Happy birthday to Harry's other mother

The Writer's Almanac - JULY 31, 2005

It's the birthday of the novelist J.K. (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling, born in Chipping Sodbury, England (1966). She's the creator of Harry Potter, who, in the first book about him, is an orphan forced to live with his aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley at Number Four, Privet Drive. He sleeps in a cupboard under the stairs. For the first ten years of his life, he's believed that his parents were killed in a car accident. But on his eleventh birthday, he learns that they were wizards and that they were murdered by a man named Lord Voldemort, who is trying to take over the world. The Harry Potter books follow Harry as he attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and learns how to use magic and tries to avenge his parents' death.

J.K. Rowling grew up in the suburbs of Bristol, England. She was telling stories when she was a little kid. She said, 'The first story I ever wrote down was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends ... Ever since Rabbit, I have wanted to be a writer, although I rarely told anyone so.'

She set out to be a secretary, learned French so she could get a job as a bilingual secretary, but she found that she hated office work. Instead of taking notes in meetings, she daydreamed and wrote possible names of fictional characters in the margins of her notebooks.

She was in her mid 20s when she took a four-hour trip by train across England, and the train stopped somewhere between Manchester and London. Rowling looked out at a field of cows and suddenly got the idea for a story about a boy who goes to a school for wizardry. She said, 'Harry Potter just strolled into my head fully formed.' She liked that it was a story about a boy who was powerless in the ordinary world but who gets to travel to a place where his power would be almost limitless. By the time the train trip was over, she had already invented most of the characters that would appear in the Harry Potter books.

She worked on the first one for about four years, during which time she got married, had a daughter, got divorced, and was living in Edinburgh as a single mother. She had to live on public assistance to finish the book. It came out in America in 1998, Harry Potter and the [Sorcerer'sPhilosopher's] Stone, and J.K. Rowling became one of the best-selling authors of all time.

My Day-saint: Mary Magdelene

Catholic Online - Saints & Angels - St. Mary Magdelene

If I ever go crazy and decide to go through Confirmation (next step after where I left off with First Communion), when I'd become a "real" Catholic (rather like Pinocchio became a real boy) and have to take on a new name, I'd totally take on the name Mary Magdelene.

No, Maggie, not because you are awesome, but because it would be the very last bit of my spine making show.

Dude. You heard what those gnostic-types say? w00t and hollah for Mary Magdelene!

(Ignore the bland blandness of the Catholic site. Google her. Also under Mary Magdalene. She rocked, in a Christiany, female, saint-like way, which means easy listening/"adult contemporary", but is better than the elevator music a lot of the others emit.)

Well, dagnabbit

I've just looked at my blog using Apple's Safari, and the layout is not working at all. It works just jim-dandy in IE... and (phew) Firefox, but not Safari. And I don't know why, dang it. Why? Why?

Why, Sugar Kat? It's 'cause the Internet HATES you. The whole damned thing just loathes your dumb white ass. That's why. Bitch.

Also, no one's reading this anymore. I can tell. I'm psychic that way. Yes, I'm psychic in a completely useless way. I can't tell you who's going to win the Preakness or what the outcome of the continuing wars in Afghanistan and/or Iraq will be, but I can tell no one is reading this. I'm freaking Trelawney, only with the Internet. Which hates me.

Also, I got Maggie & Ryan's invite and IT'S SOOOO PURTY! And I'm thinking, Yay! Maggie and Ryan are getting hitched! Yay! I hafta get 'em presents! Groovy, groovy presents. ...Wait. Money. Job. Crap. But, PRESENTS! They must have fantabulous presents. ...Hotel? Fuck! Hotel! Augh! But, dammit, I am going, and I'm bringing presents. I may have to drive back home at 3 in the morning (three hour drive), but, dammit, I'm going, and I'm bringing presents. I'll probably be wearing jeans, as I've nada to wear, but I'll hide behind a pillar or something. Drive. I have to get a driver's license. Me, driving. Gah. That's just freakin' terrifyin'. Clear the roads, people. Sugar Kat's behind the wheel.

