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My mother brought home a two month hold puppy this afternoon. Infested like whoa with ticks, so attacking blood-sucking insects with tweezers is now a thing I've done. Just finished bathing her in tick shampoo like an hour ago, planning on doing another round tomorrow afternoon.

Her temperature is up, so if she doesn't cool down after she's been debugged, I guess to the vet I shall go. Again. Ahahaha.

I posted pix of her here and here if you want to see what a smol german shepard, great pyrenees mix looks like.

Got more shit on the Summer Sale, and have refunded two games already. The first was Dominique Pamplemousse which I played 17 minutes of and realised when I exited that I will never ever open that game again, and the second was The Witcher Adventure Game because learning how to play was like trying to decipher an alien language that consists solely of charts of hieroglyphs and a set of sticks that emit raspberry noises when rubbed together.

On the other hand, I now have Dragon Age: Origins and Baulder's Gate queued to download, so heeeeyyyyyyy. Gonna get my RPG on, yeah boyz.

Was supposed to write tonight. Oh well, guess I'll go play a game and cuddle the damp and upset newbie instead. Gotta figure out a name for her, cos jokingly calling her Gozer doesn't cut it. Before long that actually will become her name, and then what. What is left then. Other than getting another dog to name Clortho to join the ranks of Zuul and Gozer, oh my god I don't even like Ghostbusters that much what is this madness.

marnanel

[This was the review of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” I posted on June 8th 1999, shortly before the release of “Azkaban”.]

It's been quite a while since I enjoyed a previously unread children's book as much as I enjoyed HP&TPS. At first, the book did seem to skip through genres quite jerkily: I think the introduction, an ugly-duckling story as with the start of, say, James and the Giant Peach, was a bit too long for a section so separate from the rest of the story. But the mystery part was excellent and I never guessed the secret. (It's an interesting point that there's no way you can be really evil if you have a stammer.) Considered as a school story... I'm not sure I can tell: the conventions for stories about boys' schools and girls' schools are so different, and good stories (such as this one) about co-ed schools are correspondingly so rare. Perhaps this is just my limited experience.

Incidentally, I wonder how much she was influenced by DWJ. The idea of the Ministry of Magic is very similar to Chrestomanci's department (though with different motives); you could perhaps draw (a few) parallels with Witch Week.

The description of the first few days at the school did get slightly irritating, because your attention kept being summarily drawn to a rapid succession of things which were (or seemed to be) just for show, without any obvious use in the story (e.g. the Choosing Hat): it was rather as though the author had invited you over to show you her holiday snaps. This is one of the places where I'd draw unfavourable comparisons with the subtle way DWJ has of doing the same thing; nevertheless, there are lots of good little ideas used well, with Diagon Alley and the Every Flavour sweets being especially memorable.

A few oddnesses: I'm sure Hermione's logic puzzle has more than one solution. The bizarre HM turned without warning into a bizarre moralist beside the Mirror of Erised (though you could draw comparisons with his behaviour by Harry's sick bed). Quidditch was rather run to death. Were there really no half-decent people in the whole of Slytherin? And by the way, I'm fairly sure I remember reading in Brewer that the Philosopher's Stone was pink and crumbly, not scarlet... hmm!

But it's also been a while since I've slowed down towards the end of a book because I know I'm going to miss the characters (cf. the Neverending Story). So I think I'll look out for the sequel... besides, I want to know whether Harry & Hermione get together :) . I'll certainly be recommending this to people I know who are sensible enough to want to read it.

[And a small claim to fame: AFAIK I was the first person to try to create a Harry Potter newsgroup.]

marnanel

This is the first of our rose plants to flower.
The plant's name is Sheila.

I've been growing roses all my life.
I wear a necklace of rosewood.
In many ways, I am a rose.

Roses aren't naturally climbing plants, like bindweed or grapevines. They must be cared for, and bound to a structure. And I've learned that I need to give myself a structure, or I can't naturally climb.

I am a rose.

Roses need work. They must be pruned. The pruning is painful, but without it they won't flower.

I am a rose.

Nobody cares about dog-roses, nobody notices them, but they grow wild wherever they please. The popular roses that everyone admires are sterile and can't spread: they survive because they're grafted onto a dog-rose root. The roses nobody cares about are the roses that keep the others alive.

I am a rose.

