Imaginal Casements

a degree of evidence

Thu, 15 May 2008 01:19:09 GMT

Ove the last few weeks, I've been wondering if I've got a degree of hayfever. In previous years I've had the odd sniffle or aching eye during spring/summer, though never to a degree of needing to go to the doctor or get medication.

But anyhow, this time I thought I'd try something mild from over the counter and see if it actually made any difference. So for the last couple of days, I've been taking some Loratidine (from the local chemist). And it did seem as if my eyes were less dry and my nose less blocked -- but equally, it could have been psychosomatic, just from the fact that I was paying attention to it and maybe remembering to blink more.

Then this morning, I forgot to take the tablet before heading out to work. By ten o'clock, I was feeling a bit nose-blocked. By eleven o'clock, my eyes were definitely aching more than they had been for the last couple of days. At the lunch break, I got some more of it and took a tablet.

I think I am getting a therapeutic effect from it. Whether it's genuine or psychosomatic, it's definitely making me feel better to take it. Always good to know.

My parents are in China at the moment, visiting my brother (who works there) and having a holiday. My brother's based in Shanghai, so they're halfway across China from the earthquake area, and probably having a great time. I do wish they'd contact me, though. One worries.

---

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

-- e. e. cummings

mean-spiritedness

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:20:32 GMT

Oh, for heaven's sake.

A Doctor Who fan is embroiled in a row with the BBC after she published knitting patterns for the sci-fi drama's monsters on the internet. The patterns of Ood and Adipose were removed from her website after the BBC's commercial arm complained that they breached its copyright.

What's next -- they're going to try and ban knitting imitation Tom Baker scarves?

(It is possible that this has been misreported and I am being unfair, but based on the BBC article, feh.)

when the final hammer falls

Wed, 14 May 2008 00:44:27 GMT

Sometimes you just want to find a poem that you remember, and then enjoy it again.

---

Bazaar Day: Ballad

A fat brocaded merchant sang the praises of his merchandise
His audience a soldier and a beggar bent and gray
The beggar no more drew his eyes than common rats or summer flies
His mind was on the man in steel, and on his monthly pay.

"I'll sell you guns and powder and I'll sell you pikes and shining swords
And drink to blunt your senses to the daily thrust and cut
I'll dress you up in bronze and cords, and finally in six pine boards
And then sell you the hammers for to nail your coffins shut."

The soldier smiled and reached into his purse, and then the beggar said
"Do you recall this hammer that you sometime sold to me?"
The soldier frowned and turned his head, and signed against the Eye, and fled
The merchant's eyes turned evil then, quite terrible to see.

"Why should I know your hammer? Is there reason that I ought to do?
Or do you mean to tell me?" and his voice turned very hard:
"That you're a thief I know is true, perhaps you've other talents too
So if your story's good enough, I might not call the guard."

The beggar said, "I soldiered once, a green recruit from up the hills,
My company supplied from you when first we mustered in
It's not the shine on swords that kills, it's steel that pays the butchers' bills,
I learned that proof the hard way, from your worthless piece of tin.

"It might have been on mountainsides, it might have been in meadows gay
It might have been in forests or upon a hill of slag
It might have been by night or day, it doesn't matter anyway
The murky morning after no one rallied to the flag.

"Alone against one final foe, my situation mighty tough
I had to strike, and hot, or I should nevermore be free
Your other goods were shoddy stuff; your hammer it was good enough
To kill the man who tried so hard to do the same to me."

The merchant said, "My sorry friend, now even if your story's true
You cannot have a reason to be angry, sir, with me
Let credit fall where credit's due; you're here because I dealt with you:
I think you got your money's worth: how can you disagree?"

The crooked little beggar turned the shining hammer in his hand
Said, "Let me end my story, then you tell me what it's worth:
I think you still don't understand: I said I killed the bloody man,
I never said I fought him anywhere upon the earth."

And now the twisted beggarman looked bigger than these words can tell
With thunder in his bootheels and the lightning in his eye
"You never gave a spit in hell for anything you couldn't sell,
But I've come up from underground with something you can't buy!"

