bloodyrosemccoy | Entries tagged with it's been going around

Had a couple of people tag me for that Book Meme that's been going around on Facebook. The idea is to pick 10 books that have stuck with you. Which is RIDICULOUS. Ten? Like all the other book dweebs before me, I have trouble narrowing down my list of a hundred favorite books. But I want to toss out a few. If I stop to analyze it anymore, I'll never actually get it done.

So! A random ten of the Books That Stuck With Me:

1. All I See Is Part Of Me, Chara M. Curtis, ill. Cynthia Alrdich - a picture book told in rhyme about the connection everyone has to Life, the Universe, and Everything. I love the illustrations, and it's a nice sentiment.

2. Matilda, Roald Dahl - yeah, you don't need me to explain more, do you? Book is great.*

3. Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain - an unfinished book, but a useful one for a secular kid who was just discovering that religion was a Thing and wanted to know if she was the only one who had noticed how bizarre it was.

4. The Belgariad/TheMalloreon/Belgarath the Sorcerer/Polgara the Sorceress, David Eddings - Yeah, I am including twelve books in one here, but as always, when you have a saga of books it makes sense to count them as one. God, I read this in junior high and it blew me away. It has its problems, but it also has Polgara, Belgarath, and Silk, who are fascinating characters, and one of my favorite author self-inserts of all time in the form of The Voice Of The Purpose Of The Universe. You know how everyone else seems to consider Middle-earth to be Standard Fantasyland? In my brain it's the world of the Belgariad.

5. Circle of Magic quartet, Tamora Pierce - The first I read of hers. Love the characters, the worldbuilding, and the magic system. I was also kind of a fan of the fact that three of the books' conflicts weren't about villains; they were about other problems, like natural disasters and plagues. That was different. And it was also one of the first Fantasyland stories I read with racially diverse characters, which was a revelation.

6. Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens, various - this was like Baby's First Sci-fi. The first Ray Bradbury story I ever read was in this book,** as was "To Serve Man" (Christ, I'm glad I read the story before seeing the Twilight Zone episode). It opened up vast and wonderful new worlds for me.

7. Our Mutual friend, Charles Dickens - one of the few classic books I really enjoyed from English class. It was funny, dammit!

8. Who Talks Funny? A Book About Languages For Kids, Brenda S. Cox - a nonfiction book taking one on a tour of the weirdnesses of language. One of the books that really got me on my path toward linguistics.

9. Room, Emma Donoghue - One of the few books that actually belongs in present tense. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but the darn thing was in the book drop at the library one day and it got stuk to my face. It was just so darn interesting.

10. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien - My all-time favorite book. I could go on forever about it, but suffice to say, the adventure is great, and goddamn I relate to hobbits in general and Bilbo in particular. Making your hero just an average middle-class schmuck without making him annoying is almost impossible. Tolkien pulled it off perfectly.

There you have it! I've been considering doing a weekly retrospective of books that made an impression on me (I HAVE LOTS), but I am incredibly lazy and so it may not get done. Perhaps I will find the follow-through now. But either way, y'all are welcome to do this meme too if you're interested!

*I'm surprised at how many people from my generation fondly remember that godawful MOVIE of Matilda I was infuriated at it. Regardless, Mara Wilson is great and I will hear no ill spoken of her.

**My favorite, "The Veldt," I found in a book from a school program called Junior Great Books like a year later. That story just creeped me right the hell out. And I felt super smart for realizng that the ~~holodeck~~ nursery symbolized television. That one was the beginning of my long love/hate relationship with Bradbury.

Current Mood: Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
Current Music: Markiplier videos on Youtube (this is YOUR FAULT, gwalla!)

Hey, guys, another interview meme! Meant to jump start me back into life and writing and stuff!

You can comment and I might give you questions, although given my track record with that it may be a while or never before I actually do. Uh, sorry about that. I am trying …

Anyway!

beccastareyes asked me some questions!

1. I don't remember if I've asked this before, but why did you go to Africa?

Short answer: because I was studying Swahili.

Longer answer: lots of reasons. I have always been an anthropology nerd, and so I really wanted to take a look at any place that was not familiar to me—I wanted to get some perspective on human culture, mine and others’. Plus, it would be an adventure.*

I could really have gone anywhere, but I had picked up a book on Kiswahili a few years earlier, and in doing so I learned a bit about the history and culture of the Swahili people. It was fascinating enough that it seemed like a cool place to start.

