Month:

January, 2009

I have too many tabs open. Most of them were things I intended to post here.

On your mark, get set, go!

    Videos:

  • The trailer for the gorgeous, wonderful “Surreal Guide to Botany”
  • The awesome Amanda Palmer, giving us all a Christmas gift: “What’s the Use Of Wond’rin’?
  • Ok, so who am I kidding. There’s no way one Amanda Palmer video is enough, so here’s “Leeds United” aka the Belly Incident Video.
  • An insightful interview of Derren Brown conducted by Richard Dawkins (link is to part 1 of 6. They’re all worth watching, though.)
  • Hilarious post-election Get Your War On video. Yeah, I know, it’s been a while. But you know what? Still funny. “America’s new flag is just a white flag, but there’s a picture of a burning American flag on it.” and “Dude, he’s Muslim, that’s how we do!”
  • Coolest Theremin EVER. I hope I can get my husband to make one of these.
  • New Coraline trailer! New Coraline trailer! New Coraline trailer! Man, I totally need to get on the ball if I’m going to read Sophia the book before the movie comes out.
    Miscellaneous:

  • Interesting word test. Fun to take, though it does require some endurance and even my prodigious attention span flagged a bit about 170 words in or so. I did ok, though I don’t trust the claimed score percentile to IQ correspondence.
  • The Graveyard Book won the Newbery! Neil Gaiman didn’t swear! (like he did when he got the Hugo).
    Stories I kept planning to recommend in my story recommendation posts and never got around to. But I want a clean slate, so here they are in a glut:

  • In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection by Caitlín R. Kiernan. This is a gorgeous, wonderful story. It’s everything I love about Kiernan. I can’t quite understand why her King Kong story won year’s best in Clarkesworld’s reader poll instead of this one, which I think is so much better.
  • Rampion in the Belltower by Merrie Haskell. Because happy ever after fairytales are better with zombies.
  • Watermark by Michael Greenhut. My favorite thing out of Fantasy magazine in ages and ages. I always read, but I’m usually disillusioned. This one works for me.

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I believe I am more susceptible to meme transmission from Transylvanian Dutch than from anyone else. Don’t get me wrong, he passes along plenty that I don’t bother with, but so do most people. But sometimes I get snagged and sucked in, and for whatever reason, it’s usually from one of his.

Here’s the meme (as copied from his blog):

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me. It will be about or tailored to those five lucky “victims.”

    This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

  • I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
  • what I create will be just for you.
  • it’ll be done this year
  • you have no clue what it’s going to be. It may be a poem or story. I may make something all craft-y like. It could even be a CD. (altering the original to add: or a bathbomb!)
  • I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this on your site as well, if you expect me to do something for you!

Remember, chime in, and be forced to participate in your own playground!

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I’ve always liked the Babylon 5 intro, where Sheridan (I think it’s Sheridan, anyway) says “It was the year of fire… the year of destruction… the year we took back what was ours. It was the year of rebirth… the year of great sadness… the year of pain… and the year of joy. It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed. The year is 2261. The place: Babylon 5.” Pretty epic, no?

Well I’m not really living an epic here, but I’m looking for a brief way to sum up 2008, so I’m going to steal that format, as a reference for what happened, which I’ll be dropping here for the future.

It was the year:

  • of Guitar Hero and of the Wii Fit
  • of DIY detergent and the new HE washer
  • of many pictures (over 2800! here’s the first of the year:
    _photo_images2_DSC_0262_20080101.jpg
    and here’s the last:
    _photo_images3_med-DSC_0595_20081231.jpg
    )
  • of finding a decent King Cake in St. Louis, and of the brawl with Oz
  • of the cubbies, built by Kurt for Sophia’s room
  • of the eclipse, observed from our front door
  • of music for Sophia (she performed a flute duet in church and started piano lessons in late August).
  • of Disneyworld, of Sophia’s first time at the beach 200901081139.jpg
  • of the new Ford Focus, to replace the sadly defunct Cougar
  • of the nonos coming to stay for a while
  • of pneumonia
  • of Sophia playing a flower in a play based on Alice in Wonderland (though she wanted to be Alice, because, as she said, she had the right hair)
  • of pierced ears, and the bike that she still cannot ride, and the Snip-Its glamour party
  • of fairy ears, and princess camp
  • of learning to eat honeysuckle from the bushes in the backyard
  • of Chocolatier:Secret Ingredients, Spore and Battle of Wesnoth
  • of driving to Texas for Fourth of July
  • of Blue Mountain Camp in the Fall and being Nastia Lukin for Halloween (even though the only Olympic events watched in this household were soccer matches)
  • of electrotango and Amanda Palmer
  • of joining book club, and of making the 52 book challenge (finally!)
  • of the new deck and porch
  • of finally giving in and getting on FaceBook
  • of bad teeth
  • of publication, at long last (x2)
  • of two sales, doubling the number from 2007
  • of learning to make bath bombs
  • of playing assistant in the Montessori classroom
  • of gorgeous hair ornaments
  • of Christmas for the birds
  • of MySims and Lego Star Wars
  • of rollerskating for the first time, and getting roller skates for Christmas
  • of a New Year’s Eve murder party
  • of learning to make soup, and wishing I’d known how years ago

All in all, a pretty good year.

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