Back home from my family's Thanksgiving dinner, at which much yummy food was had and no one picked fights with anyone else. Yay. Normally, Dad and I watch White Christmas on Thanksgiving night, but this year he's postponing it to tomorrow when I won't be there. So, in its place, I'm re-watching another traditional holiday entertainment which I taped off PBS last night.

Behind the cut: The Nutcracker (2008 San Francisco Ballet production) In 15 Minutes. ( Read more... )

Tags: fangrrl, geek
Current Location: home
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: SciFi: "For Your Eyes Only"

Wow, Akko has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries, does she?

Am I right in thinking Morinaga Miruku takes even more time with the romantic subplots than Rumiko Takahashi?

It seems to me reasonable that if it's 100% reprints, that means the field is stagnating in a rather bad way. Even at 50% I'd wonder why there aren't more new books in the genre.

0% ... feels wrong to me because it suggests the genre has no long-term memory (1). Otherwise I can see arguments in favour of newer material over old (and new midlist authors over old): most books have a majority of their sales in the first year so a steady flow of new books makes financial sense [2].

Don't ask me to defend the idea genres have or should have long-term memories.

So after a few minutes of thought, I've got it narrowed down to somewhere less than 50% and somewhat more than 0%. That's not as narrow a band as I'd like.


1: Although maybe the books are all so similar there's nothing to be preserved from reprinting older books, and the usual sales curve of books makes it more reasonable to focus on new works?

2: Why the heck did I want to mention The Velvet Underground? I'm sure I will remember once it's too late.

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

Turkey started roasting at 2pm. At 4pm, I uncover it to roast until done.

Wow, la petite Pirate Lady said they had a roasting pan big enough for the turkey, and technically, it sorta works but gosh that's a tight squeeze! She's going to do an even bigger turkey on Saturday in the same pan! She has major food packing skillz. :-)

I was supposed to tuck the wing tips underneath the neck but that *so* wasn't working. I spent 20 minutes or more trying, including cutting slits into the skin of the neck hoping to tuck the wing tips in there. No go. So I covered the tips in foil and called it good enough. :-)

Then I came home to take care of a few things including making the roux. I don't make rouxs a lot (what's the plural of that anyhow?) so it was a bit of an adventure. I'm glad I was doing this at home with no time pressure as opposed to just after the turkey comes out of the oven, making the roux in the roasting pan where if you screw up, you've wasted all the nice drippings from the roast.

Anyhow, the thing that was weird was that the flour-butter mixture was a lot like playdough for quite a while and I wasn't sure why they said to whisk it since it just stuck to the whisk. Instead I used a spoon to mush it down and stir it. It wasn't until well past the 2 minute mark wherein it was supposed to turn a light caramel color that it finally loosened up into a thick liquid and started to take more color. At that point though, it colored fast. Good thing I had a spatula handy to take it out of the pot.

I wonder if I should have let the butter foam up more and cook off its inherent water before adding the flour...

Oh yeah, Pirate Lady is making the lovely Carl's Buttery Rolls recipe for tonight. I can't wait! :-)

For those of you who are doing a Thanksgiving meal, what all are you people looking forward to most?

Tags: food

Libertarians: Making Sure That Self-Parody Is Handled By The Private Sector

Michael Levin's Scrooge Defended

Tags: everything is worse with libertarians

Once your stuff is out there, you have absolutely no control over which combination of characters fanfickers will ship. In fact, there's probably a corollary of Rule 34 that no matter how insanely inappropriate it would be for the characters to hook up, someone out there is writing fan fiction about it.

Tags: shouting at clouds

In which I asserted many of the people running major companies apparently make their management decisions based on a desire to emulate Mussolini. Not the grand propaganda aspect or the attempts at empire building; I meant the part where he ended up shot by partisans and then left hanging head down while an angry crowd desecrated his corpse.

The question

I have been informed that as of the new year I will be laid off. Our office is small and only I will be sacrificed for the long-term benefit of the company. My severance is three months, all of which I must work, albeit some of it at home. The thing is I am the person responsible for organizing the Christmas party, which is on my credit card.

Nicked from anton_p_nym

Or I will quote Andy Schlafly at you once more:

There's a broader point here. Why the big push for black holes by liberals, and big protests against any objection to them? If it turned out empirically that promoting black holes tends to cause people to read the Bible less, would you still push this so much? Certainly there is no practical justification to pushing black holes; no one will ever be helped by them in any way.--Andy Schlafly 12:03, 13 November 2009 (EST)

Nicked from pharyngula

Tags: memetic prophylactic recommended

I was going to make a claim in a previous entry but decided to test it first:

Poll #1490779
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 188

How many of you have experience with farming prior to age 25?

1: It involved salvaging America's position in the Hugos, perhaps through the use of breeding camps in a remote Appalachian location.

