My sister was supposed to tell at least one person what had happened, I might have gotten through to someone myself, but I haven't looked at what I managed to say to him yet.

Wasn't the flu, was accidental withdrawal from an SNRI, Effexor. I'll write up a longer description of what went on, so if it happens to someone else they have a little more info when google why the hell they can't wake up properly or talk intelligibly, or actually, what really clued me in was I couldn't read. I think that was a physical eye thing but boy was it disturbing. First I decided it was the kindle's fault :) Anyway, dinner at Mother's and so I gotta go but will describe it better soon. All better now! well, back to my regular state of ill health.

Donated organs, then science, then compost.

I got fifty bucks in gift certificate at the local bookstore. Here's what I bought:

Thelwell's Pony Cavalcade
Scalzi's Android's Dream
Stross's Glasshouse
Second two of Pullman's Golden Compass trilogy.

And $3.90 in change.

I went to the Berkeley Public Library on Wednesday and got some books. Anyone who lives in California can get a BPL card, which is so cool. When I went to get one, they said I couldn't have a new one since mine was still alive, and amazingly there were no fines on it.

So I'm planning to little reviews or comments on the books as I read them. Because I slept a lot yesterday I'm only a book and half in. Here's the whole list:



Scardown / Elizabeth Bear
Fledgling : a novel / Octavia E. Butler
Game-players of Titan / Philip K. Dick
I have fun everywhere I go : savage tales of pot, porn, punk rock, pro wrestling, talking apes, evil / Mike Edison
God's problem : how the Bible fails to answer our most important question--why we suffer / Bart D. Ehrman
Banker / Dick Francis
Bolt / Dick Francis
Blood sport / Dick Francis
Danger / by Dick Francis
Forfeit / Dick Francis
From eve to dawn : a history of women / Marilyn French ; foreword by Margaret Atwood
Sandman. Preludes, noctures / Neil Gaiman, writer ; Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcom Jones II
Deryni rising / Katherine Kurtz
Early autumn : a Spenser novel / Robert B. Parker
Judas goat / Robert B. Parker
Rollback / Robert J. Sawyer
Iterations / Robert J. Sawyer ; introduction by James Alan Gardner
Fer-de-lance / Rex Stout ; introduction by Loren D. Estleman
Right to die; a Nero Wolfe novel
New shoe [by] Arthur Upfield
Suicide index : putting my father's death in order / Joan Wickersham
Krakatoa : the day the world exploded, 27 August 1883 / Simon Winchester
Meaning of everything : the story of the Oxford English dictionary / Simon Winchester

Audio:
Candyfreak [sound recording] : [a journey through the chocolate underbelly of America / by Steve Almond
Liberty falling [sound recording] / by Nevada Barr
Americans [sound recording] : the democratic experience / by Daniel J. Boorstin
Poems [sound recording] / Robert Browning
In a sunburned country [sound recording] / Bill Bryson
Big over easy [sound recording] / by Jasper Fforde
Stan Freberg presents The United States of America [sound recording] / [words and music by Stan Freberg]
Damsels in distress [sound recording] / by Joan Hess
Shrub [sound recording] / by Molly Ivins with Lou Dubose
Into thin air [sound recording] / by Jon Krakauer
True enough : learning to live in a post-fact society / Farhad Manjoo
Soul music [sound recording] / Terry Pratchett
Touching the void [sound recording] / by Joe Simpson
Adventures of Nero Wolfe [sound recording] / Rex Stout
Crack in the edge of the world [sound recording] / written and read by Simon Winchester
Republic of pirates [sound recording] / by Colin Woodard

Lots of audio too, so far I'm two tapes into Into Thin Air, which I've read a number of times but the reader is really good and you get different things out of listening compared to reading.

I discovered a bit ago that I'd forgotten enough of Dick Francis books to reread them, and that I still liked the early Spenser books and I could also reread Stout, so that's why them. I had little time in the library so the selection was a big slapdash.

Ok, I finished Fer-de-Lance last night, it's the first Nero Wolfe book and it shows a bit, though he does a good job of making you think there are probably a lot of stories from before, not unlike what Tolkien did with his legendarium, if a bit different in feeling and content. It's not bad for a Stout though I was a bit weirded out by Wolfe letting the guy kill the other guy, maybe that's a first novel thing or maybe I'll have it happen more and tell you about it.

