Sa Souvraya Niende Misain Ye

2009 Memetic Madness

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:11:06 GMT

I have an idea for a very, very giant post, but I won't post that until literally the next year. The idea is from Bruce Sterling, who is certainly someone to look up about this time of year.

2009 in review

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?

Seen Rent. Walked downtown in Minneapolis, my first conscious experience of walking downtown in an urban center. I loved it. It changed mich. And, the most important thing, ich had a deeply transformative personal experience in der flames of der Battlestar Galactica.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I have promises and vows, but I don't really launch resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Well, meine Sedai lost her sister. In honesty, I had been reluctant to bring up the subject, but that's a bit of the reason for Galactica's power on mich. I felt really apocalyptic... and part of it was meine Sedai's loss. Not that I ever had met her sister, but I wanted to. Ave et vale.

5. What countries did you visit?

Not any, yet. I must, desperately.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

A full-time job. A novel published. A freelance career. A passport and overseas travel. I will achieve all of these, and pursue them passionately, no matter the risk.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

The date meine Sedai listed. And March 20th, the date that everything, to the core of my personality, changed. The flames of the Galactica were my 9/11, and once I read the Commission Report, I got that that was not a coincidence at all. Moore used all of his sadness and rage at that event in the finale, and it changed meine life completely.

Also, the day that I saw the car coming at mich. In September. It looked very different as a warrior than it would have otherwise. Thanks to one of my friends on Livejournal, I found the Moscow Rules, and well, I don't drive on that intersection now.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I drove alone for the first time. Also, as of November, I have sent 800 resumes, got 177 answers, probably the hardest I have ever worked. Top that, anyone. I dare you.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I wrote far, far less than I should have. But I know the reason, and I'm taking huge risks in the chance that I can pull off higher amounts, and faster.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nein, danke Gott.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

One of meine CDs. Probably Karma, as it held my sanity together when I drove.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Meine Sedai. I have no idea how she managed to stay sane.

Dad, for not understanding, but letting mich rage between March and July. It's a feeling I needed to feel, because it's now as part of mich as the intensity and the madness.

Emily, for boosting my rage and understanding it.

Mom, for she is Mom. :)

13. Whose behavior made you depressed?

Mom... because she doesn't get the deep rage.

Eric... I don't like who he became. Become? I'm not sure who he is anymore. Ironically, Mom feels that way about mich. But I found myself. That's not quite what happened with Eric.

14. Where did most of your money go?

CDs and books.

15. What are you really, really, really excited about?

INTENSE SPIES!

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

Wings of Despair, Kamelot

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Much angrier and tenser.
b) thinner or fatter? I might have more strength, thanks to the warrior regimen.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Travel.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

I like the Sedai's answer: "Be bored online!"

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

At the Volkshaus mit meine blood family. Online, as always.

21. What was your favorite month of 2009?

Whichever month I sent the highest amounts of resumes. April, Rent. Any of the months where me and Emily traveled to Minneapolis. Underwater Adventures.

22. Did you fall in love in 2009?

Nope. :)

23. How many one-night stands?

None. :)

24. What was your favorite TV program?

TV
Battlestar Galactica. SAMCRO. Farscape. Warehouse 13.

Movies
Paprika.
Das Leben Der Anderen.
The IPCRESS File.
District Nine.
The Dark Knight.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Nah.

26. What was the best book you read?

Whenever I read a mind-blowing book I post it. Primarily, Revelation Space, the Queen and Country graphic novels, the Atticus Kodiak series, No Man's Land, Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street and Lust for Life.

Virtual Light, William Gibson.

I started reading Distraction, Bruce Sterling. Odd and amazing. It's meine "when I'm traveling" book, so I haven't finished it.

I started reading The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan for the second time, and it's really powerful now. Reading so many at once that I have to halt a bit. :)

Hellboy, Wake the Devil and The Chained Coffin and Others. I love this series. Gothic and intense and epic.

The 9/11 Commission Report. Amazingly good read, though I read about half of it.

I started The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk, and it's like I've met my ancestors.

I started Sunshine, Robin McKinley, a very, very strange and wonderful book.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Kamelot. Within Temptation.

28. What did you want and get?

I really have no idea how I did this, but meine leben is always, every day, like almost a decade in the future. I don't live in the present.

29. What did you want and not get?

My life in the city. My own place. Travel to Europe or the South Asian subcontinent.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

One of the movies I listed above. Every one of them?

Especially The Ipcress File and District Nine. And Paprika plus The Dark Knight, er. Heh.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

27. I got a map of the globe. \m/

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Getting to Minneapolis right when I wanted to. But I think 800 resumes is worthy.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

Paranoid in a trenchcoat.

