Parliament of Leaves

I am maybe a little too drunk to be posting right now.

But I would still like to say that Elvis's cover of Fever is incredibly hot, even if it isn't the one I heard on the oldies station today at work. Damned XM radio not posting their playlists. It's a hot song anyway (I love the peggy Lee version, and heard that and the other one both today) but there's something about the version he did in the 1950s that just makes me very happy. And not in a nice girl sort of way. Happily, D likes it as well.

Also, I'm ever so slightly disturbed that, having moved to Las Vegas, I've developed a taste for Elvis's music, which really wasn't supposed to happen, though is less frightening than my emerging appreciation for the Beachboys, which is unexpected to the point of being almost unwelcome. But fun. I do not listen to Liberace, though I do have to go to his museum before leaving town. Because, you know, I HAVE to. It's required, I think, for anyone in Vegas to see the monument to the man with the world's largest rhinestone. Or something.

But you know, I really have begun to see why people went wild for Elvis, as, having played the oldies station for this long at work, every time something he did comes on, I go a little wild too. And you know, I think I need more early rock. There's something about it that has much more life to it than most of what it developed into. Though, they really need to play more rockabilly and bee-bop. Les Vegas Swing and Rat-Pack stuff. More things that will keep me awake all day, really.

And you know how I got into 1950s music? It was the only thing I could find on the radio in Elementary school that no one else in my school listened to. I had my mother make me a poodle skirt for Halloween one year, as sort of a bit of a con. I wanted it for regular clothes, not just for costume. Little did she know, her daughter was unwilling to play by normal rules, even then. Little did I know that I was apparently taking part in a much larger resurgence than just in my bedroom. Oh well, I guess I can't be pioneering all the time.

I still want a poodle skirt, though.

Pattern and dress from black and white spiral fabric. This is a test.
Finish purple hippo feet, and assemble the Purple Hippo of Munchy Doom for Heart's Dearest
Lace for the crocheted shawl (yes, I learned crochet. That's what the hippo is.)
Finish the doll
Canvas shopping bags
Knitted mesh shopping bag, cotton
Knitted mesh shopping bag, bags. Because you can turn old plastic shopping bags into a yarn-like substance, make fewer, denser, stronger bags out of them, have fewer bags in the endless pile, and generally be an environmental do-gooder in one fell swoop. Oh, and make stuff too. And probably confuse people on the bus when I make them. Heh. They say it's between 20 and 30 bags cut into inch-wide rounds and looped together to make one shopping bag on a size 13-15 needle, which I think I can manage.

To start with, she has a name, and is called Charlotte. It just fits her.

Also, I got a response from someone at the Springfield Armoury National Park, which says lots of things.

This letter is in reference to your request for information concerning an
old percussion cap musket in your possession. Thanks for the images. They
came across clearly and reveal an interesting old rifle. It’s a rather long
rifle- certainly not a plains rifle, but more likely a Pennsylvania or Ohio
Valley rifle of the second quarter of the 19th Century. It has a very fine
piece of curly maple for a stock. The weapon used a late-period percussion
lock that seems a bit small for the gun. Perhaps it was a pistol lock. The
sideplate, barrel, & stock form all point to PA & OH areas. The ramrod
thimble is not, however, your typical rifle form [octagonal facets], but a
pistol or fowler example [cylindrical pipe]. The front sight is nicely
preserved as is the fore end cap. Interesting piece! Thanks for sending the
images.

So that's kind of keen!

I have a gun! Well, sort of anyway ... it's really only gunlike in shape and intention, though I do intend to restore it to something at least appropriately decorative, if not actually useful. I don't know what it's capable of, though it's quite old and probably more than a little fragile. And weighs more than is really necessary. :) I tried to hold it to see if I could fire with anything like accuracy, and could barely hold the barrel straight. It's ... umm ... kind of massive. I can't tell whether or not it's rifled (how do you check that?) but the bore is about .5".



There are more photos in the gallery, if anyone wants to hazard a guess about what it might or might not be, and a possible age on it? Suggestions for repairs?

My crow-boy does give the best of gifts. Strange gifts, maybe, but very terribly keen.

Or not, really, but it does contain a small amount of news that I'm spamming all over the bloody place, because damn it, I want people to see it, even if they are people I already know.

Anyway, read this and you'll know why I'm happy.

I am Spam, Spam I am! (but soon I will be Spam that people have seen on occasion ...)

And now, back to the salt mines. You know, where I get the clothes from ... So I have something to show in December ... And Delchi, who did the interview, has agreed to do the announcing and music for the show as well. ^_^ Of course, something to show will be essential. And having people to show it on. We're working on that. We're mainly looking for people who are willing to model more or less for free, or close to it. I will, as always give discounts for models, and something else might be able to be arranged. Drink tickets were mentioned in passing but nothing like guaranteed. There's also space for other designers to show as well, which is cool. So far all I have as a date for this is December, so ... yeah. It will be fun. I have several dresses done, from Convergence, but ever since people said Steampunk, that's where my mind has been going, and since listening to Coil, the designs have been getting dirtier and rougher. And I don't think there's space enough for what I have done, and what will be done.

Now, for finding bodies. Heh.

The Subtle Knife, Phillip Pullman

Second in teh His Dark Materials trilogy.

