Tea and books and stupid crap

OK listen LISTEN this is IMPORTANT. I glanced into my spam folder just now and I have these messages...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:57:00 -0400

OK listen LISTEN this is IMPORTANT. I glanced into my spam folder just now and I have these messages pretending to be from UPS, and when I open them it’s just a graphic telling me they couldn’t deliver a package, blah blah blah, click on this totally legit link for help.

But what’s AMAZING is how, you know in Gmail, you get like, the first line of the email in the preview, and sometimes companies will manipulate that to say something else? These are poetry. Incomplete poetry that I will never be able to finish, because they cut off mid-line. They’re just grabbing random quotes from literature I guess, and I can see the rest of the quotes if I click “show original” and scan through the coding, but I like them better this way because of how weird they are with no context or ending.

A sample:

So they left us for their pleasure; and in due time, one by one --    
But I will not be morose about them;

It was his own fault; but it was a china plate, the last of the dinner service that had 
belonged to his grandmother

thestoutorialist: barackobama: Some Joe for your...

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:16:20 -0400

thestoutorialist:

barackobama:

Some Joe for your Wednesday.

Oh Joey

I can actually hear him calling that kid “Tiger”.

kokodokoko replied to your post: I need a new Twitter web app. I am picky, and the… just saw...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:25:12 -0400

kokodokoko replied to your post: I need a new Twitter web app. I am picky, and the…

just saw your ps. what do you mean jumps around? you can change how often it refreshes…? mine doesn’t automatically jump to the top, so maybe that’s an option to change?

When it refreshes, it’ll tell me “oh hey you have this many unread messages” and when I start to scroll up to see them, it jumps about halfway through the section of new stuff. I don’t know why it does that, but it always does, and it drives me to wanting to stab the computer. Also it auto-scrolls when it refreshes unless I’ve purposely scrolled down a few tweets, which I hate. I can find the option to change how often it refreshes, but not how to make it not do that thing.

I need a new Twitter web app. I am picky, and the last time I did this I got pretty good at...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:13:00 -0400

I need a new Twitter web app. I am picky, and the last time I did this I got pretty good at explaining what I want. So:

1. Needs to be a web app, I don’t want to download anything. I share computers at work.

2. Has to be able to handle multiple accounts well.

3. If it auto-scrolls up to new tweets with no option to turn that off, or makes you scroll down a few to keep it from happening, kill it with fire.

4. Preferably I’d like an easy option between auto-RT and manual RT.

5. Pic/media previews are nice but not a deal-breaker.

I was using Seesmic web, but they decided that it was too useful and killed it in favor of Seesmic Ping, which means if you want to post more than 10 times a day you need a paid account, and even then it just doesn’t do what I need it to do. I tried Echofon today but I don’t want something that pops up in all of my browser tabs like it does, and I couldn’t get it to work anyway. It was weird. I did like that if I buy the pro version I get it across all of my devices and it apparently syncs between them all easily, but again, not a deal-breaker for me.

So help me, Twitter nerds, what is the perfect thing that I should be using?

PS I tried Hootsuite too but the way it’ll jump around drives me nuts.

The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:12:22 -0400

tithenai:

emilytheslayer:

I booktalked this recently to adults at my library. Since the author is a friend, I thought it was only fair to post it so she could see it.

This is a fascinating little book. The author is a Lebanese-Canadian poet currently working on a phd in Cornwall. A few years back she became friends with Danielle Sucher, a gourmet chef in NYC. They bonded over their fascination with honey, and Sucher sent El-Mohtar 28 tiny samples of different types of honey. Each day for a month she tasted one of the samples, wrote down some of her observations of its character, and then wrote a poem or short story inspired by the honey. There’s moments where the flavor of a honey reminds her of days spent with her grandfather, poetry that goes from sublime to downright sexy, and El-Mohtar’s fascination and delight shines through every word. Add to all of that some fantastically gorgeous art from Oliver Hunter, and you have this unique experience that I absolutely adore. Project books like Julie and Julia or people who spend a year eating junk food have been popular lately, but this is the first one I’ve seen that’s resulted in poetry. Perfect for reading straight through with a cup of tea, or dipping into for a page or two whenever you want a taste of something sweet.

*LOVE* Thank you so much, dear lady.

In case anyone’s interested, the print edition with Oliver Hunter’s illustrations is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, as well as from The Book Depository; the e-book edition (sans illustrations) is available from Weightless Books, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Barnes and Noble, for all your various e-reading devices’ needs.

