raks sharqi...

i love belly dance... i know, it has only been one lesson, but it is so much fun!!!! and i am not as sore as i thought i would be... it is really hard, lots more so than i expected, but soooooo much fun... i can't wait till i am good... g-fresh and i are going to practice every night...

i only wish i was as good as this girl is...

mass media...

so, as descriptions of mass media, i find this one to be very entertaining... and somewhat true...

there is a ton of information, much of it i don't care about, on the internet - just as i imagine the drunk librarian in the corner at the cocktail party... and like the librarian, once one gets it started, it sucks you in with information to places you never wanted to go... like facebook, myspace and random forums that suck the soul from the ideas they may have been founded on... and occasionally you get a gem - a well-edited wiki, an educational website, friends blogs - but more often you lose hours of you life that you can never get back... and i love it...

i must be perverse, because i would rather talk to the drunk librarian in the corner than most of the other people at the party... the internet is where i get my news, talk to friends, organize my life... and i really love the random places that the drunk librarian leads me... beautiful, brilliant, fun places... even though there are some places that you can not un-know, no matter how much you may wish to - like some of the places you can find kittens...

still, it beats the hell out of "fair and balanced"...

culture, in brief...

i have discovered a lovely new(to me) site that will inspire horror in those of a serious literary persuasion, possible confusion in the rest of the population, and general hilarity all around...

please go visit Book-A-Minute Classics and see for yourself - they are truly brilliant...

my favorite so far is this one, of The Odyssey ...

i posted a general update on the status of my holiday break on flock hall 2.0, so if you are interested go there to read it...

i have to say that i am not a fan of new year's resolutions - in my experience no one follows them anyway - but there are a few things in my life that look like resolutions...

~ i have set up a fairly rigorous (by fleur standards) work-out schedule with my sister - both gym time and belly dancing and pilates classes
~ my roommate's vegan lifestyle is spilling over into my eating habits - i think about them more than i have in the past, anyway
~ my master's program reading list is going to force me to read some of the things that have been in the to-be-read pile since before i started college
~ the massive amounts of reading which i have to do this semester will require a schedule to keep on track - more planning than i have ever really done for homework before this year - grad school is much different from undergrad
~ tighter-than-planned money situation will require better budgeting skills and more fiscal responsibility

you can probably see how these items have the flavor of resolutions, but i prefer to see them as life changes not dependent on a date cycle to come into effect (besides that, i am listing them a couple weeks after the new year- where did the break go?) - and also they will hopefully have a longer life span than mid-february, unlike the average new year's resolution...

my two geeks...

so my literature geek and my tech geek both sqeeeeed a little when i saw this article about the One Laptop Per Child program and UNICEF teaming up to create a database of oral tradition stories, so as to preserve them... yay for the preservation of culture!

here is the stories database...

a holiday list...

tacky or not, the holiday wish list is making an appearance - it is by no means a complete list of my desires, and if you feel inspired to get me something not on here, feel free... and if you don't want to give me anything at all that is fine, too... but several people have asked what i want, so here it is in all of its greedy glory...

fun, writer-type stuff:
anything from here, cause they are fun: http://www.ninthmoon.com
Scrivener
Curio

kitchen stuff:
le creuset cookware
a digital kitchen thermometer
a mandolin slicer - talk to squid first, though cause she said she might =)

and the ubiquitous book category:
Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich
Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Restaurant Reviews, Articles, Memoir, Fiction and More by Dianne Jacob
The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller
More Great Good Dairy-free Desserts by Fran Costigan
Rejection, Romance and Royalties: The Wacky World of a Working Writer By Laura Resnick
any of the Andrew Lang Fairy Books
this category could go on indefinitely, so i am stopping...

that is more than enough greediness for the year... and really i don't need presents from anyone, but honestly, who doesn't like presents...

my nod to the commercialism of the season has been fulfilled...

mfa, anyone?

wow ... some bright future prospects with a my degree (kinda - i will have an MA not an MFA - not sure what difference that one letter makes in this case, though)


http://www.marriedtothesea.com/

politics and literature...

in a publicity-hounding world it is really not that much of a stretch to combine book tours with campaigns, and what a prolific bunch of candidates we have... if you are unfamiliar with the literary politicos, Salon has reviewed the candidates' books here... some i have seen some i had not heard of... will this supposedly candid look at their lives and their views (the books are all "non-fiction") give you a better insight during the 2008 election, or does it just drive home the lack of good options? by the way, Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You) was not reviewed... =(

a matter of heart...

so this is a subject that is close to my heart on many levels... it just plain rocks...
Suzanne Brockmann, a bestselling author of romance novels, is donating all the profits of her latest book, All Through The Night, which was released on 30 October, to MassEquality... you can read more about it here... as a note for all my gay friends, who may not normally be interested in such a book, it features a gay wedding, possibly a first for mainstream romance and all the profits go to a great cause...

i have not yet read the book, but i plan on it... and i am going to buy it first, not something i generally do with new authors, as the public library system here rocks... but is supports such a good cause and, well, i love romance, so...