He struck the hammer on the stone; it made the cobbles quake and ring
The merchant started pleading and the wind began to wail
The air began to crack and sing as tents and poles and everything
Came down like so much paper in the fury of a gale.

There's darkness on the Merchant's Row and stillness in the great bazaars
An emptiness in doorways and a silence in the stalls
The merchant and the man of wars are gone into the summer stars
They're gone into the thunder when the final hammer falls.

-- John M Ford

startling new sleep initiative

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:15:06 GMT

Looking forward with interest to this week's chapter of Bleach.

Weather has cooled down a little, thank goodness, and feet are walkable on, so those are positives.

I've reached a point in the Apollo Justice DS game which had me submitting a certain page of evidence and then reaping the results. I knew it was coming, but oh, Phoenix. Sniff.

Perhaps it would not be the world's greatest tactical error if I go to sleep at a point closer to 1am than 2am.

---

Miss Charlotte Brown, Librarian, Goes Mad

Today, I have decided
to read every poem ever written
in the short history of our civilization.
I know it is a selfish thing

to read. Every poem ever written
has its good intentions. I know,
I know, it is a selfish thing.
I want to believe that. Poetry

has its good intentions. I know
reading poems can't help much.
I want to believe that poetry
books have the answer. I'll start

reading. Poems can't help much
in the short history of our civilization.
Books have the answer. I'll start
today. I have decided.

-- Felix Jung

neonatal knitting

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:51:54 GMT

Quiet day in. Cleaned apartment and finally remembered to change bag in vacuum cleaner (involving the usual panic of trying to remember how to change bag in vacuum cleaner). Weather continues beautiful. The weather forecast says it's getting cooler tomorrow and for the coming week, which is a good thing, as I hate to think what July is going to be like if May stays at this temperature.

Need to remember to put the gache (Guernsey fruit loaf thing which my aunt brought over for me) in the freezer. Need to remember to slice it first, otherwise one ends up with frozen lump and having to defrost the whole thing in one go.

Here are pictures of some of the knitting that I've been doing recently, for the local neonatal unit:

Baby blanket in Wendy Velvet Flake.
Baby hat in Knitcol Trends (conveniently self-striping).
Baby blanket in Twister Chunky (ran out of the colour in the far corner, had to finish in a different shading).
Baby hat and jacket in Wendy Peter Pan. (I find white boring. And I bet everyone else makes white stuff to donate. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

Still managing to continue the Bleach / Phoenix Wright crossover on 31_days. Let's see if I can make it through the month.

---

Sea Calm

How still,
How strangely still
The water is today,
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.

-- Langston Hughes

some muttering, partly at myself

Sun, 11 May 2008 01:00:09 GMT

Ow. My feet.

Not that I don't manage to do the same thing every year -- but you would think that I would remember that if one wears sandals for the first time in the year to walk round town for a few hours in, and if they are the heavy sandals from last year which have had a year to grow stiff in, and if one's feet have got soft over the winter, then one may get blisters.

. . . I think I may need new sandals. Something low-slung and sturdy and soft.

Doctor Who episode this evening left me with a resounding lack of reaction. The explanation for the whole "daughter" business was tolerable, but the episode itself -- well, let's say that some episodes are equally enjoyable by adults and children, while others are probably going to be enjoyed by children but will be less enjoyable for adults. The actors did well enough with their script, though Tennant chewed the scenery more than somewhat. I think part of what irritated me was the lack of time; 45 minutes is not enough for the sort of character development they wanted to showcase. And the end was obvious. Both of the endings. And there's no reason how she could have known how to fly the shuttle. And I was just saying "bah" too many times. And as for the Confidential afterwards, with the producer talking about how one couldn't really be a pacifist in the "real world" -- go stick your head in a pig, sir. I changed channel at that point. Not an episode I felt any great empathy towards.

---

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.

-- Alfred Hitchcock

requesting wisdom

Sat, 10 May 2008 22:32:09 GMT

Ladies, fish, and gentlemen (I'm listening to Blue Oyster Cult), your assistance, please.

