The dissertation has been dismal.

( Dissertation venting, or, Why I Suck )

NaDisMo Word Count: 1670

I usually make a cat pumpkin, as laebeth87 remembers!

However, this year, I made a gamer geek pumpkin.
If you have played any of the Final Fantasy games, this should look oddly familiar.

THUMBNAILS:




( FULL SIZED PHOTOS )

Art reference -- FF2 Bomb concept art + bits of FFVII, FFVIII, FFX bombs from Final Fantasy Compendium's Bomb Gallery.

(Apologies to friends whom I have spammed with cross-posting)

... is not an appropriate caption, because I don't think radishes or Danver's Carrots qualify as tubers.

Therefore I am soliciting a better caption.

(Yes, catnip was involved in positioning the cat.)




I planted these in what, May?

'Bout time.

I have been moved to make a tasteless filk about the misfortunes of Matt Holliday, all-star outfielder of the St. Louis Cardinals.

"Folly Day"

Poor schmoe.

(For those who haven't seen what happened, I don't think he was actually hurt. He got up more quickly than the lyrics imply.)

I donated to Oxfam after the Boxing Day tsunami, because they already had people/supplies on the ground -- in some of the news coverage I saw that they were already there, and they had a very organized operation going distributing tarps, clothes, medical supplies, water tablets, etc.

I'm not being as thorough this time, but a quick check suggests they're already working in Samoa and Sumatra.

Basically, they get the supplies in position before a disaster and count on donors to pay for restocking.

No Paypal, but they take secure online credit card donations. I'm gonna drop another hundred on 'em.

There's so many different things around the world that need to be dealt with -- I should probably be looking for and donating to something obscure instead. (On the other hand that's what my Kiva and Heifer.org donations are for.)

So, anyway, if you feel like chipping in, there's one possibility.

So I was reading about how the Philadelphia Free Library system is closing due to lack of state funding, and how this may well start happening in many cities, despite the fact that free libraries' computers are where many of the unemployed go for job hunting and info about federal assistance, and seniors go there for info about social security (much of this info only available online).

And I thought, "Well, at least we now have a president who cares about education, who may realize this is a problem and kick somebody with a view to doing something about it."
And then I thought, "Oh, I'm being unfair to W. His wife is a schoolteacher, after all!"
And then the little voice in my head said, "Yeah, but she looks like Dolores Umbridge."
And then I scolded myself for judging someone by looks, when she actually DOES care about education!
And then I went and did this anyway, because I couldn't resist:


Now, back to work...

Thanks to owlmoose, I have learned that a prominent net-trend-tracking website [***] has declared 9/9/09 a "Day Without Cats on the Internet" day, in which no cat videos, photos, or lolcats are uploaded to the net.

Naturally, a counter-protest is circulating. Here is our contribution.



[***]: Oh, the irony! I just realized the website organizing the internet-wide ban on cat videos and photos is part of AOL, the company that mailed us several landfills' worth of "Free Trial!" plastic CDs over the last 15 years.

I'm glad to see they have their priorities about what constitutes "spam."

I'm going to quote lassarina's post on the topic, because she's succinct, and I'm not:

Please do yourself a favour and do not take the fanfiction survey that is going around, being done by two guys who are claiming affiliation with Boston University.

The long version (excellent read) is here, and covers all the reasons why these people have no idea what they're doing and are using frankly sketchy data gathering techniques, but the short version:

1) They are attempting to other people with kinks in general and fandom in specific (the title of their book-to-be is apparently RULE 34: WHAT NETPORN TEACHES US ABOUT THE BRAIN. Can you see the fail there? Yeah, I thought you could.)

2) Their questions are abysmally written - for example, not allowing for one to respond as "asexual" - and written leadingly to support their own assumptions.

3) They have not bothered to do even the slightest bits of research before putting up this study - the surveyors were apparently stunned to discover that fic writers do sometimes write novel-length fic.

4) The survey is not anonymous. They are IP logging and putting tracking cookies on your computer--as admitted by the survey authors in various comments. There is no informed consent page; they are gathering data about sexuality and illegal drug use, quite possibly from persons under 18 given the nature of the fandom beast, and this is not okay.

5) Did I mention that one of the survey authors has worked for the Dept. of Homeland Security? Yeah, cause THAT isn't setting off giant blazing alarm klaxons in my head or anything.

Some folks are writing Boston University, it sounds like.

ETA: WOW. JUST... WOW.
Read comments here by people who actually took survey on some of the leading questions and incredible assumptions being made about gender, race, sexuality, etc.

It's mostly multiple-choice, and you can't skip any questions or choose N/A.

Exhibit A: The Watermelon Hammock
AKA "Uses for orphaned socks"



Exhibit B: Photo of me I don't despise
Blurry pic from my aunt's iPhone

I am back from Pennsic, attempting to slot back into dissertation, and finally healed enough from aches/pains and near-sinus-calamity to THINK.
Except dang, I really did nearly break my shin over the rocks in Rivendell Roseland. It's a beautiful, beautiful encampment down in the valley with gorgeous standing stones and paved pathways, but WTF WITH THE BIG ROCK near the firepit where people sit around being drunk and/or bardic until 3AM?!

I killed someone's ceramic drum with my fall. He was so gracious about it, but I still feel horribly guilty, like I ran over someone's pet. I must bring a weregild next year to atone.

