Adventures in Construction

While I often like to think of myself as someone who enjoys making things, in practice I'm not especially good at it. I can make origami stars like a boss, but my talents don't stretch much further.

Point is, I bought some storage shelving at Target because I loved the last one I bought that much. I had been using several storage towers, but my new unit has rendered most of them obsolete and I actually have some floorspace now. I can even open my closet door all the way.

I'm one of those people that hoardes every little thing, just in case it turns out to be useful. Scraps of pattern, kinck-knacks, stickers - anything with crafting potential. One would think my lessons in trying to build things where the instructions are laid out for you clear cut would deter me from future projects where I'd have to wing it, but I just can't seem to learn.

Last of the postcards today, until more arrive in the mail! :D

 From Lithuania - I seem to send and receive a lot of cards from the Eastern European area for some reason. Perhaps the stats average out more as you keep sending mail.

The photo on the card is by photographer Betsy Spink titled "Mellow Pages."

Distressed and rough around the edges, this phone directory looked how I felt. But there it lay, in its beautiful tree like resemblance.
 

One from Poland - the sender happened to note I liked horses. Not really much to say about this one; what ya see is what ya get.

Oddly foggy tonight; good night to get a fire going. Unfortunately, it's also the Cotton Bowl, thus my grandparents monopolize the fireplace. We don't even have any marshmallows in this house. And that realization has birthed another one - we have no whipped cream, thus making hot chocolate is pointless. Just like my life.

The Weatherman is a Rain God

I had a lot to talk about today. But I forgot most of it, so I'm just going to ramble about for a while.

Transliterations has a new contest prompt for those interested in modernizing some mythology. Luckily, my Professional Muse is quite the mythology buff; I will be taking on a Hindu story about the god Indra and his battle with the dragon Vritra. Every time it rains, it's a recreation of thier battle.

I have decided my Indra reincarnate shall be a weatherman for the lulz. Leaning towards rival meteorologists, working for differnet news stations. I thought about having my protaganist go to the pet store and unknowingly buy a snake that tured out to be a reincarnate of his ancient rival, but it's easier to write two humans. I may have taken some inspiration from Douglas Adams on this one. More specifically, his Rain God character. I usually found Adams' throwaway gags and characters to be the best ones.

Because my Muse likes to lecture, I now know enough about Hindu mythology to give a crash course to a class of ten year olds. We've also decided there needs to be a crossover fic with Paul Bunyan and the bull Nandi. Hinduism just happens to have a race of giants that I'm sure I could tie in :P I'll keep things updated here for those interested in the mysterious writing process of mine.

But I doubt I'll get much of it done tonight. Have some more postcards.

 This one is from Belarus, which was the first time I had to go dig out a map to figure out where it came from. It's a fairly small nation that declared soverignty during the break-up of the USSR. I'd tell you what this is a picture of, but I don't know - I believe the language is Russian and if I were to guess I'd say it's a petting zoo. The sender didn't clarify, identifying it only as a "place of relaxation" in his city.



 A card from Finland - "Suomi" is not a city as I first thought, but the Finnish word for Finland :D Once again though, the sender didn't offer much information about themselves or the card.

I can understand that really - it's difficult to say much in such a small space, combinded with writing to a complete stranger. I suppose I can consider myself lucky in this instance to have trained myself into brevity with my writing, even if my penmanship leaves much to be desired.

Finland though is one of those countries I don't know much about but probably wouldn't mind visiting. It looks like a wonderfully scenic country and I'm pretty sure it's far north enough to get the Aurora at night - one of the reasons I'd love to travel North in the future.

Doodles and Emo Poetry

This is what I do when I get bored - I doodle things on dA Muro. Usually on Bill's page because Bill is amusing to draw and his curly hair/ top hat combo makes him vey distinctive. Isn't he cute? <3 I am incapable of drawing Bill without making him adorable.

Days like this I wish I still had a tablet. Though, if I do say so myself, this is pretty damn good for using a laptop pad mouse.

Tara has caused me to realize that our blog personalities appear to have been switched - my blog is considerably more optimistic thus far, where Bill, the true optimist, does not showcase as much optimism in his blog. I'm oddly amused by the switcheroo and feel the need to post some emo poetry to correct the balance of nature. (And just to give Bill what for.)

