HSU IT Department

Heh heh heh. Get it?

I don't like sticky posts -- they take up too much real estate on a small screen -- and I'm not prolific enough for the "fanfic" tag to be very visible in my tag cloud, so to make it easier for people to find my other fics I've added links (<= <= over there in the sidebar, see?) to them on AO3 and here on LJ. Hopefully that will be enough for anyone who wants to find them. (For anyone who isn't yet using AO3, I highly recommend it: well organized, aesthetically pleasing, easy to use both as reader and author. I have one invitation left to give out; if anyone wants it let me know.)

I want to do the "fic traffic meme" that's circulating, but don't have time today so perhaps tomorrow. (Perhaps I will be surprised by something and can use it as one of my "100 Surprises"!)

Now back to editing that 300+ page tome for my client from Kentucky (yup, cattle-ranchers write books too!).

April is National Poetry Month, and April 26th is National Put a Poem in your Pocket Day!! Did you observe it, by carrying a poem in your pocket? I did. My three favorite poets are e e cummings, Shel Silverstein, and John Donne (because of Lord Peter Wimsey, of course), but the poem I carried today wasn't by any of them. Instead it was a a favorite from my childhood, and excellent in a sort of meta way, since it's a poem about having a poem in your pocket :)

Keep a poem in your pocket
And a picture in your head
And you’ll never feel lonely
At night when you’re in bed.

The little poem will sing to you
The little picture bring to you
A dozen dreams to dance to you
At night when you’re in bed.

So --
Keep a picture in your pocket
And a poem in your head
And you’ll never feel lonely
At night when you’re in bed!
-- Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

This is an interesting survey by the Organization for Transformative Works -- thanks to shyfoxling for alerting me to it via her post.

The Organization for Transformative Works, for those who don't know, is a nonprofit organization run by and for fans to provide access to and preserve the history of fan works and fan cultures. They're the outfit behind Archive Of Our Own (AO3) and also the scholarly academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures. TWC has included papers on fan aspects of everything from Wizard rock to World of Warcraft to Willa Cather. They've even done a piece on silent-era movie fandoms (which operated via magazines) back in the 1920s!

They are also, which I did not know until I took the survey, the brains behind FanLore, a wiki designed to document the phenomenon of fan/fandom (making it a sort of meta-fandom of its own, I suppose?), as well as several other projects.

So yeah, I took a survey and actually learned something. How cool is that??

On another note, a lot of people are taking on the 100 Things challenge to encourage themselves to write more, and more in-depth, posts. I'm all for it (I mean, if I wanted tiny little posts I'd go to Twitter, right?). For a long time I've cross-posted my book reviews from Goodreads to LJ, so choosing 100 books (while easy) would have felt like cheating since I already do that. There's music or movies or poems, all of which are great, but none of them spoke to me. Finally I decided on 100 Surprises: the people, places, events, stories, things, ideas, etc. that have surprised me over the years. I just hope I can come up with 100 of them...

That would be "science, technology, engineering and mathematics," fields in which (as we all know) there aren't enough women -- but Etsy's doing its bit to change that. They're hosting the summer 2012 session of Hacker School at Etsy headquarters, AND they’re providing ten Etsy Hacker Grants of $5,000 each — a total of $50,000 — to women who want to go but need financial support to do so.

How fantabulous is that?? (Thanks to spacefem who initially posted on it.)

Snagged this one from ladyoneill. I like it because (a) I haven't seen it before, (b) you have to think a bit to answer it, and (c) you actually learn something about the person from their responses. I mean, I couldn't care less that you prefer croutons to bacon bits but if your first kiss was your cousin Eddie, well, that tells me something about you. So here goes:

1. Who was your FIRST prom date? - Never went to a prom of any sort

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love? - no, he invented Google Earth so he's way too important to talk to little old me

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink? - a banana daiquiri from my best friend's older brother, on whom I had the most comprehensive crush a 13-year-old can have. I was spending the night with her and he had a bunch of friends over to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail and they were drinking banana daiquiris. It was also my first experience with Monty Python. To this day the Black Knight makes me think of banana daiquiris.

4. What was your FIRST job? - if you don't count babysitting, then it was working at Long John Silver's where by today's standards I was sexually harassed by my boss, but by 1980s standards I got to smooch an older guy and felt really grownup ;)

5. What was your FIRST car? - a Reliant K car, when I went to college. I wanted the license plate NCC-1864 but someone already had it. My first introduction to the fact that adults don't get everything they want.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today? - whoever it was I probably won't get it until Friday since my phone is always dead and I never check my texts.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher, tell us about them? - wow...no idea. The principle was Mr. Buonfiglio, I remember that.

9. Where did you go on your FIRST air plane ride? - to Hawaii. Don't be impressed, I was only about six months old and don't remember a thing.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk? - the first one I remember was a girl named either Yvette or Denise. I'm sure that tell you that no, we aren't still in touch ;)

11. Where was your FIRST sleep over? - no idea, but the banana daiquiri/Monty Python/cute older brother one has stuck with me the longest!

