Nothing funny about feldspar

It started out with me trying to find ways to express my boredom with deli ham. “If it’s ever found that eating deli ham is implicated in the occurrence and severity of arthritis, some members of our family will be very unhappy.”

Then it segued into “And I might have to get religion to have a reason to not eat the ham.”

Which became “That reminds me of the ineffectual social worker who tried to tell me my folks had ‘folk’ religion because they didn’t care what happened to their bodies. Hell, they were Baptists.”

That got me thinking about why I didn’t go to the memorial service for the people who’d donated bodies to the medical school (my mom): “I’m always trying to minimize my regrets. When I’m trying to make a big decision, I determine which ‘I will regret more not doing’ and doing that one.”

Which got me to thinking that (as I was doing the dishes at the time) trying to recount all of this in a blog post is kinda like trying to recount a weird dream. It was so vivid at the time, but becomes blurry and wan as you try to describe it.

I have a lot of email accounts. Part of it is due to this “seminonymous” persona thing, some of it is because I’ve set up Gmail as my “I don’t know who you are so you get this address,” much of it is I’ve-got-this-domain-so-let’s-have-some-email-addresses.

Up ’til now, I’ve read some accounts using Apple Mail, and some I get web-based. However, as I’ve become more impatient with trying to remember which account had what in it, I’ve been trying to figure out how to rearrange things so they make more sense (I guess).

Given the Gmail now has IMAP, I thought I’d try using IMAP to load everything locally. I used IMAP looong ago, and didn’t really like it. I don’t remember why exactly, but I think it was because I kept getting confused with what message was where. I just don’t seem to *get* IMAP. But I’m going to try it for a while and see.

There are other options, of course. I could set up POP for the Gmail accounts, but I get way more spam there than anywhere else, and I didn’t really want to be downloading so much junk. I suppose I could forward all of my regular mail to Gmail so it would all be in one place online, but I’ve read more than one account of peoples Gmail archives going off into the ether, never to be seen again. So I’ll just try this for a while and see if I ever get comfortable with it.

Then maybe I can find that beer bread recipe my friend sent me.

I just finished reading The Jennifer Morgue by Charlie Stross. I like Stross, he’s inventive and tells engaging stories¹, but I’m getting a bit tired of the “geekier-than-thou” stuff that pervades his work (that I’ve read so far). Ok, so we know his characters are über-geeks that uniform in black tees and gadgets and speak Assembler. Why does he have to tell us this so frequently? It’s as though he’s making his heroes be Mary Sues for his target demographic, which I’m obviously not a part of.

Of course, I was reminded of Mary Suedom by Stross himself, in the appendix to The Jennifer Morgue, where he discusses the relationship between Ian Fleming and James Bond… Is he tweaking the nose of his readers? Should I feel manipulated? Hmm… no, I don’t, not really. I felt a similar annoyance after reading Glasshouse, like I was being allowed to read the book though I was too unsophisticated to get everything.

So call this moderated praise for the author. Stross has the potential to be a strong enough storyteller to transcend the SF label, but he’s running the risk of boring us all who don’t want to read h4×0r that doesn’t support the action of the story. I’ll probably wait to read more of his work until it’s based around a different character type. I hope it happens soon.

1. No really, once I get started, I have to read them all the way through.↩

Paraphrasing:

Take the word Peanut. Find a word that follows it to make a familiar two word phrase. Take the first letter of the word, and move it to the next-to-last position to make a second word that follows Peanut in a familiar two word phrase.

This one, like most of the listener-submitted entries, was incredibly easy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having seen some recent photos of myself, I’m left with the inescapable conclusion that mirrors lie. I know what size clothing I wear, and I know that I am not a skinny person. But when I look in the mirror, I see a woman who is relatively well-proportioned, albeit a bit lumpy. However, photographs seem to emphasize the lumpy part.

Between that realization and the rain, I’m getting a bit blue. I don’t think shopping therapy is going to help.