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Dec. 27th, 2009 @ 07:29 pm Avatar
 Yes, I went out and  made history, seeing Avatar on the day after Christmas.  I found it delightful all through -- I was never bored and often thrilled and elated.  That was by the astonishing and convincing 3D effects, the care and attention lavished on every detail of every moment -- the 300M that Cameron spent was all on show.  The scenes in the Floating Mountains (whose gravitational oddity was never explained; maybe something ot do with the huge planet around which the moon Pandora revolves? Nemmine:  Lots wasn't explained, and much was unexplainable).

As to the story -- it was astonishingly standard, every element, every twist, every emotion having been seen a thousand times before.  It was nearly identical to both Disney's and Terence Malick's Pocohantas, but more Disney -- the heroine even closely resembled Disney's.  But it also took from John Ford cavalry epics and a dozen other sources.  It also was a derivative of Ursula LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest, one of her lesser and more platitudinous all-life-is-sacred-and-women-know-it stories, up to and including interconnected wise trees and brutal uncaring corporate and military types.  Hilarious, actually, rather than lowering. Every thousand-to-one chance taken came out right, every just-crazy-enough-to-work hunch worked,  the main badguy met the main goodguy in hand to hand combat at the end.  I laughed a lot, sometimes all by myself.

It's striking that this movie, made by an army run by a macho general, was harder on the US military than any film I remember since Apocalypse Now.  I almost expected the flat-topped axe-faced commander (closely resembling Doc Savage on the old book jackets) to say "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" as his attack force bombs the innocent loving aborigines' tree home.  Technically the armed force was composed of contract mercenaries, Blackwater style; but the point was clear.  Well:  Maybe it will help these attitudes to become generalized.  Of the two simplifications offered, the life-is-sacred and leave the natives alone is the preferable.

My daughter said the story had been made intentionally simple and obvious so we didn't need to pay attention to it, and could admire the effects. 

Of course the picture of extraterrestrial life was absurdly earth-like:  the (single race of) beings, five fingered, teeth in their mouths, with language not much more different from modern white American humans than Plains Indians or aboriginal Australians, with a language you could almost translate yourself and a biology based on the standard symmetries.  But who'd make a movie starring really strange beings?  Not at these prices..  Their social relations (she the daughter of the cheif, betrothed to the top warrior, falls for the outsider, who is put through successive tests of strength and still never accepted as One of Them) comes from Fenimore Cooper or maybe earlier.  The animals -- ferocious six-legged mammals  and pterodactyl-winged flyers -- come from Barsoom by way of Frank Frazetta.

And when I tried to explain the basic premise to my duaghter, and why it was called Avatar, I realized that it made no sense at all.

But walking through those ferns! Looking deep deep down into those corridors!  It was way better than House of Wax, or even Fort Ti.
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[info]crowleycrow
Dec. 28th, 2009 @ 01:58 am (no subject)
Чтобы не решать никаких проблем их просто не надо иметь, да?
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[info]koluthcka
Dec. 27th, 2009 @ 02:14 pm sundries


  • I have just visited the cat. While she is still not eating on her own and is still jaundiced, today she sat up, meowed, try to come out of her little hospital enclosure and was otherwise more interactive with me. She also seemed less bloated and seemed to be breathing better. While we could still get a lot of bad news tomorrow, this is the first time in days I've had actual hope for her, and it's good to see her less miserable.



  • Jack's back. Actually, I just chopped off all my hair. Thank god. I feel about a bazillion times better. It's cute (at least it was until the fucking hairdresser tried to make it flouffy -- LEAVE IT ALONE -- I AM NOT A POODLE). Once I wash it it'll be near perfect. I'll get a little trim before Gally, and we'll be good to go.

  • Okay, so the response to expensive cat illness shouldn't be retail therapy, but I caved and bought myself a new pair of eyeglasses. The frames are Ray-bans, god help me (only funny if you are a child of the 80s, I think) -- fairly rectangular, gunmetal grey, and really, really, REALLY awesome. I spent more than I wanted to, but hey, they'll be ready tomorrow. Transitions lenses too -- so sunglasses and not!