34. What kept you sane?

Joanne. :)
Emily. :)

The intensity, the rage and the madness are who I am now... I'm a warrior, against the Shadow, like the Ephesians quote. Reading through the best scenes in the Wheel of Time contributed to understanding that.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

For admiration:
Everyone in Galactica. Especially Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell, who told the epic of Adama and Roslin to the end. Katee Sackhoff pulled the trigger on my old life, and I listened to nothing but All Along The Watchtower until I read the Commission Report.

If you see a video on Youtube from a concert with Katee and Bear, he talks to her while both of them are playing the piano on Heeding the Call. She rebuffs him, too deep in the memories to reply.

If you see a video of Olmos and McDonnell on Youtube in an interview for TV Guide, Olmos says that "they let me bring Adama to a dark place." And he quiets and just stares for a few seconds. He got that deep into it.

McDonnell described the finale of Galactica as "humbling".

I don't think I'm the only one transformed. :)

For hotness:

Lucy Lawless. I want her to read hallucinatory descriptions in that voice.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Afghanistan.

37. Who did you miss?

I'm not sure?

38. Who was the best new person you met?

I've met all sorts of friends who I hadn't chatted with in a long time.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.

My life is a war.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

2009, der Jahre der Watchtower.

"There must be some way out of here, said the Joker to the Thief...
There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief..."
-Bob Dylan, All Along The Watchtower

Fables Issue #18

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:15:42 GMT

Every once in a while, a short story jumps up and surprises you.

Though this entire series is surprising mich with its fun, I thought Barleycorn Brides rather powerful. Brave guys leaving for aventuras and returning to their origin point with treasure, a bug dude and rather hot women crawling out of tulips. Like in BtVS Season 8, watch the people in the panels of crowds and see if you can see who are who. They're half the power.

Naughty Tentacles

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:55:55 GMT

Tentacle porn dates back to 1820, in a woodcut from Hokusai? Like the article says, it's not La Blue Girl, but it's still tentacles! Sea creatures! Sticking things in holes!

Celebrating the Naughty Tentacles

Filler Post?

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:26:51 GMT

Because I really hate having a ROWR ROWR anger post at the top of meine journal, I saw this:

Random House auf Deutsch!

Both Spin State and Spin Control are translated in German. I WANT THEM!

The Rural Brain Drain

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:16:53 GMT

Ha, John Robb posted about the book Hollowing Out The Middle, about the Rural Brain Drain in the United States. Because I'm part of the phenomenon, I had found an article about it, and roamed through meine archives. Guess what?

The people who posted this article wrote that book in question. Like I learned in college, the only people who point out the Importance Of Small Towns are the same people, over and over.

Not that I'm interested in talking about such things right now. I'm too busy conducting a war against it. Let small towns fall apart and rot in their hidebound, petrified, terrified graves. We'll all be better for it.

Transmet Vs Russian and British Spies

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:40:06 GMT

I haven't posted a complete review of the things I'm reading in a horribly long time, and that's for the reason that it takes mich eons to finish anything. Reading 20+ books at the same time usually does that.

Thus, I'll review a complete graphic novel, and the first part of a different book.

First, Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan: Lust for Life, a book that I need to chatter about. Der buch ist about Spider Jerusalem, outlaw journalist in an archetypal "City". There are strong hints that it's a specific city, but I think it's quite broadly evocative of the idea of a city. The first volume, Back on the Street really showed mich the sensations of a living, thriving, disturbing city... and showed me precisely where I need to be, as soon as I possibly can.

The second volume was longer, and blew my mind in a slightly different way. This one is a little more straight cyberpunk rage, taunting everyone Spider can get his fingers on. Television, religion, cults, and high technology. So far, the series resembles Scape in a lot of ways, but from an urban perspective rather than space opera - poop jokes like every page, and real genuine emotion under all the snark.

Highlight, a new favorite panel: "Do you want to eat Peyotl and Human Flesh for spiritual fulfillment? Or just for the hell of it? Join the Ancient Cult of Anazasl!"

The second buch en this contrast, Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia is three parts - the beginning, middle, and end of the nineteenth century conflict over British India between the British Empire and Czarist Russia. Spies, beheading, treachery, giant mosques, geopolitical strategy, Russophobia. I've always been fascinated with the Great Game, and obviously, we have a new one.

The primary thing these buchs have in common, as strange as that might appear, is that meine zwei primary subcultural interests, roleplaying and cyberpunk, both have involvement in both of these books.

Transmetropolitan sets up a world full of wild adventures and insane people. It's epic already, and I'm only on the second volume! Many, many people on both RPGnet and the Cyberpunk Review use Spider Jerusalem avatars, and I get why. He's amazingly cool.