But I can write all that and be fine 'cause no one's reading this so no one will know and I can freak all I want about how the hell I'm going to pay for it and no one will know. Or care, really. And there you go.

And the Internet still hates me.

"I did not know that. Did you know that? I did not know that."

The Writer's Almanac - JULY 27, 2005

It was on this day in 1940 that Bugs Bunny made his debut in a cartoon called 'A Wild Hare.' Warner Brothers' writers and animators set out to make a rabbit who would be the epitome of cool. They modeled bugs on Groucho Marx with a carrot instead of a cigar. Mel Blanc gave him a Brooklyn accent. He was a nonchalant rabbit who chewed on his carrot in the face of all of his enemies and he was famous for the line, 'What's up, doc?' which he used in that first cartoon when he met Elmer Fudd who was hunting rabbits.

As America entered World War II, Bugs Bunny became the most popular cartoon character in America, always defeating his enemies through sheer cleverness, oftentimes as a quick change artist.

*ahem*

The Writer's Almanac - JULY 26, 2005

It's the birthday of the writer Aldous Huxley, born in Surrey, England (1894), best known as the author of the novel Brave New World, about a future in which genetically engineered people take drugs to keep them happy, have sex all the time, and never fall in love.

Tasty, if time-consuming

Lemon-Flaxseed Loaf Cake

I used another tablespoon of lemon juice in the cake itself as well, which turned out quite nicely and required no extra baking time.

From "The Writer's Almanac"

The Writer's Almanac - JULY 13, 2005

It's the birthday of poet John Clare, born in Nottinghamshire, England (1793). He may be the poorest person ever to become a major writer in English literature. His father was a peasant farmer. The family often had to live off the proceeds from a single apple tree in their yard. John Clare went to the village school between the ages of five and eleven. He learned to read and write and decided he wanted to write poetry.

He had to support himself as a farm laborer. Malnutrition had stunted his growth. He was never more than five feet tall, so he couldn't do heavy work. He mostly weeded and stacked hay bales and looked after animals. He couldn't afford to buy paper, so he made his own out of birch bark and made his own ink as well. Some of his poems were written on old envelopes.

Other romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Keats were writing nature poetry, but they wrote about nature as a metaphor for something, whereas John Clare always tried to write about nature as it was, the thing itself.

His first book came out in 1820. The fact that he was a peasant helped to make the book a best-seller. But within a few years there was a bank crash, and there was a recession in England. His books sold fewer and fewer copies, and he moved back to the farm.

John Clare wrote, 'I live here among the ignorant like a lost man ... they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I should mention them in my writings.' He began to suffer from a psychiatric disorder. His behavior grew more and more erratic. He began to see things, spirits and demons. He was committed to an asylum where he forgot who he was. At some points he thought he was Lord Byron and wrote some poems in Byron's style. He escaped from the asylum at one point but was returned and lived there for the rest of his life.

John Clare wrote about 3,500 poems of which only 400 were published in his lifetime, and his great importance as an English poet has only become clear in the last few decades.

View from over there

And back to what happened. I can tell this is an event which happened far away because I have the luxury of going back to fluffy thoughts not long after hearing about the attacks on London.

Ian McEwan wrote an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times which illustrates very clearly one of hte major differences between 7/7 and 9/11: London's been brutally attacked before. Stiff uppper lip indeed.

Another difference? They were as prepared as a city can be for an attack. Can't even say that about New York now.

The Surprise We Expected - New York Times

By IAN MCEWAN
Published: July 8, 2005
copyright The New York Times Corporation

London

[...]

The police were fanning out through Bloomsbury, closing streets at both ends even as you were halfway down them. The machinery of state, a great Leviathan, certain of its authority, moved with balletic coordination. Those rehearsals for a multiple terrorist attack underground were paying off.

In fact, now the disaster was upon us, it had an air of weary inevitability, and it looked familiar, as though it happened long ago. In the drizzle and dim light, the police lines, the emergency vehicles, the silent passers-by appeared as though in an old newsreel film in black and white. The news of the successful Olympic bid was more surprising than this. How could we have forgotten that this was always going to happen?

