The Pit of Despair...

...or, possibly, desperation.

I've taken to reading some online newsgroups again, now that I have an account that actually subscribes to a fair number of them.

So, whilst browsing alt.startrek.creative, having exhausted all the worthwhile conversation on rec.music.filk, I did a...well...a scary thing.

I first found alt.startrek.creative when I ventured online during my freshman year of college, during the Debate About Debating About Debating About Debating About Slash.

This is not what is scary.

What is scary is that I found an Enterprise story.

What's more scary is that I read it.

What's even more scary is that I {tries to hang head and hide at the same time} liked it.

It was cute.

It was a Trip/T'Pol story...and she even sounded halfway Vulcan.

Real Vulcan, I mean -- not the caricatures that they became on Enterprise, though Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have helped some.

But all that aside, the fact remains that I found, read, and enjoyed an Enterprise story.

To quote from, I think, Babylon 5 fandom of my freshman year of college, as long as I'm being nostalgic...

Ye gods and little fishes....

(Happy New Year, by the way.)

Yeah, I'm Babbly and Random Today

For lack of anything else, I'm watching a history channel biography of Eva Braun -- which would normally be fascinating (I have a probably unhealthy fascination with World War II), except that I've seen it about 10 times, not the least of which was the second half of it earlier tonight.

But I did notice two things -- one part of the score sounded suspiciously like the instrumental part of a Disney song that I don't remember now (I'm sure I'll think of it later); and the second sounded like part of the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey -- in the part with the ape men, but not "Thus Spake Zarathustra."

By the way -- that movie makes a lot more sense if you've read the book first, and I may just pop it in the DVD player now.

Of course, after seeing The Peacekeeper Wars, I will never again view the hotel room in the same way again (that is, without seeing Harvey on the bed :-p).

Tsunami

Whatever you think of amazon.com (the whole independent bookstore vs. you-can-buy-it-all-here thing), this is cool.

When I checked yahoo news a while ago, the death toll was at 117,000. I just looked again and it was 119,000.

One hundred and nineteen thousand people.

I think it registers more when you write it out in words -- when it's numbers, it's more abstract.

If you really don't like amazon, I'm sure the Red Cross will take donations directly -- in fact, I know they do, because I did so after September 11th, and again after hurricane Frances.

Having lived through the Northridge earthquake, a mere 6.7 that knocked out power in the San Fernando Valley for a week, I can't imagine what it's doing to islands without the infrastructure to handle even that, let alone the tsunami that followed....

Of course

Naturally, one would think to look in one's pillowcases for one's cell phone.

Oy.

Oh -- and the call was a wrong number....

Argh

So, my cell phone is buzzing a reminder (probably a voice mail) at me about every two minutes.

The problem is, that while I can hear said vibrating, and while I can feel said vibrating...

...I can't find the flippin' thing anywhere.

And, I don't even know the number, 'cause it's a new cell phone, so I can't call myself to follow the rings to the phone.

Randomness

A totally random comment, utterly unrelated to the more serious post below.

Angel and Cordelia were just totally cute together.

If you don't know who either of those are, you don't care. If you do, and you disagree...sorry. If you do, and you agree...yay!

G'night.

Yahoo! News - Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 77,000

Yahoo! News - Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 77,000

I've been watching this progress on the Internet -- haven't been watching the news because Patrick still has an earthquake phobia (as in, he won't even say the word) -- and I felt compelled to comment.

But now that I've started the blog entry -- I'm not sure there are words for this.

I'm not sure anyone can truly conceive of seventy-seven thousand life stories ending. I'm not sure, really, that you can make that number mean anything other than a-freaking-lot-of-people. Except that these were men, women, children...people who had hopes, dreams, memories, good and bad times, plans for the future -- everything you and I have. They might have been different plans for the future; in some cases, they might have been simpler memories....

But there you have it.

They were people -- that I had never met only because of a trick of geography, or of birth, that caused me to be born here and they to be born there.

Meanwhile, I try to conceptualize the sheer number of lives that have been lost this week, and I remember a simple quote: "The spear in the Other's heart is the spear in your own; you are he."

Even that doesn't do the sheer number of lives lost justice, and I really don't think there are words....

Rain Storms

Those of you who know me know that I love driving. One of the hardest things to get used to after injuring my ankle was how hard it was to drive, since I have no vehicles that have functioning cruise controls.

Yesterday, my mom, brother, and I drove up to the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, to have lunch in their coffee shop (my mom and dad used to go there every year for their anniversary, except for the year I inconveniently was born, quite early, 3 days before their anniversary, and until several years after I was born, likely due to my dad opening his alarm business).

