Amanuensis's Journal

Tagged by ellen_fremedon, plus I saw it first on florahart's lj and yeah, I think it's cool.

Go here and look through random quotations until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.

(I cheated a little--added two extra, and subbed two quotes I didn't get from the site in order to avoid using two from the same person, and to use one I really wanted.)


When I get a little money I buy books, and if any is left I buy food and clothes. -Erasmus

Whoever does not love his work cannot hope that it will please others. -Unknown

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Excerpt from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love"

God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. -Douglas Adams

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. -Abraham Lincoln

Reality continues to ruin my life. -Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Everything you can imagine is real. -Pablo Picasso

And also consistent with my beliefs, I'm tagging...anyone who wants to do it. ^_^

Whoa, are we all really that upset over that article in The Guardian about Lumos? I didn't find it negative, really; the article's written by someone who is not only NOT a fan but admits she hasn't even read the books or seen the films ("Well...some of them"). She's not a fannish type at all. She's gone into it frankly baffled by the whole concept of fans who sink into their medium so deeply. She is, to belabor the obvious, a classic mundane (which is what we called 'em before Rowling got Muggle into the OED). And she observes, and there's an air of "okay, this remains distant and odd to me," but, gosh, me, I don't expect anything else from mundanes. I thought the piece was presented with a reasonably neutral "not for me, and some of it's definitely strange to me, but, wow, there's a lot of devotion and variety here" air.

Given that the article didn't purport to be a detached record of the event, I think we got lucky that she didn't shriek "weirdoes weirdoes weirdoes!" all through it. Maybe some of you feel she did? Because she doesn't think Snape/Hermione is so much about empowering women as it is titillation? Because she thought some of the discussions/topics were lame or unfounded? Because the idea of HP bestiality got to her? Shoot, I think we got off light. And she does end on this positive note:

It's all amazing. And seeing anybody, let alone 1,200 people enthused with joy about anything is really quite uplifting. And not just anything. Books! It makes my girlish, swotty heart swell with pride.

Maybe that wasn't enough for fan readers. Perhaps a lot of you feel you've had enough of this kind of "not for me, but, whatever floats your boat" editorializing. Maybe in the same way I don't exactly want to see more films like Brokeback Mountain but rather am waiting for the gay James Bond to unapologetically flaunt the queer all over the screen.

Anybody here read Tamora Pierce?

The Circle of Magic books? The latest one, The Will of the Empress?


She's got one of the Circle in a same-sex romance.

:squeeble!:

I read an interesting fic this morning, and it made me think: if you're going to serve someone poisoned food--the kind that needs cooking and assembling--how can you tell if the food's cooked to palatability before you serve it? You can't very well taste it and see. So you'd have to put the poison in at the end. But then you'd have this pot sitting on the stove and what if someone came in and said, "Oh, stew!" and sampled some? So it'd be safer to put it in the individual bowl it was going to be served in. But then you'd have to mix it around in the bowl to mix in the poison. And be careful not to lick the spoon after. And what if it got sloshed around the edges of the bowl and didn't look pristine for serving; then you'd have to put it in another bowl. And wash the first one real quick, before you took the poisoned one out for serving. And what gets out poison residue from dishware? Do you just use regular liquid detergent? Maybe you should throw away the bowl. But what if someone finds it in the garbage; then that's evidence. And what if it's the kind of poison that needs to be cooked into the food a little so the victim doesn't taste it? Then we're back to the pot on the stove. Damn, this is tricky.

Yes, I think about this kind of stuff.

Aaaaaaaannnnnnnd that's why I don't watch.

Goddammit.

Summary Executions XXXV is up! Did a short take on them, here and here.

Summary Executions XXXIV is up! My take on them is here, here, here, and here.

Seven hours 'til showtime. Eee.


Is anyone else like me--so worked up that now they don't want the film to be here this soon? That they want to wait a little longer so that it's not over with? I was like this for the Azkaban film and for both of the previous books.

I got notification that the new archive, The Quidditch Pitch, chose my story Droit Du Seigneur as a featured story for the first month. That in itself is awesome, plus they sent me this cool banner:





But even that doesn't tickle me as much as this--they sent me interview questions! Questions like, "What advice if any would you give to other writers? What serves as the inspiration for the stories you write?" I can't help it; I've always wanted to be on the receiving end of that! I mean, I could have written up something like that anytime and posted it on my lj, but it's the having been asked of it, you know? Squee!

I know I'm fixated on the way she looked 10+ years ago, in Absolutely Fabulous, but am I the only one who read Tonks' first appearance in OotP and thought, "Jane Horrocks, when they cast this character. Definitely."?