I'm half way through Game-Players of Titan. I don't know if I'm better at getting into weird SF books than when I tried to read Dick before, I made it through three of them I think, or if this is an easy one to get into. So far it's very good, not as weird as I remember from previous readings of his. It has a bit of a feeling of Stars My Destination and the Demolished Man but not as flamboyant? Not sure if that's the word I want. In fact it feels less dated than a lot of stuff I've read that's later. I think I was reminded of Bester because so far it is a mystery with telepaths but very different from D. Man.

Ok, either mini-reviews or me saying why I got these books in particular, I hope, more posting in general. Like that's going to happen.

'If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"'

See a Pratchett quote, post one to your LJ and the instructions.

Hopefully it won't be just me and glinda bouncing off each other.

"Pride is all very well but a sausage is a sausage."

See a Pratchett quote, put one in your LJ with instructions.

Since part of my f-list was doing a Joss one yesterday, and I couldn't for the life of me think of one, I thought I'd start a Pratchett one, as I know it crosses several of my groups of friends, at least I'll get two or three, I think.

"You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although "synergistically" had probably been a whore from the start."

So when you see a quote, post another PTerry quote in your LJ, and see how long we can keep it going.

Since someone on my f-list hasn't got enough posts to read in order to procrastinate and I'm feeling mildly ok, I shall try and be interesting for her. I'm probably too late for her, but I should post once in a while, something that's not a meme.

I'm sitting on the concrete outside my converted garage house, which hardly looks like a garage anymore, using satellite broadband in what amounts to an oak glade. Hmm that may be wrong, a copse? We're right on the edge of town, so the back seven acres are pine forest, second or third growth, but the original and all following owners, cut down the pines around the house and only let oaks and the occasional cedar grown. It's a really lovely place though mostly when I'm out here I see things I want or should get done but can't 'cause of the ol' disabilities. It was over ninety yesterday, but seems less today. We had several days of lovely weather, down in the seventies! But oh do I miss rain. And I have a feeling it'll be a while till we get some. We still have two months of fire weather. Nothing really close here, but boy did we get smoked out.

So as some of you know, I taught myself to bind books, and I really should have noted the names of the sites that helped me, but of course I didn't, or if I did they're on inaccessible hard drives. Anyway, I had this brilliant idea last year to take all the stuff out of my living room and repaint, dye the concrete floor, put up the copper pipe on the perimeter of the ceiling for hanging all the gorgeous cloth I acquire, and fix up and move bookshelves etc, and not put anything back in until I'd sorted through it and trashed the trash, donated the donate-ables and not put something in the house without it having a place to go. Sounds great, huh? And you can guess how it went. Although I did do the floor, and it's magnificent, I should put some pictures up on flckr. The walls got painted and not by me, which is also great, I hate painting. And a bunch of storage stuff got put in. A big upper kitchen cabinet someone acquired somewhere, some drawer things we bought at Target, bunch of plastic boxes with lids, like that. But guess what! My crafts 'studio' is not back together yet, and there's still bunch of stuff sitting on the floor that needs sorting, and I still don't have enough storage. And of course I've been accumulated gorgeous papers and other things for when book binding resumes.

Another good thing, my sister bought me a used apartment stacked washer dryer set! And it's installed in the bathroom, so I take off clothes, bang into the washing machine! Unless they need bleach, and those can accumulate till there's enough for a load. This means I have to do something about my overgrown collection of clothes, the ones that are really too ratty to wear, the ones I'm never going to fit in again, etc. Then I'd have more room in the bedroom for guess what! Another bookshelf.

Stream of consciousness must be more fun to write than to read, so I'll stop soon.

Since I can't remember what I was going to say next, I'll stop here.

Torture is wrong.

From Slacktivist via Ksej.

This is actually something I gtalked to my sister:

A post by D at Lawyers, Guns and Money set me off.

I was reading about racism in feminism, and then there was a thread for us white people to talk about our racism/privilege and welcomed any people of colors' input/corrections. There were two stories that stuck in my head.

One was there was a Klan rally somewhere somewhen, maybe Sixties, maybe Seventies, and six big white guys went and started beating up the Klan assholes. Of course the police started beating on the people of color but this was something they decided to do as a group, the white guys and the guys of color.

The other was about a group of five people walking along, going to a concert, couple young whites, couple people of color and a fifty two year old white women. They had dope on them and so they spot some cops and they pass their dope to the white woman, without discussion and she puts it in her purse.