2. Favorite conlang or conculture project. Or just rambling on whether you can separate the two, or if conlanging is an aspect of conculturing.

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED. HOW LONG DO YOU HAVE?

I’ve got a few right now:

( Unicorn Riders! )

( Big Fluffy Aliens! )

Third, I’m working on the OGYAFEland cultures. On the one side you get the humans of the kingdom Polara, whose society I hope is believable and unique from any cultures here in our world (not to mention the annals of fantasy). On the other you get the sprites, who are shamelessly utopian, because god dammit I don’t care if it’s not fashionable, I am the writer and I get to make a world where things went right.

Highlights from the human side of things are a sense of style like the bastard child of French Renaissance and Streamline Moderne, verb phrase place names (“Roses Climbing”; “Sparks Fall on the Mountain”; “Lion’s Roar Drowning”), a casual animistic belief system with cultural heroes but no gods, a lunisolar calendar, interjections like “Skulls and Shrooms!”, a complex gender spectrum based on beliefs about blood, magic as a high-education trade like medicine or law, and patchwork pants. On the sprite side, you get energy efficience, love of the arts, large cities twined with woodland and meadows, no school, and, naturally, socialism.

3. Is Tamora Pierce worth reading as a grown-up? I read three of the Alanna books as a kid, but it was near the end of my 'sneak into the kids books to grab things' phase. Now, of course, there's Amazon and used books.

YES. (As mentioned on her blog, neither of us is ashamed of the kids’ section—I never was, and she got over it. I truly believe that some of the best writing can be found in juvie and YA sections.)

4. What's the best thing about living in Utah? Given I've spent all of a couple of hours there, enlighten me.

That you can forget about your laundry and leave it in the washing machine overnight and it won’t grow mildew.

Okay, real answer: How orange it is! In Salt Lake you theoretically get all four seasons, which means a lovely bit of variety, but I especially like the aspens and scrubby oaks turning colors in the fall. They make a lovely swishy noise when the wind blows through them, and the air smells GREAT, all crisp and dry and a little bit like leaf and dirt.

Dig:

And in the south, there’s the orange of red rock, in strange and wonderful buttes and arches and basins. It also smells great there—a soporific combination of sun, iron, and sage.

You can almost smell it now!

Oh, and there were dinosaurs.

5. Your LJ says to ask you about your mermaid collection, so a fellow ocean fan is asking.

I’ll be damned! Somebody found the “Things to ask me about” bit!

I’ve always loved mermaids, ever since I was three years old and saw Disney’s The Little Mermaid and loved it.*** I like the variations on merfolk in history and the aesthetic, and—you should know me by now—working out how they could actually live underwater has always appealed to me. (I have worked out several “species” of merfolk; one of my favorites is a fully mammalian species that stole quite a bit from the adaptations of dolphins. Merfolk with blubber!)

So I sort of wound up collecting various mermaid figures and pictures, just because I thought they were interesting. (It started, once again, with Disney: the first mermaid in my collection was a Happy Meal toy Ariel I got soon after seeing the movie.) I’ve built up a sizeable pile of mermaids!

Sadly, this is the best picture I have of them right now; they’re in storage pending my getting a house with some room to display them. But once it comes out, I’ll even have a few more to add to the mix, including that one crazy clay sculpture of a skelemermaid I got for Xmas one year. So yeah, it’s still growing!

*There was also a little bit of defiance there; people all worried about the whole chronic-depression-dependent-on-pills thing, and I wanted to prove that it wouldn’t hold me back.

**I have books like these for many concultures. I call them my hitchhiker’s guides.

***Not so much love for the original Hans Christian Andersen story. Have you read it? It is LOONY. It’s some kind of codependent psychodrama and has a whole lot of weird theology about whether or not mermaids can acquire an immortal soul. Kind of like an early version of Teen Supernatural Romance.

Current Mood: Lady Grey
Current Music: ADELE ~ Rolling in the Deep

So several million years ago,

westrider did an interview meme, and asked me some questions. I have finally gotten around to answering them!

And yes, y’all can say “hit me” in the comments and I’ll give you some questions, too!

1: How did you get into modding Dolls?