On Monday, while visiting York, I wandered into a crafts/antiques sale thing and picked up a couple of statuettes for seven pounds the pair. They're about ten inches high, and feel as if they're made of wood. (Too heavy to be plastic.)

I cannot find any identifying marks on them, except for an R.B. carved into each. I can't even identify the culture they come from.

I don't expect them to turn out to be lost masterpieces (apart from in my wildest dreams), and am quite prepared for them to turn out to be mass-produced or whatever, and will still keep them, but has anyone seen anything like them? Or can anyone identify the national costumes?

http://pics.livejournal.com/incandescens/pic/0005p0kx/g32 - front view
http://pics.livejournal.com/incandescens/pic/0005qby0/g32 - back view

another yarn seduction

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:43:50 GMT

It is not my fault if I discover one of the local craft stores is selling 50g balls of Rowan Natural Silk Aran (a silk/linen/viscose blend) at 99p a hit rather than the usual four pounds something each.

(whistles as she heads home with a bag of yarn)

I'll work out what to do with it later. Sometime.

A nice end to Friday.

---

Deborah reads this. "Eric. I really must state that I consider wild indulgence in carnal pleasures amongst the ruins of battered, bloody corpses unsuitable pastimes for our living room."
Deborah says "This is definitely lawn activity."

feeling productive

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:25:53 GMT

The weather continues gorgeous. And I'm probably going to keep on remarking on it till I get used to it, which may take a while, because at the moment I'm not used to the weather being gorgeous. Now if only there was a little less pollen around.

Nicely productive day at work, leaving me and the other cross-mapper feeling rather satisfied. Finished it off by taking a knitted baby blanket, jacket, and hat into the local neonatal unit, where they seemed pleased to get them. (Will stick up photos at some point due to helpless desire for praise/etc.) It's about half an hour's walk home, but in the beautiful weather I could almost have been happy with a longer walk.

Any Ikariam players out there who want a cultural treaty with me, just let me know. (I'm on Lambda, at Vociios, 55:67, city name Yu-Shan.)

---

Lines to a Don

Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men --
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;
Don hypocritical, Don bad,
Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
Don (since a man must make an end),
Don that shall never be my friend.

Don different from those regal Dons!
With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
The Absolute across the hall,
Or sail in amply bellying gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port
And sleep -- and learning of a sort.
Dons English, worthy of the land;
Dons rooted; Dons that understand.
Good Dons perpetual that remain
A landmark, walling in the plain --
The horizon of my memories --
Like large and comfortable trees.

Don very much apart from these,
Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,
Don to thine own damnation quoted,
Perplexed to find thy trivial name
Reared in my verse to lasting shame.
Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,
Repulsive Don -- Don past all bearing.
Don of the cold and doubtful breath,
Don despicable, Don of death;
Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;
Don evil, Don that serves the devil.
Don ugly -- that makes fifty lines.
There is a Canon which confines
A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
If written in Iambic Verse
To fifty lines. I never cut;
I far prefer to end it -- but
Believe me I shall soon return.
My fires are banked, but still they burn
To write some more about the Don
That dared attack my Chesterton.

-- Hillaire Belloc

here comes the sun

Thu, 08 May 2008 01:24:31 GMT

The weather is currently being unbelievably nice. Please last. Please, please last. Time to get out the t-shirts.

The latest chapter of Bleach continues to be interesting. I speculate wildly. It's a great sensation, not being sure what will happen next.

We had a four-hour meeting today. I did not have many brain cells left afterwards.

---

Song for St Cecilia's Day

In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.

Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited,
Moved to delight by the melody,
White as an orchid she rode quite naked
In an oyster shell on top of the sea;
At sounds so entrancing the angels dancing
Came out of their trance into time again,
And around the wicked in Hell's abysses
The huge flame flickered and eased their pain.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, attend and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.

-- WH Auden

a quiet day

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:50:50 GMT

Aunt is safely off on her walking holiday, and I can return to my normal state of untidiness and eating at odd hours and staying up late. :)

Work tomorrow. A second bank holiday later this month, which will be a nice something to look forward to.