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month... read about it here... and then go write...

referals... reading rules my life...

my life has been subsumed by grad school so here are some other cool places to go read stuff... cause i am not posting here...

cute overload
postsecret
ironic sans
suicide food
the sneeze
wonkette

they are in no particular order, but they are all fascinating to me for one reason or another ...
they are all found on PC Magainze's Our Favorite 100 Blogs 2007 though i had seen some of them before...
enjoy...

so i had to share...

some of you have already seen this i am sure, but it came up again recently in a paper i am writing on conduct books from the middle ages because the similarity really struck me...

from 1406... "She will be overjoyed to see him, and when she is with him she will try hard to say everything that ought to please him, and she will keep a happy expression on her face."

from 1953...

(click to see all of the detail)

eerily similar, no? one might think no progress had been made at all...

recipes are fun...

Tessa - 1/4 cup of ambition - 2 heaping tablespoons of kindness - a gallon of crazy Serve hot.

'What is your personality recipe?' at QuizGalaxy.com

banned book week - the closer...

so this is the end of banned books week and i thought that i couldn't let it pass without saying something, so...

U.S Airport Screeners Are Watching What You Read
"They are noting people's race and they are writing down what people read"
"The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment."

really the whole article is about the censorship of travel... soon they will decide when and where you are allowed to go... the loss of personal freedom is huge, and when you start with small things like what people are reading and what they are allowed to read - it very quickly leads to bigger things... "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."- Heinrich Heine

some links in the fight against censorship...
Delete Censorship
The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000
Banned Book T-shirts
The Forbidden Library
Controversial & Banned Books
some more quotes on censorship...

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education."
-- Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education

"If the human body's obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not me."
-- Larry Flynt

"Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance."
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson, February 11, 1964

and my personal favorite...

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who will watch the watchers?"
-- Juvenal

so, go read a banned book...

some funny craziness...

Arabian Formula- a crazy cross cultural marketing incident

Vulva Perfume (NSFW) - this one may have been visited by the flock before- but still vastly disturbing with a bit of amusement thrown in for good measure - what is new to this community is the smell test - now you can find out what men really think of the scent of a woman...

i was gonna find more, but i guess this is enough crazy for today...

enjoy =)

Harvest Home...

today is the autumnal equinox, the first day of fall astrologically (though if you live in wyoming you have probably noticed the chill in the air before today), second harvest festival and, in contemporary america, Mabon... it is a day of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and the gifts in our lives... considered a time of balance, as the day and the night are equal on this holiday, it is when we stop and relax and enjoy the fruits of our personal harvests, whether they be from toiling in our gardens, working at our jobs, studying for tests, or just dealing with the craziness that is everyday life... as with all pagan holidays, it reflects the cycles of nature and personal relationship with the world around us - and on this day we contemplate the seeds we have planted in our lives and see how they are coming to fruition...

oops!

so - i am at times internet retarded, and i mean that in the traditional sense of the word, not the un-PC sense... i am a little slow... along with the five questions i posted, i was supposed to say that if you want to play the game, let me know in the comments and i will make five questions for you... so, if you want to play, let me know in the comments and i will make five questions for you =)

Five Questions...

1. What is your favorite recipe to make?
biscuits or bread, doughy baked goods, really anything that i get to kneed - there is something so primal and connective in really digging into the creation your food like that...

2. Excellent post on Kitchen Witchery by you. What would you say to someone interested in following a such a path?
research... meditate... know yourself... know your world... know the history of the path... don't be fluffy... blessed be...

3. You are given a year to perfect your skills and knowledge in one cuisine that you are not fluent in, of your choice. Which would you pick, and why?
that is tough, i have so much to learn and there are so many places that cook beautifully, which i am only minimally familiar with - France, Eastern Europe, Iran, Brazil, the many provinces of China... but i think i would go with Thai - it is so completely fabulous and i love the balance of it - spicy/sweet/savory/sour - the delicacy and skill involved in balancing flavors like that is amazing...

4. Define "assmuppet."
that is one of those terms which actual definition is very contextual - it is a term used to refer to an individual who has someone else's hand controlling them, via their anus; however it can be used to refer to someone who is controlled in that manner by an institution, ideal, or other general stupidity, as well... i could put a name here, but you all know who he is anyway...

5. A biscuit traveling at 9.8 meters / second flies off the cookie sheet 2 feet away from the oven door, and 4 feet away from the kitchen table. It lands on page 734 of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, smearing butter into the pages. What velocity has it hit the book, and more importantly what bribery will it take for you to ship some biscuits across country?
as the Norton was on the counter, that is impossible to calculate with the given information, however, i would guess that it has hit with a velocity of "oh s**t..." unless the Norton was open to Aphra Behn, in which case the velocity was "thank the goddess"... as to bribery, i am so above that =) ... besides, biscuits are better fresh anyway... when are you coming to laramie?

classic

i have been having a bad blog week... i'll think, "i should blog..." so i open up my post and proceed to go completely blank... it's not as though nothing has happened in my life, i just can't imagine the happenings of my grad class, and my increasing fascination with victorian prose styles, and the latest paranormal romance novel as being of that much interest to anyone but me... so that leaves me with the dilemma of what to blog about... so, the cop-out of bloggers everywhere... ooooh, shiny...