The mood on the streets was of numb acceptance, or strange calm. People obediently shuffled this way and that, directed round road blocks by a whole new citizens' army of 'support' officials - like air raid wardens from the last war. A man in a suit pulled a fluorescent jacket out of his briefcase and began directing traffic with snappy expertise. A woman, with blood covering her face and neck, who had come from the Russell Square tube station, briskly refused offers of help and said she had to get to work. Groups gathered impassively in the road, among the gridlocked traffic, listening through open windows to car radios.

On television, the news programs were having trouble finding the images to match the awfulness of the event. But this was not, or not yet, a public spectacle like New York or Madrid. The nightmare was happening far below our feet. Everyone knew that if the force that mangled the bus in Tavistock Square was contained within the walls of a tunnel, the human cost would be high, and the rescue appallingly difficult.

Down the far end of a closed-off street we saw emergency workers being helped into breathing equipment. We could only guess at the hell to which they must descend, and no one seemed to want to talk about it.

In Auden's famous poem, 'Musée des Beaux Arts,' the tragedy of Icarus falling from the sky is accompanied by life simply refusing to be disrupted. A plowman goes about his work, a ship 'sailed calmly on,' dogs keep on with 'their doggy life.'

In London yesterday, where crowds fumbling with mobile phones tried to find unimpeded ways across the city, there was much evidence of the truth of Auden's insight. While rescue workers searched for survivors and the dead in the smoke-filled blackness below, at pavement level men were loading vans, a woman sold umbrellas in her usual patch, the lunchtime sandwich makers were hard at work.

It is unlikely that London will claim to have been transformed in an instant, to have lost its innocence in the course of a morning. It is hard to knock a huge city like this off its course. It has survived many attacks in the past.

[...]

You really should try and read the whole thing, which is well written, I think. Well, for the Op-Ed page of the Times.

Lighter-hearted fare, 'cause I'm a callous shit

Please check out the poem here: Apologies to William Blake, as English majors and those who like English and have a general awareness of pop culture might find it as amusing as I do.

I think this may be the best way to deal with all of this shit

I think perhaps I and a portion of the rest of the world shall go and sample some of these brain-blasting Bum Wines in hopes that the resulting brain damage will wipe out our ability to think on any level above that of a retarded cactus. Thinking hurts.

BWA HA HA HA HA

From metaquotes:
IF YOU DON'T HAVE GAY SEX, THE TERRORISTS WIN.
-LJ user tortugax

BBC NEWS | UK | London bombings toll rises to 37

The Guardian: 37 dead in London blast

The Metropolitan police confirmed 35 deaths in the three tube blasts, and two further fatalities on a double-decker bus gutted by a bomb. The London ambulance service said it had treated 45 people with serious or critical injuries, including burns and amputations, and another 300 people with minor injuries. London hospitals reported treating hundreds of wounded. Police said the overall number of wounded was as high as 700.

Books, books, books

I am typing up a list of books owned. I'm doing it using Excel, in the hopes that I can sort it later under the different categories, such as whether or not it's YA, children's, manga, fiction, nonfiction, published before 1983, etc. When I am done, I will start on my CDs, then my DVDs.

I tried to make a sortable Excel list of my books in the past, but that computer sucked and I eventually gave up after the first 125 books or so.

I am including manga, as they take up space on my shelves, or would if I'd any shelf space left which they could take up. As it is, books are lying in stacks around my room in a semi-organized fashion.

I still want more books, though. Who knows how long these will last me.

Eventually, I'll show the list with manga sorted out seperately, as they don't quite qualify as book books. Nor do the graphic novels, which will also be sorted out.

I just wish I were smart enough to make some easier way to do this. Excel lists. There has to be something more graceful I could do. Guess I'm not geek enough. Geek's the new black, don't you know. I'm sort of khaki, which is definitely not the new pink.

That should be the name of my blog. Definitely Not The New Pink. Or the name of my band. My imaginary band, which is filled with imaginary people. We rock out in a completely imaginary yet awesome way.

Fucktard Frat Boy Sets Self On Fire While Drinking

Video evidence, as placed on friend's LJ.

Enjoy!