Now really. Milton for kids? That's really what this boils down to, and I find it disturbingly lovely. Says the girl who read Poe from the second grade.

IT's not the standard "Good vs Evil" book, in that neither good not evil is all that appealing, though at least evil might be a little more honest about it. The first book worked a little better as a standalone, in ym opinion, as the second was a little more obviously a setup for the third book, which I now absolutely MUST GET. It's slower than the first, un that it took me thre days to read it rather than one, but all the same, it was intense. I expect the third book will be full of all the terrible urgency the first one had.

Yes, it talks about religion. And science, and the intersection of the two, whic isn't so much an intersection here (at least in some worlds) as a co-mingling. And, well, the church is pretty much evil, as evil as the evil side of the war. Not that wither side sees itself as evil. Both think, of course, that they are right, which is why they fight in the first place. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that it's ignorance for the common people (theoretically good) vs education and exploration (or knowledge and power) for the common people (theoretically evil).

I honestly am surprised that people would write things like this for children, more so than before. I'd been under the impression that teaching things like religious criticism was frowned on for anyone under the age of 25 or so, but this ... it's pretty well subversive. And I'm not really sure that even a child would be able to miss that, and I'm now wondering if the censors ever noticed that.

Ok, so to be more clear, I'm not actually sure that the argumetn is against religion itself, or against specifically the way it's handled by mortal authorities. And I have no real problem with that (or with anything else really, I'm a grown up and am more than capable of making my own decisions regarding my beliefs) as I honestly *do* think that mortal authorities have a bad habit of fucking shit up. Like, oh, the Crusades and the Inquisition. Those be the Really Big Examples. There are lesser ones, various formes of religious abuse that I've seen from the Priesthood on down to children fighting in the school yard. Yes, it does happen, and in my own school when I was a child. Yes, it's silly. But when they grow up and continue doign it, it's no longer silly, it's actually dangerous -- it just shows that there's a disturbing trend of religious intollerance being taught -- again, mortal authirity going wrong. And really, that's a big part of why I left the church. So far, no one has really said anything against God in the book. BEcause, well, he's pretty much just there, He doesn't intervene, and doesn't much seem to care. It's very Deist in that respect, actually, unless he's somehow influencing probabbility and chance and messengers? I don't know and probably won't until the third book, which will hopefully make everything clear.

Though the Lyra in the first few chapters was much more annoying and much less capable than the Lyra in the first book. She seemed much, much younger, and much more silly, and in truth I didn't much like her at first. Which was odd, given the last book.

The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde

Third of the Thirsday Next books, and much like the others, it's full of literary silly, and in jokes, and trouble. The mispeling vyrus results in things that look like Varizo's posts, for anyone familiar with those in a.g. and other such use-netty places. It also makes the inner lives of books that much more ... strange. Mis Havisham's fate was truly unfair, though.

It kept the pace nice and fast, which, when dealing with brain candy, is probably a good thing, though it did make it rather hard to put it down and go back to work after a nice break from reality.

Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass.

Yeah, I know. More YA. So? The thing that made me read it was the preview for it before Pirates, and ... well, it looked neat. So I got it. I'd been meaning to read it, but had never really been *forced* to do so, and they made it look all steampunky, and I'm a sucker for that.

So. It opens with a quite from Paradise Lost. I knew it was goign to be good from there on, because really, who would open a children's book with Milton if they didnt' have something good to to with it? And it didnt' disappoint. It's clearly also not of the "insulated children" genre -- more for the ones that can read the Juniper Tree and not be permanently scarred. Remember when they had brutal stories for children? Yeah, I read those when I was little. (Explains soemthing, doesn't it?) It's more fantastical than the Holly Black books, being not set in this world. But it's also *far* more sophistacated than I've come to expect of books written for people of abotu 10-12 years. To start with, there's the drinking and near poisoning in the first chapter. Lies, deceit, betrayal, death, murder, war, some more death, some gore, people doing horrible things to children, rebellion, the endless debate between destiny adn free will, the strained and hazy definitions of good and evil and the general lack of difference between the two, compassion, love, caring, deep friendship, cunning, politics ... I want to say this isn't for children. But in all good conscience, I just can't. The world is a shitty, fucked up place, and if you grow up thinking it's all just rainbows and roses, that no one dies and no one ever gets realy hurt, how are you going to be able to cope with the real world, once you grow up and out of the protection that chidren are given these days? (Thus begins another rant ...) Anyway, the book is *very* well written. It also took one day to read the 400 pages, around an eight hour work day. It goes quickly, as the story is too engrossing to really *want* to put it down long enough to savour. There's always something happening, and very few good stopping points. That is not, by the way, a complaint.

Apparently, I need to read more Milton, too.

Lost in a Good Book, Jasper Fforde.

Similar to the last entry. Read it. There's more trouble going on, and the end of the world, and evil corporations, and bizarre govenrment stuff, and the Global Standard Deity (how's that for religion?) and travel and time travel and books and literary jokes.

But there is nothing. NOTHING. to rival the image of Miss Havisham -- yes, *that* Miss Havisham -- driving a Porsche like a maniac.

Nothing at all.

New uses for condiments.

It really makes me wish I'd stayed in school for art history.