Misc. cont.

I've been ordering a lot of my assigned books from Powells.com. In order to get the order up high enough that I can get free shipping ($50 limit for pete's sake! Amazon.com's only $25), I've been sticking in the volumes of Mars which I don't have. Which was all except the first two. The ones that Powells.com didn't have, I ordered from Amazon.com. Problem is, my orders have been dribbling in, and the Amazon.com orders have been coming in faster (not only is the free shipping limit lower, but the service is faster). So I have Mars volumes 1, 2, 5 and 10. Arg. I want to read my Mars! Grr! No, I can't read them out of order. I...I just can't.

I have to say Mars is the stronger addiction, currently, than Hot Gimmick, but it's easier to sate as the entire 15-volume series has been released in English, while I still have to wait on volume three of Hot Gimmick.

Also, Alice 19th is exceptionally cute.

Yay manga! Yay Tokyopop forcing Viz to start charging less than $10 for their books and making them proper manga format, right-to-left! All smiles.

Oh hey, while searching for a website link for Mars, I came across a manga discount retailer which sells strawberry Pocky. Why couldn't I have found them sooner? waaah! All that money spent on Mars and Ranma 1/2 and Inu-Yasha. Also, stawberry Pocky is the food of the gods. Deadly. Soooo deadly.

Yay! ...I think

You all know, of course, that NASA's decided to scrap the Hubble so that Bush II can have his ridiculous plan for the space station on the Moon and the manned flight to Mars. However, this AP story says:

NASA to Review Decision on Fate of Hubble.

Maryland's congressional delegation also sent a letter to O'Keefe on Tuesday urging him to reconsider.

'The scientific returns we have received from Hubble's service thus far have exceeded our expectations. ... We believe that NASA should make every possible effort to retain this proven window on the universe,' the letter said.

Without the servicing mission, which had been planned for 2006, the orbiting telescope is expected to stop working several years before its scheduled 2010 retirement."

Which means Hubble just might survive. The telescope has contributed so much to science. While the idea of a space station on the moon is SF-geek cool, I don't want to play spaceman if it means we lose the real, hard contributions to science of the Hubble. I've been furious since hearing of the Hubble's planned demise. It's good to read that other people have reacted as strongly as I have. There's even a website petition:
However, I recommend that folks contact their representatives and senators as well. Don't let them scrap the Hubble! sniffle Please?

Another book to add to the list of editions I want to buy when I make my first few million

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer Now Newly Imprinted. London: Basilisk Press, 1975.

This is a limited edition facsimile of the Kelmscott Press production of Chaucer's works, held by many to be the most exquisite book of printed English literature. It was originally published in 1896 by William Morris with illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. It was the final book printed by Kelmscott Press under Morris and remains the only major effort to illustrate all of Chaucer's works.

Morris had a clear goal in mind when creating this edition: 'A book ornamented with pictures that are suitable for that book, and that book only, may become a work of art second to none, save a fine binding duly ornamented or a fine piece of literature.'

[ ... ]

That this edition was the crowning achievement for both men was not in doubt. Burne-Jones wrote, "Indeed, when the book is done . . . it will be a little like a pocket cathedral."

sigh Please note I'd even settle for a nicely printed replica from the `70's. And yet I still cannot get it. Being without money sucks.

Misc.

The snow didn't hit us too hard up here. Sure, we got a lot of it, but it wasn't insane. I'm sorry I can't say the same for my friends in NYC. Sorry, guys.

Oscar's arthritic hip hurt him so much this morning that he had to eat out of his bowl while lying down. Poor fuzzy.

I've a new addiction: Hot Gimmick, the manga by Aihara Miki.

Hm. It's 8:20 already. I'd better get back to Japanese. I'll probably add more later, as I've not much to say lately.

Oh, sorry I couldn't answer the phone last night, ET. I was feeling sickly. Bleh.

Ooh! What's this shiny, firey globe thing...?AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!...Hey, that hurt! Oh, hi Gandalf.... (whoops)

Whee! I'm still Pippin!


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Polly wanna cigar?

Naturally, you've all read about Churchill's 104-year old foul-mouthed parrot. "Fuck Hitler," she says, sounding just like the former prime minister of Britain. "Fuck the Nazis." How adorable.

Better yet, though, is the plethora of useless and possibly erroneous information to be found at this site. For instance:

"Robert Heinlein once used the sound effect "*spung*" to describe female nipples changing shape. This is yet more evidence that Heinlein was scary in a bad way."