  • Hard Choice for a Comfortable Death: Terminal Sedation. I tried to read this last night, and failed, which is unlike me. Got through it this morning.

  • The NY Times on marching bands. But really? It just makes me want to watch Drumline again. I love that movie so much it's embarrassing.

  • Really need to order/get a stud set for my tux like five minutes ago. If not today, tomorrow. I resisted the urge to traumatize Patty with the easy availability of one celebrating her alma mater. Her alma mater is like a fandom. It's really scary.

  • [info]cupidsbow is doing this brilliant thing of 12 Days of Cliche with Torchwood fan offerings. Day 2 was mpreg, which is weird in TW fandom, since a) it's canonically relevant (I say relevant as we don't know if Jack was lying or not) and b) it actually can be used to address a lot of other stuff that is central to TW canon. I find TW is the first and only fandom I'll read mpreg in, and I wonder why that is. It's not erotic to me, and it's certainly not making these men seem more familiar to me or my experience. I suppose it's the unlikeliness -- and that is familiar. Jack or Ianto having a damn baby is only marginally more absurdist than my having one. Or something.

  • [info]marchek sent me a remarkable little poem, 221B, by Vincent Starrett about Sherlock Holmes, that in its first couple of lines really speaks to what I'm doing for the Bristol paper, and I think would also be of interest to many Torchwood fen.

  • While I didn't much care for Part 1 of The End of Time I gotta say the new trailers for Part 2 (especially this one) give me chills. I normally don't consider trailers spoilers, but these are pretty spoilertastic. I have a lot of hope that RTD's habit of making the second half of two-parters too big manifested in the first half this time, and that the second half is going to be cold and chilling. Also Read more... )
  • About this Entry
    [info]rm
    Dec. 27th, 2009 @ 10:20 am No Centennial Symmetry
    When I contemplate the end of cheap oil, I do not ascribe to the view that we'll go back to the way things were in the last century. 

    We won't give up gains in health care or communications. Just everything else. )
    I don't think we're going back to a preindustrial-revolution society.  But I understand why people might long to.
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    [info]gwendally
    Dec. 28th, 2009 @ 12:02 am Monday, December 28th 2009
    you can publish your photos as a comment to this post, if your photo was shot on:

    Monday, December 28th 2009
    What was on screens a year ago: Durham, NC, USA from [info]kendellsquare
    At the Duke gardens.

    click to reply to image

    to publish your photo (please choose one and resize it to 700 px!) just copy this text:
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    [yesterday] [year ago]
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    [info]daily_poster, posting in [info]day_on_earth
    Dec. 27th, 2009 @ 09:50 am Just finished reading...
    ReadingTempest Rising by Nicole Peeler

    Here is the blurb from Amazon, which is also the text on the back flap:
    "Living in small town Rockabill, Maine, Jane True always knew she didn't quite fit in with so-called normal society. During her nightly, clandestine swim in the freezing winter ocean, a grisly find leads Jane to startling revelations about her heritage: she is only half-human.
    Now, Jane must enter a world filled with supernatural creatures alternatively terrifying, beautiful, and deadly- all of which perfectly describe her new "friend," Ryu, a gorgeous and powerful vampire.
    It is a world where nothing can be taken for granted: a dog can heal with a lick; spirits bag your groceries; and whatever you do, never-ever-rub the genie's lamp.
    If you loveSookie Stackhouse, then you'll want to dive into Nicole Peeler's enchanting debut novel."


