ridiculously soft, cats I've ever met.
At the time I found him, I was in the middle of rereading Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, and his clumsiness, un-cat-like lack of subtlety and irrepresible personableness, even when randomly brought into a strange space with another, territorial, cat, caused him to be named after Lord Ivan Vorpatril, a favourite character not just for the humour he brings to the series, and for the foil he serves to cousin Miles, but because how /perfectly/ Bujold develops him. Primarily comic relief and a certain dimwitted annoyance, Ivan doesn't so much /evolve/ as Bujold slowly begins to reveal greater depths to the character, culminating in a drunken grieving for his dead cousin in Mirror Dance that speaks more through actions than any words (and adds a certain bite to the role he plays in the main conflict later, in A Civil Campaign.
I could talk about Ivan, and Bujold's sublime skill with character development, and how it compliments world development, societal development, familial development, but I am pretty sure I bullshit enough about Bujold on a regular basis to tangent off quite so drastically now.
Videogames are not my preferred medium for storytelling, but they are, without question, my favourite - or perhaps easiest - social-related form of experiencing stories. Possibly one of my favourite ways to socialize with people when I'm around them in person. I can only assume this dates back to when I was a very little girl and my father would sit me in his lap as he played King's Quest and Space Quest and Hero's Quest Quest for Glory, reading the dialogue boxes to me and explaining what he was doing, getting me excited about invading Baba Yaga's cottage or avoiding the randomly marauding witch. My little brother and I would often, if not play games together as we got older, hang over each other's shoulder during parts of game, offering advice and ideas. I can remember doing similar things with my older cousins, and my father showing them, with no little smugness, Wolfenstein 3D while all four of us gathered around the little computer screen, in awe. I don't actually /get/ a lot of what I really want from most games these days, especially with most of my focus going to consoles, but I get /something/. An alternative form of storytelling, sometimes something really quite good, and even, when I'm lucky, the chance to experience some of that with a friend, either offering commentary or experiencing the story together or puzzling through how to shoot Jesse James' severed hand.
And a new Monkey Island game is coming out /this month/ - a definite step on the way to more of what really does it for me in the realm of games that are not board or card.
Shakespeare is one of those things that a lot of people think is 'ruined' by high school. I tend to think a lot is just lost in the reading (although being taught by incompetents surely doesn't help). Shakespeare can't be filmed, it doesn't read well, and a lot of performances are mediocre or merely adequate. But sometimes, you really do get to witness something amazing - which, of course, can happen with any theatre, but there's something about Shakespeare, when done just right, that reminds you /why/ it's still performed, even though so many people are exposed to it at such levels that they have to question it. /I/ was skeptical about how good Shakespeare really was, until I was blown away by The Tempest. I think my little brother was, too - not a great lover of literature, my brother - but God knows he was enraptured by Hamlet (although that season he preferred The Importance of Being Earnest).
I own five T-shirts with Shakespeare quotations on them [for The Merchant of Venice (the caskets), A Midsummer Night's Dream (lord what fools these mortals be), Henry VI (first thing we do is kill all the lawyers), Twelfth Night (some are born great), As You Like It (all the world's a stage)] which is probably a sign there is something wrong with me.
Snark you know, I'm not sure there's anything to say about this, really? It seems like a word very much associated with what I used to do, in a vain attempt to make the internet like me, which never worked - bitch and mock things I didn't particularly like or found ridiculously flawed. I don't know. It's a word that seems co-opted a lot by wank communities and the like, which ... aren't, really. Not anymore. I don't know.
Snow is one of those things that Canadians bitch about, even in areas like this, because every spring brings with it a focussed amnesia where Canadians forget they live somewhere where it /fucking snows/ which requires things like - shovelling, plugging in cars, wearing mittens, and not driving like a dipshit. I hate hearing people /bitch/ about a fucking meteorlogical occurrence that is easily predictable and expected almost as much as I like watch it come down, save and warm in my house.
I still don't think I could ever really envision somewhere that it doesn't snow. It's too integral to my understanding of my environment.
I finished House of Leaves today. Genre-wise, I would say it's post-modern pretentions bullshit horror which doesn't mean it's bad. Of course, I finished it and I also wasn't sure it was /good/, although I think that's not the real dilemma. I think it's more that it's /decent/ and hyped when what the hype really boils down to is that the author really feels the need to hammer home how unreliable the narrative is (which, if you have ever sat in on a university English class, you should know you don't need to hammer home, or even intend, for readers to start speculating on, especially if they're bored/high/desperate for something new academics-in-training) and fills his book with Easter eggs, which are nice, if you're into deciphering codes and finding hidden messages ... but which don't really seem to alter or enhance the /story/ (except for in one part where I seriously think a sense of dread/terror/fear/anxiety was broken up by the fact I had to constantly turn the fucking book around to follow the text - which did not enhance, it detracted). They're just ... there if you want to take the trouble to find them.
I'm not sure - I have to think on it more to formulate a solid opinion. I can't speak to it as horror novel - I don't read horror enough to speak to the genre - and I hate pretentious pomo bullshit with a significant number of being fibres that I can't really say how well it does or doesn't work on that level, either.
After finishing it, I went on to read BOOKS WITH PICTURES.
Courtney Crumrin and the Monstrous Holiday in which there are werewolves and vampires and art full of lovely solid blacks and some truly astonishing backgrounds (I really appreciated that - a lot of stuff, especially small print indie stuff like this, sort of shafts the background, but there are some parts, especially in the second chapter, where castles and hallways with glorious arches are laborously, lovingly detailed). It's a melancholy little book and while certain plot twists are so obvious to the reader they can hardly be called such, the narrative doesn't give the typical easy outs, and under the werewolves and vampires is a sad story about a lost girl trying to find connection and family with an old man who's just trying to figure out how to be /there/ for her, even if he's not very good at it.
Which was followed by volume one of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service which is /great/ and I resolve to get more. The story follows a group of students at a Buddhist university who are having trouble finding suitable entry-level monk callings. When Ao Sasaki, a senior student and computer hacker, finds out that protagonist Kuro Karatsu can speak with dead bodies, she uses him as the core to build the titular company, along with Makato Numata, a dowser - but one who can only find dead bodies, Keiko Makino, an embalmer, and Yuji Tata a ... dude with a rude sock-puppet on his hand.
In one volume, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service has proven both fascinating (the premise is interesting, and there are some fascinating and well-researched notes in the editor's end notes) and /really really gross/. Unless you would like to find a different word to describe a naked reanimated corpse strangling a man to death while the corpse's eyeballs burst from the strain. The art is clean and attractive, the premise is absurb and allows for seriousness and batshit horror movie insanity (and an evil insurance adjuster) and it is definitely a winner.
Which is a bit of a relief. I was worried that between Naoki Urasawa and Junji Ito I was broken for life. Luckily, I can still appreciate the wholesome adventures of some teenagers in a van hauling bodies around Tokyo.