I originally saw Hopkirk referred to on RPGnet, and his books are used as references on the Wikipedia. The roleplaying aspects are obvious - a great part of what the spies in the nineteenth century were doing was mapping out the territory, because barely any Europeans had ever seen the middle of Asia.

Spies in the nineteenth century, perhaps du thinketh, what might this have to do with cyberpunk? I personally think it's an ideal cyberpunk land. Think about it. British India had been partitioned into two states - now way more than that - and the Soviet Union fell apart, too. Many of the spies were bilingual, and what's a better historical precedent for looking into the future than people who were exploring an unknown land?

These two books have probably been a couple of the most challenging things I've read in 2009. I know I'm a warrior now, and they're making mich understand what that really is.

Peter Watts Beaten and Arrested at US Border

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:22:24 GMT

I wouldn't have known anything about this four years ago.

Now, well, this is all around the nets. Send this on, fuel the fire.

Also posted by Mike Allen (from whom I found this news), Bear, Scalzi, Making Light... oh yeah. This is the power of the nets.

Peter Watts beaten and arrested from Boingboing

India Creates a New State

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:20:13 GMT

I wondered if something like this might happen. I figured it would happen in the east, though, with Assam and Jharkhand and Bangladesh, not in the frelling south with Andhra Pradesh.

India Creates a New Southern State Called Telengana

Not 'fall of the nation state' level cyberpunk, but fascinating. Apparently Andhra Pradesh's capital, Hyderabad, might become a part of Telengana. They'll have to find a new capital.

The Rise and Fall of Geneon

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:19:48 GMT

Geneon, which used to be Pioneer, and which used to be one of the grander anime licensing companies, dissolved in December 2007. The information is easy to find. The fascinating part is that, on a search for a series I'm pondering watching completely, I noticed, on Anime News Network, a fun little podcast interviewing one Chad Kime, who according to the description worked in Geneon for ten frelling years.

This guy was involved in things like Tenchi The Movie and Armitage III. Holy geez.

If I show this to the friends of meine who bought these, rather than watching series on television, they would probably load up the politics. I'm working on imagining what the anime showbiz industry might look like in ten, twenty, or more years. Companies might fall apart, but the shows are frelling there nonetheless.

The guy cites stats, units sold. Wow. Fascinating podcast for anyone interested in anime history.

The Life and Kime of Geneon, USA

The Dark Side of Dubai

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:03:23 GMT

I read about a third of this thus far, and glanced through the other parts. The article is long, but interesting.

The Dark Side of Dubai

Afghan Escalation

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:53:30 GMT

Considering meine fascination with the South Asian subcontinent, I've had the thought I should whip out my ponderations on the 30K Afghan escalation, or aim people toward interesting sources. I hardly have enough expertise at the moment to really say much. But it looks really eerie, with the British and Russian historical precedents.

Afghan seems like a question of honor, to mich, but it's more complex than that. The disturbing part is what will happen if UAVs go over the border into Pakistan. Stirring up hostility there really, really isn't a wonderful idea.

The sources I like?

Thanks to BoingBoing, and Greg Rucka, I have found Rachel Maddow:
Rachel Maddow's reaction. Be warned, I haven't watched it yet! But I do like her no-holds-barred style.

And also, from Patrick Nielsen Hayden I have found Juan Cole. Cole's an expert on the Middle East (like Joanne told mich, that can be a broad topic...) and I've thought about reading his works.

Should Have Done a Class in Statistics? Nah.

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:04:41 GMT

I have everything on this other than "a college-level class in statistics." I could obtain a book from the library, but I can't learn it that quickly! Oh well. This is why diversification is important, I suppose.

Deep Sea Creatures

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:37:47 GMT

I hardly need to say anything, right?

Deep Sea Creatures

"Postponing Your Dreams"

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:35:45 GMT

Kristine Kathryn Rusch's new post for the Freelancer's Manual is especially powerful today. She's arguing why... someone in my generation... shouldn't postpone their dreams.

If your situation is anything like the one I'm in, you have nothing to lose.

Postponing Your Dreams (maybe not)

I Have Been Assimilated As Madman Of Borg

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:56:00 GMT

Questions from Paedrag and very nifty questions if I might say so. Harass mich if you want to answer things for mich.

1. How did you get into metal?

2003, a trip to Ames, Iowa and Grinnell University, for which my feelings have an intense conflict. My friend Isaac showed me a series of AMVs, one of which had Sonata Arctica's "My Land." He thought it would be something I would like.