    I finally finished this. I am not a fast reader this year... It seems as if every writer that can hold a pen at the moment is writing Urban Fantasy. You never know, it could be another Sookie Stackhouse or Twilight.
    It was ok. The author is trying a little too hard to make the heroine witty and an entertaining smartarse. The funny silent dialogue was applied so thickly and annoyed me so much in the first 2 chapters or so, that I nearly tossed the book. But it got less pronounced, so I kept going. The supernatural beings are not the usual fare and even the heroine had something new to offer. I will put the second book on my wishlist, although I am not rushing out to get it just yet.
    About this Entry
    [info]cathepsut
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 06:16 pm Honey, I'm hooooome!
    I'm at the new place, surrounded by piles of boxes. I didn't go back after coming here with the movers (they left a bit after 4pm) There's still a bunch of stuff to be moved. That'll get dealt with tomorrow. By then there should be fewer piles of boxes here, and more stuff away. The movers stopped packing only when they ran out of boxes. :-p Sadly, alcohol was not among the things that got packed before that happened. :-p

    I didn't eat breakfast. Or lunch.

    Right now I want hot food, a bubble bath, and a massage. It's pouring out and my umbrella is at the old place. I have no bath bubble stuff or masseuse. I'm hoping I can find the number to the Chinese food place and get stuff delivered. Maybe I'll just walk down and get wet. I have a washer/dryer unit, so getting my pants soaked would be easily fixed. :)

    I *do* (as you can see) have an available wireless signal in the area. That makes me happy.

    Downstairs neighbors are VERY noisy with the blasting of...something. It's only 6ish, so I'm not too concerned.

    Must forage for food now...somehow....

    Any recommendations on dishwasher detergent? I've never had one.
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    [info]netsearcher
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 05:55 pm Historical electricity generation
    My Dad grew up on rural farms in the midwest that were settled my German immigrants when it was the frontier.  They were so poor that not much changed before my Dad came along in 1944. 

    Yesterday my Dad told me that the farm he lived on until after I was married had a device in the backyard that was some sort of metallic circle inside a drum that was filled with "soda" or "sodium" and the ground water would push against it and create a DC current that ran to one light bulb in the house.

    I haven't figured out what this is. )
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    [info]gwendally
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 05:47 pm (no subject)
    Moved a hay roll into the pasture today. It's the first time I've done any driving since before Thanksgiving. I wanted to test and see if I could handle being at the wheel. Hooked the truck up to the trailer, drove slooooowly into the pasture, dropped off the hay, drove sloooowly out.

    I was doing okay right up until I was pulling the trailer around to park it. Going, oh, all of 5 miles an hour and making a sharp turn was way, way too much for me. Damn, damn, damn, damn.



    Side note: I loooove having a working winch on the trailer.
    About this Entry
    [info]ladygzb
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 03:06 pm Kobayashi Maru
    In Star Trek lore, a Starfleet Academy student named James T. Kirk was scheduled to face an unrecoverable disaster scenario known as the "Kobayashi Maru."  The test was to see how the individual would handle command during an escalating disaster even past the point of complete failure.  The computer simulation was rigged such that no matter what the student did, he would fail.  Kirk looked at this scenario and decided he wasn't going to accept even simulated failure, so he hacked into the computer that was to run the simulation and reprogrammed it so he could win.  We, collectively as humanoids, are facing a similar situation.  Our reality has been hijacked, our language and our very minds hacked into and made to serve a purpose other than our own.  We can't win under this scenario.  So we have to reprogram our reality to make a win possible.

    I've hinted in the past that this Universe is a vast information system.  When I was about 13 years old, I had a series of dreams in which I met a man who was the caretaker of a vast complex of buildings on a pristine world.  All that seemed to be there was this one complex, the rest was just the most beautiful Earthlike planet ever, only it had two moons.  Inside the complex, only a little of which was I allowed to see at this time, was a vast data system.  He called it a Library, and I was soon able to return there Astrally (4D) at will. After a couple of years, he told me that he would not be there when I came again, and also revealed that he was an AI.  He gave me a gift and told me to keep it in the Astral until I needed it.  I did.  I never saw him again.

