Please visit this entry to introduce yourself and find out about other people who read this journal. Feel free to add a new post when your circumstances change.

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https://www.urbanthreads.com/blog&Itemid=9
Scroll down till you see the clever idea for making some neat Halloween party wall lights, or maybe just cool lights in general.

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Hey, hoshizora: I thought you might be amused by Hiwheel, a company over here--well, up in Alameda--that makes antique and retro-style bikes, as well as lots of other interesting cycles.

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We're watching 我が愛の詩, or Bloom in the Moonlight (what?!), which is a 1993 movie about Rentaro Taki, a late 19th-century Japanese pianist and composer (in the western classical style) whose music is still performed despite a very short career. Heck, here's a video of Yngwie Malmsteen covering "Kojo no Tsuki" (with a guitar and his teeth...), or listen to the Scorpions performing it with the words.

I'm guessing he dies from a buildup of impulsivity in his lungs, because thus far he's a bit of an impulsive goofball. Possibly this is because he's from Kyushu, which one can wildly overgeneralize as being full of goofy energy.

(Just kidding. Tuberculosis. Age 23. I bet there's manga out there somewhere featuring him as a waifish bespectacled bishounen.)

I can't explain what they are to C. and he doesn't think he's ever seen one. (He may not have, who knows!)

You know, they're paperbacks that have been reinforced (after publication, IIRC) with cardboard and...stuff.

I think all the Choose Your Own Adventures at one of the local public libraries near me as a kid were that way.

Anyway, if you have any of those books and a camera on hand, could you snap a couple photos from a couple different angles?

(Google Images just gives books flat on, which doesn't really show what makes turtlebacks turtlebacks!)

Netflix users: You might like http://feedflix.com/ , which lets you evaluate your Netflix usage (how much are you really spending per movie? etc.).

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Another new Alltop page: http://frugality.alltop.com/

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Contest: "Rebrand" a literary novel with a mainstream/pop fiction cover style. I hope someone remembers to post a link to the results, because I can't wait. I'm too lazy to use Photoshop and enter the contest, though (and I have no good ideas anyway).

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OMG WAIT WHAT: Origami space shuttles! (well, paper airplanes.) ... To be tossed to Earth from space! Did I read that right? Would 400F resistance really be good enough? I think I must have read that wrong.

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It's chilly! I need to buy slippers. Also, 'tis the season to make sure I keep some boxed Trader Joe's creamy tomato soup around. I'd really go for a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup right now.

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Oops: Usually I make sure to check fabric labels at Lane Bryant, but this pretty purple sweater I got last month is, apparently, "reshape, dry flat, and warm iron." Ugh. It's pretty thin and soft and is going to look great with a black turtleneck under it, but ... gah. Who wants to iron a sweater? Not me. And I usually try to simply not buy anything that says "reshape" on it, oy.

(Actually, it's "reshape whilst wet"--perhaps made in Bangladesh or something, but I can't actually find the label with the fabric contents and where it was made.)

Here's the sweater (the color's a bit more heathered than the photo). Apparently it's rayon/nylon. Hrm.

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Hey, tammylee, I joined you on that early updater madness on Dreamhost!

I hope we don't get borked!

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The Mummy (1999) -> Erick Avari -> Parsi -> Freddie Mercury.


Also, my plan to avoid tomatoes to see if eating acidic stuff was triggering heartburn or if eating everything was triggering heartburn FAILED when I ate Trader Joe's triple berry pie for dessert (it features cranberries). D'oh.

also.

Half a dozen people on my f'list have lost grandparents, parents, etc., this week, or have parents, grandparents, etc., who are very ill right now.

I've responded to hardly any of you and I'm really sorry about that, but I really am thinking of you and I hope everything that can get better does get better as soon as possible.

Footage of the Ghibli-Level 5 RPG, "Ni no Kuni/The Another World."

Apparently it'll come with a book that has gestural spells and mini-stories with information you'll need during the game.

I fired off a Freecycle request for Japanese magazines from the last 3 years, hoping that someone somewhere might have some with English-learning game ads in them...thus saving me from spending $12 per magazine at Kinokuniya or driving 6 hours to the Book Off in LA. :P

Steampunk "Twelfth Night" in NYC. Obviously, I can't go, but it looks awesome.