How to use your white privilege for Good.

The other thing discussed was using your voice, since you may be listened to when others won't, but there's also the problem of speaking for people who want to speak themselves.

Edited for spelling, capitalization, and clarity. New content below.

My sister and I were raised to speak up. My dad's parents were Progressives back in the day, my dad was a feminist before my mother, a union guy, and although not perfect did raise us to hate injustice and at the least, speak up. My mom's family was all about speaking loudly, and she was six feet tall and never knew about sexism. Don't know if that was obliviousness or no one dared to talk down to her.

That hate injustice thing sounds stupid, or arrogant or both, but it is true in its way. We grew up in Berkeley, we heard I Have a Dream, or watched it, every year at school. Not on his birthday, because we didn't go to school that day. We also had Malcolm X's birthday and International Women's Day off. Other school districts used those days together as a skiing holiday, we were Berkeley. Which means we were arrogant about our liberalism and sheltered from the ugliness that is the rest of America. I didn't believe that, really really, until I moved to a small mountain town and we protested a war.

So the loudmouthed pointing out of stupid, unfair and illegal practices at our various jobs has gotten us in trouble sometimes, more my sister after we moved up to the mountains. In Berkeley she worked for the City's pools, and the City is not allowed to do anything bad. Up here shut up sit down and be polite are the watchwords. I haven't thought if this is more for women or not. R's a nurse, and most of them are women, and most of the doctors are male but the doctor-nurse relationship is fucked up anyway, so hard to tell if it's doctor arrogance or just plain male.

In Berkeley I did manage to get a place I worked investigated and fined by Cal-OSHA. I got everyone to call Cal-OSHA and yay! Big corporation based in Saint Louis is busted for painting the store with oil based paint at night when we were expected to work in there during the day. This was Copy-Mat, the big one, not the franchises. Sometimes I wonder if that was what caused the Headache and the Fibro but I don't think suing 'em at this late date is possible.

Oh, better link a few things. I didn't link the stories, because if I did it would have been pointless to retell them, and show everyone how badly I did retell them. They're in the thread though, toward the end.

I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make, but that thread and all the other people of color who brought up the privileged snottiness of some of the feminist bloggers helped me some with my problems with privilege. Since I started reading the feminist blogs and the threads and seeing the MRAs and the clueless idiots talk about how we're overreacting or how come we don't teach them the basics of feminism, I realized I had done this kind of stuff, not a lot, but enough, about race mostly. And to feel myself start to do that at some of the comments on the blogs where they were discussing this stuff made me not only sick but think. Now I do recognize the defensiveness and fear that are behind those comments, and hopefully can recognize it in myself before I actually do it again. Also that move of asking the one Other friend I have to teach me about things that must bore or annoy her, I still need to apologize to her.

Anyway, thank you, Chris and Theriomorph, Brownfemipower, Blackamazon, Firefly, Ilyka, and all those other commenters and bloggers that helped me with this, even though you have no idea who I am.

Hmmm hope this doesn't sound like I think I'm perfect now, or even that my speaking out is always good or that... well I hope my privilege isn't blinding me to something here that's ugly. Sorry if it does and if you feel I'm worth correcting, I promise not to get too defensive.

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

And don't be nice or polite when you feel the fear, you're not going to be beaten or raped because you weren't 'nice.'

Gavin De Becker on Oprah! Everyone must read his book Gift of Fear! It basically tells you what you should fear and what you shouldn't, and to trust your instincts, because that voice inside that says "he's creepy, get away from him fast!" is right. Very empowering book in all kinds of ways.

I wish he'd write an autobiography, he mentions some of the violence he saw as a kid, and I'd like to hear about how he survived and grew up to be so cool.

So I don't get enough sleep, or it's disturbed sleep, or I'd overdone the day before. Bad rest makes the other symptoms worse, so the fibrofog, the problem with words, the clumsiness, and the pain all get worse. So fibrofog means a lot of wandering around wondering what it was you were going to do, who you were going to call, where you put the remote control, or the phone, or your book. And problems with words, mostly for me nouns, are less of a problem if you're not trying to communicate so today that wasn't bad, but it can be really bad, especially with people who don't know you have fibro or with people who don't know how the word things work, so that's frustrating. The clumsiness is what really gets to me by the end of the day, I trip over things, sometimes fall because of it, I drop things then can't find them, or drop them and break them, I accidentally kick dogs and hurt them, all of that is frustrating. And all kinds of pain, lots of little aches that you don't really notice till they just become too much, or have one big one that drives you nuts, or your knees are hurting, making it hard to get up and down, or your back so you can't lift stuff, so that's also all frustrating. You sensing a theme here? So by the end of the day you trip and yell with annoyances, the dogs bark one too many times and you scream at them, you break one of your favorite dishes, or two of them.

