the wombatcave

At this point, I regard Diana Gabaldon's books as somewhere between a guilty pleasure and force of habit. IMHO, her writing has grown notably more self-indulgent as her doorstopper series continues (and/or her editors have stopped editing), and her recentish meltdown about fanfic didn't improve my opinion. I doubt very much that I'm going to buy her new graphic novel, The Exile, although I may browse through it at a bookstore-- it's essentially a partial retelling of her first book, switching out of the original tight 1st-person narrative toward other characters' POVs.

However, I'm kinda disgusted by the tone of many negative reviews it's collecting on Amazon, which can be summarized as follows:

1.) "How were we supposed to know that a 'graphic novel' would turn out to be some dumb cartoon book?" No comment.( Read more... )

Most parents believe that vaccines protect their children against disease, but one in four think some vaccines cause autism in healthy children, and nearly one in eight have refused at least one recommended vaccine, a new study has found.

...and meanwhile,

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care -- admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada's single-payer system.

Courtesy of pyat (via Google search on one of the text strings), there's an ongoing set of LJ zombies that keep re-using the same text in f-locked posts; the incarnation that's recently "friended" me is called aetwind. I'm cut'n'pasting some of its posts into the open for the sake of further Google-matching.

17 Feb 2009:

Andrew understood that debating with me was useless and left, slamming the door behind him. After he left, I didn’t feel any better because I started to feel guilty that I hurt the person who had no hard feelings and was just trying to help. Am I really such a bad person after all, that I cause people nothing but trouble and pain, that I tortured Peter, and that I just got into an argument with Andrew?

I was so out of it from all that had happened that my legs were shaking and my head kept throbbing. In order to get myself together, I went over to my bar and found what little alcohol was left there from my last visit. Comfortably settling into the armchair, I started drinking straight from the bottle, forgetting about everything. I started to feel better with every sip that I took. My thoughts started to vanish, and the physical and spiritual pain began to subside little by little. I sat there and kept on drinking until all the alcohol ran out.

( Read more... )

The wombat-consort has been home sick all week-- nothing serious, just a low-level debilitating flu-like thing. As a semi-consequence, I decided to try making pho at home according to this recipe, since beef back ribs were on sale at Safeway and I was getting bored with chicken soup.( Read more... )

Overall, it's hard to say whether the recipe was worthwhile-- yes, the result is very nice, but the time/ingredients just aren't very cost-effective if you have several local places to just walk in and get a big bowl of pho for less than $10. OTOH, I do like having LOTS of this broth to play with.

And as a random note, I believe that this comment from a Cassie Edwards defender is one of the finest examples I've ever seen of Not Getting It. "Ms. Edwards writes about Nature in a very beautiful way", egads.

Have been munching popcorn at the Cassie Edwards situation.

Having never read one of Edwards'(?) books before, I decided to browse through one yesterday while visiting Barnes and Noble, to see if I could spot any similar passages of disjointed didacticism. Yup. It was odd enough to stick in my memory, so when we got home, I plugged the keywords into Google Books and found what looks like iirc a damn near exact match. I'll have to wait on specific cites until I can find a used copy of the Edwards book to support my favorite secondhand bookstore-- our county library system doesn't have it, though it does have the original reference work-- but in the meantime I have a few appalled comments to make.

First of all, Edwards' prose is horrid to the point of parody. She indicates dramatic tension... by... inserting... ellipses... while simultaneously! ending every... other... sentence... with... exclamation points! Secondly, has no one ever seen any problem with most of her ~100 books being called "Savage [something]" as a description of Native American men pairing off with white settler women? And thirdly, of the few books of Edwards' that *are* in our local library system, almost all of them are in Large Type editions, which strongly suggests that they're being requested by Little Old Ladies who *like* them, giving me the uneasy sense of watching people stuff themselves with fast food... okay, yeah, it's their choice and it's not as if I want to *force* them to stop, but don't they know how bad that crap is for them?

I have no idea anymore what search trail I was following that led me to this site, but it has galore of wondrous links. (Don't miss the page of wet cat photos mentioned at the start of the Nissan entry.) I'm especially trying to figure out the "scientist labcoat fetish cafe"; Google's version of the main page is not especially helpful:

Mad Scientist LOVE! Your. Whit glasses of science Hakase, a mysterious laboratory to possible suspicious beverage service. Science and expertise endless, boundless ambition automatic shows. Also, Hakase your own screw sowing Lobo proud of the excellence of our maid and garcon, Secret Hakase and gently between your support. First of reassurance. Favorite Hakase, along with where to go and Sci-Fi-teatime

Also, I really should be used to this by now, but having managed to keep my glass of milk away from the resident catbeasts until I finished drinking it, I put the empty glass down on the table and went back to the kitchen for a moment; by the time I got back, Spot was already crouched over it alternately stuffing his head inside the glass so he could directly lick the sides, and sticking his paw into the residual milk at the bottom so he could lick his paw clean.

http://stores.ebay.com/wombat1138?refid=store , items 290117473306, 290117475350, 290117475578, and nineteen other listings for various magatama; first written by me for that purpose several years ago:

Nowadays, most people think a magatama is an off-center glass seed bead. But originally, the term belonged to "curved jewels" (the literal translation) like the ones here: stones carved into a comma-like shape whose significance is lost to the ages. Different sources claim it's meant to resemble a drop of water, a sprouting seed, a tongue of flame, or even an embryo-- maybe all of the above, for all I know. Whatever its origin, the magatama has always had a special status in Japan; even now, one of the sacred Imperial treasures is a magatama necklace handed down from the ancestral sun-goddess Amaterasu, or so they say.

http://www.nuimana.com/spellsb.html , about a third of the way down the page:

Magatama-shaped Crystal (Japanese): Most people think a magatama is an off-center glass seed bead. But originally, the term belonged to "curved jewels" (the literal translation): stones carved into a comma-like shape whose significance is lost to the ages. Different sources claim it's meant as mimicry of a drop of water, a sprouting seed, a tongue of flame, or even an embryo -- maybe all of the above, for all I know. Whatever its origin, the magatama has always had a special status in Japan. Even in Modern-day Japan, one of the sacred Imperial treasures is considered to be a magatama necklace handed down from the sun-goddess Amaterasu.

After some hunting around on that site, I eventually found an email address and have requested a proper citation for my text. We'll see if they actually respond. At the moment, not quite feeling incensed/bored enough to rampage around there looking for additional text stolen from other sources; however, subject to change.

I will be so going to hell because of the chorus from Hounburnd's "Catalanta in Colliedon". (I'll send postcards.)

I iz tyg4r burn1nz br1t3
In yr f0r3stz 0f t3h n1t3
WHUT da m4x l33t h4ndz 0r 3y3z
Fr4m3z0rd mah f33rfl 5mmtryz?( Read more... )

In spring, a young(ish) marsupial's thoughts turn to Tolkien pastiche. Or something. I have no other rational explanation.

Fit the first: Balrog/Shalott.( Read more... )


Fit the second: Nimrodel Lee.( Read more... )


And now for something completely different:( Read more... )


Addendum:( Read more... )

I'd vaguely been hearing about the Joyce Hatto musical plagiarism scandal for the past week or so, but haven't really looked into it until today. Damn. She's the NoKa chocolate of classical piano.