D'oh

Whoops. Ten days late! Bad Sugar Kat. Baaaad. Baaaaad. Oh, well. It's already been proven via extensive testing that I'm more than a bit of an idjit. Tra la!

Case of the disappearing blogs

A year and a half ago, I was persuaded to start a blog. Everyone's doing it, I was told. You should, too. We don't read your e-mail, anyway. So, I started a blog. I've kept up my blog. I've wasted far too much time on my blog. It's not a good blog, but it's here so I don't have to write e-mail (which I've pretty much stopped doing all together).

So what is everyone I know doing? Stopping their blogs. No more blogging. Bleh-phooie upon the blog fad.

Now I'm debating with myself whether I should bother continuing with my blog, as it is not very good and I suspect my friends for whom I created it don't have the time to read a badly written blog to find out what's going on with me. You know, they, like, have lives and stuff, as illustrated by their no longer wasting precious time on something as idle as blog maintenance.

(As my blog so clearly illustrates, I do not have a life.)

Christmas continues...

Well, I don't know what I did to earn the loot, but the gifts keep on coming.

Doomo arigatoo gozaimasu to...

• D---, my brother's best friend from high school and almost a sister to me, sent me the Angels In America soundtrack, which made me very happy as I adored that film.



• Maggie, who will meet you at 8 at Ray's Pizza, she swears, who sent me the My Neighbor Totoro DVD, which also made me very happy as I also adore this film.

I have such good friends! :)

kingashinnen!

Gung Ho Fat Choy



Happy Year of the Monkey, y'all.

Whoops

First day of classes today. Japanese and Chaucer. Have not done a damned thing to help myself remember my Japanese except to watch Cardcaptor Sakura DVDs: they are in Japanese with English subtitles, so I can catch the spoken Japanese; the text is often in kana, as the characters are in elementary school and the intended audience is about that age, too. Other than that, I'm screwed (especially when it comes to vocab: adjectives, location, building names). Unless I really put a lot of work into it this weekend.

Ha. Yeah. Right.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ET!

wow. now you're thirty. that's old. like, i-hope-i-die-before-i-get-old old.

'course, i'm still older than you are, e.g., old-fartier.

welcome to MIDDLE AGE.
Halifax, Sheepboy and i got it all warmed up for you.

cheers! -ltsk

Return of the little trooper

Came back home Monday. Have done little but reset the DVR to shows which are returning and flip through Entertainment Weekly magazines which arrived while I was away.

I have not and probably will not finish the latest Honor Harrington book before the semester starts on Tuesday. It's difficult to focus on the book at this stage, even though I'm half-way through it, as I keep thinking about the movies I've seen instead of the book I'm reading. And nothing's happening in the book. I know something will, it's an Honor Harrington book, but nothing has and that does not stand up again memories of oliphaunts and ships of war and giants.

Halifax's novel is completely beyond my limited mental capacities this holiday break. I'm feeling guilty about that one. How soon do you need the critique, Mr. Slasher?

Mostly I just want to go see a couple more movies (saw Big Fish last Saturday, and it was good) and veg out. Unfortunately, I live in Smalbany, NY, where small films do not come and if they do come, they don't stay long enough for us to get out to see them. Also, I have work to do to prepare for the upcoming semester.

My brain's so dead, however, all I want to do is take the LotR personality quiz over and over again, as I'm just so dead thrilled to be Pippin.

Fool of a Took! the prequel

Made my mom take the Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you? quiz, and she got the following result, which is just so damned appropriate, let me tell you:


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That's just damned funny

You are going to marry Orlando Bloom. He will
always treat you right and is very romantic. He
will do anything for you. He is very polite and
has deep brown eyes and is very good looking
(which is another plus!). He can make anything
cheesy look really good (like sliding down
stairs on a shield shooting arrows or wearing
pointy ears for example). Congrats!!


Which male celebrity are you going to marry?
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Just wanted to say...

I don't care how fucking ugly Charlize Theron is in Monster--and therefore how brilliant an actress she must be, because pretty people making themselves ugly is what acting's all about, don't you know--I will not go see Monster. When I want to go see an independent film, I'll go see In America again, which was a very good and moving film about the fringes of American society with brilliant acting which did not require a lead to go from fashion model to bufugly in order to be considered a real actor.

