delphipsmith: (wibble)
This quote from Bridget Jones' Diary has been running through my head:

It seems wrong and unfair that Christmas [or, in this case, Corona-mas] with its stressful and unmanageable financial and emotional challenges, should first be forced upon one wholly against one's will, then rudely snatched away just when one is starting to get into it. Was really beginning to enjoy the feeling that normal service was suspended and it was OK to lie in bed as long as you want, put anything you fancy into your mouth, and drink alcohol whenever it should chance to pass your way, even in the mornings. Now suddenly we are all supposed to snap into self-discipline like lean teenage greyhounds.

It may be due to the fact that this was my breakfast:

(click to embiggen cake)
cake4brekkers.jpg


I hope, when we all go back to work, I remember how...
delphipsmith: (Solo odds)
Of course, the Jedi didn't go around beheading people who didn't believe in the Force so, y'know, still the good guys. But it kinda makes you think.

delphipsmith: (PIcard face-palm)
...or is there something fundamentally wrong about this bit of end-of-semester marketing?

delphipsmith: (Cicero books)
Recently over on GoodReads, someone started a discussion on "How Did You Become a Reader?" and kicked it off with the following three questions, to which I have added a fourth:

1) Do you remember being read to as a child?
2) Do you remember when you first realized you love to read?
3) Have you always liked to read, or is it something you developed later?
4) What are some "firsts" in your life as a reader?

I had a lot of fun thinking about these questions and my own history as a reader, and since so many of us here on LJ are avid readers, I thought I'd share with y'all. I'd love to hear your answers as well (if you answer over on your own LJ, leave a comment here and let me know so I can find it!).

I don't remember ever not being a reader. Mom was an English teacher and librarian so there were always books at our house. We went to the library A LOT and I was always allowed to take as many books as I wanted. (Our first trip to a bookstore was quite traumatic, apparently, as I did not like being limited to only two!).

Mom read to me, and later to me and my brother, until I was in my teens -- he was five years younger than me so it was quite a challenge finding something that suited both of us! I remember The Hobbit, The Paleface Redskins, Half Magic, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle...

Sometimes Mom would insist that I go outside and get some fresh air...so of course I would go outside with a book. My favorite thing to do was take a bag of apples and two books and climb a tree. I would sit in the tree happily reading for easily a couple of hours.

My parents divorced when I was really young, like about two, so for years I would go spend two weeks with my dad every summer. My stepmom had three kids when they got married; I was a pretty shy kid and they didn't like me much, or I thought they didn't, though more likely it was just that we didn't have much in common because...THEY DIDN'T LIKE TO READ (gasp). So every summer I took two suitcases, one full of clothes and one full of books. One year I didn't bring enough and had to read some of them twice.

The only time I remember mom taking a book away from me was when I was ten or eleven and I got my hands on her copy of The Godfather. Probably a good idea, I think it's a bit much for a ten-year-old. Although the best thing about books is that, unlike movies, if a kid runs into something they aren't ready for, they probably simply won't understand it or be able to picture it, so it just goes right past them.

The first book I actually remember reading was Lloyd Alexander's The High King. The first book I remember getting as a gift is Bambi, when I was about seven. The first book I remember eagerly awaiting publication of is Silver On the Tree -- I'd recently discovered the series and had zoomed through them, and was horrified to discover I would have to actually wait for the last one. I think that was my first introduction to the idea that books weren't some kind of natural resource -- they didn't grow on shelves like apples grow on trees, but had to be made -- written by a real live human being and then printed and bound and shipped and so on. (The logical corollary, which I arrived at almost immediately, was People Write Books + I Am A People = Therefore I Could Write A Book. I haven't yet, but I haven't given up on it either.) The first nonfiction book I remember reading is Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man, about her research with chimpanzees in the wild. The first book that actually changed how I thought about life was Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Growing up, I never went anywhere without a book, even if we were just running to the grocery store or the gas station. This is still true today; just as some people won't leave the house without putting on their makeup, I feel undressed if I leave the house without a book. They have been and continue to be the best of teachers and friends.
delphipsmith: (busy busy busy)
All that and more, here in this very entry!

A friend of mine has opened an Etsy store to sell her awesome fabric tote bags. My favorite is the Star Wars one. If you need a tote bag, make this your first stop.

Signups are ongoing over at [livejournal.com profile] sshg_giftfest -- there's still space for both authors and artists/crafters so hop on over! I'm thrilled that we have lots of people returning from last year as well as some new faces. Also signups are open at [livejournal.com profile] hoggywartyxmas, so start thinking xmassy thoughts!