    Some time later, I was exploring some concepts whilst "rising on the planes" and came to a place where I could see a flat plane with a cone skipping over it.  It had the appearance of colorlessness, but when viewed very closely, myriad colors could be seen.  This feature I associate with with the Aethyric planes of 5D and above.  As I watched, I noticed that everywhere the cone touched the plane, something changed.  Immediately, I thought of a disk drive.  Being the inquisitive sort, I took control of the cone and had it read something and then write something else to the same location.  Things felt really weird, so I had it write back what had been there originally, and the weird feeling went away.  I experimented with this quite a bit, and soon came to understand that at this level, one has direct read/write access to everything, at any time.  It was literally the database known as the Akashic Record.

    Not long after that, I was meditating on the Sefirah, thinking about how each vibrates a different "frequency" and "meaning."  As I was meditating, the scene shifted and space twisted so that the Sefirah were like horns arrayed around the surface of a single-surfaced manifold, and I could see the interference patterns they formed creating manifest matter and energy and movements like time and motion and state changes.  There were 11 Sefirah in my model, including Da'ath.  About a year later, I read an article that posited 11 dimensions, and I went "AHA!  Emitter Array!" *

    Over the next few years, I explored each of these systems carefully, trying to learn about them.  Be thankful that I had a background with computers, so before I conducted any experiments, I always made a backup copy...using my access key to the Library facility...which was a good thing because having the ability to do a flash-restore was needed a few times.  The systems were all running completely unattended and seemed to have been like that for a very long time.  Other than the caretaker at the Library who gave me his key and disappeared, I never encountered another entity in my many excursions to these facilities.  I became frustrated at my inability to learn more than the very basics about these systems because my puny human brain could not hold enough information to even begin a proper pattern-analysis...these things were just too vast.

    A few years ago, whilst visiting the Library, I chanced upon a corner of one room I hadn't seen before, and found a machine disconnected, covered up, and pushed off into the corner.**  A fat cable lay outstretched on the floor pointed toward the disconnected machine, as if it had once been connected to it and had been hastily removed and dropped.  I queried the Library about the disconnected machine, and I was told "that is the Interface."  "The interface to what?"  "The Interface to everything."  The image that came was of the Akashic Record and the Emitter Array.  "Is it broken?"  "No."  "Why is it disconnected?"  "It was disconnected before the Founders left."  "Why?"  "A test."  "Ah!  What happens if I plug it back in?"  "Then this facility again controls the other processes, which currently are running in an automatic mode."  I had recently been thinking that the Universe had an irregular, hitchy feel to it like a computer that is running out of memory, so I uncovered the Interface, rolled it back over to the cable, and sure enough, found a receptacle for the plug-end.  The Interface woke up, and the hitchy, klunky feeling went away.  Woohoo!  When I returned to normal perception, I noticed few changes at first, but then a few causal events broke surface, and I started to notice that truth was coming out more easily, lies were becoming more apparent, and karma was coming home to roost more quickly and more clearly than before.  The sophistication of active AI control over the basic physical system was working!

    Recently I was introduced to some materials from Wingmakers.com that included a model of reality that posits an artificial control system over the lower planes of existence.  The more I poked and prodded at it, the more I realized its similarity to a computer virus that hijacks the functions of its host system.  Combined with my personal knowledge of the engineering brilliance of and sudden twist to the dark side taken by the entity known as "Anu" *** in the Wingmakers material, I would not be at all surprised to find that just such a hack was done.

    I know for a fact that at one point, this was a brilliant naturally evolving Universe and I expected all good things from it, and then "Anus"  (my little twist) decided he didn't want to wait for the humanoids to evolve because he wanted to play with them - well, the girls mostly - right away, and once started, the degeneracy escalated quickly. So I believe we can expect that the underlying, properly structured Universe remains in place and is still functioning.  I think that might have been demonstrated by my experience with the Library and the positive effects of restoring a disabled function.