Regarding the dog

It still smells bad. The dog. The places where the dog hangs out. They smell. Bad. I have to wash my hands every time I touch the dog, they smell so horribly of him. It's like OCD: pet the dog, wash my hands. Not because of germs, though that is a concern considering the creature eats his own shit, but because his body odor reeks and transfers easily. I gag when I bring my hand anywhere near my face after petting the dog. He smells that bad.

There is a reason that "dog's breath" is such a nasty thing to call a place or thing. Dog's breath is the only thing which smells worse than the dog itself.

Yeah. You read that right. He eats his own shit. Most of it is shoveled up quickly after his walk and put into a corner of the yard most people don't go. Unfortunately, the boys don't do this and apparently M-- and E-- are begining to slack. I know this because there are shit land mines waiting to explode in semi-frozen form all over my shoe as I follow the dog around the yard, waiting desperately for him to just take a g*ddamned piss already so I can go inside. Or, apparently, to become a tasty snack for the dog.

Yes, you have to dig cat poops (and clumped pee) out of the catbox every week, but they have been deodorized (usually) by the potent chemicals in the sand and are small. You use a scoop and transfer the emittance into a plastic bag and toss it into the garbage, never to been seen or smelled again.

Dog piss is everywhere, and dog poops must be moved immediately unless you want to step in them later. The only reason you'd step in cat poop is if your cat is sick and pooping outside of the designated defecation area.

Cats automatically go to their box as kittens. They want to poop in their sandbox. Dogs must be trained not to poop and piss everywhere they see fit. And even that's not a guarantee, as they get excited and apparently have exceedingly poor bladder control.

Cats just saunter over to their box and do their business. You have to take the damned dog outside and wait, no matter what the weather (and scoop the poop, too, when the dog's done).

Cats don't have B.O. They do have shitty breath, but not because they actually eat shit. They just can't brush their own teeth. Dogs stink. It's not a smell you get used to; your sense of smell has to die before you can stop smellling that dog funk.

Oh, and when a dog farts, you sure as hell know about it. It's worse than some people I know.

Dogs are nice to see for short periods of time. Not to own. Lord above, never, ever to own. What the hell was my sister thinking. She wanted a cat, who would shit in a box in the basement without asking, but she gets a stinking poop machine. Ugh.

Lookalikes on Turner Classic Movies

Turns out that our Maggie looks a bit like Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). I would not know this if I didn't spend far too much time watching old flicks on TCM.

Observations regarding dogs

I will never own a dog.

They poop and pee everywhere.

They are horribly, horribly smelly.

They jump on your furniture and make it smelly.

Your hands smelly after you touch them.

They make your clothes smelly.

They jump on you, scraping you with their ridiculous, useless-yet-huge claws and messing up whatever you're wearing.

They track dirt everywhere.

No matter where they poop, you have to pick it up and move it.

Dogs are cute, but not to own. Leave the dog-owning to the insane, and don't go to their houses. Their houses stink and you will stink, too, after a little while. It's like going to a smoker's house, only the smoker won't jump all over you, shed on you, and get slobber on your shoes. Or chew on any- and everything in the reach of their mouths.

Return of the Fool of a Took!

My elder sister, E--, took the Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you? quiz at my behest and wound up as


which is rather appropriate, considering I'm "Pippin and his complete simple-mindedness". Which I am. See?

Returning to high seas

Went to see Master and Commander again. The screen was okay, but smaller than the one I saw it on the first time. The sound was crap, located entirely to the front. The soundscape in M&C is increadible: there is always the water and the creaking wood of the ship. However, you couldn't hear it in the theater we went to last night. This was very disappointing, as I wanted my sister and nephews to have the same experience I did when I saw it for the first time. My comfort is that their sound system at home is professional-grade (as my brother-in-law, M---, sets up systems like this for his job for major corporations and obscenely wealthy and such). They'll be able to hear every lap of water, every creak of timber and rope.

M&C is a bit like a documentary. You observe what happens during a certain period of time. It's brilliant. I never once thought I'm watching FX. The fighting ships of war looked like they had actually filmed fighting ships of war. Even with this observational, documentarian style which Weir chose, I found I cared for what happened to the men on the ship, to the ship, to its doctor, and I understood a little of what the men saw in their captain and why they were willing to sail around the Horn at his command.

Anyway, it's worth seeing and I'm very glad I saw it again.

