Brigdh
Sunday, September 23, 2007
7:58PM - Project 365, Second Try
Hey, remember that Project 365 thing? Where you took one photo a day for a year? Well, I sort of gave up on it back in February, when my camera was stolen, but I bought a new one before going to Cyprus, and I want to get back into it. I enjoy the way trying to find photos causes me to perceive the landscape in a different sort of way than I do otherwise.
Anyway, thumbnails beneath the cut! Click them if you'd like a larger image. ( Photos, yay! )
busyTuesday, September 18, 2007
9:57PM - Celebrations
I taught a class today and no one said anything utterly inane! I feel this is an accomplishment.
Also, I just received a phonecall from my father letting me know that tomorrow is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Clearly we should all celebrate these events.
Arr!
amusedFriday, September 14, 2007
5:09PM - Linkblogging
White Jigsaw Flash Game. SO ADDICTIVE.
What is Alan Moore doing these days? Funny and bizarre little comic.
Speaking of comics, 'The Trouble with Tribbles' as drawn by Edward Gorey.
Springkink is now accepting claims for prompts for the month of October! Go write some porn, people.
busyWednesday, September 12, 2007
12:13PM - Scenes from Academia
Everyone warned me that I would be incredibly shocked at the, let us say, uneducated state of the average undergraduate in my class. I was prepared for this.
Still... how does anyone not know where Tasmania is? And not when asked randomly, but when looking at a map of Australia!
amusedTuesday, September 11, 2007
9:45PM - Will write more updates; am just busy
On Saturday, I needed a book for a class that my university's library did not have, but which I noticed was available on the New York public library's website. I hadn't been to the New York public libraries before; I know I should have, but the abundance of used book stores in this city meant that I could usually simply buy whatever I wanted, usually without paying more than a few dollars for a book, or even no more than fifty cents. So I'd not yet gotten around to getting a library card.
But this weekend I needed this book, and so I borrowed Racheline's card and went to the library. After some small difficulty finding the place (since I had the wrong address), I discovered the first of my problems with the library: when one goes into a library, typically they have computers set up so that one may look up the call numbers of the book one wants, and then locate it within the building. The New York's library's computers require you to type in your account number and a password before you can use them.
Wait. Let me explain this. These computers do not have access to the internet. These computers cannot be used by random people to check email, surf the web, write their screenplay, or any other random activity which might impede others' access to the computer. The only program these computers have on them is the one that searches for books within the library. Why is this access restricted? And sure, most people in the library probably do have library cards, but I'm sure there's plenty of situations in which people don't- children who check out books on their parents' card, people who want to use the library for research without checking things out, people who use libraries as just a place to go after school or work. And now they can't even find out what is in the library.
I didn't know Racheline's password, but I knew the book I wanted was about ancient India, so I just followed the maps to the history section and then wandered around until I noticed others on the topic. It was a bit annoying, but not a big problem.
There was a fiction book I wanted, and thought I'd check to see if they had it before I left. It was one of Tamora Pierce's Tortall books, which are popular enough that I assumed there was a good chance the library would have it, and figured I should check in their YA section.
I had to ask for directions twice before I could find the YA section. Imagine, if you will, a square area with windows running along the left hand side and the path through the library on the right hand side, walls to the top and bottom, all the space full of shelves of videos parallel to the windows. Picture the shelf furtherest in the top left corner, and thus furtherest away from where you would walk if you weren't looking for a video, but rather, you know, books. This shelf, and only the side facing towards the window and therefore not visible from within the library, was the YA section.
I was annoyed enough when I finally found it, as you can probably tell. But then I started to see if they had the book I wanted, and realized that it was not alphabetized. And I don't mean that it was sort of disorganized and messy. I mean that this shelf had never been alphabetized in its life. Books by a single author were scattered randomly. Copies of the same book were feet apart from one another. Spanish-language books were mixed in with the English-language books; non-fiction was strewn throughout fiction; books that were clearly not YA (The Count of Monte Cristo,for example) were not only on the shelf, but had YA stickers on them. I was so irritated that I sat down and started at least alphabetizing things for about an hour before I gave up. And this wasn't some ghetto branch library where I would be annoyed but unsurprised; this was a library right in midtown, in fact, right across the street from the famous library with the big stone lions and Bryant Park.