In any event, I volunteered to drive part of the way back because I know my way around Santa Barbara better and wanted to stop at the huge Borders there (Merry Christmas to me!). Well, we hit the north end of the storm on the way back; we'd stopped in Santa Maria for gas, and it wasn't until I got off the freeway at Carrillo in SB that I was even able to open the soda I bought -- not because of the rain, but because of the wind...yikes.

In other news -- there's a video of Julia Ecklar's (well, written by Leslie Fish, but sung most famously by Julia Ecklar) "Hope Eyrie!" Written to commemorate the Apollo moon landing, the song is a gorgeous tribute to the feeling of wonder that folks, especially the scientifically inclined, must have felt, knowing that human feet had, for the first time in all of recorded history, set foot on the rock and soil of another planet.

(It's more than thirty years later, and we can't even get a flippin' shuttle off the ground, which is sad....) Not that I don't feel for the families of the crew of Challenger and Columbia, but they're not the first to have died to explore space -- and certainly not the first to have died in the pursuit of exploration.

Wow, that got philosophic...sorry.

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

Mmm...books....

So, I'm about a third of the way through one of my new books, The Timeships by Stephen Baxter. Very, very good. I'm loving it so far.

Also, I preordered the next Harry Potter book. Hopefully, they'll do the same thing and ship it so it arrives the day it gets to bookstores, like they did with The Order of the Phoenix.

I've been having domain name issues, so I used my webspace that comes with my DSL service to put up a bare bones version of my site -- just the stories and wallpapers. I have a new Lord of the Rings one called "The Bravest Thing." It's my favorite graphic I've done so far. Enjoy.

Christmas

Well, we're back from Christmas at my cousins'. It was fun, and the dinner (prime rib!) was very yummy. We made creamed corn using Alton Brown's recipe, and it was really, really good, too. :-)

I got lots of books, and a few DVDs, including Flight of the Navigator, an 80s Disney sci-fi film, The Princess Bride, The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, and the first season of Punky Brewster.

Patrick really liked his gifts, especially the monorail poster. After we went to my cousins', we went to visit my grandma and grandpa -- grandma was doing pretty well today, though grandpa wasn't in the best of moods.

So, Patrick and I are back at my place for a DVD night, and maybe some after Christmas shopping (we both got money from our grandparents) tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

The Raven, et. al.

Who would have though that Homer Simpson would work so well as the main character in Poe's "The Raven."

But honestly -- Homer's perfect to play the mood-swinginess of the main character. And only Homer could truly shriek when the poem says:

'Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
'Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'

Personally, my favorite is how he delivers that last line -- "Take thy beak from out my heart, and take the form from off my DOOR!"

By the way -- speaking of popular poems -- Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman" (Loreena McKennitt does a beautiful-but-missing-three-key-stanzas rendition of it on her album The Book of Secrets) would make a great story....

She also does a great (okay, gorgeous) rendition of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shallott" (summarized brilliantly by a high school English teacher of mine thusly: "This girl was cursed and could never look outside her tower directly. Then she saw Sir Lancelot in her mirror and fell in love with him, and wanted to look at him, even though it would kill her. So she did. When he saw her, he said, "Well, she's pretty. Hope she rests in peace," and goes about his life.")

Now if only she would, you know, release a new CD someday....

Oh -- and more trivia...Anne Shirley reads from and/or performs both poems through the course of the first two Canadian-produced movies Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea.

Finally...I try to avoid being political on this blog, though I have strong political feelings. But if you have 99c, please consider downloading "Lullabye for a Weary World" on Julia Ecklar's CD Divine Intervention. I can't figure out how to make iTunes Music Store links work (okay, I probably could, but it's late, I'm tired, and I'm lazy), but just search "Divine Intervention" and you'll find it. Or, you can buy the CD here.

In an odd way, I view it as a holiday song, particularly in troubled times. In a hopefully less-than-odd way, think of it as a New Year's wish.

She's very protective of her lyrics being posted, but here's a brief excerpt:

"I wonder how my world can live with all the hate she harbors
Sleep, my weary world
. . .
I wish the power to stop it all could rest within my hands
I've seen her people dying for such bold and bloody causes
. . .
While the rising tide of history just ebbs and flows again
Make me a cradle to rock my weary world
Make me a gentle voice to soothe her when she weeps
. . .
I wish that I could soothe away her jagged shards of hatred
. . .
If her fighting will not stop, then I'll hold her that much closer
And sing my lullabye above the noise and pain of war
. . .
Make me a lullabye so sweet and fine
That I can sing my weary world to sleep."

Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, belated Happy Hannukah and Peaceful Ramadan to all, in case I can't post before the 25th.

