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[Dec. 14th, 2009|11:17 am] |
There's a saying I drag out every now and then (usually when I'm defending my interest in seeing a particular movie or performance piece): It's not how well the bear dances, it's that he dances at all.
While I've applied it to a lot of things over the years, it's seldom been as apt as with what I discovered this weekend. For a charity event, one of Britain's top dance groups had a dance-off...with BBC newsreaders.
I think this really, really needs to happen over here. And not just because I have a hunch that Keith Olbermann has some moves, yo. |
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| Local Signage |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|11:21 am] |
I don't "think" this sign "succeeds".
This one, on the other hand (for a German art song cabaret by one of the local music schools) wins. |
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| Nano, the last post for the year |
[Nov. 29th, 2009|05:26 pm] |
Sentences You Really Don't Want To Hear Coming Out of Your Own Mouth on the Last Day of Nanowrimo, The Day After You Wrote 6500 Words and Only Have 2000 More To Go to Reach Your Goal:
Sweetie? What's it mean when you try to turn on your laptop and the screen stays black and you just hear this low 'beeeeeeeeeeeep'ing sound?
Thanks to my loved one's mad l33t computer skills, though, the problem got solved, the story got finished, and I can now display:
And now to catch up on a month's worth of LJ posts and New Yorker magazines. Oh, and sleep. People say that's nice. I should try it. |
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| Sleep No More |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|12:19 am] |
Wow.
Any Shakespeare play I walk out of with my ears aching a little from the techno music, a little dent on my forehead from the mask they make all the audience members wear, and my feet a little sore from all the running up and down stairs I did, is a good show.
The short version: 'Sleep No More' is a bizarre mash-up of a 'Macbeth' play, a LARP, and a haunted house designed by Stanley Kubrick, where the actors are in constant motion and the audience (in masks and silent, so it's like a busload of ghosts are following a few real people around) can either trail one, investigate the rooms, or have a nervous breakdown and go drink in the bar. Everyone in the Boston area who hasn't seen it should, and you should take me with you so I can see all the bits I didn't have TIME to see tonight.
The long version will have to wait until tomorrow, for I'm SO totally worn out. Watching Scottish witches drink half a bottle of bourbon and then take piggyback rides on the Devil is just exhausting. |
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| Nano, yet again |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|01:28 pm] |
Dear Brain,
Okay, yes, the idea of a techno-druid trucker driving a strange plant/big rig hybrid has always been part of the plan. And yes, it is fun to write a stoner hippie Han Solo, with his entire ship taking the place of Chewie.
But having him turn out to be Al Gore??
But you know, whatever. Get me to 34,000 words by the end of the weekend and he can be Barney the Dinosaur for all I care. |
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| The fluffiness, it burns |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|10:17 am] |
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Note to self: this black shirt combined with that coat with the fluffy white inner lining? BAD COMBINATION. I spent the first half hour at work improvising a lint brush using packing tape and slowly cleaning myself, three square inches at a time, and I still look like I spent an hour mixed in with the socks and towels in a clothes dryer. |
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| The good |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|10:57 am] |
The good:
*There's a new place in my neighborhood, the Dosa Factory, that sells Indian street food! Their main focus are dosas, which the sign out front calls "Indian Crepes", I guess because "Indian Burritos the Size of a Ten-Pound Cod" didn't fit on their awning.
I mean, look at this thing:
In Davis Square you could hollow that out, install a sink, and charge $700 rent for it. Oh, and it's yummy. And if you eat in the restaurant you get to watch Bollywood music videos, which are awesome.
*Nanowrimo continues well, despite or maybe because of the raucous parties each write-in seems to turn into. At my most recent one I'd been in my seat for about thirty seconds before I was sucked into an in-depth discussion about cauliflower and how difficult it was to be a gluten-free vegan who hates vegetables, like my neighbor was.
Also, by this point in the story my plan was to have the town surrounded by a nigh-unstoppable force, with the main character barely escaping ahead of a mob of townsfolk angry at him for bringing this situation down on them. But the best-laid plans...first my character made it clear that he wouldn't run and abandon the townsfolk to certain death, and then the s.o.b. actually came up with a PLAN, and now the bad guys are getting their asses kicked and the headlong flight to steampunk-Philadelphia is going to be much, much less headlong. Humph.
Also, I notice that based on the photographic evidence, attending these write-ins make me look like I'm posing for a very disturbing Valentines Day portrait.
*I played in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) _dragonwolf_'s "Oz" larp this weekend, and it was totally awesome. I had a near-death experience, an "aha" moment that still makes me grin, and a great group of fellow players to bounce theories off and make twitch. And there was a flying monkey. If the GMs had just given out $50 "consolation" prizes every time they were asked a question and couldn't give a complete answer, this would have been the larp I asked a genie for.
