Black Dog Blog

Archive for February, 2007

Not always so. In an actual RPG, I would want things to happen. However, I'm a 'writer', so I come at it from that direction.

I think the coolness of a character depends on what you actually see den doing as well as how well written de and des backstory are. For example, I'll be much more interested in someone's backstory having first seen den in action or heard something narrated from des viewpoint…

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Didn't gain. Lost. Majorly. Not sure what, if anything, I did differently, but whee.

If I ask anyone they'll say "oh it's probably h0rmones", which, don't get me started. I hate h0rmones. They are h0rs. In fact, pretty much anything whose chemical name ends in 'in' or 'ine' is a h0r. This I know through my wattly wisdom.

(Yeah, on the wattle-and-h0rs tangent, nobody let the Fish dude from Single Female Lawyer anywhere near me, 'kay? I fear for my brachial integrity.)

Still only vague instructions, but "you're doing nothing wrong so keep doing whatever you're doing", while somewhat confusing in the verb arena, is at least something.

2000AD! Now there's a thing I keep meaning to acquire and read a few back issues of. (Dredd = win, except when Stallone comes anywhere near him.)

Prey silence for 2007's Da Vinci Code!

Jesus tomb found, says film-maker

Another film that will stunningly fail to change the world of superstition, but may be remade starring Matt Damon.

Bid to end puppy farm 'misery'

It's perfectly simple. Check out the mother. Check out the breeder. Stop being obsessed with 'purebreeds'. Give a rescue dog a home.

Squee!"£'123123;21'31~@;' *dies* *resurrected to post*

I'm glad the Beeb is above trying to manipulate our feelings in any sort of obvious pictorial way.

Mwe he he!

If ya think I'm evil in my choice of illustration¹, Lent-doing people,

You're all pansies. I haven't tasted bread in six months, forget about cake.

Nyeh. I'm struggling with the greens-'n'-synth-meat reintroduction, but it's not willpower that's the problem. I rather like cabbage and stuff as long as I can cook it myself. No, the problem is that my brain is not constructed to do well with such precise measurements as "some" or "a small plate", and I have no time for "ooh, we don't do all those confusing weights and measurements here *giggle* *hairflip*". This makes me panic. Panic.

I don't know if this even merits the 'aspie' tag, since I'm sure other people would benefit from hard data. Numbers shouldn't be pushed on everyone, but not even giving us the option…

I want numbers, damn it. And, honestly, if you can really only give me a figure in ounces, I don't have a problem finding a conversion widget online. (The NHS is officially metric. I think in metric. NHS staff talk and think in imperial. It's rather retarded.)

Anyway, if I've gained again this week I'm going to give someone a harsh talking-to. They are failing to support me. I couldn't even get to see a nurse last week because they kept me waiting until I (felt I) had to leave for work, being late enough already.

My back's better-ish; I'm still periodically aware it's there, though it's not really pain at any point. This morning was the last physio appointment for the moment. We're getting orthopaedic chairs on trial at work. *waves flag*

¹ Time-sensitive link, because the page is updated weekly; the billing I refer to consists of (parasected) "Songs of Praise Lent – Pam Rhodes discovers there's more to Lent than giving up choccy …" and illustration is a piece of choccy cake being invitingly cut into by a fork. But this is the inside page; the front page illustration is a picture of the named presenter.

This is what we've been working on for the last… many weeks. Covering the religious and ethical side of slavery, for the BBC's season about Abolition.

BBC Religion and Ethics pages on slavery

2007 is the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, not of slavery in general.

Though I proofed and coded up all the articles here and they're mostly really good stuff, I think our biggest coup¹ is the article on Rastafari, reggae and slavery. Audio clips FTW!

¹ i.e. where we really outclass the massively better-funded History site. :)

I caved and changed my Pro username to my true name (well, true nickname) instead of Baskerville, my primary character's name.

(Don't worry, this wasn't really engendered by just two fellow members saying they thought I should. I wouldn't have mentioned the idea to begin with if I hadn't mostly decided to do it already; in actual fact, it's been a decision months in the making.)