---

I. The Glass-Stainers

To every Man his Mystery,
A trade and only one:
The masons make the hives of men,
The domes of grey or dun,
But we have wrought in rose and gold
The houses of the sun.

The shipwrights build the houses high,
Whose green foundations sway
Alive with fish like little flames,
When the wind goes out to slay.
But we abide with painted sails
The cyclone of the day.

The weavers make the clothes of men
And coats for everyone;
They walk the streets like sunset clouds;
But we have woven and spun
In scarlet or in golden-green
The gay coats of the sun.

You whom the usurers and the lords
With insolent liveries trod,
Deep in dark church behold, above
Their lance-lengths by a rod,
Where we have blazed the tabard
Of the trumpeter of God.

-- GK Chesterton

fractals

Mon, 05 May 2008 23:48:14 GMT

York was great, and the weather was unexpectedly but excellently gorgeous. I'd almost have been comfortable in a t-shirt. And we managed to get into Betty's for lunch. And we had supper at Wagamama. And it was a great day.

(Onmyouji failed: but it was late and my aunt was tired and she did watch half an hour of it before suggesting sleep.)

Delightful surprise: saw sign for "Crafts and Antiques Show" and peered in on general principles of curiosity. Found that a stall there was selling prints from the work of Daniel Lichtman --
http://www.danielfractals.co.uk/ImageGallery/CategoryList.aspx?id=56ea73c9-d084-4e89-b661-6b64f8fb5ff0&m=0 -- and bought three.

Bought these three:

http://www.danielfractals.co.uk/ImageGallery/ImagePreview.aspx?id=56ea73c9-d084-4e89-b661-6b64f8fb5ff0&m=2&c=e67a6dc2-10b6-4166-98b8-e90d3c6b2b5f&i=63405cef-0815-4655-915c-acfe4816d5bb

http://www.danielfractals.co.uk/ImageGallery/ImagePreview.aspx?id=56ea73c9-d084-4e89-b661-6b64f8fb5ff0&m=2&c=e67a6dc2-10b6-4166-98b8-e90d3c6b2b5f&i=f89f74f1-4874-483d-a045-ffb5faae1c6c (this was my favourite)

And a third one that isn't up in the online gallery, alas.

---

IV: The Bell-Ringers

The angels are singing like birds in a tree
In the organ of good St. Cecily:
And the parson reads with his hand upon
The graven eagle of great St. John:
But never the fluted pipes shall go
Like the fifes of an army all a-row,
Merrily marching down the street
To the marts where the busy and idle meet;
And never the brazen bird shall fly
Out of the window and into the sky,
Till men in cities and shires and ships
Look up at the living Apocalypse.

But all can hark at the dark of even
The bells that bay like the hounds of heaven,
Tolling and telling that over and under,
In the ways of the air like a wandering thunder,
The hunt is up over hills untrod:
For the wind is the way of the dogs of God:
From the tyrant's tower to the outlaw's den
Hunting the souls of the sons of men.
Ruler and robber and pedlar and peer,
Who will not hearken and yet will hear;
Filling men's heads with the hurry and hum
Making them welcome before they come.

And we poor men stand under the steeple
Drawing the cords that can draw the people,
And in our leash like the leaping dogs
Are God's most deafening demagogues:
And we are but little, like dwarfs underground,
While hang up in heaven the houses of sound,
Moving like mountains that faith sets free,
Yawning like caverns that roar with the sea,
As awfully loaded, as airily buoyed,
Armoured archangels that trample the void:
Wild as with dancing and weighty with dooms,
Heavy as their panoply, light as their plumes.

Neither preacher nor priest are we:
Each man mount to his own degree:
Only remember that just such a cord
Tosses in heaven the trumpet and sword;
Souls on their terraces, saints on their towers,
Rise up in arms at alarum like ours:
Glow like great watchfires that redden the skies
Titans whose wings are a glory of eyes,
Crowned constellations by twelves and by sevens,
Domed dominations more old than the heavens,
Virtues that thunder and thrones that endure
Sway like a bell to the prayers of the poor.