    It was submitted to me by a friend of mine that 4D is compromised, heavily infiltrated by whatever this illusion is.  I'll buy that in part...there are a LOT of problems in the Astral, but it is not totally compromised.  If the test is whether the assistance one gets from an entity encourages or teaches about God-consciousness (what the Wingmakers' material refers to as the Sovereign Integral), then I have received a great deal of help and encouragement toward integrating that God-consciousness both in myself and in the world from Astral friends, most notably my Angel, my Demon, the original entity I identified as Ea/Enki (not the later one; there was a subtle shift between first and second encounters - the second was a hijack!) and the caretaker of the Library.  Without them, I would not be who I am today, and I might not be alive at all, since they encouraged and supported me when everything else in the world was attacking me.  So my advice to my fellow searchers is to be careful in Astral, trust, but verify, verify, verify and be ready to kick to the curb anything you encounter there on the first false note (and don't wait for a second - what's valid will come back around, what's invalid will whine and lay a guilt trip on you).

    Then it was submitted to me that 5D was better.  5D is what I call the Aethyric, and my experience of it indicates that some of the control systems exist there, but I never ran into another entity.  The fact that a control system exists there immediately puts in solidly into the bucket with the rest of the co-opted planes.  I was thinking about how you could tell whether a plane was in the hijacked set and I was studying the mathematical models of the dimensions**** as I was doing this, and I realized that a computer program needs mathematical models to run, even if it is a virus hijacking a universe!  We know this hijack is sophisticated, and we know that it draws on near-absolute knowledge of everything a person knows, thinks, and feels in order to better manipulate them, so we can assume that a LOT of planes are included in the hijack, or those of us who can access the higher dimensions would more easily throw off the illusions.

    But we also know that the control is NOT PERFECT.  We can break free at least momentarily.  We can perceive its manipulations if we learn what to look for.  So we also know, by extension, that there is some point at which the control system is not fully overriding the base Universe, probably at the point at which there is a dimension that is difficult to mathematically model and also is either seldom interactive with the 3D, or it is filtered through a dimension that is well-controlled.

    I immediately thought of the Veil, the separation of "manifest" and "unmanifest" Sefirah in the Kabbalistic Tree of LIfe, and the fact that Da'at is not only in the unmanifest group, it is almost completely hidden, a "shadow" Sefirah in many interpretations, and "is the location (the mystical state) where all ten sephirot in the Tree of Life are united as one."  It is "located" on the Middle Pillar directly between Tiferet, the seat of the Love (the Heart), and Keter, the Crown or manifest aspect of the Godhead (the Head), and Da'at is also said to "displace" Keter.  We know that Love is one of the most corrupted of the heart virtues. It is bisected by the Veil, so the "Heart" is disconnected from the "Head."  "Because Daat signifies the unity of all Sephirot, a very few Kaballists believe it was associated with the New Testament demon, Legion, before they fell, or a polar opposite of it." Hello.  I'll call that a pattern-match.  We now know where "Anus" lives and where we are really being held prisoner.  (We are emanated from Keter in true form, captured in Da'at, and re-emanated in corrupted form to the lower worlds.)

    Now the evidence is that the corruption is through-going in the lower dimensions, the false control systems are very sophisticated, and the "height" at which the corruption finally breaks down is "on" the Veil, so it is difficult to access even to very advanced adepts.  BUT it is only HALF compromised!  Which means this is the vulnerable spot in "Anus' " plan. Here's where we begin the process of rewriting our reality to win the Kobayashi Maru scenario.  But we can't get there!

    Yes we can, indirectly.  Something I've learned about the way this Universe works is that everything has a set of associated harmonics.  If you can affect one of the harmonic nodes, you can affect the source.  The harmonic nodes of Da'at is 4D...the partially compromised Astral 4D plane and the Sefirah Tiferet.  Through the Astral and through the heart...through the two things we've been conditioned to distrust the most.

    Who's with me?  Will and will; wing and Wing!