Maybe I am spoiled, because my hometown has an excellent public library system. But seriously, what the hell is wrong with the New York public libraries? No wonder people don't read, if this is what they have to deal with.
busyWednesday, September 5, 2007
11:25PM - and more academia news
ALSO I MIGHT HAVE FINALLY THOUGHT OF A TOPIC FOR MY MASTER'S THESIS, WHICH WOULD BE THE RELEASE OF, LIKE, A YEAR AND A HALF OF WORRYING*. I AM WAY EXCITED, YOU GUYS. WAY
Except for the whole, you know, actual writing of it.
pleased3:21PM - Scenes from Academia
I tend to get bored with desktops easily, and so I change whichever one I have every other week or so. Which happened yesterday; I was tired of what I have up currently (a photo of the sea from Cyprus) and felt like something else. But I paged through the various ones I have on my harddrive- mostly of boys kissing or angsty animes- and didn't feel like using any of them, since they all felt overused. I decided I needed to make a new one, but didn't have time right then, and left the nice, bland sea photo up.
Which turned out to be very, very much for the best, when my laptop was abducted this morning to project a powerpoint for the class I'm TA'ing, thus broadcasting my screen to way more people than I would ever want to be familiar with my current fannish obsession.
So, uh. Hooray for good luck!
amusedMonday, September 3, 2007
4:44PM - Yuletide Rec
Apparently ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
yuletide is the gift that just keeps on giving, because I had another story written for one of my prompts a few days ago (that makes three this year!).
Salad-Head, by RubyNye, is a modern retelling of Rapunzel. I love how the fairytale details (cravings for salad, dead parents, evil guardians) mix with real-life elements (New York City, punk concerts, hair dye). It's really a gorgeous little story. Plus, there are girls kissing! Who could go wrong with that?
cheerfulWednesday, August 29, 2007
8:18PM - School stuff
Oh my god, classes start next week! Oh my god, they expect me to teach people! I am not ready for any of this.
Yesterday and today I had to attend various orientations for new TAs, a process which began way, way too early in the morning and involved a great deal of handouts and lectures. I have now decided that I am utterly fearless in the face of putting together syllabi, grading papers, holding office hours, and so on. But I will fail utterly in the face of attempting to hold a lab on my own. I have two a week, an hour and 15 minutes each! I can't talk for an hour and 15 minutes! Not because of stage fright, but because I am not a chatty person. I couldn't talk for an hour and 15 minutes if my only audience was a cat. And certainly not at 9:30 in the bloody morning.
This problem is not being helped by the fact that the professor of the class has not yet returned from England, and thus I have no idea what the labs will actually consist of.
On that panicked note, ( my classes this semester )
cheerfulWednesday, August 22, 2007
8:32PM - Things to pass your time
Lolcatz of death! Oscar the cat, who predicts people's death, gets his own macros.![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rubyd is making lots of pretty YnM fanart!
This 'intelligence test' is addicting. I AM STUCK AT 20; SEND HELP.
I'm the last person to start using those book-organizing websites. Friend me, or, alternately, tell me which cool book website you use instead.
Brigdh at GoodReads
Brigdh at LibraryThing
pleasedTuesday, August 21, 2007
4:24PM - Book Recs!
Help me, please! I want to read is a book which features (preferably stars) a lesbian couple, but I can't find any. I've already read everything by Sarah Waters. I started 'Aimee and Jaguar' by Erica Fischer, but didn't like it at all. I've read Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit', and I know she has other novels about lesbians, but I'm looking for books that are more, well, fun. Less serious. Historical fiction and/or fantasy is a plus, but I'll read modern stories as well. It doesn't have to be a romance, specifically, but that would be awesome. I prefer fiction, but if you know of a non-fiction book that reads more like a story than a history, that would work as well.
The only thing I don't want to read is a coming out story, or anything in which a large amount of the plotline is devoted to the angst of OMG I am teh ghei! What I want, really, is the equivalent of cheesy Harlequin romance or chick lit novels, but if you attempt to browse the GLBT section of bookstores looking for such, you end up with books that make fanfiction.net look like the home of the next Nobel prize for literature. You know not the horrors, o flist.
So, does anyone know of a good book?
calmSaturday, August 18, 2007
6:32PM - Back Home
Today is a very lovely day.