Bog yes but I did. Sonata Arctica led me to Nightwish on Youtube. Then Mike Allen showed me Pandora, which led, initially, toward Within Temptation and Kamelot. And others. Holy bog. Now I'm all about the \m/. Particularly after 3/20, the date that changed my life. "There must be some way out of here..."

2. Was ist deine lieblings essen?

Bah! I had to freetranslate lieblings. Sigh.

I most assuredly haven't obtained the German for these things, but now that I'm busy listing them I should do that. Uh, anything pasta. Tortellini y macaroni y queso. Pizza, though I'm a picky bastard about pepperoni and sausage. I ate mushrooms once and hated the bugger out of them. Anything that comes out of the ocean. Shrimp. Fish. Fish. Whatever the strange things like crab had the cream cheese. Mmm, cream cheese.

3. If you could take a trip to any country, which would it be?

Considering my deep fascination with the South Asian subcontinent, you would probably figure India. And I would adore it. But I really want to get to Berlin.

Right now, I have never been overseas nor flown except for a tiny aircraft in west Minnesota. I really need to change that. Further answer in das final question!

4. Why are you never on AIM!?

When I'm talking to people, I don't do the work I need to be doing. Which is, at the moment, sending out applications up the arse. I suppose I should hop online once I get finished doing that. Grr. I'm not sure why I don't, actually. (Mutter mutter work isn't everything mutter mutter)

5. Are you going to go to grad school?

When I went to college in 2004, I had hardly any idea what I was doing. If I knew what I was doing, I would have went to the U of M in Minneapolis and left west Minnesota the first chance I obtained. But Minneapolis is three hours away from the place that I now refer to as the "Volkshaus". It's absolutely not my home, not anymore.

Everything I've known has changed since college, professionally and personally. My relationships have changed; now I'm actually reading William Gibson and Bruce Sterling every day on their Twitter accounts. Both of them have traveled overseas, and Sterling has three different places where he lives - Austin, Texas; Torino/Turin, Italy; and Belgrade, Serbia.

That sounds intensely fun and challenging. But I have no idea where my sanctuario... en espanol, the langue I've been pondering as being my langue de la aventura... or any of my sanctuarios actually are. I have ponderations... New York City, Tokyo, Berlin, Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, but I have not been to any of them. Not grad school for mich. I need to travel.

However, I barely know where to begin. So I'm running some research here and there.

Armistice Day

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:08:46 GMT

On 11/11/11, 1918, the guns on the Western Front fell silent.

Writing in a Foreign Language

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:44:37 GMT

I've been leaping pretty deep into Deutsch and Espanol, and I'm also interested in SF and F in other languages. There isn't a coincidence that my default avatar is from a Swedish WoT translation! Anyway, Apex has a thing out called the "Apex Book of World SF", the same topic as their current theme. I haven't got to reading the stories at the moment, but I had found this.

Writing in a Foreign Language

Aliette De Bodard speaks French as her first language, and writes in English. The reasons are fascinating and complicated, and have a new level considering my newfound obsession with genuinely learning others. She also posted it on her livejournal, and gets comments from other people with similar experiences.

Globe Quiz

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:19:00 GMT

Foreign Policy brings up some ideas contradictory to the things I have, but it's good to bring in another viewpoint once in a while. And they have things like this, which make me think:

Globe Quiz, disturbing but educational.

I'm currently going through the list of answers, and I don't like most of the things I'm hearing. It gives me some odd science fiction ideas, though, such as the list of countries in which humanitarian workers were killed. Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Chad and Iraq.

Though I have a deep interest in South Asia, I have to wonder, are Somalia and Afghanistan really places to write about, or should I find something else? Using Sterling's tactic of 'one step ahead', what is the world going to look like when the situations in Afghanistan and Somalia finish? What will they look like, and what will the consequences be?

Connect that to question 3, that of "1 billion people go hungry every day." If one doesn't get a wince out of you, the other might. Connect that with slums, and that "more people live in urban places that rural", and a world starts to shape itself.

Richard Morgan's Read and Rec's, Nov 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:22:43 GMT

What are the books Richard Morgan's been reading? I've been anxious to know!

Woot!

What do I think of these? Well, one by one:

I haven't read The Arrival but it sounds fascinating. The Marshall library has his Tales from Outer Suburbia but I'm reluctant to read something about the suburbs at the moment for obvious reasons.

Morgan makes a biography of Che sound fascinating. I usually don't go for biographies, but I'm questioning that for this book.

Finch is an ideal example of something I would not have known four years ago, before Webmage opened the scifi community unto my senses. Locus Magazine showed a series of reviews about this today, describing it about a bizarre, surreal urban fantasy with mushroom men... and honestly? This looks like the type of thing I could write. Should I write it and chance the influence on my own writing?