    ----

    * Of note is the design of the Tarot card "Lust" in the Thoth Tarot deck:


    In this card are shown 10 horns (10 Sefirah, Keter and Da'at are considered to be shadows of one another, or Da'at is considered to be all 10 Sefirah expressed in Unity).  Ten Sefirah in regular order above the veil, with an 11th "fallen" into the "blood" and 10 Sefirah below the veil in disarray, scattered amongst the bodies of the dead.  And the central characters, BABALON and the Beast upon which she rides, a corruption of the art of Love into Lust...and the pendulous rein, which takes the form of the loop of the Ankh, the loop of the Anunaki true genetic structure that should have been ours (and with it lifespans of reasonable length to allow progress in wisdom as a species), which also evokes the Möbius strip, a one-surfaced object.  The advice associated with this card is "Balance against each thought its exact opposite! For the Marriage of these is the Annihilation of Illusion."  This is the metaphysical equivalent of a "divide by zero" error.  YES:  it could break a false algorithm by confusing the subroutines that watch thoughts and predict actions and outcomes.

    ** Understand that these are all SYMBOLIC representations, not concrete objects, that provide a user-interface that can be manipulated by a being with limited senses.

    *** Anu.  In the Wingmakers' mythology, this is the king of the Anunaki (variously spelled in the Wingmakers' materials, spelled correctly here).  They fail to understand that An is a title, not a name.  An [ahn] means "God (in a humbled, or serving form)."  An-u [ahn-ooo pronounced in distinct syllables, not "noo"] (correctly spelled here) means "God's service in descent," or "God's service in the Underworld."  Underworld is 3D, the lowest dimension one can obtain and still have any real interactive possibilities.  An of the Anunaki was a "son" of the original entity who most closely matches the personality and behavior of the Wingmakers' Anu.


    **** References:

    Spissitude

    Fourth Dimension

    Flatland
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    [info]keter_magick
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 11:48 pm (no subject)
    Новогодние брекето-телки от Бродячей Собаки )

    Простите, HighISO это ужасно в совокупности с много_вина и мало_абсента.
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    [info]koluthcka
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 02:22 pm sundries & cat
  • Little's condition is currently being described as "guarded." She has fluid around her heart and in her lungs. They think it might just be from all the fluid they were giving her for her liver/gallbladder. On Monday I take her to another vet for an echocardiogram. If that shows no heart disease, she can get cortizone which will stimulate her appetite, help her liver and reduce pain, and assuming she responds to treatment she will recover and be just fine. So on Monday we'll know if she can get further treatment, and we'll do more blood work so we'll know if she has been responding to the antibiotics and vitamins.

    I visited her earlier, and she is cranky and listless, although she purred for me a lot. When I kissed the top of her head she gave a big petulant sigh, which was hilarious. The growth on her face turned out just to be a cyst and they did remove that.

    I've spent a lot of today crying. Among other things with cats, because they live so long, is they see a lot with you, and when they are in peril you have to revisit a lot of times when they were the only thing decent.

  • On the subway going down to the vet's there was a four-year-old beat-boxing. He made my day.

  • Last night Patty and I had a video chat. It worked so well! at first we just talked awkwardly with lots of pauses because we expected there to be lag as if we were calling Mars.

  • She is soothing me with texts, about this cat thing.

  • The War at Home: post-S2, Jack/Ianto, passive aggressive relationship dramarama. But it's graceful and lovely and smart. TRUST ME.

  • Jack Harkness narrates this creepy ass thing about the Weeping Angels. Makes me glad I've not yet finished my Jack/Weeping Angels fic, because now I need to deal with the existence of this thing. It doesn't really have any canon to deal with, but still, there's the matter of integrating his voice on the subject.

  • Woman stabs one of a group of men harassing her and escape via subway. More from the AP here, wherein we find out that the person who did the stabbing was 16 and it happened after 7 or 8 men tried to pull her off a train. "Harassment" rather understates the case.

  • Oh for fuck's sake. New flying restrictions, including people may not move around the plane int he last hour of flight, maybe not access their carry on luggage and may not have anything in their lap for the last hour of flight. Just handcuff and sedate us for the duration of the trip already.