So. How're you? |
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| Nanowrimo, again |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|01:33 pm] |
Well, the good news is that I'm a quarter of the way through! I'm still a bit ahead of schedule, and haven't yet experienced the "argh argh argh hate this what do I write now?!" feeling that usually hits. Maybe the fourth time's the charm?
The BAD news is that I'm a quarter of the way through, and the main character's just reached town. In LOTR terms, this is like the hobbits making it to Bree. This could turn out to be a 100,000 word story *easily*, especially if I keep getting distracted by the supporting characters like the dead first love (though her POV is so fun) and the sorta-villain werewolf I just orphaned (though the parallels that are there between her and her mentor, and Biff McStudlypants and the Main Character give me warm fuzzies)...which means it would be about 49,998 words more than I'm mentally prepared for.
Oy. |
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| Nano post two |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|09:43 am] |
I just went to type 'elves' and accidentally wrote 'elvis'.
And I think I'm gonna keep it.
I mean, they'd be as susceptible to pop culture as anyone else. Maybe more so. And if in my story that susceptibility takes the form of rhinestones and poodle skirts, y'know, I'm totally okay with that.
(It's pronounced 'elvzzzzzz', by the way. It helps if you curl your upper lip while you say it.) |
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| The first Nanowrimo post |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|01:35 pm] |
Dear My Own Brain,
No, the main character may not have a cute, mute, nonhuman, two-foot-tall sidekick. No no no no NO. Especially not after you spent 300 words describing just how alien and incomprehensible nonhuman minds are.* I don't CARE that he looks like 'a kangaroo carved out of a turnip'. He's there for one purpose, to lead the main character to the body, and that's IT. Do you remember when Miyazaki derailed the plot of 'Princess Mononoke' halfway through to write fanfic about the little forest spirits? No? That's because he didn't do it because it would be a HORRIBLE IDEA!
Just keep following the darn outline and no one gets hurt.
Grudging love,
Me
*Okay, I admit it, the bit about the colony of creatures living in the hillside which look like adorable hobbits but have the behavior patterns of naked mole rats made me smile. |
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| So, how's YOUR weekend going? |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|10:23 pm] |
This is a friend and I in Hour 4 of the great "Thrill the World" workshop and performance tonight.
It was totally awesome.
I'm totally, utterly fried.
50+ zombie dancers generate a LOT of heat. Like, floor-slippery-with-sweat, makeup-melting-off heat.
I'm totally, utterly fried AND I'm now a half-assed 'Thriller' dancer. That's right, I leveled up from 'painful to watch'.
I sleep now.
*Tud* |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|09:25 am] |
Thing you probably didn't know about me: as a child, I spent a few years as a total Carl Sagan fanboy. I LOVED 'Cosmos', to the point where that summer I cut a deal with my cousin and moved two cords of wood from the chopping area down into the basement, wheelbarrow load by wheelbarrow load, if he'd buy me the book. It was totally worth it.
And seeing this video brings it all back:
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| The things I think about when it's time to think thoughts |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|01:12 pm] |
So I was listening to 'Be Our Guest' this morning at the gym (because I am a dork, yes), and for the first time something struck me as being a little bit off. So I looked up the lyrics when I got to work.
I'm ordinarily pretty good with the suspension of disbelief. Singing, dancing crockery? No problem. Preparing a 50-person meal for a single guest? I totally understand, because a) they've got enthusiasm and b) France.
But here's the thing: the second verse mentions beef ragout. The third verse, much more disturbingly, mentions Singing pork! Dancing veal! WHERE DID THE MEAT COME FROM? Every other dancing thing in the castle is an enchanted, transformed human. Did some poor saps draw the short straw and get turned into living food? Or, maybe even worse, when the spell hit did Bob the Butcher...sorry, Bernard le Boucher...and his assistants get turned into a chopping block and an assortment of large knives, and periodically they have to go out into the countryside hunting down local livestock? |
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| Wheels of progress grind slowly |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|04:43 pm] |
Fair warning, friends and neighbors: I'll be doing Nanowrimo again this year, so you're going to get a lot of little posts about my (lack of) progress.
But for today, I'm happy to announce that I've hit a milestone by coming up with the title:
The Hand of Fate Has Four Middle Fingers
Oh yes. This is going to be special.
(More seriously, if anyone else is doing it and wants to link up for mutual support and shared hot chocolate recipes, my username at the Nano site is the same as it is here). |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|02:34 pm] |
I'm not sure whether last night's dream was caused by a) the mocha truffle espresso yesterday morning, b) two hours of shopping at BJs, or c) an hour on Second Life investigating "Zombiefest '09", but it involved being at a ren faire when televisions on VERY LONG poles swung down from the sky because CNN needed to announce that a very exciting new species of ape had been discovered. As the footage showed, this was the first known non-human to grow a gigantic pompadour.