This past weekend Mr Psmith and I went to the State Fair where we saw, among other things: llamas, sheep, goats (why are their testicles so enormous? why???), adorable baby piglets and monstrous full-grown pigs, and many many flavors of dairy cow including an adorable Jersey calf being raffled off. I wanted to enter but sanity in the form of Mr Psmith prevailed. As always, the food on offer ranged from standard to startling, the latter including a "Gators and Taters" food booth, kangaroo spiedies, and Shark-on-a-Stick. Sadly, we did not get to see the draft horses -- Percherons, Belgians, Friesians, etc. -- which was our main reason for going, as the barn was closed for some reason, drat the luck. But we did get to see the arts and crafts building (quilts! cross-stitch! handmade lace! paintings on sawblades! tiny model rooms!) and the sand sculpture, which is always amazing. One side showed a train going into a tunnel watched by some woodland creatures, including a very alarmed-looking beaver.

My life continues to be far too busy, and sometime between now and the end of September, we have to pack up our entire house. Eek.
delphipsmith: (Cicero books)
Is book reviewing a public service or an art?

Well duh. It's BOTH. Who didn't know that??

This part made me laugh immoderately, because OH SO TRUE!!!

As inert as it might look on the page, the book review is a weirdly pressurized and verbally jeopardized space, crisscrossed with potential errors. There’s a huge pull toward pomposity, for one thing. Drop your guard, mid-review, and you’ll find yourself holding forth like a drunken bishop. “Insofar as our author blah blah blah. . . . ” Book review bombast comes in three flavors: highbrow (“Every page witnesses the overflow of his vast erudition”), middlebrow (“magisterial . . . that rare thing”) or lowbrow (“Wade through burning gasoline to get this book”). And everybody does it, automatically as it were. It’s why blurbs all sound like blurbs.
delphipsmith: (thinker)
Just returned from a week visiting family back in the Great Flat Midwest. Lots of catching up to do tomorrow, but in the meanwhile:

Dare Wright's The Lonely Doll and Taylor Swift -- is it just me, or is there an eerie resemblance there?

ts_ld_sab
delphipsmith: (elephant)
Somebody on my flist is a collector and lover of keys -- the old-fashioned kind, like these -- and I am completely blanking on who. I thought maybe this icon would help me remember but no luck, alas! Is it you, [livejournal.com profile] teddyradiator?
delphipsmith: (weeping angel)
It has been a very difficult few days here at Chez Psmith. Mr Psmith's brother G was unexpectedly taken to hospital on Monday morning; things went very bad very quickly, and he died Tuesday afternoon. We are all still a bit numb; it is hard to even know how to think about such a lightning bolt out of nowhere. G was only forty, and leaves my sister-in-law with three little children, our niece and two nephews. I don't know how one explains such things to a child who just wants their daddy to come home. My heart aches for them, and for all of us...
delphipsmith: (ooooo)
Yes, apparently the first Friday in June is National Donut Day (fooled you, didn't I? You thought I meant the other D-Day).

Neither of which are to be confused with National DoUGHnut Day* which is in November. Because donuts are so awesome they need two celebratory days, I guess.

* Until I wrote that I never realized that "doughnut" has the word "ugh" in it. Which is just ridiculous, right? Because NOMZ.
delphipsmith: (Luddite laptop)
A couple of weeks ago, on my mom's recommendation, I read Dave Eggers' The Circle. Like Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, it's more of a fable than a novel, social criticism rather than great characterization and plotting, but rather chilling in that this awful world is yet so very close to where we already are, and very likely where we're headed absent some sort of epiphany in our love affair with technology. In a sense he is preaching to the choir (the choir, in this case, being those who worry about the ubiquity of social media and Big Server rather than Big Brother), but it was engrossing. The ending was surprising; I think his message is that no big deus ex machina is going to rescue us from the constant stream of friending-tweeting-liking-pinning-statusupdating-rating-networking-linking-sharing-sharing-sharing-MUSTSHAREALLTHETHINGS!!! We have to rescue ourselves. I sympathized very much with Mae's friend who makes lamps out of antlers and just wants to be left alone.

Then today I ran across this rather apt quote from Neil Postman (written in 1985!!):

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

I fear very much that we're a good way down into Huxley's world: "a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy." (Honey Boo Boo or Ashley Madison, anyone?) The problem is that if 99% of the world is living in Huxley's version of the future, it's incredibly easy for a very few people to operate it like Orwell's version without anyone noticing. When everything is digital, it's easier than ever to edit the past. Or the present.
delphipsmith: (thinker)
Help!! I got a request from a friend regarding computer games for his kids (age 12 and 8) and am drawing a total blank, as everything Mr Psmith does is MMORPG or at least requires online access and it's been years since I played anything like this myself (xyzzy, anyone?).

He's looking for (and I quote) "WOW style game they can play (for PC or Wii) that doesn't have too much blood or naked fornicating Orcs, but does have a fantasy feel with some combat, interaction, quest for glory, etc. Multiplayer isn't really an option for us because our internet is spotty at the best of times."

Thoughts, suggestions, ideas?? Your input eagerly anticipated!

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