Writing Blues

So...I really want to write a monologue for a character following an episode of a certain TV show. (I am not saying specifics 'cause (a) most of my friends who read this don't read fan fiction anyway and (b) I'll jinx it, I'm sure.)

The problem is, I can't get the character's voice right. Usually, I can -- but here, it's just not working. I worked out the psychology, what's going on -- and I can't even get the tone of pained bewilderment right....

Aah well....

Return of the King

In case I haven't said it before, Sam is the true hero of the story.

So there. ;-p

Too Much Private School

So, they played this on The West Wing tonight ("Hallelujah").

I had the same problem when it was in Shrek.

Maybe it's too much private school -- or, rather, too many religion classes while in private school -- but I just have to point out that while much of the story fits David (seeing "her" bathing on the roof, etc.), the part about cutting hair was Samson and Delilah.

That shouldn't bug me that much.

But it does.

Go figure.

Happy Nerd

My Return of the King Extended Edition (finally) came today!

I caved and ordered the gift set (complete with Minas Tirith statue) because it included an extra DVD of the Lord of the Rings symphony that Howard Shore arranged with music from all of the movies. :-) My only complaint is that the footage didn't show nearly enough of the movement that includes the Rohan music, my personal favorite part of the score.

Okay, so it's tied with the music from the prologue of Fellowship, especially the bit that plays right as "The Lord of the Rings" comes up on the screen, but still.

Other than that -- yay! :-)

Time Stamps and Stuff

It really was "way late" when I posted the previous, but because I started it at whatever it says, it kept the original time stamp.

Anyway, the funny story for today. About a week and a half ago, my trusty blue fan I've had since my senior year of college broke. The post snapped right clean off at the base. I was able to duct tape it together, mostly, and can coax it upright, mostly, as long as I don't so much as breathe on it.

So I looked around froogle and found a nifty fan that's height-adjustable (one of the drawbacks of trusty ol' blue) and has two sets of blades -- large ones for when it's hot and I need to move air around, and a smaller one to direct air flow, for when I sleep at night ('cause y'all know that I can't sleep without a fan to provide white noise -- that started my freshman year of college when I tried to drown out the what's-her-name's morning hour-long shower, complete with "If It Makes You Happy" on repeat).

It was supposed to show up within 3 days. That was about 10 days ago.

I was willing to cut them some slack because of holiday mail, but I finally emailed their customer service over the weekend.

It was accidentally shipped to the billing address (here) rather than to my mom's, where they could have just left it on the porch. But because I wasn't expecting a package, I haven't gotten my mail every day, so I missed the "you have a package" notice. The poor people in the office....

But the good news is...I have a fan. :-)

Mucho drama

I know, I know...another extended absence. I'm a horrible blogger....

Actually, no -- it's just that I tend to go into hibernate mode when stressed, and the class I've got this year is going to give me gray hair. (Well, just R., mostly, but when you add to that the fact that my grandmother's emphysema is getting way worse, the fact that I've managed to get all the normal first-year-teacher illnesses in this, my second year, the fact that...oh, whatever -- it's not important, and I don't want to go into POK mobile mode.)

A brief summary of where we stand now, though. Grandma has pneumonia (not a good thing with very bad emphysema) but an excellent heart, which is the usual cause of death associated with emphysema -- so the chances are she'll be around but miserable for quite some time. Meanwhile, I have laryngitis and possible walking pneumonia myself, so I'm not allowed within 5 miles of grandma. And other stuff I can't think of right now.

Again, to avoid POK mobile mode...some cool stuff has happened the last few months:

* Thanks to Leo, I found Weak Knees and added a hard drive to my TiVo, which now has 248 hours of storage. I love it.

* I got fed up with Earthlink DSL being down more than it was up, and signed up for DSL Extreme, also thanks to Leo.

* I bought the original Star Wars DVDs, and Harry Potter 3 (neither of which I've watched yet, but that's what Christmas vacation is for).

* I forced myself to make time to read every day, and discovered two new "hard" sci-fi (meaning more science than fantasy, like Arthur C. Clarke -- and, yes, for those of you about to make comments, I know that's a simplistic way to describe it) authors I like a lot: Stephen Baxter and Greg Bear. Greg Bear's book Eon is a lot like Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. Not long after I read it, I was going through an old box of my dad's books -- and what do you think was at the top? His obviously well-read copy of Eon. And then, tonight, I discovered that Greg Bear wrote Corona, the first Star Trek book I ever read, at the ripe old age of 7. Cool, huh?

