In the meantime, Deird wrote an awesome post on both breastfeeding and why using the word "graphically" doesn't automatically make your point any more forceful:
Graphically. She is graphically breastfeeding. Much as I graphically got myself a cup of tea, graphically bought a train ticket, and graphically edited documents this morning. Horrors! *swoons*
Recommends time! What have you been reading, writing, watching, or thinking?
12 comments:
My first thought is "The arrangement is graphically floral."
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Still haven't been reading much. It's been a bad week for me. One in a string. How many bad thingys (days, weeks, months, years, whatever) does it take before you stop saying it's a bad thingy and start saying it's normal?
I did read an installment of Pius' Edge of Apocalypse decon for the first time in a long time.
This week I wrote an irrational defense of Pi in response to learning of the Tau movement, I wrote about things that I do not understand (be warned that one of them involves the Catholic Church's response to abuse by priests, and another involves transphobia), I wrote a story snippet with a chess metaphor, and I wrote about wanting big government.
I also posted a glimpse into my life, trigger warning for pretty much all the usual stuff involving my life (depression, anxiety, the like.)
And I made an index for the month of February in case anyone wants to catch up on things they may have missed. (Yes, February. It took me a while to get around to it.)
I've been reading a book called Pure by Julianna Baggott. Excellent so far, but I was actually pretty disappointed to find out that it is book one in a trilogy. See, I have this funny rule, guideline really, that I don't read books that are part of a series until the ENTIRE series has been published. For no other reason than I am super impatient, and I hate waiting for the next book to come out, only to read it in two days, and have to wait months or years for the next one to be released.
But! If you don't mind waiting for book 2, and you like post-nuclear apocalypse, I recommend this greatly!
I also continued my deconstruction and analysis of The Vampire Diaries. This time, I dug deeper into issues of wealth and poverty in the mind of the impressionable teenager.
I need to say, women or men breastfeeding plastic baby dolls would creep me the hell out, not because of the breastfeeding part, but because baby dolls are creepy. If she was "graphically" breastfeeding, can I be graphically listening to music as I graphically surf the interwebs?
In other words, graphically is my new favorite adverb. :)
I haven't been doing a lot of book-reading given how I've been a little frantic with classes and stuff. At least I had the inspiration to finish another chapter of a certain project I've been on for a few months. In fact, the rate is about a chapter a month or so. (speed demon~) I believe I linked it in a previous open thread, but. Well.
Disclaimer/Trigger/etc: Violence in a war and fighting sense, people dying in war, war happening in war, there's some smut in chapter one, some of the characters swear. Word search turns up five instances of the word 'crazy' in dialog from characters.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7670318/3/Records_of_Our_War
Just posted chapter four, but I'd recommend reading 3 first if you don't know anything about Record of Agarest War but still want to give it a try. That's where I did a bit with the intro to the game and the setup and whatnot. Honestly, the story is a collection of sparks, and not arranged in chronological order; I just put them up as inspiration comes.
It gets more attention than I figured it would because it's only one of seven Agarest fics currently on the site. I guess that's like the time I won the Halo Wars gamestop tournament because only four other people showed up, and I was the only one who'd played the demo.
I read... crud, can't remember, shows how much of an impression they must've made! After checking the shelf, I read How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls which is just the sort of poor-teacher-Cinderellas, rich-brats-become-better-people story that you know it will be from the moment you pick it up. Sometimes it's nice to read something predictable. Also read Mistwood by Leah Cypess. Her fantasy is better than some, worth picking up if you see her books at the library.
Currently re-reading Memoirs of a Medieval Woman, because we're studying that time period in the class I'm taking. It's nonfiction, an actual diary translated into modern English with what would be extensive footnotes except that they're in the main text. Highly recommended if you like medieval life and the particular forms of religion going on at the time. Margery Kempe, the medieval woman, was very loudly religious and eccentric.
The epic fanfic continues its steady march towards completion, at least I finished the scene with the dragon! Next up, the magic students go on a field trip to the local Thieves Guild! But they may never get there if I keep playing World of Timesuck instead of writing.
I loved MISTWOOD. I had a stupid smile on my face all through the last chapter.
The sorta kind maybe sequel NIGHTSPELL is also very good; at any rate, I hate zombie novels, and yet this one I really enjoyed.
What I have been reading is mostly reviews, to finish up my March orders before the end of the month.
What I have been writing ... eh, not much. Anyone who wants to know about the existential terrors induced by Holy Week, can read about them here.
