If you happen to be like me and am crossposting these days over to LJ and LJ-related sites off of Wordpress, you might want to give a look to the shiny new version of the JournalPress plugin. It just upgraded to version 0.3 and includes, finally, support for letting you choose what userpic you want when the post shows up on LJ!

This gives me a Happy, since it takes a few extra steps out of my crossposting efforts. And lets me specifically do something like oh, say, choose to show those of you who’re looking at this post on LJ or Dreamwidth the shiny new icon that spazzkat made me! It’s a new version of Great Amurkian Novel, featuring Scuzzbopper, who is arguably my personal muse. I <3 Scuzzie so.

But for those who’re looking at this post via Wordpress, here’s the icon itself, behind the fold!

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

So I went to Third Place Books tonight for a reading and signing by the mighty cmpriest, who read one of the very best little bits from Boneshaker, and who then answered a lot of questions and signed quite a lot of books. Far and away, hands down, the best question answered was that yes, there will be a sequel to Boneshaker. Which I’d actually already seen her mention on her blog/LJ posts about its progress, but I hadn’t realized it was Boneshaker’s sequel! Anyway, it’s coming. It’s called Dreadnought. I will be waiting for it with bells on.

Also happened to see caitkitt there, so I thanked her for sending the e-arc of Street Magic to me, and picked up a couple more books of hers while I was there. In print, since I’m trying to keep the Seattle-based authors on the Buy In Print list!

But on a related note, I also asked the staff about their shiny new POD machine–with, of course, an eye to whether they could print Drollerie books. I had the guy at the info desk do a couple of searches, but sadly, it looks like Drollerie books are NOT in its database. So assuming that Faerie Blood joins the Drollerie print roster, the only option will be to order it. If the situation changes I will of course let folks know.

Meanwhile I must note that the following books have now been purchased by me:

In print:

• Demon Bound and Witch Craft, by Caitlinn Kittredge

In e-book:

• Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, by S.G. Browne

And, since Fictionwise is having a massive and I mean MASSIVE sale for the end of the year (to the tune of everything between 40 and 60% off, so if you haven’t bought Faerie Blood yet now would be a REALLY GOOD TIME, not like I’m hinting or anything okay yeah well I am), I’m probably about to do another e-book run. A good chunk of this will be buying stuff by Morgan Howell, because I just read Book 1 of his Queen of the Orcs trilogy and liked it quite a bit.

Until then, the yearly books purchased tally is now up to 173.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Now that I'm working at the UW I get this 'alert' mails that are really rather upsetting. Latest one was "Armed robbery Wells Fargo 45th and UWay at 5:55pm. Male suspect left with money. Male suspect wearing beige jacket, black cap with red stripe, brown hair."

Great. I might not have been 'safe' before, but at least I had the illusion of being safe. Now I feel like I can't even leave the house any more. :(

When depressed do NOT listen to Muse. Even if you're not consciously listening to the lyrics, apparently your subconscious is.

Glenn Greenwald takes apart the military explanation of three simultaneous 'suicides' at Gitmo. If you don't remember the event, I refer you to Andrew Sullivan, here:

You may recall the somewhat bizarre response of the Pentagon to the news in June 2006 that three prisoners at Gitmo had somehow managed to hang themselves simultaneously in one of the most watched, patrolled and monitored prison sites in the world. The facts were bizarre: prisoners somehow had been hanging for two hours with rigor mortis when they were discovered; and their bodies were found to have a rag stuffed deep down their throats. But the strangeness and pathos of this event was only matched by the virulent anger of the Pentagon which immediately accused these defenseless and dead prisoners of "asymmetrical warfare" against the US.

Greenwald and Sullivan are both talking about a Seton Hall report on the military's farcical non-investigation of the incident. There's a lawsuit from the families, but the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to prevent the lawsuit from moving forward, arguing that there are no constitutional limits on what the executive can to do anyone outside the United States:

...the Obama administration has surprisingly endorsed the same legal positions as its predecessor, insisting that there is no constitutional right to humane treatment by U.S. authorities outside the United States, and that victims of torture and abuse and their survivors have no right to compensation or even an acknowledgment of what occurred...

Scott Horton of Harper's talks about the Obama administration's efforts to redeem John Yoo and block any prosecutions of "Justice Department lawyers who counsel torture, disappearings, and other crimes against humanity." Notably:

In the face of actual criminal investigations, the DOJ has behaved usually like a criminal accused, and intent on obstruction, not like a law enforcement agency. Criminal investigations involving the conduct of Yoo and his fellow torture-memo writers are underway at this moment in a number of foreign jurisdictions, most notably including the two pending criminal cases in Spain. It’s noteworthy that the U.S. Justice Department, presented with letters rogatory from the Spanish court probing into the torture of Spanish citizens at Guantánamo and the role played by DOJ lawyers in this process, elected not to respond. Attorney General Holder traveled to Europe at the outset of his term, promising European justice officials a new era of cooperation. But in the first significant test case, he has continued the Bush-era cover-up of potentially criminal misconduct deep inside the Justice Department.