Thanks to brown_betty, I've discovered despatches, which is a kind of LJ newsletter for "Age of Sail" fandom, including PotC, Horatio Hornblower, Temeraire, Aubrey-Maturin, Austen, etc. (and according to brown_betty, also Heyer etc.).

If only they'd explicitly include Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, I'd be very happy indeed.

I'm only slowly getting into Temeraire/Hornblower/O'Brian, but anyway, assaultdoor is already into them, so the news posts are good. Posts consist of fanfic links at the topic, which I will likely largely skip (I just can't get into fanfic for the most part), but there are news and other links at the bottom.

Nifty.

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as long as I'm ranty:

Dear US Chamber of Commerce,

In another naive moment, I had kind of imagined chambers of commerce as being big-picture folks, not profit!profit!profit! anti-environment no-taxes-ever-for-anything conservative types.

Oops.

Your radio ad today about two candidates I've never heard of and who aren't even in my district left me with three impressions:

1. The first guy voted for some taxes that may or may not have been for good causes. He was environmentally responsible when it came to offshore drilling.

2. The second guy was against some taxes that may or may not have been for good causes. He's environmentally irresponsible and shameless panders to an ill-informed public in order to get votes.

3. The US Chamber of Commerce is shortsighted at best and harmful to US interests at worst. It promotes the popular notion of "drill now!" even though it won't lower gas prices any time soon (even though your ad shamelessly implied that it would). It ignores all the possible jobs and revenue we could generate through alternative technologies. It is focused purely on short-term profit (which, you know, doesn't seem to have been working all that well lately). It doesn't have the best interests of American businesses in mind, let alone American consumers, people who breathe American air, people who'd rather not depend so much on other countries, etc.

I have to say, your ad was really effective!

Sincerely,

Me.

Sigh.

Part of me likes to think that charities are charities first and politico-religious organizations later.

Part of me is stupid and naive. And also contradictory, because when you get down to it, I guess I really no longer trust any "faith-based" charitable efforts. I don't give to random religious charities that I see soliciting for pocket change because I don't know where the money goes. Well, I don't give to any unknown charity, but I'm increasingly suspicious of religious charities because the more I learn about them, the more I hear about organizations that actively discriminate. You want to help people? Then help people. Don't turn away gay people, single mothers, people from other religions, or whatever group you hate this week.

If religious groups want to do good, I feel they should just divorce their charitable efforts from their religion. People who are moved by their efforts will still probably be drawn to their religion through personal conversations if that's what they want. But if the goal is doing good, and not proselytizing or imposing their beliefs on others, then they need to quit dancing about and really just DO GOOD.

This message brought to you by the hateful, anti-family, anti-love, anti-marriage radio ad in favor of Proposition 8 that I heard this morning, which was partly sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.

I will never donate to any Knights of Columnbus fundraiser ever again.

Sure, they also do some good things, but you know what? There are OTHER organizations that AREN'T bigoted and ALSO do good works. You don't have to give to organizations such as the Knights of Columbus and the Salvation Army. They do good with one hand and practice bigotry with the other. You have a choice. Choose an organization that doesn't discriminate and add to hatred, discrimination, and bigotry.




(NB: It's not that I won't give to religious organizations at all. I will if I am assured that their good works are no-strings-attached. Otherwise, I'm not subsidizing their crusades.)

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for Mad Men fans and especially mshades:

someone who really likes the show takes a critical look at their typeface choices:
http://www.marksimonson.com/article/236/mad-men-mad-props

(can I just say, OUCH? I only took 1 layout-related class and my feel for fonts is based on ... feel, not actually knowing anything about the dates, and even I think these are glaringly anachronistic screwups. But I also know that 99% of the audience won't notice or care, so ... )

(and let me mention again, because I'm a bit loopy, that this is pointed out by the writer and passed on by me just as something interesting to look at, not as an actual criticism of the show! Kind of like how I enjoy those writeups by an MD of all the medical screwups on "House." :))

...is now a good time to invest in stocks/index funds for the long haul?

(Yeah, yeah, I'll go read up over at Motley Fool.)

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