Mangela Lansbury

Calling her out of the blue probably would freak out her and her parents both, but why would you call her now when you can just add her on Facebook?

Demosthenes dissed Phillip of Macedon so hard that we now have the word phillippic to describe a damning political speech. Cicero's Phillipicae against Mark Antony were pretty good too. It's a series of 14 speeches that has little gems like "I mean, it's not like I ever said anything about you getting super wasted and banging anything that moves at your place in a public speech or anything. That would just be a shitty thing for me to do, as a friend." Romans and Greeks had some really good political insults, basically.

The line break on that is at "She grew up to the become the first Asian." I had a hard time parsing that sentence for a minute.

What if your will to live was so diminished that even your atoms didn't want to recombine, though?

I read it as someone trying to indict the creator of Oglaf as sexist against men. I don't know how a comic depicting a dominatrix making men cum demons would do that (somehow interpreting it as literally demonizing a subjugated male's sexuality?), but it's how I read it.

I started a full time temp job this week and realized that I've gotten too used to reading with no real time limits -- I usually read before bed, and the unemployed lifestyle generally lets you just read until you realize how late it is. I looked through my bookshelf after work today and saw a collection of short stories I've been meaning to reread that can get me through next week, but I don't know what I'm going to do after that. I tried taking the book I was reading in with me, but ended up coming back from lunch late every time I tried to read my book while I was eating. What kind of books do people read while they're on their break at work? What do y'all recommend that's in short-ish (I have an hour for lunch and can spend about 45 minutes of that with a book, so the short-ish has a lot of give), easily digestible chunks? I used to be able to pick things out for this pretty well, but that's apparently a skill that I've lost.

I spent two years studying this kind of science. The mere thought of the level of math and theory behind this being real and workable is going to leave me with nightmares. But also fusion has been a decade away for decades, so...

It's weird to me that this is a thing, especially since I know I've seen a lot of news stories that are "FBI/Police investigating death threats against [person]" with comment from the FBI/police. If they're the ones to sometimes announce that death threats are happening and definitely a thing, I don't really see how anyone can take the grossly un-nuanced position of "don't talk about them" when it's obviously something that merits a nuanced reaction. I could understand taking the position "don't talk about your death threat immediately" in a kind of "it could provoke a person who is obviously mentally unstable" kind of way (it's easy to poke holes in, but it's at least understandable), but it's so often just an admonishment to never talk about your death threats.

Michio Kaku writes kind of sciencey speculative works, not really science non-fiction. I think Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe is a better introduction to string theory than Kaku's, if that's of interest. Also, Feynman has some stellar and easy to understand lectures on physics. Six Easy Pieces is six of his easiest lectures on physics, followed by Six Not So Easy PIeces, or there's just Feynman's lectures in general. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is good, and it should be obvious what it's about. Depending on how broadly you're willing to define non-fiction, you could always read The Hot Zone. It's a novelization of the last time Ebola was in America, so it's a little topical, I guess? I don't know any great WWII history, but Lawrence in Arabia applies a cogent, compelling narrative to the Middle Eastern front of WWI. A Savage War of Peace does the same for the Algerian War, and is a strong enough history that it was cited as an example of what not to do in the Iraq War and recommended to/by US military officers.

I'm glad that more people are seeing that Milo is a sack of shit. He's been on my radar for a while because of some comments he's made as a general commentator on Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks, and all the general electronic security/freedom of information issues that go along with those, but it's really good to see that he's willing to spread his shit stained reputation as far as it can go.

Squarespace provides hosting and I think they don't charge you to register a domain if you pay for a full year of service up front? I'm actually not sure if you can use a Squarespace template without using them as a host, but without looking into it at all, it just doesn't feel like that's something you can do. No clue on whether or not the discount codes are active.

This was a huge part of the harassment of Jenn Frank. Her piece in the Guardian was published under a News > Technology > Games heading, and I saw a lob of hubbub about how it was opinion masquerading as news and it wasn't REALLY news and Jenn Frank should be ashamed of publishing her opinion piece as if it was a 100% factual account and blah blah blah. It sounds like even in his, "I'm not a misogynist!" statement, he's managing to make the coded message, "Yo misogynists, we're cool, right?"

You basically described my experience of fighting Kefka and hearing Dancing Mad for the first time, but replace orchestra with synth pipe organ and split it into four movements. There isn't technically Latin chanting in the game version for technological reasons, but come on. Just listen to the thing. The Latin is there in spirit. 4 movements of a single song for 4 different phases of a boss fight, all distinct from each other but cogent as a single work separate from the rest of the game (aside from a few leitmotifs). Also, I see someone mentioned it in passing earlier, but if you wanna talk about groundbreaking (or maybe just stupid? or bizarre?), how about making the player participate in an opera when the technology you're using isn't even sophisticated enough for your music to include lyrics? I have no idea why this appealed to me so much since I was like 8 or 9 when I first played the game (I guess I've just always been a pretentious asshole), but it hit me super hard back when I played the game, even if I'm not sure I completely understood what was going on?