Reblargling for the relevant links. Also I apparently got part of this wrong, and the grandfather story did not actually take place in Lebanon, I just fail at reading, lol.

The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:14:00 -0400

I booktalked this recently to adults at my library. Since the author is a friend, I thought it was only fair to post it so she could see it.

This is a fascinating little book. The author is a Lebanese-Canadian poet currently working on a phd in Cornwall. A few years back she became friends with Danielle Sucher, a gourmet chef in NYC. They bonded over their fascination with honey, and Sucher sent El-Mohtar 28 tiny samples of different types of honey. Each day for a month she tasted one of the samples, wrote down some of her observations of its character, and then wrote a poem or short story inspired by the honey. There’s moments where the flavor of a honey reminds her of days spent with her grandfather in Lebanon, poetry that goes from sublime to downright sexy, and El-Mohtar’s fascination and delight shines through every word. Add to all of that some fantastically gorgeous art from Oliver Hunter, and you have this unique experience that I absolutely adore. Project books like Julie and Julia or people who spend a year eating junk food have been popular lately, but this is the first one I’ve seen that’s resulted in poetry. Perfect for reading straight through with a cup of tea, or dipping into for a page or two whenever you want a taste of something sweet.

Photo

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 22:17:25 -0400

Photo

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 07:47:53 -0400

laughterkey: Top that.

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 22:05:28 -0400

laughterkey:

Top that.

unholyglee: kyssthis16: brittleshea: sisterbutters: kummersau...

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:10:55 -0400

unholyglee:

kyssthis16:

brittleshea:

sisterbutters:

kummersaurus:

crying because 50 shades of grey

50 shades of there

This fuckery right here.

You mean this fuckery right… there.

OK so today we kayaked again, and friends, it was MAGICAL. I’ve said all of this on twitter so...

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:09:38 -0400

OK so today we kayaked again, and friends, it was MAGICAL. I’ve said all of this on twitter so skip to the next paragraph if you’ve seen it but on the way there we saw a woodchuck, just chilling out on the side of the road nomming some plants. Then on the river we saw about a million turtles sunning themselves, the usual shit-tons of geese and ducks, lots of ducklings and goslings too, loons, blue herons, night herons, herons sitting on a floaty thing making patterns with their wings (every other one had their wings out), and a guy on the banks playing saxophone as we paddled past.

Anyway the important thing is that this is actually only my second time kayaking, but I did WAY better than last time. We were out there for about 2.5 hours, and we went 7.28 miles, which is a LOT and my shoulders will probably hate me tomorrow. So right now I’m pretty damn pleased with myself, and it got me thinking about body acceptance and exercise and stuff. I’ve been lifting weights semi-seriously for a couple of months now too, and I’m starting to see actual definition in my arms? That’s rad. Here’s the thing, is that doing this stuff is making me appreciate my body in ways I don’t think I have before. Like, I’m still fat guys, I’m not going to shy away from that. I hover around 200 pounds right now and I’m kinda short, and I’m fat. Whatevs, right?

I’ve seen Fat Acceptance people talk about not “punishing” their body with exercise, and I get that. The thing that’s changed is that exercise is now a way for me torevelin my body and be proud of what it can do. There’s probably a lot more there to think about, and I might come back to it, but the other thing this got me onto was healthy and unhealthy behaviors and how sometimes those can be the same behaviors but with different mindsets, which is not a terribly earth-shattering thought, but there it is. I used to exercise because I thought I had to because obviously I should want to be thin. Sidenote: it may or may not be important to the understanding of this post that my mom is/was/is again IDK anorexic. Which explains a lot about my thought processes and what I heard growing up. Anyway. I always hated exercise, and I hated sports, and nothing about any of it was ever fun once it became about losing weight. Exercise was a means to an end and that end came out of self-hatred and all of the ways society told me to hate myself because my body was unacceptable. So no wonder I never really stuck with it, right?

My goals have changed completely now. I’m pretty cool with my muscles bulking up if that’s what ends up happening with my body, I’m cool if my stomach’s never flat, whatever. I really loved the way I felt at the end of our paddle today, even if my arms were a little shaky trying to get out of the dang kayak (if you have never done this it is an obnoxious way to do things), and I know my shoulders will probably hate me tomorrow. There’s a lot tied up in this, and part of it is this whole thing where being a vocal (even mildly vocal, which is where I put myself) feminist on the internet means accusations of misandry, and how so many of us have basically decided to just run with that for now. I mean hey, if you’re going to accuse me of hating men and wanting them all dead, well, you convinced me! So there’s a bunch of us who’ve been weightlifting and talking about this and rejecting this thing of wanting to be stronger but “you know, not bulking up.” Screw it man, I’mfinewith my body bulking up. I want to look like I can punch ALL the dicks.