*grin* I started by necessity, mostly. I started out just liking the dolls offered in various catalogs, but—as with most of my interests—I sort of picked up where the companies left off. I would come up with characters that had very specific characteristics you couldn’t really find in a catalog. So, I had to do it myself.

To be honest, I don’t feel like much of a doll modder—I’ve done a couple of wig swaps, like with Danny and Tris, and of course Daja needed her brass hand, but really most of the additions I make are to accessories, wardrobe, and characterizations. The most extensively customized doll I’ve got right now is Kuen, who I designed down to the eyebrow, but who was put together by a short-lived company with extensive ambitions. But each one is definitely a unique character—even, at this point, the ones who have existing storylines, like Laurel and Molly, so I suppose that counts.

2: Do you read Webcomics? If so, which?

I read a few! I enjoyed DC Simpson's Ozy and Millie—it had fun characters and a good balance of silliness and philosophy, and of course Simpson is obviously a Calvin and Hobbes fan, which makes her my friend. I also really enjoyed Digger, a comic that proves that a practical, logical hero can give you one hell of a story—especially since the author has to work harder to outsmart an intelligent hero.

For the comics that are still going, we have just a couple. Jeph Jacques’ Questionable Content has yet to become too sitcom-esque for me, and I adore Hannelore. And of course there’s Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, a comic with the frowniest frowny faces ever committed to screen or paper.

3: I know I've read about your time in Kenya. Other than that, which Countries have you visited. If none, which do you want to visit most?

I’ve … been to Tanzania? For a few days? Yeah, not much travel other than that.

I would like to visit a few countries—at this point I would love to look around South America—especially the Andes, Peru, Patagonia, places like that. I’d also love to see Iceland Mostly, though, I’d love to go back to Kenya and look around more.

4: Speaking of which, though, how did you end up going to Kenya?

Honestly? It’s because I picked up a book on Swahili. I wanted to study abroad, and I figured as long as I’d studied the language, why not?

Obviously, there were other reasons, too. When you’re studying anthropology, it helps to Broaden Your Horizons, and I figured I’d start with a place that interested me. That was probably also due to the language—I was studying the history of the langauge and found that it was completely fascinating.

5: Wombat?

I believe I answered that in Question 2.

Current Mood: World Peace
Current Music: Chris Ardoin & Double Clutchin’ ~ Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher

Okay, everyone! Meme time wrapup. Y’all asked me questions, and now I provide the answers in the Mystery Characters Doing Stuff Meme! The players were:

1. Bilbo Baggins
2. Toph Bei Fong
3. Pilot
4.Pyanfar Chanur
5. Hank McCoy/Beast
6. Granny Weatherwax
7. Donald Duck
8. Digger-Of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels
9. Data
10. Old Spice Guy
11. Daja Kisubo
12. Keladry of Mindelan
13. Lando Calrissian
14. Uncle General Iroh
15. The Joker

Put them all together, and ( hijinks ensue! )

Current Mood: Lady Grey
Current Music: James Taylor ~ You Are My Only One

Dang , I love this meme! And

nobleplatypus is doing it, so it’s time for me to leap on the bandwagon!

1) Make a list of fifteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment.

2) Ask your f'list to post questions in the comments. For example: 'One, nine and fifteen are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from four. Do they succeed?' 'Under what circumstances might five and fourteen fall in love?' 'Which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?' 'Write a drabble in which three and eleven fight crime.' (...possibly not technically a question.)

3) After your f'list has asked enough questions, round them up and answer them using the fifteen characters you selected beforehand, then post them.

Got my list all set! Ask away.

Current Mood: Pride of the Port
Current Music: The Ark ~ This Piece Of Poetry Is Meant To Do Harm

Okay, I give up,

nobleplatypus. Your question 3 stumped me.

1. If you could take a week-long vacation inside one of Tamora Pierce's books, which would you choose?
Hoo, I really don’t know. Probably I’d hang out at Winding Circle Temple taking some kind of crash course in arts and crafts. Lark could teach me sewing tricks, Frostpine could show me some neat jewelry techniques, and then Rosethorn and I could spend pleasant evenings hating on everything.

2. What is your number one musical guilty pleasure?
I have so many it’s hard to choose, so I’ll just go with Swedish Bands That Start With “A”:
ABBA: My synesthesia has decided that ABBA music is the aural equivalent of a Lisa Frank picture: all candy and neon rainbows and sparkles. And yes, I love Lisa Frank too.