-- GK Chesterton

Nephelidia

Sun, 04 May 2008 23:25:10 GMT

Very nice day, apart from some rain that we could really have done without. My aunt had a lovely time wandering round Leeds, and she got some linen at Muji (reduced, even!) and a top at M&S, and took several photos.

Since it was a Sunday, we couldn't go into the library or the art gallery. On the positive side, this spared me the painful making of excuses about why I didn't want to spend ages wandering round the art gallery.

She really enjoyed the Notre-Dame de Paris musical.

She also very much enjoyed the salmon teriyaki I made for supper.

Tomorrow: (a) York, (b) supper at Wagamama. Should be good. (And maybe watch Onmyoji too.)

---

Nephelidia

From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn
through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower
that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean
from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes
that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged
at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future
than pale with the promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever
that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam
through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time
is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,
Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife
of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm
of erotic emotional exquisite error,
Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss,
beatific itself by beatitude's breath.
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul
that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses
Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion
that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh;
Only this oracle opens Olympian,
in mystical moods and triangular tenses--
"Life is the lust of a lamp for the light
that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die.
Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory,
melodiously mute as it may be,
While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised
by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod;
Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound
with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby,
As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies
growing green at a groan for the grimness of God.
Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old,
and its binding is blacker than bluer:
Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies,
and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;
Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free
as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her,
Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn
from the hunt that has harried the kennel of kings.

-- Swinburne

(Yes, this is a deliberate self-parody by Swinburne.)

aunt safely here

Sat, 03 May 2008 22:52:47 GMT

The weather has turned unexpectedly beautiful, just in time for my aunt's arrival. I hope it lasts -- well, for the next few days at least.

I would like to recommend http://www.kiva.org, by the way. Looks like good stuff.

---

The bedchamber staff were hotly in dispute with the kitchen staff as to which of them was the most overworked; Madame was very particular about her bedchambers, they said, and she was very particular indeed about her own bedchamber. When you considered that you never knew just what you might be finding on the floor of Madame's bedchamber on mornings after a banquet, you might count yourself very fortunate if all you had to do was conjure up a few roast geese and maybe a swan or two to grace the table. Also, hadn't Madame the habit of drawing up a strict rota for her own night's activities. And if the kitchen staff thought it an easy task to have to keep an eye on the clock all night, and send in the young men every hour on the hour, they were welcome to try it.

The kitchen staff refused to be drawn. They said that when you remembered that Madame had the way of flinging nearly all the unsatisfactory lovers bodily through the window before breakfast, it cut down on the tidying up of a morning, never mind reducing the number of breakfasts to be carried in.

-- Rebel Angel, Bridget Wood

fingers crossed

Sat, 03 May 2008 02:34:48 GMT

Well, I think I'm mostly ready for my aunt to arrive. It's her first visit to my flat, thus the nervousness.

Hope that we have a nice sunny weekend. Please, weather. It wouldn't be that difficult.

Work was annoying due to a geneticist named Lenz who had far too many syndromes named after him. Very annoying when you're trying to work out what fits where in the terminology hierarchy.

Four day weekend. Oof.

---

Flitterby says "Everyone around here saw Prophecy and started *perching* on things. I wanted to get a stick and knock them off."
Flitterby says "You! Stop perching!"
Flitterby says "What, you have delusions of angelhood? *baff*"

Order in the Court: Compilation Post

Fri, 02 May 2008 12:50:59 GMT

Collected entries for the Bleach/Phoenix Wright crossover Order in the Court that I'm posting on 31_days. (If only so that I can find them all later.)

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII
Part XIII
Part XIV
Part XV

the song of the wheels

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:59:03 GMT

For once, I am going to get to sleep at a halfway reasonable hour.

Really.

---

The Song Of The Wheels

[Written during a Friday and Saturday in August, 1911]

King Dives he was walking in his garden all alone,
Where his flowers are made of iron and his trees are made of stone,
And his hives are full of thunder and the lightning leaps and kills,
For the mills of God grind slowly; and he works with other mills.
Dives found a mighty silence; and he missed the throb and leap,
The noise of all the sleepless creatures singing him to sleep.
And he said: "A screw has fallen -- or a bolt has slipped aside --
Some little thing has shifted": and the little things replied:

"Call upon the wheels, master, call upon the wheels;
We are taking rest, master, finding how it feels,
Strict the law of thine and mine: theft we ever shun --
All the wheels are thine, master -- tell the wheels to run!
Yea, the Wheels are mighty gods -- set them going then!
We are only men, master, have you heard of men?

