(Note: this post was started last month, in mid-October) Just got back from the ballet tonight — Coppélia! It was such a delight. I haven’t been to the ballet in way too long, and this was absolutely marvelous. There were a few interesting things I noticed this time that I don’t recall seeing as a…
I have wonderful housemates. Last night I was quite glum about something unpleasant I’d had to do, and one of my housemates knew about it. He arrived home from work with a bag of delicious Del Taco take-out, gleefully announcing as he walked in the door that the burrito fairy had arrived! When I finally…
“When facts fail you, words come in handy.” — Goethe Frankly, I deplore most of the “talking heads” garbage (yes, I call it that deliberately) I’ve seen or read recently. Simplistic framing of complex issues into “us vs. them” is damned stupid, and I’m tired of having my intelligence insulted so. It’s gotten to the…
What is the form this mental organization takes? Dr. Lakoff believes our personal morality is framed by our family structure as children. There are two rough types or classes of family: the “strict father” paradigm and the “nurturing parents” paradigm. The “strict father” is a definite patriarch of his family, in control of his dependents…
Originally posted November 2004 Credits: To Bob, of course, due to his irritating (but this time helpful) habit of always leaving the radio on! ;) The emotional quality of what we moderns call our thought produces an extreme violence of conviction combined with extreme incoherence in our arguments. — Jacques Ellul I don’t like politics….
Ordinarily I write my postings for this blog several weeks, or at least days, in advance. I do this because I suppose I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my attempts at communicating via the written word. I want to read the entire article over before it goes public, making sure I’ve…
Amazon Ink I loved the basic premise of this story, which was that the Amazons of myth and legend still exist, hidden within our modern-day culture. Unfortunately, past that initial premise I found myself asking a ton of anthropologically based questions which were never answered — I think it was a case of me knowing…
Norse Code The back of the book suggests the story is about the newly created Valkyrie named Mist, but this is not actually the case — it is more about the Norse deity Hermod, and Mist is mostly along for the ride. Further, I cannot say I enjoyed the author’s (extremely unsubtle) re-hashing of the…
Touch of Evil This book was, interestingly enough, a free digital book from Tor which my friend had downloaded in mid-2008, and suggested I might enjoy if I wanted another urban fantasy. Checking on amazon, I find that the book was first published in 2006, and is the first of a series of three books….
Some friends of mine loaned me some books to read recently, since they both know I’m a fan of urban fantasy. I rather enjoyed the books, overall, and I’m pleased one of the books turned me on to a series which I think will be worth following. The books were Patricia Briggs’ Moon Called (Mercy…