The Ark: If I had known about the Ark in high school, they would definitely have been part of my Teen Anthem Music. They’re just so upbeat about hating the world. “Sure, we’re mad as hell,” their music says, “but we’re not going to let that stop us from enjoying ourselves!” As it is, they are instead the Anthem Music of my murderous psychotic sprite character.

Army of Lovers: Just watch any of their music videos. Like Crucified. Poor Jean-Pierre. Life is tough, here in this bathtub.

3. Challenge: cast a production of "Hamlet" using Jim Henson's muppets.
Confession: I really am not familiar enough with Hamlet to cast a production of it. Not even when I allow myself two human cast members, as seems standard for Muppet movies. (Although admit it: you would watch a production of Hamlet with Dom DeLuise and Madeline Kahn as Hamlet’s uncle and mother.) Piggy would obviously be Ophelia, and Kermit would be Hamlet, but after that I kind of lose track of the characters, and all I can picture is Statler and Waldorf heckling the play-within-a-play. Sorry, my friend, I must forfeit this one.

4. Would you describe yourself as a cat person or a dog person?
I honestly do not understand the appeal of dogs. I have no doubt that they have some, but I myself rather dislike the style of attention-getting they go for. Give me a cat any day.

5. If you spontaneously developed the power to become invisible at will, what is the first thing you'd do with this new ability?
I would use the ability to SHELVE THE MOTHERFUCKING DVD CART WITHOUT ASSHOLES COMING UP AND BROWSING IT. Alternatively, I would probably just annoy the cat. Dream big!

This one is shamelessly ganked from

flutterbychild because I felt like it. Alas that so many memes can’t possibly fathom asexual people.

1. What bill do you hate paying the most?
Credit card. I always feel like a failure when I see how much I owe.

2. Favorite place to eat a romantic dinner?
I don’t eat romantic dinners. However, our own deck has some excellent ambience.

3. Last time you puked from drinking?
Never. I have never been drunk. I hate the feeling of losing control.

4. When is the last time you got drunk and woke up in a strange place?
See above.

5. Name of your first grade teacher?
Miss P. I just saw her a couple of months ago. I remember her being a lot taller.

6. What do you really want to be doing right now?
Getting paid. Otherwise, I’m cool with what I am doing.

7. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
( You don’t even need to click to guess the answer to this one )

Current Music: Cheap Trick ~ Don't Be Cruel

Got another hit on my fandom meme. In case you forgot, here’s the meme itself:

1. The character I first fell in love with
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't
4. The character I love that everyone else hates
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer
6. The character I would shag anytime
7. The character I'd want to be like
8. The character I'd slap
9. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise
11. Favorite character
12. My five favorite characters
13. My five least favorite characters
14. Which character I am most like
15. My deep, dark fandom secret

The new one is X-Men. Okay, lessee.

1. To be honest? Professor X. I always take to the avuncular oyaji types. I want to be them. (See also: Uncle General Iroh.) Beast was only the second one I fell in love with.
2. I have a sort of bassackwards amazement at Scott Summers. Because he’s such a weenie, nobody seems to notice that Scott’s a god damn kickass action hero. He’s like twice as big as Wolverine and can blow shit up with his FACE. For some reason the combination of that and his angsty emokid attitude crack me up.
3. Do we all love or hate Gambit at this point? Anyway, I’d stick with Jean Grey no matter what.
4. Movie Rogue. I just pretend she’s, like, actual Rogue’s little sister, and it’s all good.
5. Gambit. The novelty wore off. But his power is awesome.
6. You really have to ask me this. You can’t possibly think of one fluffy blue intellectual I’ve been obsessed with for years?
7. Hank. Or Mr. Sinister, because that man is FABULOUS.
8. Jeeeeeeeean! Or Scott.
9. Beast/Me; Wolverine/Storm
10. Wolverine/Jeeeean. It never made sense.
11. Beast
12. Beast, Rogue, Wolverine, Professor X, and Nightcrawler
13. Jeeeeean, uh, Apocalypse, Dazzler, Bobby, Mystique
14. Probably one of the random redshirt bystanders who gets killed when giant mutant squids attack or something. I never really identifed with any of the X-Men, for all I love them.
15. I am really only in the fandom for Beast.