  • YULETIDE! I got two stories The Path is Made by Walking which is a lovely, lovely His Dark Materials piece about the adventures of daemons, who realize, having once been left in the land of the dead, that they may wander on their own, and Somewhere, A Clock is Ticking which is Torchwood RPF; it's also rated-G and therefore pretty much unsquicky for nearly all readers. I was moved by it because it shows people dealing with the weird care they have for character who are people they are not, but are also people they sometimes are. I will, quite frankly, be floored if the writer of either piece doesn't know me, so perfect for me were they.

    I, meanwhile, wrote two pieces. I''ll write you a little vignette if you guess correctly which they were. And all the people who knew in advance, NO CHEATING.
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    [info]rm
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 11:00 am (no subject)

    • 14:28 Wow. The fucking national gard comercials at movies are as incrily fucked up as ever. Christian crusader imagery meets video game editing. #

    About this Entry
    [info]jlassen
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 11:07 am Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
    Tags: , , ,
    My sister made a video for my children once that we called "Jurassic Park for Kids".  She cut out all the really scary scenes where the children were imperiled and kept just the beautiful placid cool ones of dinosaurs up close, with enough of the narration to make the story hang together.  It was a masterpiece that transformed a work best suited to teen-agers (or older) to the level suited for small children.This is rather the inverse. )

    If you cannot read Jane Austen, then,  yes, read this.  Jane Austen is really worth reading and this author captures the essence in important ways.  For example, in this version the great reveal that they love each other happens just after Jane has sank to her knees in front of him. 

    "Jane immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone a material change.... Had Jane been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face...."

     Jane Austen needs close reading, but she's worth it when you puzzle out what she's saying.  This work merely added a dimension that most of us wouldn't have seen in the original.  Who knows.  Maybe it was there all along.

    About this Entry
    [info]gwendally
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 10:14 am Andrew Jackson: How being dead 160 years improves you
    I finally finished "American Lion".  I took up this book because I was intrigued about how Andrew Jackson took on the central bank - and won - and also recalled that he held together the Union during some early tests.  I also know he paid off the National Debt, and demanded specie instead of paper money for some purposes, linking the dollar back to a standard.  What a guy!  I am weak on American History during the first half of the 19th century, so picked up this biography of the two-term 7th President to fill myself in.

    Uh oh. )
    Honestly, I felt like I was reading a biography of George W. Bush as written by an apologist a couple centuries down the line.  The Massachusetts Liberal delegations, the Pennsylvania abolitionists, the human rights advocates for the Cherokee citizens... these people decried Andrew Jackson in the strongest possible terms.  They got him censured in the Senate for one of his unilaterally stolen "executive privileges".  He was the first American president to face an assassination attempt by one of his own citizens, and faced at least a couple.  (This shook Americans, who considered this Noble Experiment in democracy to be above such need for violence.)  Opposition to his monarchist tendencies created an entirely new political party, the American Whig Party.  (I'd never figured out where they came in before reading this.) 

    I feel better educated now, but haven't found myself a new hero.
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    [info]gwendally
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 07:44 am Health Care Reform
     No, just kidding.  But there is a small but annoying problem in Health Care I am trying to solve.  At least where I live, and I bet for almost everyone with health insurance, it's very difficult to avoid making several trips to the pharmacy to have various prescriptions filled.  If you take (say) four pills a day, and will forever (or until death parts you from them), and you have prescriptions for a month's worth of each, it would be very nice to be able to go to the drugstore and pick them all up each month at once.  However, if it so happens that one or another of these was first filled on a different day from the others, it can only be refilled on the thirtieth day after that.  The insurance company will not allow you to reset the refill day, because that would mean their paying for a month's worth of new pills when you still have old ones, and incurring a cost.  Tsk!  Your doctor can't rewrite the prescription for the same reason.  The only way you could do it would be to pay for the off-calendar prescription order yourself, and only if you demand to be allowed to.  This was explained to me by the pharmacist.  My only recourse, she said, was to manipulate the time I put in my refill order:  the insurance company will allow you to reorder as much as five days before the refill date.  If you calculate this all very cunningly -- maybe make a spreadsheet, or perform an algorithm -- you can slide certain refill dates successively backward till they meet the date of the laggard.  But not too far! then you're back where you started,  