Here, have a today's round-up of updates on the Uganda situation, and a brief note on a brutal report on the Catholic Church child-molestation scandal and Pope Benedict's role in the coverup.

First, Uganda:

Enjoy Dancehall star Beenie Man's songs calling for the execution of gay men. The link also includes an April 19th newspaper's naming of various GBLT people ("TOP HOMOS IN UGANDA NAMED") which was followed by arrests, blackmail, and torture.

GayUganda reports on statements made Friday declaring GBLT people to be "cockroaches." He notes that during the Hutu genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda, this was the language used by the Hutu leadership: the Tutsi were "to go out and 'kill cockroaches.'" This extremely loaded language is being used by Rev. Michael Esakan Okwi of the Anglican Church in Uganda, lecturer at Uganda Christian University in Theology and Philosophy.

Scott Lively - author of The Pink Swastika and newtype holocaust denier who claims that Nazi regime was run by gay men, who also ran the concentration camps, and not Those Nice Germans - published a statement on the Uganda law he helped inspire, denying all responsibility and blaming everything on Fags of Old, as he does with literally every evil in human history. He can pretend this law goes "too far," but that's a load of crap; deaths from this law will be, in part, on his head. He, of course, claims anti-Christian persecution. You can see the effects of his hate literature here, as Ugandan anti-gay activists quote "The Pink Swastika" and other commentary from his lectures in Uganda.

Remember: this is what they would do everywhere they could.

Box Turtle Bulletin talks about how Uganda's oil developments are making foreign commentary against this bill less influential. Uganda's political leaders are apparently happy to listen to and stoke GBLT hate, but not opposing voices.

Finally, and importantly, it looks like Pope Benedict XVI personally, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was key to the Catholic Church's attempts to cover up the systematic molestation of children by priests, threatening bishops who came forward with information about molestation allegations with excommunication. Given that Pope Benedict's entire reaction to the Catholic Church's molestation scandal (and coverup he helped run) were to blame GBLT people for it, the lack of church commentary on Uganda's extermination bill seems likely to continue.

And I don't mean losing weight, I mean for the totally bleah, not fun, annoying quality of it. I thought it was going to be so much more fun and well made than it is. Half of the games I tried frustrated me or were poorly designed such that you couldn't play them well and over all I think it does the exact opposite of what I had hoped it would do, which is to make exercising fun enough that I would want to play it again and again.

I am so incredibly unhappy and disappointed. :(

I think I'm going to box it back up and return it to Costco and maybe get something I'll actually enjoy AND be able to work out with, like Dance Dance Revolution. :P

EDIT: Hmmm, then again maybe not. All of the music on the Dance Dance Revolution games apparently SUCK. Too bad you can't get them with actually GOOD music to dance to. :(

"Excuse me, Rabbi? Could you help me speak to my dog?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/us/05religion.html

(ganked from gwynnydd)

ETA: GYAAAHH! Use BugMeNot or Google to access the link...

So I never really unpacked all of my stuff from when I went back east last year. Not sure why, just didn't seem worth the effort somehow so it never happened. But I've recently found a friend who is interested in subletting my apartment but who doesn't mind if I leave my stuff in it. This is GREAT because it means that I won't have to pack up my entire life to do a trip to the east coast. But I figured I should get as much stuff out of storage and put up as possible so I can make room for her boxes of stuff that she won't want/need to unpack till she finds a new apartment of her own here in Seattle.

So tonight I unpacked and put up my Indonesian angels in my bedroom and suddenly the space which had been quiet and peaceful feels cluttered and chaotic.

Hmmmmm. I think it is time for me to start purging my belongings in a serious way, starting with the angels. I don't think I want to get rid of ALL of them, but perhaps I should try pulling my least favorite ones down and see how it looks with less. I could always put up some subtle, dangling stars on the empty hooks so it doesn't look too weird. Right now though it looks overwhelming.

In which we have only four, count ‘em, four of us present for music; in which we break in a GBS song we haven’t done before; and in which we break in a new song of solarbird’s as well. Songs: “Concerning Charlie Horse”, “Captain Kidd”, “Come to the Labyrinth”, “America in Amber”.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Here are a couple of quick pics I snapped today!

Last night, like I am wont to do, I was whipping through my “Anna’s Set” playlist on my iPhone, which is the various songs I can play to one degree or another on the guitar. And while there’s even stuff that isn’t Great Big Sea on that list, it was somewhere just after “Lukey” when I looked at my pick and realized it suddenly had extra points on the end. Oops!

Meanwhile, the cats have gotten very fond of parking on the windowsill in the kitchen and staring out to the walkway just behind the house. I still don’t know what they think they see back there. And by “they” I mean “Fred”, because George is clearly a slacker when it comes to being a watchcat.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

OMG, this is so amazing!! Click on the pic for the grand tour!