"O, they live on earth like fishes, and a gasp is all their breath.
God for empty honours only gave them death and scorn of death,
And you walk the worms for carpet and you tread a stone that squeals
Only, God that made them worms did not make them wheels.
Man shall shut his heart against you and you shall not find the spring.
Man who wills the thing he wants not, the intolerable thing --
Once he likes his empty belly better than your empty head
Earth and heaven are dumb before him: he is stronger than the dead.

"Call upon the wheels, master, call upon the wheels,
Steel is beneath your hand, stone beneath your heels,
Steel will never laugh aloud, hearing what we heard,
Stone will never break its heart, mad with hope deferred --
Men of tact that arbitrate, slow reform that heals --
Save the stinking grease, master, save it for the wheels.

"King Dives in the garden, we have naught to give or hold --
(Even while the baby came alive the rotten sticks were sold.)
The savage knows a cavern and the peasants keep a plot,
Of all the things that men have had -- lo! we have them not.
Not a scrap of earth where ants could lay their eggs --
Only this poor lump of earth that walks about on legs --
Only this poor wandering mansion, only these two walking trees,
Only hands and hearts and stomachs -- what have you to do with these?
You have engines big and burnished, tall beyond our fathers' ken,
Why should you make peace and traffic with such feeble folk as men?

"Call upon the wheels, master, call upon the wheels,
They are deaf to demagogues, deaf to crude appeals;
Are our hands our own, master? -- how the doctors doubt!
Are our legs our own, master? wheels can run without --
Prove the points are delicate -- they will understand.
All the wheels are loyal; see how still they stand!"

King Dives he was walking in his garden in the sun,
He shook his hand at heaven, and he called the wheels to run,
And the eyes of him were hateful eyes, the lips of him were curled,
And he called upon his father that is lord below the world,
Sitting in the Gate of Treason, in the gate of broken seals,
"Bend and bind them, bend and bind them, bend and bind them into wheels,
Then once more in all my garden there may swing and sound and sweep --
The noise of all the sleepless things that sing the soul to sleep."

Call upon the wheels, master, call upon the wheels,
Weary grow the holidays when you miss the meals,
Through the Gate of Treason, through the gate within,
Cometh fear and greed of fame, cometh deadly sin;
If a man grow faint, master, take him ere he kneels,
Take him, break him, rend him, end him, roll him, crush him with the wheels.

-- GK Chesterton

Fedex back and forth

Thu, 01 May 2008 01:02:44 GMT

Pro: Fedex delivered parcel.
Con: Fedex delivered it nearly an hour later than promised.

Pro: Boss was understanding about me being late in for work.
Con: Wish I hadn't had to come in late for work.

Pro: Missed QA meeting, which was unusually short.
Con: Actually, can't see any con there.

Everyone was most amused by me coming in late and panting and apologetic. I think everyone's had bad past experiences with Fedex themselves, so they could sympathise.

(And in the end, the parcel turned out to be just my 2 comp copies of Exalted: Compass of Celestial Directions Vol III, Yu-Shan. Not that I object to receiving such things, but I had already gone and bought a copy anyhow.)

Oh well; sorted, in any case.

---

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-- Wallace Stevens

Wikihistory

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:20:40 GMT

Got this off gamera_spinning, who got it off everflame.

Wikihistory, by Desmond Warzel.

the addiction spreads

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:21:30 GMT

Playing a bit of ring-around-the-roses with an incoming Fedex parcel. I thought Parcelforce was bad in terms of delivery; I take it back, or at least, I amend it to note that Fedex is worse. Feh.

I have introduced someone else to Mylene Farmer. Heh.

Have finally got an idea on how to tie up one of my stories that was at a loose end. The fact that it involves pouring pots of paint all over the villain is a fringe benefit.