Speaking of existential terrors, my captcha words for that comment were "Berg Cychoth."
And now I want to spin a yarn about a Lovecraftian law firm...
Check my blog in the morning. I'm recommending things I've been reading, plus a project I'd like to see promoted. Please?
Ooh, thanks for the hint! I'll have to see if I can find it somewhere not-Amazon (or at Amazon when I get to ordering more stuff there again...)
I've been reading the Rule of St. Benedict, for the nunnery game, since there is no e-text version and we want it for the game for the scribes to copy, so I'm writing it down, slightly abridged, on the computer so I can print it on some suitable font. (Considered actually doing the calligraphy by hand but managed to smack some sense into myself in time! It's not often that I manage to actually say no to doing stuff the hard way when it comes to living history projects! Then again this is a LARP, not a real event, so booyah!)
Recently bought A Dance with Dragons but haven't read very much of it yet - anyway I've read all the pre-released spoiler chapters and not out of familiar territory yet. It's the first one I'll be reading in English and even after 5 or so chapters I can notice there are several annoying phrasings. Non-linguists shouldn't be trying to be pseudo-medieval. I probably won't like this one as much as the previous books.
I kind of don't like reading series that aren't finished, but my life was seriously enriched by reading books 1 and 2 of Spirit Binders, and Crystal Rain was good, too. Almost as annoying to me is when you read and loved something but lost the book or moved away from the library and you want to reread it and it's out of print and AAAARGH!
Chris, I feel like bad never becomes the new normal. It may be average, but it's always bad. This may be a problem for me in admitting to dysfunctonality, but I think I've gotten better at that over the years. Thinking of good as the new normal is hard, too, sometimes. May I have that problem more in the future, and may you have it too.
Reading: I just finished Lament of the Lamb, by Kei Toume. But I don't recommend it. The plot was repetitive and dragged on, the setting lacked energy, and the ending made the whole thing largely a Shaggy Dog story. Even the final revelation was both predictable and not terribly interesting.
I also started The Story of the Stone again. This is one of the major works in the classical Chinese canon, although I haven't gotten far enough to determine what it's about yet. I've started it a couple of times, but I always lose steam and then forget who is who (it features a large family with a lot of people to keep track of). I preferred both Water Margin (AKA Outlaws of the Marsh) and Journey to the West to what I've read so far of this new book, but I can tell that I'd like TSotS a lot if I could just make myself stick with it. Well, here's to my next attempt. :-) And I have promised myself that, if I can get through this, I will read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which I really want to read. Hopefully that will be adequate motivation.
As for writing, I just completed a 7000 word journal article that was submitted yesterday, so here's hoping it gets in. (This was on top of a 6 page conference paper and a 4 page workshop paper that were submitted earlier this month). And I also just finished writing a 7700 word short story 'Saylor v. Strynskov.' It's about a chess player, Saylor, who winds up at a chess match that seems to go on for an interminable length of time. It's my first attempt at a sort of horror-esque story, and I'm sure I'll find all kinds of problems with it tomorrow morning when I wake up and think about it, but for now, I'm happy. And now that I have three short stories done in first-draft form, I think it's time I go back, do some second drafts and polishing, and begin sending them out.
Of the other two short stories (both of which I finished a while ago), I'll probably edit "Flame of the Urals" first. The basic premise is that the Crimean War is going poorly for the Russians, because the St. George Dragonriders of the British forces are able to wipe out any opposition and will soon reach Moscow. A lone Russian soldier and her archeologist friend embark on a desperate race to find the legendary Firebird, which alone has the power to beat back the British dragons and save Russia. The other story, "Orc Discipline," is about an orc teenager who decides that she wants to become a great and wise archmage, capable of casting the sort of mighty spells that can go down in the history books, even though orcs are usually on the 'half-illiterate monsters that smash things, eat raw food, and grunt' side of things. So she wranglers her way into the local School for Magical Creatures and tries to get started on this path. It needs more structural work, so I'll mull it over for a while as I fix up the Russian story.
And lastly, I'm workshopping a new trope for tvtropes: Buffet Buffoonery (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=awlu2vqz63huivx6zi3vfn99). It's about the wacky hijinks that comedy series invoke when buffets come into the mix (ultra-intricate strategizing on how to get the most for your money, rules lawyering on what 'all you can eat' means, etc.) If you have any examples, feel free to contribute!
(That tvtropes link has an extra parenthesis. Sorry).
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