Current Mood: silly
Current Music: Tom Petty ~ Change the Locks

More fandom stuff!

1. The character I first fell in love with
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't
4. The character I love that everyone else hates
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer
6. The character I would shag anytime
7. The character I'd want to be like
8. The character I'd slap
9. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise
11. Favorite character
12. My five favorite characters
13. My five least favorite characters
14. Which character I am most like
15. My deep, dark fandom secret

igntethestars inquires after Star Trek. ( There sure is a lot to choose from! )

renshai gave me my pick of Tamora Pierce universes. ( I went with Circle/Emelan cuz it’s HARDER. )

ellenmillion wants me to do Torn World. I will have to wait on that until I’ve gotten more of a feel for everyone, but it will happen!

Current Mood: silly

Hokay, here’s what I got so far. (Y’all are welcome to ask me about other fandoms here!

For reference, here’s what each one stands for:

1. The character I first fell in love with
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't
4. The character I love that everyone else hates
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer
6. The character I would shag anytime
7. The character I'd want to be like
8. The character I'd slap
9. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise
11. Favorite character
12. My five favorite characters
13. My five least favorite characters
14. Which character I am most like
15. My deep, dark fandom secret

10cents asks me about Doctor Who! ( I answer! )

renshai suggests, surprisingly enough, Star Wars! ( I tell you what I think of the EU! )

gwalla thinks he can stump me with MST3k! ( We’ll see about that! )

Current Mood: hungry

For some reason I’m into meme indulgence lately. What can I say—they’re my writer’s blocks!

Pick a fandom of mine, comment here with it, and I'll tell you:

1. The character I first fell in love with
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't
4. The character I love that everyone else hates
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer
6. The character I would shag anytime
7. The character I'd want to be like
8. The character I'd slap
9. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise
11. Favorite character
12. My five favorite characters
13. My five least favorite characters
14. Which character I am most like
15. My deep, dark fandom secret

Current Mood: lazy
Current Music: Gorillas In The Mist (movie)

Sometimes when your brain is broken from editing and shelving, you find yourself easily suggestible by SCREAMING CAPSLOCK, such as the one from this meme

bottledgoose had. (Of course, I’m the kind of person who always answers questions, so that my warning label would be “IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW, DO NOT ASK.”)

( FUCK YEAH, CAPSLOCK )

Current Mood: memey
Current Music: America ~ The Last Unicorn

Meanwhile, while I was sick my meme backlog has piled up. I hereby must respond to the memes or ~~my ego will be unsatisfied~~ I will have failed the internet. So let’s see, in order that they were received:

nobleplatypus demands my handwriting answer the following questions:
1. Write your username.
2. Write your 2 favourite bands/groups of the moment.
3. Write something you ♥, AKA lemme see your heart!
4. Write the name of your favourite person of all time.
5. Write the name of your recent favoured person.
6. Tag 6 people to do this meme.

She did not, however, stipulate that I had to answer with the truth.

That’s right, dudes, I have a LISA FRANK notebook. You are jealous.

bottledgoose had this meme:
1. Leave me a comment saying anything random, like your favorite lyric to your current favorite song.
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be asked, you will ask them five questions.

… and asked me these questions:
1) write a letter to me in one of your fun alien scripts!
2) tell me what it means, lol

Okay!

In the Roman alphabet:

Kwiryi Andee
Ka gwŕkarris mezhwubnug ashthekyu,
ishŕl mezhyak midzandghŕa Gherresa.
Lye ka sŕlash rrañif Rroerth tan ethlyi,
dher ki kipal ozkorris olye,
ish juvei esa ghesh frodha sŕyul olye kipal rrañirris ka.
Prat rroareafishŕl jeltsughazho.
Amelia

And it means:

( Hah! Now you HAVE to click! )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Real McKenzies ~ Cross the Ocean

Today I've decided to let you guys do all the work. Fill this out in the comments!

INFO
1. Name:
2. Birthday:
3. Where do you live:
4. IM:
5. What are you studying/What are you working as:
6. What makes you happy:
7. What are you listening to now/have listened to last:
8. Weirdest food you like:
9. An interesting fact about you:
10. Are you in love/have a crush at the moment:
11. Favorite place to be:
12. Favorite lyric:
13. Best time of the year:
14. Put a picture of yourself:

RECOMMEND
1. A film:
2. A book:
3. A song:
4. A band:
5. A tv show:

PLUS
1. One thing you like about me:
2. Two things you like about yourself:
3. Put this in your lj so I can tell you what I think of you?