So it just builds and builds and hopefully by the time you can get to bed you don't have too much pain to sleep. And since you have to sleep with the barky ones, you probably can't sleep well tonight either, or your sleep has just gotten worse and worse and you're trying to change your sleeping pills and they are worse than your normal ones.

So now I can't remember quite what point I wanted to make, maybe that it's not just about spoons, that there are other ways it gets crazy. I mean, I can live this way for a while, but I need some changes. Or at least we need to switch seats for another go round.

So sister can leave again tomorrow, but next time I go, then I can get tired and take care of my mom instead of the dogs. But on the bright side I get to do the tiring out and taking care of in the Bay Area so if nothing else the food will be excellent.

Oh, and that plan to post everyday? That worked well.

Not doing really well on this typing everyday thing, but today I'm forcing myself to rest, after about five days of doing way too much, typing is not considered all that unrestful here at Casa RepGillian.

Pain notes: Right Shoulder, right wrist, and most of stuff between, most other stuff ok when lying down. Headache pretty much usual level.

So I just finished Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and I recently reread Into Thin Air again. I also have read Under the Banner of Heaven. I like his writing a lot, haven't gotten a hold of Eiger Dreams yet. But the effect of reading the books is that I have to go look up everything on wikipedia and see what's what. Or rather who thinks what's what. Much better stuff about Everest in 1996 than there was when I first read it a couple years ago, but I haven't even gotten to the Into the Wild stuff yet. I'm wikipedia addict, I keep opening more and more links in new tabs. Though aside from 'wasting time' it's hard to see what harm it does me. I've always had a trivia retentive mind and think knowing things for the sake of knowing things is one of the main reason humans are tolerable. Ok, I just made that up, not the trivial mind though.

Oh, also have to watch my netflickeses, I have Hot Fuzz, which is great so far. I watch Shaun of the Dead quite often, so am going to need a copy of this. And I got Running with Scissors because I found the book fascinating and I think the Baldwin in it plays the perverted shrink, which I tend to think is typecasting. Though Michael Douglas would probably be closer.

I need to get the netflixes watched 'cause I just found out Kristen Bell is going to be in Heroes this coming season, so I enqueued the whole first season of it, and must get 'em watched before the new one begins. Yes, I am just that weird. Though I tend to go the other way, refuse to watch any of the series before it comes out on dvd and I can watch it all. That's the best thing about dvds in my book.

Another random thought, I was a big Adam and the Ants fan back in the day, I'd forgotten how much piratey stuff he did and wore. No wonder I want to dress like a pirate, though highwayman and others could also be fun. Hoist up your Jolly Roger! Of course, lyric writing could be much improved. And yes I did notice what song was playing in the background at the beginning of Hot Fuzz.

So much happening so little energy to write.

Things I'd like to write about: The Living-room 'Renovation', don't know if you can call it a renovation when so little of the physical building was changed. The Story, which I'm telling the Friend Who Shall Not Be Named, but I can't really put it here without asking the principle. This story is in ways totally typical but also unique. You know, Tolstoy and unhappy families.

You know, I don't know what I want to write about, but I'm going to write, maybe everyday. Which is how I learned to write easily in the first place. I didn't go to school between grades six and ten, and had a tutor during the last year, and he made me write a page of something everyday, and I found those the other day, I have a bunch of stuff I wrote starting then and going through till senior year in college. Apparently I saw Blondie when I was 13 or so and didn't like 'em much. I have absolutely no memory of this. Fibro fog or Blondie didn't make an impression? Later I bought all their albums, after I became punky.

Ok, I have to unload the car and get something to eat. I left the house at three meaning to be gone less than an hour, five and a half hours later I return.