[...] [M]odern Westerners can be separated by the work they did when they were young and unskilled. One great mass worked in retail, selling goods of one kind or another. A second cohort worked in food service, waiting tables or working a grill. And the third group, seemingly the luck ones, were those rich or privileged enough not to have to work at all -- the ones who were children, then entirely students, and then set off on their careers, without ever having had "just a job."

Tags: has seasonal commerce become too commerc

There were two parts to this:

( Read more... )

Tags: d&d

Mike Brotherton comments on two abstracts concerning Accretion disk civilizations.

On the one hand, there's a lot of energy to play with. On the other, there's a lot of energy to play with you.

Subject line says it all.

Comment away!

Tags: holidays, restaurants

Fred Pohl, award-winning author, editor, and agent, turned 90 today.


One nice gift for authors is to buy their books. I note the following links at Pohl's site:

Pohl books at Baen

[Are these still in print?]

Pohl books at Del Rey

Pohl books from Macmillan

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! (To those of you who don't, happy Thursday. There is a James Bond marathon on the SciFi Channel and a Godfather marathon on AMC. You're welcome.)

I am thankful for so very many things. I am thankful for my family, and for my awesome roommates, and for my job that I love and that is probably not thinking about laying me off, and for all of the wonderful music and theater projects I have been part of over the past year, and for not yet (*crosses fingers, knocks wood*) having come down with the Flu although really it's only a matter of time because my immune system is kind of slackeriffic.

And I am thankful for many extremely awesome friends. I don't say that often enough (especially not in this journal, where I mostly geek out about TV shows and kvetch about daily irritants) but I truly am. *hugs you all* Have a good day.

Tags: happy x day
Current Location: home
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: TV: "Dr. No" on SciFi

Here's a report my union published on charter schools, in case you were wondering why I have such nutty ideas about education reform.

http://www.massteacher.org/news/headlines/charterschools0909.pdf

Today I will be 30 weeks pregnant with the (still nameless) boy. Yay. This is a big deal because it's a major milestone in survivability. Babies born after 30 weeks tend to live. I'm actually not too worried about the boy coming preterm, but infertility teaches you not to take anything for granted.

Why am I posting at 5 am? Well, I've reached the point in the pregnancy where I can't sleep. This happened last time too, I'd wake up at some hour when I should be asleep with sudden insomnia. It's not just the kicking either. I'm guessing there are some hormones at play here, hormones meant to help me through the feed-the-newborn-every-two-hours phase, they just kick in before they are truly needed. Oh well.

In other news, prenatal massage is worth every penny. I had my first one of this pregnancy on Monday and the boy quit trying to shove my tailbone out of his way, so I am one satisfied customer.

You guys, I have internets at home again now! The wireless card still isn't working (Belkin recommends updating the drivers), but I have been graciously lent a 20' ethernet cable that is doing the trick just fine in the interim.

Thanksgiving is so totally the Yomtov That Isn't. It's extremely weird to watch everyone disappear out of school and have it *not* be a case of running home in time for candlelighting...!

I am spending this weekend locally, since I had invitations to Thanksgiving dinner from several different friends -- thanks, you guys, all of you, for making me feel loved and included. :-) So although this will still mean driving well over an hour each way (with traffic) tomorrow, I don't have to get up early or do any of the driving or, in fact, do anything but pack some good music for the car and be a gracious guest. I'm looking forward to it.

And now that I've finished the shul newsletter, and uploaded it to Kinko's for Friday morning pickup... *BED*.

Tags: holidays
Current Mood: happy

I suspect Canadians will be upset over Palin's exhortation to Canada to drop our health care system, presumably in favour of one that will leave a large percentage of Canadians without coverage while costing much more per person, but to my eye the only two comments she could have made about our system without taking a non-Republican stance were either one much like the one she made or "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl!" while spinning her head through 720 degrees and she's probably not bilingual.

Thinkprogress has more details and a clip.

I always figured if Mary Walsh tried Marg Warrior Princess thing on an American politician, she'd be tasered to death, gunned down on the spot or shipped off to Gitmo. Good to know I was wrong.

Scott is allergic to holiday wreaths but not to real christmas trees.

Weird.

i'm going backwards. rather than upgrading my mac laptop, i'm looking to downgrade it to osx 10.4 (tiger).

does anyone know where i can find a copy of an older apple operating system?
almost everyone i see in the cafes with macs are running updated leopard or snow leopard. if anyone has upgraded lately, and no longer needs their original osx 10.4 disks, maybe we can work out a deal ($, box of kickass cupcakes, ?).

ideas? thanks!!

Tags: computer repair

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Poll #1490403
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 177

Which fictional character would you rather punch in the face?

Life on Mars! The Sequel

Now, 13 years after the Martian meteorite life story emerged, the science team finally feels vindicated. Their data shows the meteorite is no smoking gun but is full of evidence that supports the existence of life on the surface of Mars, or in subsurface water pools, early in the planet's history.