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Amy Adams ~ That's How You Know (Enchanted)

agenttrojie gave me some more words a couple weeks or so ago. Here they are!

Garnet – I am fond of garnet for many reasons. Yes, I very much like the gem itself—the way it can look so much like a drop of faceted blood or a pomegranate seed* makes me really prefer it even to rubies. But after that, the rest of my reasons are markedly insane. In the miswired synesthetic synapses of my brain, the word “garnet” is the most onomatopoeic one ever seen, heard, felt, tasted, and just experienced. It sounds exactly like the gemstone looks—and more than that, it’s got a musical tone (two, actually), a taste, and a goddamn hand movement to go with it. It has never been topped for pure fused-senses goodness.

Malaria – Did you know that the Super Mario Bros. music can alleviate the symptoms of malaria? I discovered this in my host family’s house in Mombasa, while lying miserably on my mattress being extremely thankful for the quick response of the clinic’s medication and my host mother’s intelligence in dragging me to that clinic. Suddenly the familiar Mario music, the one that I am pretty sure is encoded into my DNA, wafted into my consciousness, and I sprang off the mattress and stomped out to find the kids crowded around their bootleg video game system. “Gimme that,” I said, taking the controller.

“You know Super Mario?” one said, wide-eyed.

“You kidding? This game’s as old as I am!”

And I totally forgot I had malaria for the rest of the evening.

Spore – One of the few PC games I’ve been into—sure, I like the Little Bit Of Everything game itself, but the real appeal is in being able to build the aliens and the buildings and spaceships inside my head. I just wish it wasn’t so cartoony.

Doll – Yeah, I’m the Crazy Doll Person. I could make a lot of in-depth psychological points about why dolls give me insight into myself; I could argue that they are exercises in character development; I could go on and on about my interest in their parallel with authors’ characters and the illusion of independent agency, but the simple truth is that they’re just so damn cute.

They also seem to be a focus for a lot of my craft projects. I'd never have learned to sew if Kuen didn't need clothes.

Space – Space. The Final Frontier. It’s … big, and full of cool, fascinating things, like pulsars and nebulae and swirling galaxies so big we can’t wrap our heads around them—and all of them look really great as desktops. Plus, someday we’re going to bust out into space and absolutely fuck shit up, and we’ll all have a great time, especially when we meet the aliens. I take it for granted that there are aliens somewhere else.

I like to write stories set in space because, while we know some key things about how space works, it’s big enough to accommodate as many fantastic worlds as we can come up with without having them proven wrong anytime soon. It’s a giant sandbox, where you can study real science and speculate with dreams. And, of course, in a very vast sense, it's where we live.

*Which actually gives us the name “garnet.” The more you know!

Current Mood: cold-y
Current Music: John Williams ~ Star Wars Main Title

Oh, and I’ve been remiss!

Comment "WORDS" to this entry and I will comment back with five words I associate with you. Then you post this in your journal elaborating.

Here are

kjpepper’s words.

Buzzcut – I love buzzes. It makes my head fun to rub (although it does seem to invite random people to come up and do just that), and it makes it a lot easier in the shower. For some reason, other people seem to think I can’t possibly actually like them.

Utah – Yes, I’m from Utah, and I’ve lived here since I was two. It’s a fabulous, beautiful state, but it’s full of crazy people. At least, one particular brand of crazy people. I’m not sure why I’m here since I’m a left-leaning liberal, but fortunately Salt Lake City isn’t entirely made up of right-wing hicks. For that, you want to go to Provo.

Conlang – I’ve been doing conlanging since I was but a wee little nerd. I think it was back when I was writing a story featuring Yoshi from Super Mario, and I decided to stick in a sentence in Yoshese. I realized that I’d have to make words that made sense, and suddenly it occurred to me that this was really fun. I was doomed.

It’s hard to count conlangs I’ve made, since degree of completion can be anywhere from several thousand words and a thorough grammar and history to a broad outline of a sound system. But I’ve got a few put together enough that I could translate a quote into one, put it in its own unique script, and tattoo it in a column down my back, so.