Generation Loss gets referred to by many people, including Morgan, as a book that's difficult to describe, but raw and personal. Not quite scifi, not quite ... drama, I suppose. Sounds like precisely the type of thing I want to read right now.

Homicide, about a reporter's observing of the Baltimore homicide division. This is probably one of the most recommended books on RPGnet's book threads (short of all of the Dresden Files) and I was sold on it before Morgan. I only have to freaking find it.

Starfish is about twisted people at the bottom of the ocean, where, the idea is, people get twisted anyway. I read part of it, through Creative Commons. The writing style irritated me, but the story is intriguing. So, I'm conflicted about it.

The Unwritten, a graphic novel by the same guy who's writing the Felix Castor books. Which I should be reading. Grngh.

getting to know...me?

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:27:22 GMT

Eh, I shall play your game, Trebek, for once.

I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

Spider Demands Long Courtship Or Else

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:56:35 GMT

Fueling the bug cannibalism:

100 minutes of counting or NOMNOM!

WWII Veteran Supports Gay and Lesbian Marriage

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:40:57 GMT

I find it difficult to find words.

"What do you think I fought for on Omaha Beach?" - Philip (Schooner?)

Philip

Thanks and danke and gracias, BoingBoing!

Soldiers in Iraq read CS Lewis and learn Calculus

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:10:52 GMT

Increased security in Iraq lets soldiers do other things than work. And woot! Things like C S Lewis and the Aeneid, and one John Dorman, learning geometry and calculus. He's pondering becoming a math teacher when he leaves the army.

Ambitious peoples.

Anime and Jerry Lee Lewis

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:38:17 GMT

I finished William Gibson's Virtual Light and feel a little surprised I hadn't read it a long time ago. It blew my mind quite a bit, but it really would have challenged me had I read it before I enrolled in college. The key quirk to his writing is that he describes the world we're in - but a little surreal, and always a little bit ahead of the game. And he writes it as a bloody good suspense book. So, hmm.

A comment of his on Twitter showed me perhaps one aspect of the reason about this - is that he's a bit of a historian. The comment was that "In the 1980s, the 1960s looked like the 1920s. Now they look like the 1890s." Play with it and you realise that the culture of the 1980s thought the entire world would become a nuclear apocalypse. It didn't, but that's a source of all the desperation and bleakness in the cpunk setting.

This ramble isn't about that, though, but I could ramble about it more. I have certainly thought about that. This ramble is about the 1950s - and that, in a sense, the anime I watched in the late 1980s and 1990s sort of resembles that, for me. I've seen a LOT of anime, and love to harass people with that fact.

Any series that came out in those years I've probably either seen or heard of or seen parts of. TVTropes has a category for that, and Angel Investigations first showed me what the pattern was - the idea of a nakama, a family of friends who aren't your relatives but the people you have chosen as your family.

That's a tangent, too, but one of my favorite themes of all time. Even The Wheel of Time involved it, and I've never seen anyone use it in such a grand, unique way. The only thing that comes close to The Wheel of Time is assuming that all of the anime that involved a nakama literally lived in the same Tokyo. Which some MUSHes play with...

After I've realised that the vast majority of my favorite stories were in a city, even though I haven't seen one and understood one until April of this year, I've been pondering what the bugger all of that time spent on anime meant. Not broodingly, or anything, but sort of figuring out the meaning of it.

Most urban fantasy resembles them, for instance. Try "Mercy Thompson: Homecoming". Groovy read, in which a twentysomething coyote shapeshifter finds her home.

The anime I watched, and at last I say what I'm been intending to say, acted as my 1950s rock and roll. Not Elvis, as he usually annoys me, but Jerry Lee Lewis, and the tougher types. Anime was something I had never seen before, the language, the techno, the culture, the stories. It blew my mind, and the amount of it rivaled cpunk for the various creative people who joined the party.

And those things were built from a world in which almost everyone thought that the world would end in a nuclear apocalypse. It didn't, and many of those people in that world never even saw war affecting them personally.

The cpunks did. And me, on March 20, 2009.

So Many Things To Read

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:38:10 GMT

Initially, the Recommended Reading from Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline, which is on this page. I've read one of the things, Shadow Cities, which boggled me, and pondered glimpsing The Places We Live.

Apparently Sterling admires Brand, and Brand had the idea of the 0 in front of the year, as in 02009, as a representation of the real length of time. Which is rockin'.

This is why I roam through Sterling's blog, too - he posted to a list of the Most Powerful People in India. Yes, I'm very intrigued, why do you ask? Woot.