I'm back in New York now (I think I've said that already, but maybe not), which I am finally done traveling, at least for a few months. In the last four months, I have been on planes from: New York to Ohio, Ohio to New York, New York to England, England to Athens, Athens to Cyprus, Cyprus to London, London to New York and Ohio to New York. And in all that, not once was my luggage lost, a plane missed, or a flight delayed for more than a few minutes. I even only got called over for extra searching by security once. Clearly I have the best airport luck of anyone ever. Although, come to think of it, I've never had my luggage lost, but perhaps that just proves my point.
I like being back in New York. It's not quite like any other city; London has the skyscrapers and the history, Columbus has my family and a skyline and districts I know by heart, like a mirror image, and Nicosia has character and individuality, a pretty little halved city with ancient Venetian walls and UN guards diving into the capitals of two different countries. But New York has that and still feels like a place where people live, a home and playground and market and setting. Even the parts of the city that are most gentrified, most designed to appeal to a tourist, still feel like that to me. Even Time Square, for all its ads and chain stores and crowds so huge they spill out into the streets, crowds so dense they feel like a mob that hasn't decided which way it wants to go, even Time Square has its people who are there to live in it: the guys selling ten-dollar watches and fake purses shouting and joking with their friends or customers, and the women in heels trying to shove across a sidewalk to make it to a show on time at one of the theaters all around there.
I missed New York while I was away. I 've never been homesick before (if you can call it homesickness when you've only lived someplace for a year); I've missed people, or a certain restaurant or store, but not whole places, just for their feel. I do love something indescribable, intangible about the city, the angle of its roofs against the sky, or the pattern of all those rectangular buildings- some taller, some shorter, white marble or grey stone or red brick- that shouldn't be different than any other city's but somehow is. I love the dusty purple of the night sky and the long, narrow horizons down the avenues and how the subway trains sway and roar and their brakes squeal in the stations, and how people move quick and sure to an exit or a transfer.
Today I went to the Union Square farmers' market, which is bigger this time of year, wrapping around three sides of the park, the south side with people selling paintings and photographs and t-shirts and candle-holders giving way to the west and north sides with vegetables and fruits and honey and flowers and houseplants, everything smelling like green growing things. I bought bread, a fresh loaf with white chewy insides and a crunchy crust. I missed bread in Cyprus; we ate homemade bread, but the only kind available was thick and tasteless, some trick of local wheat or cooking style making everyone's resemble rubber; and cheese, sharp cheddar, smelling strong even wrapped in paper; baby carrots, pale but thick and round, like little fingers; tiny strawberries the size of my littlest fingernail but so sweet, stronger-tasting than a huge berry; and my favorites, the heirloom tomatoes. They have so many of them right now, and in every variety: yellow and orange and red and green and purple, little tart green zebras striped in shades of grass and lemon, and big old germans, mustard colored with ketchup streaks coming up from the bottom, but sweet as sugar and big enough that one tomato easily weighs over a pound.
Then I sat in the sun for a while in the grassy part of the park, to watch the people. A man in his mid-twenties climbed a tree until he got as high as the branches could hold him, perched there for a few minutes, and then came back down; he was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt that was just the color of the underside of the leaves when the sun shone through them. Across the street, a man stood on the roof of a building, far enough away that he was half the size of a dime. He had dark hair and stood with his back to me, wearing only a pair of pale grey sweatpants, so the line of his spine was visible when he leaned back against the railing at the edge of the roof. He stood there for a long time, half an hour or so, taking in the sun and doing nothing, until a man wearing only black shorts came and said something to him, and they went away together.
As I said, a lovely day. Though it would be even nicer if, you know, Racheline was not currently on the other side of the continent.
pleasedFriday, August 17, 2007
6:18PM - Linkblogging
Um, seriously, I will write an actual post soon! I am just so busy, people.
An interesting post about making difficult characters happier, if not happy. I liked this a lot, since I feel like it applies to my own writing.
A list of migration tools.
Bookshelves of Doom: a blog I've been reading often. I really enjoy this, even though it's mostly YA and I don't read much of that, myself. I suppose if I wanted to come up with random posts, I could always do book reviews, except that whenever I try I can't think of anything to say.
xkcd: my new favorite webcomic!
And if this works, I will have crossposted to multiple journals, yay.
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