http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8419948.stm

No fucking way. Someone stole the Arbeit Macht Frei sign from Auschwitz.

I laughed so hard I cried. Five times. For six minutes solid.

Character meme! I vastly prefer memes that assume my character is a person and work from there, rather than having me describe them. That's what the original work is for!

( M. Lucien de Lavardac )

Tora of Danger Field on art: (no italics/blockquotes because it's long)

As an artist I feel like I deal in a completely different currency. If we were to really count every little income and expense and average it out over our entire careers, we would probably (for me CERTAINLY) have earned well under the poverty line in terms of a weekly or monthly or yearly ‘income’. But thats because a monetary currency is not relevant to our cause. We don’t clock on ‘hours’ with ‘time cards’ because time is not constant or relevant for us either! My job when I work in theatre is to manipulate time and space, to bend and fracture everything we know and present it in a stylized form so that we might learn lessons from the stories we are telling…and when I think about it that way, how can I possibly fit that job (and myself) into an ‘approved’ social structure? I cannot. In a way, the only way I can possibly be paid, is if people pay me what they think I am worth.

There are those who think I am useless.

There are those feel they owe me their life.

There are those who are too proud to give (but take nonetheless).

And there are those who are generous.

Yes we do need to eat, but it also needs to be acknowledged that we work on a different system, but a system that runs parallel to the mainstream and is just as supported by it as it supports it, they feed each other. I put my hand into my pocket for the buskers because I know that we are all the same…and at the end of the day, if I really asked myself what it means to me - my favorite story, my favorite album, my favorite painting, my favorite movie, my favorite song - I can’t put a monetary value to it. It is truly priceless. And when we realize THAT, maybe we will start to be more generous towards artists.

International friends! I want to do a Thing* with postcards, can you please send me some?

*I want to make a wall display with a grid of postcards from cool exciting places like Paris and Freiburg and Jeju-si and Newfoundland, I would like to make it at least 3x4 which means I need 11 postcards! (I have a couple from Paris)

I managed to convince semyaza to do this, so I suppose it's only fair that I should give her the chance for revenge.

Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

I could not possibly participate in intergalactic travel. Sub-light interstellar travel is at the very very edge of possibility of a single (enhanced) human lifespan. Our own galaxy is 100,000 light years wide! Short of a more or less physically impossible "warp" drive or tesseracting that distorts spacetime, it would take more time to cross the Milky Way than the entirety of human civilisation.

Warning: ENORMOUS picspam!meme post. Seriously.

General gist: Post pictures on your computer that you think represent you, without any comment or clarification.
( You've been duly warned )

A short film (~5 min) from France about the Plague:

La Peste from La Peste on Vimeo.

Just as an FYI, I've started a cooking blog called

Cinnabar Road: Culinary Journeys

The general idea is to document my experiences learning to cook various asian cuisines (focusing on Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indian with possible forays into Thai and Mongolian). I'll include recipes, technique breakdowns, and suggestions for variants as well as (hopefully) insightful commentary on the history of asian ingredients and methods.

I'd love to hear your ideas for what I learn to make— if you suggest something and I use it, I'll invite you over to eat it, so suggest as many as you can think of!

Okay, I mentioned this on Twitter, but many of you do not tweet, so I shall post it here as well (plus it's easier to corral* comments)

I've decided to start a Nighttime Appreciation Society. The main goal is to, well, appreciate nighttime and how awesome it is. To this end, it will largely revolve around nighttime walks and gatherings.

I have decided (because I am all modern and shit) to make it an adhocracy, run by its members. So here's how it works:

1) Comment if you want to join.
2) Include how late you are willing to be contacted about impromptu walks and how late you are willing to be out.
3) Theoretically we should all have each others' cell phone numbers. If you want to take a walk, mass text message the group. If you are interested, reply; if not, don't (or reply in the negative).

My info/sample:

I want to join! I am willing to be texted until about 2 AM, and I am willing to be out until about 3 or 3:30. My cell number is on Facebook if you need it, or PM me.


*No, not coral. Corral.

I'm looking for something to read. I read a lot of things, of course, and many of them have been at least passably good. But that's not what I'm looking for. I'm in A Mood, majuscule. And when the mood strikes... Oh, I let it carry me.

I'm looking for A Book. The Book. A book that will thrill me and chill me and fill me, a book that will wear me as a skin and throw me about, a book that will bend my psyche and blow my mind and chew me up and spit me out. I'm looking for what Neuromancer takes to get high, whose complexity Dune reels in, who cyber-beat-anarcho-opiates crush up and snort directly into quivering, melting brainmeats.

I am looking, in short, for a Book that will explode my fucking mind into ten thousand glinting pieces of broken dream and razor-sharp reality and cut me until I bleed.

Please?

( Ferrets say: murka murka murka )

Forgot to mention that I stole this from dokkaebi

Active Projects:

Novels:
* The Eightfold Path
* Fey
* Adrift

Questionable Length:
* The Diary of Hiroshi Matsuzaki
* Samael

Short Stories:
* The Thing
* Old Lace
* The Rose

Comics:
* Amaranth

Plays:
* As Yet Untitled Play About Knights


Inactive Projects (Shelved/Nothing Written)

Novels:
* Shaolin
* Betrothed
* Followups to Fey
* As Yet Unnamed Drug Narrative
* The Fall of Utopia
* City of Dreams

Tentatively Short Stories (all untitled):
* Travelogue
* Cthulhu Mormons
* Graveyard Slipstream
* Witch Wars
* Fab World
* Where Is the Love for the Occult Zombie?

１５日５月２００９年

Kimura and Ono hid my indoor shoes again today; I had to wear socks until gym class. Honestly, I've gotten used to it at this point. What's really pathetic is the ignoring. Like by pretending I'm not there, I'll somehow just disappear. The only time they break the silence is to insult my father. Of course, they're about as subtle as a traffic cone— "Naa, Hiroshi, you'd be better at math if your dad hadn't been a drag queen." I was saved having to reply by a passing teacher, Kawamura-sensei. He pulled me into the teachers' room and told me that if I didn't start studying more for math, I'd flunk my entrance exam and have to go to technical school. You can use all the regretful language in the world, Kawamura, but that doesn't mean you care. And I know that Honda-sensei and Tachigawa-sensei heard you. It probably never even occurred to you that Honda is Ono's first maternal cousin, did it? And (I really had no doubt this would happen) by the time school is over and I go to cram, Ono already knows. Another two hours struggling to keep up with what the teacher is saying while Kimura talks loudly about me as if I'm not behind him.
Mom was home late again; I had curry-rice from the convenience store for the fourth time this week. I tried to talk to her about maybe changing schools, but she said that if I wanted to get into a good college, I needed to stay. I told her that I didn't care what college I went to, but she just frowned and told me to go study.

The entire world seems to think that studying will solve all my problems. I'm not so sure.

Just as a general note, I can now also be found on Dreamwidth as user eleraama, as usual. Look forward to seeing you all there in the coming months!

You guys want to read some amazingly crafted fiction?

Hell yeah you do.

A Buyers Guide to Maps of Antarctica

Structure: It can make or break a piece.

Merci mille fois à The incomparable semyaza

Unanimous ruling: Iowa marriage no longer limited to one man, one woman


This is one of the happiest days of my life.

The icon I want to use:

( Icon Meme, blame battlepunk )

ETA: Apparently I am a Plus account. I'd downgrade on principle, but then apparently they'd delete everything from my scrapbook, and that's a dealbreaker. Balls.