Chatty. Very chatty.
Aug. 1st, 2005 02:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedV says I should use this icon for this post, because it is completely inappropriate. Okay!
(But, but! This icon WILL NEVER be appropriate, because I am never in a “creepy, old, wannabe-immortal child-molester” mood. So if in a few weeks you stumble back across this entry, and see only my default icon here, it will be because not even![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
riko’s SUPAH SPECIAL icon-making skills were enough to justify giving Orochimaru his own slot.)
First of all: Hunter x Hunter Musical (The Nightmare of Zaoldyeck), Part 2 of 2 (edit: taken down.)
Sorry this wasn’t up yesterday. The University network was down-then-up-then-down-again this weekend. It was down part of Friday too -- it does that sometimes, maybe thanks to all of the engineers (and me!) using their one gigabyte of complementary webspace to engage in bandwidth-intensive illegalities. XD. But at least I know I don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for it, not on a campus whose second television station is dedicated to playing just-released DVDs.
I’ve been admiring this meme from afar for a while now, so:
FIVE WAYS IN WHICH I AM A DORK
1. Ran away from home when I was three. We were playing Ninja Turtles and Matilda wouldn’t let me be April. This is my earliest memory.
2. University of Michigan Scrabble Champion! Victory is a seven-letter word! XD although there were only a dozen people at the tournament (compared to the twenty or so on the Scrabble club mailing list).
3. I’m on the Scrabble club mailing list. It took some doing, too. (In the first week of my first year here, at the university’s massive club recruitment fair, I signed up for a few, umm, niche mailing lists. (Juggling club? Fooseball club? Squirrel club?) One of these was the “Scrabble” club, or so I thought. Actually the girl on the ground with the clipboard taking names was not part of any recognized club, but was the sole member of the “Amsterdamer’s Party Association,” which would hold exactly one meeting next Friday night. ^^;; I nearly had a heart attack when the invitation appeared in my inbox. (False advertising! Underaged alcohol consumption! Partying in some stranger’s apartment! I went, though. Wouldn’t you?))
4. I saved fifty dollars on my cable connection this summer talking about Star Wars.
5. Just realized I have Hunter x Hunter backed up four separate ways: on my computer, on my external harddrive, and on three separate DVDs (two with all of the anime, one with “highlight” episodes and all of the manga.) Oh yeah, and I have the manga on CDs too! Gah.
IF YOU HAVE DONE THE “ASK ME MY TOP FIVE ANYTHING” MEME, COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT HERE WITH A LINK? I’ve been seriously busy all weekend, only found time to upload the musical and download Initial D (♥♥♥ Chrissy). But I love this meme.
40,000 in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh.
It’s like getting four books for the price of one! Every hundred pages or so there’s a time jump, and this is book a documenting the rapid assimilation of humans into an alien culture so the landscape changes drastically with every jump. Society, technology, culture, even dialect changes. I really, really, really like this book. It alternates technical writing – memos, reports, mission statements, duty rosters – with prose, and the prose is carefully worked to flow well. Sometimes it’s overworked (“warmth and coolth”?), but only sometimes.
It gets unbearably cool about halfway through, when the total alieness of the aliens really hits you. Very few writers do completely alien aliens (Octavia E. Butler is one). But there are interesting concepts introduced from the first chapter – what defines “sentience”, human clones brainwashed from birth not to think for themselves, political machinations in space. "40,000 in Gehenna" refers to the original colonists “seeded” on a planet at the verrry edge of Union territory, then abandonned: basically a human distraction for the Alliance, to whom I give my sympathies as they are slightly less awful.
It’s a botched first contact, basically. I don't think I've ever read anything like it -- although this is my first time reading C. J. Cherryh, and if V is right and all of her books are like this, it probably won't be my last. The only thing that really bothers me about this book is that the blurb on the back, which gives away events halfway through. I hate reading for hundreds of pages, waiting for the premise I bought the book for to appear.
(But, but! This icon WILL NEVER be appropriate, because I am never in a “creepy, old, wannabe-immortal child-molester” mood. So if in a few weeks you stumble back across this entry, and see only my default icon here, it will be because not even
riko’s SUPAH SPECIAL icon-making skills were enough to justify giving Orochimaru his own slot.) First of all: Hunter x Hunter Musical (The Nightmare of Zaoldyeck), Part 2 of 2 (edit: taken down.)
Sorry this wasn’t up yesterday. The University network was down-then-up-then-down-again this weekend. It was down part of Friday too -- it does that sometimes, maybe thanks to all of the engineers (and me!) using their one gigabyte of complementary webspace to engage in bandwidth-intensive illegalities. XD. But at least I know I don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for it, not on a campus whose second television station is dedicated to playing just-released DVDs.
I’ve been admiring this meme from afar for a while now, so:
FIVE WAYS IN WHICH I AM A DORK
1. Ran away from home when I was three. We were playing Ninja Turtles and Matilda wouldn’t let me be April. This is my earliest memory.
2. University of Michigan Scrabble Champion! Victory is a seven-letter word! XD although there were only a dozen people at the tournament (compared to the twenty or so on the Scrabble club mailing list).
3. I’m on the Scrabble club mailing list. It took some doing, too. (In the first week of my first year here, at the university’s massive club recruitment fair, I signed up for a few, umm, niche mailing lists. (Juggling club? Fooseball club? Squirrel club?) One of these was the “Scrabble” club, or so I thought. Actually the girl on the ground with the clipboard taking names was not part of any recognized club, but was the sole member of the “Amsterdamer’s Party Association,” which would hold exactly one meeting next Friday night. ^^;; I nearly had a heart attack when the invitation appeared in my inbox. (False advertising! Underaged alcohol consumption! Partying in some stranger’s apartment! I went, though. Wouldn’t you?))
4. I saved fifty dollars on my cable connection this summer talking about Star Wars.
5. Just realized I have Hunter x Hunter backed up four separate ways: on my computer, on my external harddrive, and on three separate DVDs (two with all of the anime, one with “highlight” episodes and all of the manga.) Oh yeah, and I have the manga on CDs too! Gah.
IF YOU HAVE DONE THE “ASK ME MY TOP FIVE ANYTHING” MEME, COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT HERE WITH A LINK? I’ve been seriously busy all weekend, only found time to upload the musical and download Initial D (♥♥♥ Chrissy). But I love this meme.
40,000 in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh.
It’s like getting four books for the price of one! Every hundred pages or so there’s a time jump, and this is book a documenting the rapid assimilation of humans into an alien culture so the landscape changes drastically with every jump. Society, technology, culture, even dialect changes. I really, really, really like this book. It alternates technical writing – memos, reports, mission statements, duty rosters – with prose, and the prose is carefully worked to flow well. Sometimes it’s overworked (“warmth and coolth”?), but only sometimes.
It gets unbearably cool about halfway through, when the total alieness of the aliens really hits you. Very few writers do completely alien aliens (Octavia E. Butler is one). But there are interesting concepts introduced from the first chapter – what defines “sentience”, human clones brainwashed from birth not to think for themselves, political machinations in space. "40,000 in Gehenna" refers to the original colonists “seeded” on a planet at the verrry edge of Union territory, then abandonned: basically a human distraction for the Alliance, to whom I give my sympathies as they are slightly less awful.
It’s a botched first contact, basically. I don't think I've ever read anything like it -- although this is my first time reading C. J. Cherryh, and if V is right and all of her books are like this, it probably won't be my last. The only thing that really bothers me about this book is that the blurb on the back, which gives away events halfway through. I hate reading for hundreds of pages, waiting for the premise I bought the book for to appear.