* I found an ankle brace that enables me to actually walk for more than about an hour at a time. I still have a long way to go to get it back to pre-bad-sprain stage (don't worry, I., I still love you, even if you did trip me). I don't think I'll be able to do Disney World if we really go this summer without renting a scooter every other day or so (it's much more spread out there, with much more walking) but for every day stuff around town I only have problems if I have to stand still for a long time.

* Thanks to Kevin Rose from the old The Screensavers, I discovered BitTorrent, a unique file-sharing thing. Instead of d/ling a file from beginning to end, you grab whatever pieces are available and it puts them back together in order, which makes things much faster. I was able to d/l this season's episodes of Enterprise and thanks to several freeware intermediary steps was able to get them into iMovie and iDVD -- so even though Dish Network no longer gets UPN, I can still see Enterprise, which is finally redeeming itself a little, no doubt thanks in large part to people like Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who have been writing ST books for a long time and actually know what they're talking about.

So, there's more cool things, but it's way late and even though I have nothing in particular to do tomorrow, I should go to bed. Hasta.

D'oh!

Amazon.com: DVD: Farscape - The Complete Fourth Season (1999)

Murphy's Law strikes again -- why didn't I see this when I was at Best Buy with my mom on Wednesday and in a spending mood?

Oh, wait.

I need black ink for my printer.

Gosh darn it. ;-)

Murphy's Law

I've learned something about myself the last couple of weeks. When I get stressed, nervous, or upset, I hide...withdraw.

(This is a POK-mobile post, so probably no one should read this anyway...)

It's not been a fun few weeks. It all started the weekend Connie was supposed to call me and arrange to meet for dinner -- I totally forgot I was expecting the call, then thought of it that night, and realized I had no earthly idea where my cell phone was. Once I found it, I found that somehow a master password or something, which I never set, got messed up, and I can't get past the locked SIM card.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was told that because of the advanced stage of her emphysema, so much of her lung tissue is damaged that exposure to any respiratory-related illness (colds, flu, etc.) could be fatal. Actually contracting them would almost certainly be fatal.

Oh -- and she's smoking again.

So now, everytime I get the fluttery feeling I had the night my dad died (and my great-aunt, grandmother, and grandfather), I get nervous. Despite watching sci-fi, I'm not really one for the mystical stuff, but this, I believe in. It's happened too many times now...somehow I know when a relative is dying.

Let's see...my class is a disaster. The kids I had last year are doing okay, but none of the others have any clue what to do in a classroom. Most of them are doing a little better, but one kid, R., is driving me bananas, and I can't figure him out. This is very frustrating.

To add to that, one of my students is probably moving, and because she's assigned to P. as one-to-one support, one of my aides in the morning will be gone in the near future. Meanwhile, this person (who has a personality like my grandma's) is obsessing about random things, which I get to hear about for 6 1/2 hours a day.

Then, beginning about a week and a half ago, my jaw started to hurt. The wisdom teeth -- which were supposed to finally hold my teeth in place so my retainer wouldn't be necessary -- I was promised are finally coming in, but there doesn't appear to be room after all. Now, I have a major dentist phobia (not good, 'cause bad gums run in the family, but so far, I've been lucky in the teeth/cavity department), so I haven't yet convinced myself to call a dentist for what will probably be oral surgery to remove at least one impacted wisdom tooth.

And then, after my weekly Monday Carl's Jr. date with Patrick, I woke up so dizzy I felt like I was on a merry go round on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. Yep, folks, I had food poisoning.

One bright spot is the new 1st-3rd special day class teacher, Jenn, who has made it her mission to drag me to a teachers' happy hour gathering on Fridays, and finally succeeded Friday -- though I only had a virgin margarita. She's almost exactly my age, and we get along really well together, so I hope she stays more than one year.

Maybe forcing me to do that is what finally got me to write this. I knew that as soon as I did, I'be be...well, for lack of a better word...interacting with the wide world again. Maybe it's a sign that things are going to turn around.

Or, maybe I'm just a little maudlin tonight 'cause it's 7:30, there's nothing good on TV, I ran out of labels and ink to do anything useful for school, I don't want it to be Monday tomorrow, and my mouth hurts. :-(

I Have Been Pushed Over the Edge

Yeeeaarrrgghh.

It's "would have," people. Would have...could have...should have....

There is no such thing as could of. Or would of. Or should of. Or...had to of.

Would have.

Say it with me. Would have. Should have. Could have. Must have.

(Or, the acceptable slangy Farscape variant: could'a, would'a, should'a. :-)) Note, however, that the contraction includes the "a" from the word "have" -- nary a hint of the word "of."

Must have.

Could have.

Would have.

Should have.

Sigh.