Currently I’m experimenting with nonverbal languages—sign languages, languages for aliens using scent and color, etc.. (

gethenian may be amused to hear that my friend wants me to make up Klingon Sign Language. I imagine it would be very choppy.)

Lobot – That would be the guy with the stereo in his head who follows Lando Calrissian around in The Empire Strikes Back. He’s also dancing in my icon, taken from a clip in the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special that made my brother and me laugh so hard we fell off our couches.

Padparadscha – A beautiful pinkish-orange variety of corundum (aka sapphire). Jewelers are torn over whether that can refer to any pink-orange sapphire, or just a particular vein found in Sri Lanka. The name is derived from the Sanskrit term padma-raga, which means color of a lotus blossom. It’s the only variety of corundum other than the ruby to have its own official name. I love the color and love corundum.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: MST3k ~ Prince of Space

All right, we got photos! In roughly the order they were requested …

( Behold! )

I think there are a couple more requests, and stragglers can always make more, but I’d say that’s enough for now.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Avatar on TV

Because why not?

Comment with a request and I'll take a photograph of something in my life providing that it's nothing top-secret.

I’ll give it a day to get a few requests, then post tomorrow!

And!

Do you read me?

If you read me on a regular/semi regular basis, leave me a comment and let me know.

Then post this in your LJ and find out who reads you (that is if you want to of course)

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: John Fogerty ~ Rambunctious Boy

Speaking of books! I stole this from

tay421. I couldn’t limit most of my answers to just one book, but it was the best a bibliophile could do.

1) What author do you own the most books by?
An interesting question—I’m not entirely sure what it’s meant to measure, since Terry Pratchett has written WAY more books than, say, Stephen Hawking, but I’m a fan of both. Add to that my tendency to read Giant Epics, and it’d be a list. I have large numbers of books by Pterry, David Eddings, Tamora Pierce, Roald Dahl, Dave Barry, and of course Marissa Moss.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Probably The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, since my brother and I keep getting each other copies.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No. That’s an antiquated notion introduced by somebody who thought English should be more like Latin, whose grammar makes preposition-ending impossible. English grammar allows it, despite what other know-it-alls may tell you.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
SECRETLY? That’s hard. Pretty much everyone knows of my undying love for Hank McCoy. Perhaps less widely known is my desire to be Sherlock Holmes’s nonromantic companion …

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
Possibly A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I reread it every Christmas. Though Roald Dahl’s Matilda is up there, too. (What? I started both of those young.)

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old.
Now the lack of question mark does bother me. Also, pick a favorite book? I couldn’t do that back then, either. Although I was fond of Bruce Coville’s Book of Aliens, though that was more of a short story collection. Also, JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
You know, someday I will tell you all about these awesome “Tea Shop Mysteries” my dad got me on account of I like books and tea. Oh, how they cry out to be sporked.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Either Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men, although comparing them presents a lot of difficulty.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Force? No. But if I could be guaranteed everyone would read it, I would go with Mark Twain’s Letters From The Earth. I really wish he’d finished that.

( The rest under here! Also random point where I lose my shit! It’s fun! )

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Keb' Mo' ~ She Just Wants To Dance

Conlanger + viral meme font program:

It was the first thought I had when I saw Your Fonts going around. I mean, what else you gonna do with it?

This was the only complete script I have that really worked on this program. The others are either vertical, cursive, otherwise spatially inhibited, some combination of the above, or logographic.* Except Galactic Common, but I think I lost the notebook that one was in, so I’m going to have to start over. Damn.

This is the arhodes’ most common language, Rredŕa. (Ghil’s native language, for anyone who has read my stuff with him in it.) It’s written right-to-left, and thus I wrote it backwards—yes, those big dots aren’t bullet points, they’re periods. This language does things with finality. The first line is the alphabet; the second numbers, which work the same as Arabic numerals. (Their math is base 8.)

The sentences read:
Spikiki kihei ke.
Ulye ghramovne kihei ke?
Ulye alash ke kihei fandrimŕl.
Pei, ulyi zandrorris shia ashfyızhi oliefıl.

The fourth line means “Now you’re just making things up.” And first three? Well:

Don’t laugh. I really do make the long overdone f’s when I write. I also join a lot of letters to my e’s, so this isn’t completely accurate. But still, not too far off my handwriting.