Raining outside, rapping against the window.

Have resolved case 3 of Apollo Justice. Poor Klavier Gavin: not one of his more successful moments, all in all.

---

The final atrocity is effectively the result of millions upon millions of discrete events, impacting and interacting and escalating to a catastrophic gestalt climax that is greater than the sum of its parts. Every squalid little assault upon an individual for some personal slight or other, every retaliation by that individual and a couple of friends, every reciprocal retaliation with a few more and rather less good friends and a number of big sticks contributes to a general atmosphere that makes such attack and counter-attack more and more possible and inevitable. One step leads to the next, and then the next -- until one suddenly finds oneself in the faction that is herding the other faction into labour camps, and building extra crematoria as a result of the conditions in the camps, and glancing speculatively between the ventilation shafts in the showers of those camps and a gas canister. Without ever quite knowing how it happened.

-- Wetworks, Dave Stone

things to do

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:21:10 GMT

I really need to get round to making my booking for Yaoicon. Note here to remind myself.

Also, DVDs to suggest to my aunt that we watch during her visit:

Notre-Dame de Paris, because she likes musicals.
Onmyouji, because I think that she would enjoy it if she tried it.
Doctor Who, if all else fails.

---

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells "Can't you remember anything I told you?" and lets fly with a club.

-- John W. Campbell

achtung, baby

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:01:15 GMT

The temperature (if not, alas, the weather) has improved enough that I am no longer putting the radiator on or wearing bedsocks. I expect snowstorms and ice to hit at any moment.

Because, you know, weather's annoying like that.

Apollo Justice is being intensely amusing. Apollo himself is, dare I say it -- cute. I feel the need to hug the poor boy. He and Trucy have an incredible brother-sister vibe going. And our Prosecutor (who fronts a rock band in his spare time, like so many other prosecutors . . . and let's not go on about all the leather and chains in their dressing room) seems so far to be a worthy successor to all those who have gone before.

And he plays air guitar in court. Achtung, baby.

---

Doctor: What would you say if I were to tell you that I once destroyed an entire race? That I have led friends to their deaths, and caused numerous wars? That my intervention has led to peaceful races taking up arms, and good people having their faith or reason destroyed? Because I failed to act, millions upon millions of people have been enslaved or killed? What if I had done all those things, but had always... always believed I was doing the right thing?
Sarah: If you were to tell me that, I would say: 'May God have mercy on your soul.'
Doctor: Sarah...
Sarah: But I would also say I trust and pray that he will.

-- The Marian Conspiracy, Big Finish Doctor Who Audios

stolen from sophiap

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:38:22 GMT

Check my fandoms, my favorite characters, the pairings I like the most, my kinks, my fictional crushes, anything. Now, in a friendly and possibly teasing way, point out the obvious and not so obvious trends or fetishes you see in my tastes. Maybe I'm nuts for all vampire stories, or have a thing for men in glasses, or I'm fond of kick-ass women, or I'm into rival slash. Let's point out all of those you've noticed I tend to squee about during our friendship.

Sontar! Sontar! Sontar!

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:43:17 GMT

Okay, now that was a proper old school Doctor Who episode.

Ah yes. That was a lot of fun. It wasn't quite the mental elegance of Blink, or the deep feeling of Family of Blood, but it was nice and vigorous and enjoyable. The Sontarans were great. The whole "going into battle bare-headed" made sense of the whole probic vent and why the hell they don't wear armour over it issue.

And, well. Evil Martha. Am I wrong to find this a source of great potential?

I do hope that next week's second part of this story will live up to the first part.

. . . and I would have watched Woxin Changdang afterwards, but I really wasn't quite in the right mental frame.

some evenings there isn't much to say

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:41:26 GMT

Useful day at work: quiet evening: weekend.

---

This was the stupidity of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or dumping active nuclear waste in the sea, or taking the kids along with you by way of a healthy lacing of strychnine in the Kool-aid. It was an insanity grounded in the reality of iron and flesh and bone. The voice of the lemming was heard in the land and real people were dancing to it.

-- Death and Diplomacy, Dave Stone