12. is missing, so I'll make on up...Who was your first kiss? - a boy I didn't know, at the roller skating rink, when I was thirteen. He could skate backwards, which apparently really impressed me.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time? - my aunt's, I got to be a flower girl with a really dorky hat.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning? - swore at the alarm clock, as per usual. Then I let the dog out, got dressed and went to acupuncture.

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to? - Van Halen!!!! David Lee Roth did obscene things with a beach ball. I was in heaven.

16. FIRST tattoo? - still to come someday, if they ever go out of fashion

17. FIRST piercing? - ears, at about 14 I think

18. FIRST foreign country you went to? - Oklahoma? OK, just kidding. England, summer after my freshman year of college.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing? - STAR WARS!!! I remember waiting in loooong lines (there was much hype back in 1977) and peeking through the gap in the doors to see a giant explosion. I was soooooo excited!

20. When was your FIRST detention? - never had detention but I was sent to the principal (Mr Buonfiglio!! see #8) in first grade due to chasing boys and trying to kiss them

22. Who was your FIRST roommate? - I had two, both fashion conscious and curvy, which intimidated me no end ("You really don't know how to accessorize, do you?") but they turned out to be very nice and we roomed together for the rest of college. They were also my first introduction to the fact that you could be smart and still a Christian. Having gotten most of my exposure to Christians from Oral Roberts and televangelists, this was a revelation (pun intended).

23. If you had one wish, what would it be? - to be a best-selling author of sci-fi and fantast novels, or a vampire so I could live forever and see what happens in 500 years. Or both.

24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance? - Aramaic and Hebrew so I could read the Bible in its earliest versions

25. Did you marry the FIRST person to ask for your hand in marriage? - no, see #2 above, but it all worked out fine because Mr Psmith is wonderful :)

26. What was the first sport that you were involved in? - um...competitive quarters?

27. What were the first lessons you ever took? - piano, and I'm still glad mom made me do it

28. What is the first thing you do when you get home? - change clothes, get on the elliptical, and then have a glass of wine (I'm not an alcoholic; alcoholics go to meetings)

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

The other day I ran across this interesting take on the Hunger Games phenomenon. The author presents her theory as somehow related to being a Christian, but I don't think that matters -- her points stands just fine without bringing religion into it.

[V]iolence in The Hunger Games...serves a purpose: It is not gratuitous. It is not voyeuristic. But...We the viewers are not witnessing a past event. We feel like we are seeing the Games in real time, that we are part of Panem and, by virtue of sitting in the audience, part of its dysfunction. That powerful revelation encourages us to contemplate the ways that we are complicit in violence in our own world and the ways in which we do not object...[I]ronically, The Hunger Games' greatest triumph would be an empty theater and streets full of people demanding the kinds of changes needed in Katniss’ world and in our own.

An interesting thought. What if they released Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty and no one bought it? What if not a single person paid to see Saw [insert any roman numeral]? What if the audiences for Maury Povich, Bridezilla and Hoarders dropped to zero? What if we simply stopped being complicit in the cheap nastiness and ugliness that's marketed to us in the guise of entertainment?

I'm not saying it has to all be fluffy bunnies and puppies, because yuk. But we don't have to mindlessly suck up the worst of what's on offer either. More thoughtful choices: Why am I watching this? Is it truly entertaining, or does it feed my own sense of superiority or my wish to mock others? Am I gaining my pleasure from someone else's pain/problems/weakness? When you put it in those terms, it doesn't sound nearly as harmless.

Columnist George Will wrote a great essay on this back in 2001, which I still have tacked up on my fridge. Among other things, he says this:

The historian Macaulay famously said that the Puritans opposed bearbaiting not because it gave pain to the bears but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. The Puritans were right: Some pleasures are contemptible because they are coarsening. They are not merely private vices, they have public consequences in driving the culture's downward spiral.

Full column is here. Something to think about.

It was in the 80s last week. The next few days the highs will be in the mid-40s and the lows in the 20s and 30s. Curse you, fickle spring!!

However, since it IS spring, I'd like to share one of my favorite spring poems. I discovered e e cummings ages ago, back when I was writing bad angsty woe-is-me teenage poetry (a habit I thankfully dropped, in no small part because I discovered good poets like cummings, Countee Cullen, John Donne and others). I fell in love with his work because of its creativity, its liveliness and loveliness, the way he plays with words and language. No matter the subject, there's always an undercurrent of joy; reading this one aloud you naturally fall into a cadence almost like singing.

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love
    e e cummings

Also, third and last call for free books! You don't even have to pay shipping, that's how much I want to find good homes for them. (No, none of them look like the books in the icon, and yes, you have to provide your own beverage.)

KU 60 NCState 57
>whew<
::lies panting in exhaustion and relief::