It's… kind of a thing. A big thing. Medium size, at least. Baskerville's been my username since the Vine.

It's cutting off another connection to my past, my very origins as a 'writer'/play-by-turns messageboard roleplayer.

Or, to look at it in an alternative way, it's clarifying (because posting under a character name could be confusing) and streamlining (because my posting account's now the superuser account; R.I.P. Admin). And 'Mutt' is four letters long.

Mainly, though, it reminds me of all the people who knew me first and primarily as Baskerville Phoenix, and of how when I look around today, none of them is around very much any more. And of how I parted with some of them, including one in particular who — well, de was love-of-my-life territory in a purely platonic sense (I'm asexual and so was de back then).

Unfortunately I don't have Swiff's organised approach to loves of one's life. He got all that out of the way as a young teenager and is now cut loose to have the odd casual fling whenever he gets lonely (or a girl sneaks into his room and he's too polite to kick her out) and only very occasionally looks back and feels wistful.

(I must remember not to write him as a brooding romantic anti-hero, because he really isn't one. He just happens to have been hit in a major way by very unplatonic courtly love¹. He's otherwise very sane and secretly rather cheerful.)

¹ Not in the classic sense of the phrase, obviously, because the whole idea was bollocks. I merely call it that to tease him, which he takes in good humour. Ah well.

First sentence of email:

The FTM on the second floor is temporally out of order.

First of all, instead of FastTicket Machine, I always read that particular TLA as meaning "female-to-male transgendery person". But it's the typo that really tickles me.

I ordered a ticket next week and I still won't received it already this morning.

Life's kicking my ass emotionally at the moment, and I don't know why. That is, I know a couple of minor reasons – but maybe those are enough to break my mood after all.

One's the stupid clinic. Another is not being able to compress certain bits of me with Lycra because I'm being careful not to aggravate my back. The third is mum periodically locking the computer room without warning after temper tantrums (in this last case, locking my iPod in there too, because I'd taken it in there to charge). It's more of her power games and posturing, which hurts, but ultimately she can do it if she wants to – I just want warning, so I don't arrange to talk to someone or rearrange movie plans to fix something broken on my website¹ or be kept waiting an hour to use the modem before finding she's swanned out somewhere and locked the door or whatever.

But then, she knows this perfectly well; the inconvenience is all part of the game. *rolls eyes*

I just need my own place. Now if only I wasn't terrified of literally everything that exists, maybe I could do more than passively recognise this fact.

Gridlinked, by Neal Asher, was good. I'm currently inhaling its sequel, Brass Man. That is, I think it's a direct sequel; there's no noticeable gap in the narrative, but there may have been books (about other parts of the same universe) in between². These are the two I own, though, so that's handy.

I could've taken or left Mr. Crane in Gridlinked³, but he's hooking me in this. To the point where I murmured "Good boy" aloud at a fitting moment. And I'm wondering how much of it Asher planned in the first book – not all of it, I'm guessing (resurrecting a character that was killed pretty definitively dead in the first, when I realised that was what was going to happen, made me immediately very cynical), but it does feel as though he's returning to themes he didn't get a chance to elaborate on. I like that.

So. Considering my main criticisms of books like Gridlinked are always "More AIs! More androids! More biotech!", in my mind Brass Man is getting kinda filed as the better second half of the former. We shall see. I'm rooting for Asher to fail to do the 'villain redeems desself then dies nobly' schtick.

¹ I don't literally do this. Fucking annoying if I've planned to get a newsletter written and sent out that evening, though.
² Before you ask, I deliberately don't look these things up online, because I honestly hate spoilers that damn much.
³ And to be fair, I can't be sure if that was more the lack of characterisation or my not reading it carefully, because I didn't understand the ending of G/L either. (Actually, I'd been sure throughout the closing chapters that [alienCharA] would turn out to be the offspring of [dissimilarAlienCharB] in an earlier stage of life. Still think that would've been cool.)