*I also have a thing for scripts that are half-cursive, so that vowels or consonants or whatever look like diacritics.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: James Taylor ~ My Traveling Star

All right, all right! I’ll do the damn meme, Facebook. Yeesh. Pushy bastard.

25 Random Things About Me:

1. For me, some very strange words are intrinsically onomatopoeic—such as garnet, swelter, and bottle. It's an odd extra of the synesthesia, I guess.

2. I chose Kenya for study abroad because I was already studying Swahili. I was already studying Swahili because one day in high school I saw a book in the library that said Teach Yourself Swahili and I figured, why not? Life is just full of these little oddities.

3. I am a first degree black belt in tae kwon do. No, really. No, really.

4. When I was in elementary school I spent every single recess from third through fifth grade meandering around in circles on the school’s crummy little track. I was dreaming up story ideas. I never realized how weird this was. (In sixth grade I discovered that I could do odd jobs in the library at recess.)

5. I started conlanging for real at the age of 12 or 13 when I included a sentence in “Yoshese” in a Super Mario story I was writing. I believe the sentence was “They don’t call him ‘Fireball’ for nothing!”

6. When I was ten, I struck up a long-lasting friendship with a children’s book author because of my name.

7. At one point in my house we had three cats, a budgie, a rabbit, and intermittent frogs and goldfish.

8. According to my mom, I have a defective imaginary audience—that chorus of people we think is watching our every move and judging us. Mine rarely shows up, and when it does it’s after the fact. It makes me immune to self-consciousness most of the time, but it also puts people off.

9. Between the ages of about four and seventeen, I was the Human VCR. I could recite or sing almost everything you told me after hearing it once, and I can still recite everything I learned back then. This includes the entirety of “Yakko’s World,” Rockapella’s “Capital,” and songs I didn’t understand—I learned “Cielito Lindo” from a Speedy Gonzales cartoon, and could sing a song in French. The trick was to memorize the sounds, not the words themselves. Either normal brain development or antidepressants robbed me of the ability.

10. Kermit the Frog was my first crush. (I was four.)

11. I have skinny-dipped at night in a phosphorescent ocean.

12. My hip still sports a big old scar from the great rollover car crash I was in when I was six. I got out of my seatbelt for ten seconds to reach for some markers on our cross-country trip, and of course those ten seconds were the ones we crashed in. I was thrown from the car so violently that I blew the back doors open; I apparently skidded to a halt and shredded my right side. I woke up in a thorn bush and for the next six months was picking thorns and broken glass out of my scalp. But all my abrasions were superficial, and I didn’t even break any bones.

13. I used to play the stand-up bass in orchestra and jazz band in school. That got me involved in all sorts of crazy capers.

14. I am a tea snob and can tell you the correct temperature and brewing time for white, red, green, black, and herbal teas. People laugh at me until they realize that the tea I make tastes a helluva lot better because it’s done right.

15. I once threatened to steal Penn Jillette’s ponytail, until he pointed out there was no way I could reach it with our height discrepancy. I still plan to steal his house someday, though.

16. My birthday is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

17. I’ve had malaria.

18. I have a huge crush on Dr. Henry McCoy from X-Men. My friend drew several comics in which she and I hounded him the way Twilight fans hound Robert Pattinson, although to my knowledge Twifans have not, so far, given the object of their affections a bubblebath in a big washpan in the front yard.

19. For years I had a “Padawan braid” at my left temple while I kept the rest of my hair short. People knew me as “the girl with the braid.”

20. Until I was 19, I had never seen an episode of Star Trek. Then Liz, my best friend in college, introduced me to it. Blame her.

21. Liz and I also started CSI Night our first year in college, which remained a weekly party over the next four years. Sometimes we actually even watched CSI.

22. I collect mermaids.

23. I know how to cast a piece of jewelry using the lost wax process.

24. I have had a theme song since before I was born, courtesy of my mom, who would put headphones on her pregnant stomach while she worked and pump in Annie Lennox’s “There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart).” According to her, I could recognize that song long before I noticed any other music.

25. I once got to be in the OR to watch a brain surgery. I was really enjoying it right up until I passed out.

Most of you with Facebook accounts have probably already been tagged 25 times, but if not consider yourself tagged. I like random facts about people!

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Randy Newman and Lyle Lovett ~ You've Got A Friend In Me

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The Desert Mermaid

I Am The Boss Princess

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