This was a writing group exercise from some time ago. The form was thus:

Ten lines - 1 and 10 must be the same
Subject
Metaphor
Lines 4 and 5 rhyme
Metaphor
Quote
Disagree with quote
Emotion
Same as line 1

The Result:

The pit of my soul
is empty, or nearly so.
A blank clock, a dull blade -
this condition inhuming,
blooming
flower to firework.
"Hell is other people,"
but Sartre was wrong
and my apathy is consuming
the pit of my soul.


It makes me laugh each time I read it. You would too if you could hear the voice in my head for it.

This Post Turned Into a Memoir

Having been sick for much of the week, I took most of the day to sleep in; I got up around 2:00PM today. Then spent most of the remaining daylight fuming because my Internet was, once again, broken. I have since fixed it obviously, by ripping out all the cords and plugging them back in. Three times. Why it didn't work the first time is beyond the scope of my knowledge and I am forced to conclude that the machines are in fact sentient and they hate me.

Finally got things working around 6:00PM and found not as many messages in my dA inbox as I feared, though I did miss the chat event I had been planning on attending. Oh well, there will be more in the future.

Tara has pointed out to me that this is slowly becoming a daily blog, which wasn't really intended XD I'll probably slow down with the posting so often once school starts up or I run out of postcards to share (two more posts at this rate). Until then, more postcards!

 Terrible photo quality on this - apologies. The lighter colored cards get a lot of glare.

This one happens to be a homemade postcard; the paper is a bit thinner than normal and the pictures were both taken by the sender. The one in the top right corner is some sort of market scene - the lower right is a boat.

The sender was from Malaysia and also provided a return address so I can send a card back to her, which doesn't happen that often. Usually there's no address at all except your own, so it's neat to be able to return the favor.

I've been to Idaho once, but only very briefly - as in, just a few minutes. I got the opportunity to visit Yellowstone National Park with my grandparents several years ago and our route took us through a quick stretch of the state.

This card was my first request - usually, Postcrossing works by getting a random address, but users are allowed to message specific members and ask if they would like to do a postcard exchange. This makes it easier if you're out to get a card from every country or state. The lady who sent this card was the first person to send me one of those messages :) She also wrote quite a lot on the backside - apparently she used to live near a site with a herd of some 200 horses. After a rash of widfires though, the herd has been considerably reduced. Only 30 came back and some of the others were adopted into ranches in Utah and Nevada.

I'd love to go out West again one day. Both of my trips - Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon - were made with my grandparents. Unfortunately, my grandfather seems to subscribe to the philosophy of "go just to say you've been;" we didn't even spend an entire day at Yellowstone. Just stayed long enough to watch some geysers. Pretty big letdown really (though I'm still grateful to have gotten to go). The world out there looks more or less the way your average Western depicts it - huge open spaces, big cloudless skies, few trees. The scenery is just amazing in every direction.

I didn't understand it at the time, but I've also had the privelage of standing on a certain corner in Winslow, Arizona :P It wasn't far from most of the stuff we were there to see - the Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, Meteor Crater. I've also been to the Four Corners, seen the Great Salt Lake, and I think that may be it for my Western landmarks. I've been to a lot more in the other direction XD

Totally Not Bribing Anyone

I'm using Blogger this go around as a friend is also using it and told me it was pretty simple to use. I already like it much more than I did LiveJournal :D Said friend also ceased posting for a few days, which I later found out was due to technology issues. Long story short; I told him I could not, in good conscience, link him here until he started posting again.

Since he has, everyone should go annoy him here. Be really obnoxious; he'll love it.

But really; Bill's a good friend of mine and has been for many years. He's very interesting in his blogs when he wants to be and would be a damn good writer if he weren't so lazy :P I'm sure he would appreciate a few new hellos over there. When he finally gets around to conquering the world sometime this century, I'm sure he'll remember you and your kind words. (And me and my backhanded, jestery compliments, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.)

More postcards!

This was the first card I received through Postcrossing. This one comes from Brussles, Belgium. There's also a stamp on the back of the plan of a bascillica, which I'm only telling you about to show case my Art History nerdiness (I nearly majored in Art History). The sender was actually from Latvia though, and had been living in Brussels for the past three years.