Still want to see Return of the King again, though.

Fool of a Took!

"Congratulations! You're Pippin!"


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Dog

My elder sister, E---, got a dog.

She'd had a cat, Mitzi, who was tiny and sweet, with the prettiest, greenest eyes I've ever seen. Mitzi was hit by a car in September. As of Christmas, E--- had recovered enough to want another cat.

"I want a cat," she said. "I want to get another cat." All during her stay, she let everyone know how much she wanted another cat.

So she got a dog. A six-month old rotweiler mix. From Petco, which is kind of like getting him at Wal-Mart. He was a rescued animal who'd been abused. How, they don't know. Or won't say. Petco had a "vet" check him out for them and they took the dog home and named him Max.

They're not planning on having him see a real vet any time soon, in spite of the history of abuse and his questionable background.

He's sweet and quiet and doesn't jump on you or sniff your crotch or bark or chew on your stuff if it's left anywhere remotely close to the floor. But he will, once he gets used to being here and being somebody's dog and not getting punished for it.

And they're not making any moves to get him professionally trained.

I'm not big on the not-peeing-and-pooping-in-designated-box thing. The walking the dog in rain and mud or else I get a puddle or worse on the carpet is not an entertaining thought. I'm not big on dog smell, either, which is kinda icky and permeates every room a dog habitates. Pet with B.O. There's something very wrong about that. I can handle fur, which can be rolled up with one of those rollers you can buy in bulk from Bed, Bath & Beyond, but body odor is another thing entirely. I'm definitely not happy with wet dog smell, which is super-foul. Like, gagging foul.

I like dogs, just not living with them. Especially when they haven't been properly trained. I'm definitely not the best choice to be the day-sitter for a six-month old dog who doesn't know not to defecate in the house.

This very well might be my last extended visit to my sister E---'s outside of Philly. We'll see.

p.s.

Saw The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King again today. Went to the "new" theater over on 34th between 8th and 9th. There were all of, like, four people in the theater, as we went to an afternoon showing on a Monday. It was like a private showing. It was awesome, especially since the seats were those nice, comfy stadium seats.

The movie's even better the second time around. It is different from the book, but I don't care. It's what it is, which is my new all-time favorite movie, bumping Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back out of the top spot for the first time since it was released. I'm on a RotK buzz. I'm so happy, I could cry. I want to see it again. (God how I love that sequence where they set off the bonfires from Gondor to Rohan. I feel like I'm soaring when I watch it.)

Well, I want to go see Master and Commander again and The Triplets of Belleville and then go see RotK again. With another huge-ass screen in a private screening. Yah, right. Super wicked-cool.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAGGIE!

hope you had a fantabulous day, in spite of it being a workday.

:)-kla.

p.s. my mom says the search-within-books bit of software on the amazorn site is wicked-cool and useful beyond the knowing of it. she asked me to share her thanks. So,

THANKS, SUPER-PROGRAMMER MAGGIE!

A poem for today

The Writer's Almanac - FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2004
Poem: "Any prince to any princess," by Adrian Henri, from The Loveless Motel (Jonathan Cape).

Any prince to any princess

August is coming
and the goose, I'm afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.

I can't imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the
Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.

I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General
Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.

The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be
repeated.

I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn't getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see
the absurdity of the
situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It's been three weeks now, and not even
a word.

Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,

let down your hair,

reconsider.

Movies what I've seen in the theater this season

• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
  oh my lord, 'twas so very, very good.
  blew me tiny, little mind.
  will most definitely see again.
  am dancing with glee in anticipation of ridiculously long extended version/"director's cut" DVD.


• Love Actually
  very funny, very charming, rather sad without jerking tears.
  very good performances by amazing cast.
  a nice, British romantic comedy.


• In America
  broke my freakin' heart, it did.
  great performances in very moving, delightful, touching, funny film about Irish immigrants in modern-day Manhattan.


• Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World
  geeze pease louise, that was awesome to look at, and much, much better than I was expecting or the filmgoers deserved.
  seamless FX, brilliant battles, spot-on depiction of crowded, filthy, superstitious, deadly life on a ship of war.
  would definitely go see again, on very big screen with super-sound.
  yay Lucky Jack! (that's right, another Captain Jack.)
  (added bonus of educational-type website stuff which tells you what the hell the four course is.)

-*- H A P P Y -*- N E W -*- Y E A R -*-