    Why is this not addressed in the bill?  (Maybe it is.)  Why did Harry Reid not rail against the injustice of making seniors take multiple trips to oppressive CVS's in faraway neighborhoods?  (Maybe he did.)  Why is there no CVS in my town? (Hope there never is.)  Injustice persists.
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    [info]crowleycrow
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 07:29 am Find the Error


    .... in this NY Times sentence (the actual sentence is longer but the rest is not relevant):

    As a relatively new phenomenon in the crowded arena of journalists whose specialty it is to report the news of the catwalks, fashion bloggers have ascended from the nosebleed seats to the front row...
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    [info]crowleycrow
    Dec. 27th, 2009 @ 12:02 am Sunday, December 27th 2009
    you can publish your photos as a comment to this post, if your photo was shot on:

    Sunday, December 27th 2009
    What was on screens a year ago: Jamaica Beach, Texas, US from [info]lil_m_moses
    Image008.jpeg

    Mom and I drove down to Galveston Island this afternoon to check out the damage from Hurricane Ike, three months after the fact. Most of the beach access points were inaccessible, and there's a whole lot less beach than there used to be. We found one spot to get in on the west end, near several beat-up houses. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten my good camera at home and had to take this with my cell phone. Those pilings you see in the foreground used to be another house (check out the satellite map view on the Flickr page).

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    [yesterday] [year ago]
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    [info]daily_poster, posting in [info]day_on_earth
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 04:45 am Dear Verizon FIOS
    Current Mood: blah
    I appreciate that some of the information you are requesting from customers trying to set up an online account is probably designed to prevent fraud of the harassment variety.

    However, if you insist on having my last billing date as part of the REQUIRED information, and you bill me automagically each month but send no statement, leaving me with only whatever is shown on my *checking statement*, could you at least either NOT make me re-enter the other 10 or so pieces of information each time you reject the date that would be a month after the last one shown for November, and then give or take a day, then the post date, then the date I pulled on my online statement for December which was a month and a week after the November one, then the day before/after that...

    And when I give up after wasting an HOUR trying to do this online, and call at 4:30am so I can move my service, I understand there may not actually be humans available, but please realize that providing me with the online location of where to do this is not helping. Providing the hours your customer service reps *are* actually available on the phone as the LAST POSSIBLE bit of information is at least better than not at all.

    But fixing the system you have online, which both of us would prefer I use, would be even better.

    Lucky for you I love my Fios, because this is as bad as when I set up my pre-paid phone and was only able to activate it by feeding it completely fictitious contact information.

    *sigh*

    Edit: Just dug out my old emails from when I had FIOS installed here. It was over a week from me putting the order in to the install. *twitch*
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    [info]netsearcher
    Dec. 26th, 2009 @ 09:02 am Writer's Block: That's a wrap!

    Do you have any holiday traditions that extend all the way back to childhood? How about family recipes? What are they?


    View Answers


    We used to have a Christmas tree, but not anymore. And we only give very few presents. My parents and I did not swap gifts at all, I gave my brother some perfum and he gave me a book. That's about it. My nieces got some small things. The only tradition that happens every year without fail: My mum makes goose roast. And we all love it to pieces! It's with red cabbage, potatoes and a delicious gravy. Yum-yum.yum! We had irt yesterday, when my brother was over with his daughters. The next few days we will concentrate on eating left-overs...
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    [info]cathepsut
    Dec. 25th, 2009 @ 09:00 pm The End of Time, pt. 1
    OMGWTFBBQ!!!!

    Read more... )

    Woah.
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    [info]rm