This one is (obviously) from Indonesia. I chose to showcase these two together becuase the top one was the first card I received; this one was the first that someone else got to send :) The statute in the picture is not actually a statue - it's a mummy. A mummified war god of the Dani tribe, a tribe that still exists today in the Baliem Valley and is fairly easy to reach. Aside from smoked mummies, they're well known for one of their unusual customs; when someone in the village dies, one finger of all of his female relatives is cut off. Despite missionary efforts, the hands of the Dani women continue to be mutilated.

Since I throughly lambasted "Snuff" last time, I feel like I should make it up (and relieve my feelings of being a terrible person), by telling everyone how awesome Discworld is. "Snuff" was an anomaly for me - I've loved nearly every Pratchett book I've ever picked up. There were only two I couldn't get into at all and did not finish; by and large the series is hilarious. I'd recommend "Mort" or "Guards, Guards!" for series newcomers as each one is the beginnings of their own arc, but if you're asking for faves it's a toss up. "Night Watch" is the darkest, but also one of the best; "Reaper Man" has the best atmosphere for me, though I didn't like the wizards sub-plot that much (I spent most of my time hoping we'd go back to Death soon, which was probably the problem XD); "Hogfather" is rather seasonal being a sporking of Christmas, but is probably the most uplifing and the funniest of the three. By and large though, if you pick up anything with the name Terry Pratchett on the cover, you're in for a good read.

Long post is getting long. I cease here. I shall return with more postcards!

Snuff

I feel terrible saying it, but I was disappointed by the lastest from Pratchett. I'm already forgetting much of the plot, and I only finished the book a few days ago. I didn't find many memorable lines this go around, nor did I find much humor - given that I consider "humorous" to be the defining characteristic of Pratchett's style, that's a pretty big miss for me. If you changed the character names, I wouldn't have known it was a Discworld novel.

It's not that it didn't have it's moments, but I honestly couldn't tell you what they were now. I can still remember, line for line, some of the best quotes from books like Mort that I read two years ago and have barely looked at since. I still read the book in two nights (typical for me and a Pratchett book), but I did feel like I was forcing myself a little out of some loyalty to Vimes, who gets some of the best books in the series. AND WHY WAS THERE NO DEATH CAMEO WHY DID THIS HAPPEN HOW COULD YOU.

There's also some confustion for me, which a friend will no doubt be able to clear if he ever gets on Skype again - goblins and orcs. Same thing? Different races? It's really not made that clear - in previous books we see one orc who has been raised up as not very orcish at all so I can't really draw a comparison. I recall from "Unseen Academicals" that they was some talk near the end of civilizing an entire race, though I can't remember if it was a reference to Nutt's culture or a seperate goblin culture. I also recall pastor Mightily Oats has some dealings with goblins and was the one that freed Nutt in the past. But I can't get around that I think that goblins and orcs were supposed to be different species.

But come to that, I don't really like that, if different, two new races have been introduced within three books. Dwarfs and trolls and werewolves and most of the other species have been given 40+ books to be fleshed out and developed as unique cultures. Goblins and orcs feel like caricatures in comparison. Nutt at least we got to see as a character; the entire point of his book was not letting others define him by what he is  and developing a sense of worth despite what others think of his species. We don't really get a chance to see any of the goblins as characters in that way. (I'd say the one with the harp was probably the most well done, even if the power of music felt like such a huge ass pull.) We get an overview of their way of life, their religion is breifly discussed (in the first pages in fact) and forgotten for the rest of the book and bears no significance on the plot is except to make one Watch officer go insane for a little while. It doesn't help that by making the entire goblin species so... helpless? Self-hating? it makes them feel like a plot device instead of actual characters. We get it - racism, xenophobia = bad. There's no need to beat us over the head with it. Not that it stopped him other books, but at least he was funny (and occasionally subtle) while beating us over the head.

And I don't know if I'm reading way too much into it, but given how little subtlety was in this book maybe not; but was the goblin mothers eating their young thing supposed to be a metaphor for abortion? Because seriously, if that's what it was I think I lost a little bit of respect for Pratchett. Unless it was supposed to be a reference to "A Modest Proposal," in which case it was rather botched.