I don't understand how people can think like this. Society-at-large has a big misogyny problem that applies to the majority, so how hard can it be to accept that maybe any sufficiently large group that exists in the world will probably have a big misogyny problem that applies to the majority? I'm so glad I stopped paying attention to TotalBiscuit years ago.

Talking to a therapist is definitely a good step, but if it's not an option for whatever reason, Al-Anon exists for a reason. It's a support group for families and friends of alcoholics. I've never been, but the people I know who have tell me that it's been a great resource for dealing with the helplessness and confusion that comes with just not being able to make someone want to get better. Here is a web site that lists Al-Anon meetings in the Austin area, if you decide to go that route. It's not for everyone, but it's an option that's available to you. I'm sorry you have to go through this.

It's one of those movements that thrives on people engaging with it, which is why it's just not worth commenting on anymore to me. It'll be background noise for a while, but once they realize no one's paying attention to their utterly vile tantrum, they'll stop. You know, until the next Tropes vs Women in Video Games video, anyway.

this was not a lie

My parents always just used decorative steins they had lying around for bookends, so I inherited their just-use-something-kinda-heavy-that-you-might-like-to-display-as-bookends philosophy. This has ended in me using a signed book in a display box as a bookend, but it looks fine so whatever. Or just use what my roommate did on her bookshelf: Dildos.

I went on a movie date with a guy where we both slept through Coraline. Theater staff had to wake us up afterwards to ask us to leave. I don't go on movie dates anymore.

At one of the places I temped at, my office mate was a cardboard cutout of John Wayne. Someone who'd been fired some 5 years before had brought him in so he had company in the secluded back office and nobody had bothered to move him in all that time. He was quiet and kept to himself. Really great guy to share an office with.

Isn't Uncivilized Press collecting Eel Mansions and releasing it this fall? I might end up buying that even though I have the singles just to have a second copy of it that's easier to read. It was a really phenomenal book. I think the only thing I've disliked from Uncivilized is Truth is Fragmentary and that probably has more to do with my taste than the quality of the book. I have Theth and Number 2 in my to read pile of comics -- they've just come in the mail and been thrown on the pile. I hope to get around to them this weekend. I've been really lazy about reading comics because life, but it's good to know that they're quality! Some Retrofit stuff is a little not great.

Look, just because the badass white sea snake skin wallet I have is naturally constructed to be fat does't mean I'm crazy. It just means I have bad taste.

I've been going through my minicomics this week because I need to get rid of some and I've been coming across some things that I forgot I really, really liked. People like Antoine Cosse and Alabaster whose names were only vaguely familiar, but whose work I really love. I think J.1137 is my favorite of Cosse's comics that I own. It's this fun little sci-fi pulp story about a robot actor who visits an open air slave labor prison camp thing and suffers the consequences of going somewhere he shouldn't. Alabaster has a series called Mimi and the Wolves that's pretty good so far, but apparently ongoing. She did a really good retelling of one of Horus' origin stories in Eye of Horus, too. Beta Testing the Apocalypse by Tom Kaczynski was a really great collection, but everything by Kaczynski is great. Big Busty Psychic Celeb Votes Satan by Ben Urkowitz was a really interesting look at fame in America, and also it's printed in pink and white so that's pretty great. I stopped for the night while rereading Secret Prison 7, which is a collection of essays and comics inspired by a Japanese underground anthology named Garo! It has a really interesting essay on Seiichi Hayashi that reminded me I want to read more than just Red-Colored Elegy by him. I also have a lot of really terrible comics that I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with. I'll have to check out Wal-Mart for some document frames or something, too. I have some subscriptions to small presses (which is why I have too many comics in the first place) so I get prints from them every now and then. I just have them in a pile, but I should actually display a few. Then again, I bought a frame for a John Campbell comic over a year ago and it's still just sitting on a table in a too big frame with a post-it note that says BUY MATTING on it, so...

When I moved into my current apartment, I was asked multiple times if I had my own appliances that I wanted to bring with me. I'm still really confused by how that would work. Where do they put the ones that are in here now? If the water line going into the fridge broke, would I be responsible for fixing it myself or would maintenance do it? Would they install the appliances I brought for me or is that something I would have to do myself? If I don't want them when I leave, would I be penalized for leaving them here? What kind of person is renting a shitty apartment like this but has a stove and fridge they're so attached to they want to bring them along? Not asking more questions about it is one of my biggest regrets in life.

The earring thing is pretty petty (It gives you something to look at during talking head sections! The shot is more dynamic! I don't know, I just like hoop earrings and think they look good on her.), but the forgettable content from the early videos isn't. I remember the general gist of the earlier videos, but not really specific examples. That removes some of the weight from her argument, but it might also just be a function of time -- I saw them a while ago, so maybe I've just forgotten the examples by no one's fault but my own. When I've pushed people on this in the past, it's gotten pretty obvious pretty fast that by "I don't agree entirely" they either mean "Agreeing makes me uncomfortable with some of the media I like and how it reflects on me, so I'm just avoiding thinking about it" or "Man, I really think women are shit but I have to seem reasonable somehow." I think just stressing to the first type of person that everyone likes problematic media is really helpful (I always tell them that I love horror movies and oh wow women in horror movies), and just fuckin socially curb stomp the second type as best you can.