Thanks to king_chiron for the gorgeous pointer! :D

So due to no good reason whatsoever other than working full time has made me a bit of a spazz mentally, I missed a credit card payment date by 3 days. Whoops! I paid it and then called to see if I could get the late fee waived. Usually this works, but this time they said that I would have to email in my request. I did so and for reasons not made clear my request was denied.

I have a policy. If a credit card company is not willing to be flexible, then I don't use their card. It's that simple.

So I claimed my reward points, wrote them an email saying that I would be canceling my card and then called to do so. Got sent over to a supervisor and when I explained to her why I would be leaving she asked if I would stay if they removed the fee. I said yes.

It's really pretty amazing. I'm not late very often, but I don't think I've paid a single late fee in a long long time now, if ever? I seem to recall there was one time where they were just like, "Okay, we'll cancel your card" but it was only once in my whole lifetime.

The lesson to be learned? It never hurts to ask and say you'll take your business elsewhere when it comes to credit card late fees which are, lets face it, outrageous to begin with.

Here are some Wayfound logs as well, since as I mentioned, the Wolfbringer’s daughter is just refusing to leave me alone. Bear with me, folks, I’m going to be posting logs for a while, I think!

“Tefin Meets the Captain” has Wayfound introducing Vardeus to Tefin, a fascinating Go-Back she’s met in the nearby woods; in “Keeping Watch and Making Plans”, Tefin finds Wayfound on watch over the Vraeyan camp by night, and the two elves share something of their childhoods with each other and make plans to head to Lostholt; “Of Babies and Gold” is a log fragment in which Wayfound and Tefin hang out with the human youth Maerro and the baby Jorrico, and learn a little about human babies and Maerro’s own history.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

This got pointed out by wintersweet over on gears_and_steam for it's neo-Victorian/gothic Lolita stylings, which are not quite steampunk, but are pretty cool. So I checked it out and thought, "Well that's pretty" and then I watched it again and now I'm hooked. I didn't particularly care for the song the first time I heard it and now it just keeps circling around in my head. *fistshakes catchy J-pop music!*

Oryx_leucoryx mentioned she wanted to rec my WIP "Headmaster Snape" if I cleaned up the tags.

I thought it would be helpful also to give the tentative order and dates of the posted chapters. (Several of the early chapters occur simultaneously in different houses, so I can't do it strictly by chronological order.) (Of course, it would be most helpful to do direct links, but I'm off to work in a few: this will help for now.)


( Prologue )

Because I’m totally on a nostalgia trip for the Seafarers, and because Wayfound and Arnos still aren’t leaving me alone, I’m on a major log-posting kick today. All of these are logs out of my long-unposted backlog. Hope those of y’all who were in on the Seafarer RP with me will enjoy! damara, stickmaker, ssha, animenathan, and most especially syn, these are for you! (Any other former Seafarers actually reading this, sing out, crew! I miss you!)

“Council by the Campfire” shows Vardeus and Kephissa learning quite a few things from the humans and elves helping them, while making plans for finding the rest of the crew; “A Joyous Reunion” is the log of Vardeus and his party finally finding the rest of the crew; Vardeus shares with Coralfire the news of his betrothal to Tiana in “The Captain’s Delight”; in “Coralfire’s Dilemma”, Coralfire shocks Vardeus by seeking out his advice on what to do about her love life.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

So a proper sendoff for Liam Clancy, of sorts: The food was Irish (well, OK, I had London broil, but I did have Irish soda bread and Smithwick's; my companions had shepherd's pie and stew made with Guiness, though...), the whiskey was Scots (the Dalwhinnie 15).. and the music was American: Journey's album Revelation, featuring Filipino lead singer Arnel Pineda, whom they found literally on YouTube. The album is a triple-dip: 10 new songs, a second disc with 12 classic Journey hits re-recorded (which was the part we listened to - Pineda is a vocal ringer for Steve Perry, only he's (don't hit me) better. He's more crisp, brings a bit more vocal strength, and has put the band back on the charts... add to that the virtuosity the players have gained over the years (the guitar licks are more complex), and it's no surprise the album *debuted* at #5 last year. (The third disc, for North America only, is a live concert DVD.)

Thanks, s00j. A bit of the Irish made my evening.

Hi all! Wanna see some movies? These are my current passes and theater locations. Times will probably vary depending on what day people are interested in seeing something, if anyone is interested . :)

An Education - Egyptian
Precious - Harvard Exit (not sure I want to see this - looks DEpressing)
The Road - Guild 45th (another uncertain film for me)
A Serious Man - Metro
Bad Lieutenant - Metro
2012 - Metro
The Messenger - Metro
The Blind Side - Metro
New Moon - Metro (this would be purely for mocking purposes)
Red Cliff - Varsity
Ninja Assasin - Varsity
Bright Star - Crest