Why is it that, whenever I see an email with the little red exclamation-mark icon that indicates the sender has flagged it as high priority…

This immediately makes me want to leave it until last?

Because I'm an antisocial, cynical bastard, it's true. But, annoyingly for the world at large, this doesn't stop my gut response from being right nine times out of ten.

Speaking of gut reactions, I'm annoyed with the staff at the clinic, but I'll leave that whole rant for another time or never. Briefly, though, I wish people would give me guidance, and especially hard data, when I want it and not fob me off with "oh, we don't bother with all those boring weights and measurements here". So here I am at the most difficult stage of this program and trying to get into a sensible eating plan and, hello, chances are I wouldn't be this size if I already knew how to mix foods in correct proportions, but I'm being treated like a moron by those damn…

…sorry, but damn girls!

Testing Performancing plugin.  Will this work with crossposter?

(edit: Apparently so.)
(edit2: And editing works too. Nifty.)

So far, what I don't like: (1) not being able to manage the list-of-blogs tab. The 'name' on my LJ is 'Zie of the ceram paw-pads', but obviously I might want to give the blog profile in Performancing a more sensible label. (2) the bug in the 'what community accounts do you want to add' bit that stops me adding Androgynes and Asexuality. (3) the logical combination of these two annoyances means it's impossible to add 'Post to moonburntlounge as [Weft/Suitov/Ishtar/Green]' and give it a sensible name. Ah well. Further playing will be done in lunch break.

Cut for images. What 'leader' am I? What 'classic' film am I? Dun dun dun…
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I've got one of these on my monitor.

Just to be crystal clear, I mean I printed out the picture and cut it out and stuck it up (such craft!), not that there's a real cat avec violin screeching at me.

(As to why I have one of those on my monitor when I dislike both things depicted, I felt like it and liked the style. Quickie brush art is very Zen, but I don't let that prejudice me against…)

Quite frankly: best pair of jobs ever.

Ancient chimps 'used stone tools'

Eeeee. :)

"For those in gender transition from male to female or female to male, or for those who are permanently stuck between genders in this society" (emphasis mine). ♥

Iraqis use Google Earth to survive war

Always African Greys, isn't it? And these stories always make me want one. If only I could work from home – trouble is, you can't get paternity leave if your baby isn't your own species.

Not very relaxin

Cuuuuute!

Whut

Squidlights!

Remind me. It was St Whattatine day last night, and I was supposed to be griping about it why?

We saw The Mikado done Bollywood style!

It's been so long since I last saw it that I'm considering buying the soundtrack (but not to last night's, 'cause it was an amateur performance and Ko-Ko was kinda weak – damn good efforts all round, though!). Anyone have a good recording/edition/thingy they'd recommend?

For people who like flamy (smouldery) bastards, I pass this on:

Happy Valentine's from punkedoutotter on the Lokeans group.

People are bringing me cushions – a choice of cushions, no less – and the whole team is going to get some wacky orthopaedic chairs to test out.

I considered saying I should get in pain more often, but that's not so funny. Not so funny at all.

I'm reading Gridlinked on the tram journeys and lo, it is good. It couldn't keep my mind occupied throughout the other night, but that would've been rather much miraculous to expect from a first novel. Reasonably standard worldbuilding so far, and some rather papery villains, but having read The Skinner I'm optimistic.

Last night, well. It's tempting to put a brave face (spine) on it, but truth be told, I was awake all night crying like a girl at the pain.

Saw a physiotherapist today, who did some ultrasounding and other stuff once we finally pinpointed just where the pain was. (I'm never good at that. The slightest agony blinds every single one of my senses – not to mention obliterating my autism shields, meaning I jump and yelp at things far more frequently than anyone usually gets to experience – so that if I can specify upper or lower back, I'm doing surprisingly well.)

The pain's gone now – though true to experience so far, having wrecked my night it'd actually mostly disappeared before I arrived at the clinic. I have anti-inflammatories, a few gentle exercises and general guidance to follow, all of which seemed eminently sensible, and a follow-up appointment on Friday morning 09:30.

'm scared.