So then the flipside of this is how the same behavior can be healthy or unhealthy even in the same person. In high school my best friend was anorexic. Which I wassuperin denial about because I saw her eat every day, so how could this be? She was a health nut, right? And that was the thing. She exercised to the point of obsession, and she’d internalized the idea that *any* fat on her body was bad. Part of this was because she got into bodybuilding. It got bad enough with her that she stopped having her period and her parents were thinking of sending her to an institution instead of having her senior year at school with me. This was the point where together, she and I finally faced the extent of her problem, and she started getting better.

A few years later when we were in college in different states, she sent me an email after completing her first half-marathon. She talked about standing in the shower after the race and being exhausted, but so proud of her body and what it had accomplished. She knew she never would have had the staying power for a race like that when she was still sick.

So I don’t really have a grand conclusion here, and obviously this is really just about me and I’m not going to try to generalize out to anyone else or start acting like I know what everyone should do, but this was some important stuff for me to think through. It’s kind of a big deal for me to be able to look in the mirror and see my belly fat and still be proud of how far I got in the kayak today, and know that tomorrow I’m going to completely rock my gym session, and even if no one but me can *look* at me and see all that, well, fuck those people anyway.

Photo

Wed, 23 May 2012 22:35:17 -0400

dogblogsf: And then there’s that certain breed of dog we know...

Wed, 23 May 2012 20:06:07 -0400

dogblogsf:

And then there’s that certain breed of dog we know only as the Woe Sponge, so named for his ability to soak up not only the dolor of the world at large, but your own as well, removing it from your body after only a few seconds of gentle pats on the head. Remarkably, the Woe Sponge never needs to be wrung out, as he is self-renewing and eternal.

(dog 596)

jasietaraevangesen: madamethursday: [Image: A very surprised,...

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:58:48 -0400

jasietaraevangesen:

madamethursday:

[Image: A very surprised, shocked looking larger owl type bird currounded by several smaller finch type birds nestled closely together all on one branch.]

thestrongestman:

nazerine:

phuuuuu:

THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE

THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE

how did I get here

Same as it ever was

For Amber.

polerin: super-eklectic1: vectors…basic physics I was...

Wed, 23 May 2012 16:28:33 -0400

polerin:

super-eklectic1:

vectors…basic physics

I was cheering the slinky on like it was running an iron man. Seriously. Full on whoopin ‘n hollerin. … I’m a dork.

So dramatic! Reblog if you cry every time.

Photo

Tue, 22 May 2012 22:06:08 -0400

Oh my god I have to stop looking at Goodreads reviews! I only do it because sometimes people will do...

Tue, 22 May 2012 21:25:19 -0400

Oh my god I have to stop looking at Goodreads reviews! I only do it because sometimes people will do summaries that are better than the back of the book, and I find that helpful when I’m writing booktalks for books I haven’t had time to read yet. But I just found ANOTHER ONE where the reader is like “I don’t understand why this character wanted to be a jazz singer, that was totally just thrown in out of nowhere.” The first chapter of the book (Vixen, it’s YA jazz age historical fiction) is about this character going to a speakeasy for the first time. She’s listening to the music and there’s like, an entire page of her getting wrapped up in it and thinking about her own voice lessons, and how when her mom’s not around she turns on the radio and sings along to popular music, and then there’s this line “Even though she’d only performed publicly for school events and the occasional society party, Gloria was overcome with a fierce longing, wishing it wereherup there instead, soaking up the spotlight’s beam.”

So yeah, the desire to become a jazz singer definitely comes out of nowhere later in the book.

My favorite thing is when I read a book review on Goodreads or Amazon where someone HATED a book so...

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:14:23 -0400

My favorite thing is when I read a book review on Goodreads or Amazon where someone HATED a book so they post all these questions that are supposedly left unexplained and I’m like “huh that’s interesting I wonder if this is really something justifiable” and then I read the first chapter of the book and all of those questions are answered really clearly.

fycomicbookfriendships: — Amanda Conner Cover of Girl Comics...

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:30:46 -0400

fycomicbookfriendships:

— Amanda Conner

Cover of Girl Comics #1

We got a print of this signed by Amanda Conner at NYCC a couple of years ago. She is the Best Artist in Comics and a very cool lady. And yes, everything about this is awesome.

Photo

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:09:18 -0400