I grew up near one of the biggest rose nurseries in the country, so everywhere there was me, there were roses too. I fell into many a rosebush while I was learning to ride a bike. I carefully grew one up the side of the house, a yellow rose with a mind of its own: soon I had to leave it to its own devices because it had grown taller than my arms could reach.

I am a rose.

When I was about six I had a dream of a concentration camp. I had been imprisoned, along with many other humans, by gaseous aliens who lived on methane. The armed guards would float around our cabins and the parade ground, terrifying us as much as they intimidated us.

Of course when you're sent to the camps, they take everything away from you: all your property as well as your dreams and your name. But I'd smuggled in one memento: a small twig of rosewood. I kept it in the pocket of my grey uniform and squeezed it tight whenever I was homesick.

One day I realised that roses have thorns. And that was the day I used the rosewood to burst and kill the guards at the gate, and run free into the outside world. One small piece of reality had torn a hole in the nightmare.

I am a rose.

alchemia

So...

strange/interesting how things ferment at the back of one's mind until quite a while later, AHA so that's the answer/meaning/whatever.

This little doodle I did years ago... alchemia.dreamwidth.org/31325.html

Bug and I have been writing, and we are wrapping up a specific scene, and while I was searching for something else, I came across this entry via journal tags and thought, 'holy crap, we just wrote that'. Not, you know, Snape and Harry naked on a bed, 'cause we and plenty of others have written that in many delicious ways. But specifically, this exact pose, the mood, even Harry appearing 'aged down' (there's a wee spoiler for anyone interested, but I can't imagine that revealing anything of importance at the moment; afterall, he's a shapeshifter, and he's aged himself up in previous books, so why not the other way around?). The only thing missing in the image is a the **** lol, ;-)

Even Bicrim's comment about it looking more parental than romantic is, just... at first I thought, wow, she picked up on that so early, but then realised i didn't say the image was ABP related so it musta just been the image speaking to her, and my unconscious thru the picture (no, don't worry (or hope, if the case may be), ABP does NOT turn into a Severitus fic.) For those wondering, no HP is not wanking for Snape's entertainment (or potion ingredients, or anything else), but feel free to consider it independant of ABP, or some character's fantasy or something.

The current unfinished book, and the one right after it, might actually get smooshed into one (not positive yet), and this scene is in the one after the current one we left off on, unless they are combined, in which case, it will be in the current book. I am really eager to get to it. It had some really horrible stuff to write in it, but totally necissary if they're going to ever heal / move forward.

Crossposts: http://alchemia.insanejournal.com/134149.html http://alchemia.livejournal.com/468959.html

kerravonsen

Go look here for a fascinating discussion about men, women, the world, and the chimerical concept of "the rules".

Current Mood: cold
Crossposts: http://kerravonsen.livejournal.com/1088358.html

steorra

I was eating 'Honey Dijon' flavour Kettle Chips while waiting for my baked beans concoction lunch to heat. I took my lunch out of the microwave, stirred it, and licked the spoon. I tasted a hint of ... gingerbread. Gingerbread? Gingerbread.

Weird.

alchemia

I really wish EFiction wasn't MySQL based. That's how intertexius got broken the first time around, corrupted DB.

Trying to write my own little piece but damn physical pain, so I can't stay on the computer to work for more than 30 or so minutes at a time.

I know, Iknow, AO3... but I can't make heads or tails of it, as a reader or a writer. Plus I like all our work in one place. Unless we die, then I don't care where y'all want to post things.

Speaking of which, since lots of ppl have asked for ABP on AO3, can we just make an entry for it on AO3 but not put the actual story text there, just the link to it? So people can find it on searches and leave kudos etc.? Or is that not permitted?

Crossposts: http://alchemia.livejournal.com/468720.html

steorra

I just noticed another example of a transitive adjective:

'But I'm not really certain the cause.'
(Comments, here.)

It feels pretty natural to me. I wouldn't be surprised if I use it that way.

steorra

Here's a bit of twisted grammar that just formed itself in my head:

"...because of people to get explained that to by, she's one of the best"

(It works even worse in writing when there's no intonation to go with it.)

I don't know why it didn't come out as "...because of people to get that explained to you by, she's one of the best", which seems obviously better.

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Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister

Member Posts

love your mama’s Cadillac, had it since the dawn of crack

"Ugh, troll bogies!"

I am a rose

a little snarry doodle came back to haunt me... (ABP)

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Flavour combination weirdness

website software, Efiction, AO3

Transitive adjective: 'certain'

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August 2012

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