Yeah, probably the espresso. |
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| Deep Thoughts |
[Oct. 8th, 2009|01:28 pm] |
Y'know, it's a catchy song but Johnny Cash never really makes it clear why being a Ghost Rider in the Sky is such a bad thing. Sure you're chasing the Devil's herd, but no one says you have to actually catch them. My other fine source of information about cattle drives, the song Rawhide, points out the absence of "good vittles, love and kissin'", but those aren't exactly things Heaven's known for either.
Fresh air, companionship, notable lack of pitchforks...compared to spending eternity as, say, the Office Temp in the Sky it sounds like a pretty good deal.
Maybe there's a verse missing where they go into detail about how nasty the Devil Herd's manure is, and how the saddles are actually made of live rattlesnakes, and instead of whinnying the horses continuously channel Nancy Grace asking the riders questions about their sins. THAT would explain it. |
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| Mutual of Cambridgeport's Wild Kingdom |
[Oct. 6th, 2009|03:03 pm] |
The important thing is, we have fewer mice.
Back in the day we thought we only had one, very intrepid one. Squeak, we named him. As in, "Dude, Squeak's right behind you," and "Squeak totally seems to be ignoring these four Hav-a-Heart traps", and "Was it my fever, or did Squeak really just hop up on the couch next to me and check me out?" We ordered every non-lethal trap Amazon sold, and Squeak ignored them all. We watched him run across the *top* of one, which totally added insult to injury.
(Speaking of injury, I should note right here that we're NOT going to set out lethal traps and that any "you're stupid to go to all this trouble instead of just killing them" comments will not be received well. Just FYI, hypothetical commenter-person).
Anyhow, it was that last 'O hai! R u uzing this couch cushun?' incident that made me bite the bullet and go get heavy-duty mousing supplies. Glue traps. Vegetable oil (aka 'glue antidote'). An empty trashcan (aka 'Holding Cell 19'). And it worked! Within two hours of setting the traps there were some shrill squeaks from the corner (I've gotten to know this sound pretty well, the 'WTF!' call of Rodentus Cambridgeportus). I lifted the trap up, set it down inside the Holding Cell, poured a liberal amount of oil over mouse and trap, and breathed a sigh of relief as Squeak wiggled free from the loosened glue and began exploring his new temporary home.
And then the WTF squeaks sounded in another part of the house.
******
This morning we said goodbye to Squeak 4, in our time-honored method of driving the Holding Cell across the river, parking, carrying the Cell over the pedestrian bridge and to the secluded section of the park where we've released his three siblings, putting down some cereal so he won't go hungry and then letting him go. (D insists we do all this so that the mice can't track us home. Personally, I think she just likes messing with the heads of the rowing crews going past on the Charles). 4 was noticeably larger than the first three, which makes me hopeful that we're working our way up the chain of command. Either that or there's some sort of 'conservation of multiple mouse mass' equation at work which dictates that the weight and size of the mice in our house will remain constant even if the number of mice changes. If I go out to the kitchen in November and discover a mouse the size of a wombat, I'll know what's up. |
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| Second Life, I geek about it |
[Oct. 5th, 2009|02:11 pm] |
In part three of the ongoing series "Oaken gets into a computer thingie years after everyone else has discovered it"...I've gone and gotten hooked on 'Second Life'.
The nice thing about being the pokey little puppy *this* time around is that, Second Life being all about player-built zones, I'm wandering around areas and joining groups that've grown and improved over years of trial and error. I mean, one doesn't say "I'll build and furnish a house so large that visitors will feel like they're three inches tall, and then populate it with tiny Martians...oh, and I'll give visitors jetpacks and rocket boots, too" and script it all overnight.
The cross-pollination all gets to be a bit overwhelming sometimes. I tagged along with a friend to an online wedding last weekend that featured a DJ and a live bagpipe performance (streaming audio can be both a blessing and a curse). One third of the wedding guests seemed to be Scandinavian vampires, another third were furries, and the remaining third were anime characters, mermaids and balloons. I wound up sitting between a woman dressed like Napoleon and a man in white robes with his head on fire, in this outdoor glade decorated with five living statues being orbited by fairies and floating candles, and watched as the bride and groom mingled drops of blood in a chalice, drank, and told everyone how much they loved each other.
And then everyone took the Stargate-style teleporters to the beach for the reception.
When D and I renew our vows, I *totally* want to re-create it in real life.
Coming up next month: hey kids, anyone hear about this quirky game called "Portal"? I hear there's cake involved! |
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| Things Northampton has |
[Sep. 12th, 2009|09:54 pm] |
1. An art gallery with sculptures meant to look like taxidermied heads of Dr Seuss characters, and Leonard Nimoy's photos of large women dancing; 2. A martini bar built into an abandoned railway tunnel, where to get to the restroom you have to climb a flight of stairs where each step is deceptively small, only two inches high. Considering how strong the drinks are, this must lead to nightly havoc; 3. Currently, me. Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
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| Freedom sweet freedom |
[Sep. 10th, 2009|06:58 pm] |
I'm typing this from the car as we drive The Nephew to his landlord to pick up his keys! Soon the living room will be ours again! Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
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