This is the best book ever, I want to do something, anything, that will help Emma Bull write more books, maybe I should found a religious order that serves that purpose, we can be like one of those self supporting abbey things, grow our own food and make our own stuff and keep Ms Bull in finest writing trim. Or maybe just write her a fan letter, though I haven't much else to say but I loooooove Territory! Write me another! Pretty Please!

I do find myself hampered by the fact that I can't for the life of me remember what led up to OK Corral. And I can't exactly wikipedia it because what I want isn't what really happened but the.. legend, I guess you could call it. The cultural memory of it. I recognize most of the names but have no idea what I should know, I mean I've figured out most of who is on what side, but not what the heck is supposed to have happened. Oh well, I'll ask my sister, she may remember better than I do, being a bit older and liking westerns more than I.

Nightmares

My father landed in the seventh day of the Normandy Invasion during World War II. My nephew fought in the first days of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. My father had nightmares and screamed in his sleep about the people he had killed till he died in 1976. Now my nephew is screaming in his sleep when he dreams of the people that he has killed.

The next time you vote for some war-mongering profiteering dirt bag to start another war for us poor people to fight for you, make sure that your kids are in line with mine at the recruiting office. You can listen to the screams at night.

G- T-
Portola

I wonder if I'll ever post anything other than memes again.



Create your own visitor map!

Is anyone surprised that my first post back is a meme? I didn't think so.

Hopefully I'll post something a bit more substansive soon. First I have to add some more interests.

( My Interests Collage! )

Anyone know anything about what kind of scanner I should get for the scanning of photographic slides? Doesn't have to be the absolute highest resolution, I'd give up some for ease and speed of use, and of course not a thousand bucks.

My sister brought down a bunch of my dad's stuff from Oregon, and I've fallen heir to the family slide collections. Not only all this family history, but there are pictures of Chaco Canyon from before it was a tourist destination. The road wasn't paved, and was probably not even graded. That was in the early seventies. Waking up there at dawn is one of my most vivid childhood memories.

So I'm not positive what it was in the news report that I heard about this new 'terrorist plot' that made me nervous but turns out I had reason. They were planning and maybe trying to get materials. They hadn't *done* anything, I thought thought and speech and assembly were legal in the US, silly me. NPR mentioned that someone, in congress? in the press? suggested that the timing was suspicious since the WP or the NYT was publishing something the government didn't want us to know it so there's the smoking gun in my opinion.

But I finally looked at an article from google news, Toronto Star as it happens, and they had pictures. They're all black. I thought it was weird they didn't mention race or country of origin on the radio, and since they said they were homegrown, why no one mentioned Timothy McVeigh. They're all black. Some flack from the government says something about somehow these people didn't belive the United States government had a right to authority over them. They're all black. Seems self explicable to me! This is the most activelly and actively encouraging racist government since I don't know when, since Jim Crowe maybe. And two were from Haiti, hell if I was from a country where the legally elected, democratically elected, president was removed by the current US administration, I'd be just a *wee* bit annoyed and tend to question the legitimacy of that government. Especially with the first election obviously stolen and the second one questionable, hey, I question their legitimacy.

I think I have to go erase some irc logs, over and over and over... And maybe anything I ever wrote about the first amendment.

Should I have known that Ann Coulter was one of Paula Jones's legal advisors? I'd always wondered where the hell she came from.

MyGeoSpots Map - Get a Friends Map!

Because I can never not do a pirate name generator and then I have to share it with all and sundry. That's a pretty good name, for some reason I get Ethel on this one a lot.

From coffeem:

That Cash thing--we're pirates from a musical family.

Sing it, mateys:

You keep a close watch on my chest of gold.
You say I'm not so daring or so bold.
You say my velvet coat smells much of mold.
Because you're frank
You'll walk the plank.

She's one of my favoritest writers.

I am having a crisis of faith. The gospel is sexist. I have noted at least three sexist things and one body-sizism and sexist. I know the I'dRatherYou'dNot specifically states that the Noodly One created us to be equal but a woman was given to the midget and the generic pirate is male. Not only male but gets wenches. And in a footnote female-pirates should find themselves a male pirate.

I'm sorry! I can't let this go! If Bobby Henderson states these are all wrong, he mis-stated, well maybe but still the Stripper Factory really can't be explained away they did on that forum I tried to read, most people want other people as companions, not things made for companions.

So I have to rethink the Till I Get the Perfect Design tattoo, I'm thinking a frog, maybe a portrait of one of those that inhabits my sister's bathroom.