Whatta Fiasco

Ugh. There’s nothing like waking up to a swollen, blotchy face and taking enough antihistamines to leave me a little foggy. There was no way I was going to be able to concentrate on work, let alone trying to keep people from freaking out about the way I looked. Of course, I had all the time I wanted to play with ruby on rails, but I just didn’t have a sufficient number of working brain cells. Coding? Heck, I wasn’t even able to do much reading. Instead I spent the morning listening to commentary tracks for The Fellowship of the Ring.

Mostly, right now I’m just disappointed that the antihistamine that was working so well the last time the hives struck, doesn’t seem to be doing the trick right now. But I’ll be seeing the dermatologist early next week. (Such and exciting life. So glamorous.) Here’s hoping he has another rabbit in his hat.

Blah blah blah. I want my brain back.

If you liked Cowl or Skinner, you’ll enjoy this collection of stories. I suspect the novels provide a better introduction to these worlds, so I would encourage reading them first.

It’s a patriarchy blamer’s nightmare. A young village thug falls for the local priest’s daughter. She rejects him because of his habitual violence, preferring to stick with her arranged marriage rather than wed a bully. She later learns that the thug has saved her sister from shame and convinced sister’s abusive husband to change his ways. (She isn’t told that the thug has used his standard violence and threats of more violence to get it to happen.) Just as she’s prepared to declare her love for the thug, he kidnaps her, screams at her, declares he can’t live without her, and threatens to beat her to death. She escapes. He gets involved in another altercation which leaves him seriously hurt and with brain damage. When she discovers how badly the thug is hurt, she declares her love for him. But when there is no hope for improvement and he’s sent off to an asylum, her friends and family convince her to go ahead with her arranged marriage. The thug experiences a magical recovery and escapes from the asylum, arriving just in time to find the family mourning because the daughter has killed herself with poison just before the marriage takes place.

Yes, it really is that bad. Maybe worse.

Due to unexpected circumstances, we postponed our anniversary celebration from Tuesday night to Thursday night. Aside from leaving me uncertain what day it was for the rest of the week, all worked out well. I went to the gym on Tuesday and did the workout thing, then last night we went to see Volver (two thumbs up).

Walking out of the theater afterwards we were assaulted by the sound of car horns. Oh yeah, KU was playing a basketball game. (They must have won.) Then sushi for dinner. I splurged a bit and got sashimi (hamachi) and some mid-range chilled sake. Too bad I don’t recall the name of the stuff, as it was good. But there was more sake there than I’m used to drinking. We also got a tip from the waitperson on where in town to find a decent selection of sake. It’s not something I normally keep in the house, but I may have to go check it out just to see what’s available. By the time we were done eating, the rain had chased the hawk fans back indoors.

And now it’s Friday and I can reset my internal day of the week function. Maybe I’ll even get some actual rest.

Another Pedro Almodóvar film. Yes, it features Penélope Cruz (and her cleavage) again. Very pretty. But Carmen Maura, as the deceased mother, is just superb, as is Blanca Portilla as Augustina. As are all the other female characters, and this film is jam packed with them, with real women, in painful and all too real situations. The music is excellent too. And tilting (at) windmills in La Mancha. I would say this is my favorite Almodóvar film, but I say that after every one of them I’ve seen. I’m looking foward to seeing what he comes up with next.

[imdb]

Here I go again, not getting a weekend update done until Tuesday afternoon? Typical. It was a decent weekend. We slept in Saturday and then did our monthly pizza brunch thing. I’ve decided that avocados on pizza are maybe not the best idea. And then in the evening we made it out to Union Station to see our friends, Queen’s Gambit, perform their last set of a very long day. Fun fun fun. I always enjoy hering them, and live is best of all. On Sunday we got up in time to have a non-pizza brunch with them before they took off for parts southerly.

Yesterday my replacement photoshop CDs showed up in the mail, so I was able to get that loaded on the new macbook, and then hook up my pen tablet. As expected, it’s much speedier and more responsive than on the iBook. And that’s officially the last piece of software I needed to get moved to the new box. I’ll give it another week of exclusive use (for luck) and then begin the cleaning process on the iBook in preparation for finding it a new home. With any luck, that will be with Max, but it’s very much a wait and see thing.

Today? Today is the thirteenth wedding anniversary for hubby and I. Will the craziness never cease? Not any time soon. I think we’re going to go see Volver and then try to find some food. Happy vernal equinox!

Did it answer all the questions I had after reading The Ordinary. No, it did not, other than a few of the obvious ones. (Why is not having royalty such a big deal? Who is this Kirith Kirin fellow? What’s the story behind Jessex/Yron?) Mostly it’s a big sweeping epic oozing with Tolkien influence and with some prominent gay and lesbian relationships that are (mostly) not a big deal. To sum up: gay teenager comes of age and ends up the most powerful mortal in his world through his own efforts and talents, and with a little help from his friends. And that right there is most of the reason why used copies of this book are going for outrageous prices. But it’s also a right decent not-quite-fat fantasy novel.

Hooray. I’m now on my new MacBook and I’m liking it very much. I stopped by the Apple Store last night on my way home and asked the genius behind the name tag for a USB modem, his response was, “uh like, for dial-up?” Yeah, boy-wonder. Dial-up. I’m rocking it old school during the day. Luckily he was able to find one downstairs and it works like a champ. I still miss the menubar interface of the internal modem on the iBook, but I can deal. Now I’m just waiting for my replacement Photoshop CDs. Very happy. It’s almost like living in the present!

[Edit: Just figured out how to get it to show up in the menubar. More joy.]

Yes, it’s opera time again! Normally I go on Monday nights, but because of the trip to Atlanta, I switched out for Wednesday night tickets and got to enjoy the annoying doctor who likes to “sit close enough to spit on the conductor.” I don’t think he meant that in the way it sounded. Thank goodness. But he still talks too much.

It was, as I had expected, a very funny opera. In fact, way back when I was a wee sprout, I saw Beverly Sills on the television with the Metropolitan Opera singing the role of Rosalina. This Rosalina (Jennifer Rivera) was a good singer, but she had appropriately crazy eyes and an amazing comedic face. Figaro (Daniel Belcher) was a red-headed puck, and Count Almaviva (Chad Freeberg) was pretty enough to put in an icecream cone. All in all, a pleasant evening of music.

A biologist (Calvin) and a linguist (Bickerton) chat from their respective fields concerning theories of how and why humans progressed from protolanguage to modern language abilities. Each contributor gets his own text font, and they generally alternate chapters, with each providing interjections and aisdes in the other man’s text. Between them they knock down the ideas that speech evolved from alarm calls or was prompted by social interaction needs in large groups. Along the way they deflate the Chomsky monster, pointing out that his views have evolved considerably over the years, and that his position on genetically shared language capacity isn’t quite as far-fetched as it might seem. Luckily Chomsky stays mostly in the background in favor of ideas about mapping physio-spatial planning onto linguistic structure planning and the economies thereof. Fun stuff.