I do like the idea of Vimes having to stop a crime that isn't in fact a crime, having to choose between the lawful thing and the right thing, but I really do think it could have better written. That theme barely raises its head in the book, held down by the plot device that is the goblin race. Pratchett spends so much time on racism, a theme we've seen in pretty much every Watch book so far. I'll conceed Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped, but  that anvil has been dropped at least five or six times in previous books. Better yet, those anvils actually merited thought - this time I felt like I was being talked down to.

I'd say the the Summoning Dark was the best part of the book, but it makes its presence known so few timesthat it practically doesn't count. I'd have loved to see that relationship expounded upon, but it looks like I'm going to have to dive back into FFN to get it. The relationship we do have between the two is ridiculosuly out of character - actually, a whole lot of things are out of character. What happened to the Vimes that was terriffied of losing his morality and sanity against this pseudo-demonic force in "Thud!"? The Vimes who would never depend on magic to solve a case now accepts said psudo-demonic thought-beings' witness testimony? The Vimes who hated being a nob now uses his aristocratic power shamelessly? The Vimes who was haunted with doubts and clung to the Law like a beacon has resolved all his doubts somewhere off-screen? This isn't Vimes. This isn't one of my favorite Discworld characters.

Similar thoughts for many of the others - Willikins is a thug. A very well dressed thug no doubt, but in "Jingo" for instance, he was still a gentleman's gentleman; his thuggish past only came into play during times of danger. Here, it's all tough guy, all the time. Sybil is awfully concerned with being prim and proper this go around, something she couldn't have cared less about a few books ago. What happened to the Sybil that raised dragons like a boss? Since when does she need her husband to tell everyone off for her? When did she go from "totally awesome supportive wife" to henpecking Vimes over every little thing?

Honestly, I do feel bad about saying the book is kindasortaokayit'sreallybadbyDiscworldstandards given what the author is dealing with. And I know for most authors it's difficult to maintain quality over a trilogy, nevermind however many Pratchett has churned out (what is it, like 45 books now?). I was really hoping the series was going to end on a high note, but if the books are going to continue on like this, perhaps it's time to quit while ahead. Of the Discworld books I've read, there are six I wouldn't but for my own collection. "Snuff" is one of them.

First Post!

Starting the year with origami stars and snail mail :D

Counting myself, there are, as of this posting, nine players in the Round Robin game of mine. I haven't decided if I want to keep using the current notebook that apparently isn't as full as I would have expected given that most of the players are writers, or just start a new book with the new year. Decisions, decisions.

I think I'm going to go ahead and let this one play out. It gives the newest participants time to jump in and get a feel for how the game works and the older particpants aren't immediately handed shipping costs again XD There's also the issue of what happens to a full notebook, which I'm going to have to confront eventually. It seems unfair to just keep it, but I can't keep passing it around either. If the game goes on long enough, eventually everyone will have a full notebook for themselves I guess, but I don't see anyone playing that long, especially if it takes a while to fill a 100 page notebook.

 Meanwhile, my postcard collection is growing at a steady rate =D

These two are from Russia - the windmill is from a small town called Tula, near Moscow. Apparently, the winters there are quite cold (the sender doesn't like that D:) The sender was also an architect, so naturally would be fond of buildings. It's one of my favorite cards so far.




 The second is (obviously) from St. Petersburg, though the sender was actually from Moscow. They picked up this card on vacation I believe. The picture quality came out strangely because my camera is a silly point and shoot :/

The goat probably has my favorite story behind it. It' not actually a postcard - it's a greeting card. The sender (Poland) had a library book on them at the time and couldn't go into the store to buy a postcard without the book setting off the alarm. So I got a card with a goat eating a flower instead XD Apparently, they've had to explain multiple times that they weren't stealing anything.





I've got quite a few more in my collection - I'd like to start putting them all here as I recieve them :) Expect more cards soon enough!

New year stuff - nah. I've never done resolutions or set goals for myself, though I've begun taking on projects so that I can feel accomplished when they're done. Last summer was a bottle of origami stars which left me with a nervous tic around origami paper for quite a while. I'm getting back into it though and have three or four glass bottles I'd like to fill up. They make fantastic display pieces and gifts.

My official project, as it were, is a poem a month based on the Eastern Zodiac. A bit cliche, but it was given to me by a friend and no one had any better ideas, least of all me. And said friend usually doesn't steer me wrong :P