On a COMPLETELY different topic. The following is ganked from flist. I find it painfully funny, even though I've managed to avoid MMOs. The selection-screen poses are great.



And just to reiterate, ONE MORE TIME, for old time's sake:
"There is no sex on GarouMUSH."

Heh.

Map of Pennsic on Google?!

Pennsic streets labeled on Google:
Servants Path (where Enchanted Ground is, my favorite lurking place for period storytelling)
Hill Road (My campsite is at the corner of the d in the "Hill Road" label in the woods next to the highway -- noisy, but SHADY)
Chandlers Way
Runestone Highway (where Pennsic began, loooong ago)
Roman Road
Low Road
Fosse Way
Brewers Road
Sedalia Way
Bow Street
Battle Road
Long Way
Great Middle/Great Eastern Highway

I guess the labeled roads all have at least a portion of them in gravel or dirt, so they're year-round. Other roads are set up only for Pennsic.

You can see traces of the rest of the Pennsic roads in the fields: Abandon Hope, Good Intentions, Street of Gold, By The Way (I'm still irked somebody screwed up the sign 10 years ago and changed it to Bythe Way), etc.

The photo appears to be from Pennsic XXXV (it's mowed into the hill behind the castle). This year is 38. Yikes. I think I've missed 2 years, but it feels like forever.

Here's my album from Pennsic 34.

I stopped by on lark and see that Sunday's edition of the Onion is a special Chinese Edition.

ETA: Aha, now I see. It's been sold to the Chinese government.

Some of you have probably seen these videos before, but you probably haven't seen them all.

This was organized by a theater group.

The Sound of Music



The rest are organized by Improv Everywhere, a nucleus of pranksters who use email and the web to gather groups of volunteers and dispatch them on "missions".

(If you only watch one, I recommend the food court musical for hilarity and/or the very last one. Note that Jim Gray really IS a sports broadcaster for NBC.)

Frozen Grand Central Station
(their most famous prank)



No Pants on the New York Subway



Food Court Musical
(For this one they contacted the mall upper management to get permission and rig up cameras and a sound system, but none of the regular mall employees knew what was going on.)



Best Game Ever



Go to ImprovEverwhere.com for more. I also recommend "Look Up More", "High Five on Escalator" (notice how the mood of the commuters changes by the time they reach the top), "Abercrombie and Fitch" (shirtless guys), and the "Human Mirror".

...at least, now that I've got netting up to keep out the #%@!! possum.




( More Garden Photos with Obligatory Cat )

And meh, I should've called.

But somehow I suspect stress is piling up in large dust-rhinos, and I waffled about calling until too late.

ANYWAY.

akycha, you are wonderful and goddess like and I won't jinx it, but I know you're going to do WONDERFULLY tomorrow.

Much love!

And cong--

nope, nope, can't say it yet.

But you are brilliant.

...I'll never forget hearing this song live for the first time.

It makes you cry even on YouTube, but it's worth hearing, if you haven't.




I remember Taylor bell tower at Bryn Mawr College tolling for Jim Henson the day he passed away.

w000t! 10-second shake-and-bake. Far enough that the edges were smoothed off of it, but close enough to make the whole house creak and shift.

*pokey pokey pokey at recent earthquakes map*

C'mon!


EDIT: HA. 5.0. Am I good, or what?

Trekqueen, that epicenter looks like it's on your side of town. Anything fall off your shelves?


Sounds like a rather exciting showing of Star Trek in Redondo Beach. Ceiling tiles, projector, and movie screen came down!

Near Los Angeles some people reporting lots of stuff flying off shelves, out of cabinets, TVs falling, pictures falling and breaking, etc. They must've had more shake than here.

...never got a good video of the original Concrete Dance, but here's happy Samhain in the back yard. One of the top priorities on my house hunting list was an enclosed, partly-paved area for her to play in!

So, in celebration of moving in about a year ago...



Music is some random song I've never heard of, "Bang a Drum" by Selena Gomez, because I was trying to get a piece of music in the Audioswap section of YouTube (i.e. made available by the artist).

And yes, my eye is healing. SLOWLY. Still can't see much out of it, but the main thing is the infection is gone, so now it's just a matter of healing the damage.

Mostly I just like the name, but the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest tickles my fancy: submit an absurd poem to a "vanity contest," as a joke, then also submit it to Wergle Flomp.

I think they should give their award to the most outrageous poem that WINS a vanity contest, but anyway... cheers. I have a latent subversive streak when it comes to making too much of poetry, despite being a highfalutin' bard.

I believe I tormented Mrs. Cope (English Teacher) once by giving her a batch of haikus my Random Basho Generator had created on my old Apple ][, just to tweak her nose, because (as I expected) she immediately started interpreting the profound meanings in each haiku. I was resisting poetry analysis as a colossal waste of time, because I was suspicious that it was a process of projection.

There's this rabblerouser iReporter on the CNN website who's been proselytizing from his living room throughout the election, some guy named David. I've enjoyed his musings and rants and had a few friendly comment exchanges with him.

He lives in DC, and he managed to get himself fairly close to the podium-- "with no ticket," as he says proudly.

This is David's recording of the ceremony, with a lot of heartfelt whooping and hollerin'...and some peanut gallery comments during the speech. :)


Feh, embed may not have worked. Oh well, here's the Link.