lightcastle

My Friday class was just cancelled.
Anyone doing anything interesting I should know about?

My arm hurts.

My coworker (those of you at the housewarming party would remember him as the one who made curry and was crashed on the couch blissed out on music causing some to wonder if he thought he was in an opium den) carries around a small version of The Iliad in ancient Greek.

No, he cannot read Ancient Greek.

It's been a day or two of random.

Thor was meh. Pretty man flesh, as I was told, but clunky in the storytelling.

The new umbrella lasted almost 1 hour before breaking.

I signed the lease on the new place.

I have an audition in Ottawa tomorrow.

I somehow succeeded in butt *texting* someone, which still kind of amazes me.

Twenty minutes to Doctor Who

As some of you know, that's pretty much what filming is like all the time.

When that wait is in -13 degree weather, it's pretty annoying.

Nonetheless, I had fun filming this weekend, and Laurie's bold idea to film the wheel of the year will result in further adventures in weather as shooting goes on. Since I am the stranger from the other village, I won't be in all of them anyway. With the first story shot, the characters are getting more depth and background as the actors (almost all amateurs) find reasons to do what they are doing. I remain hopeful the writer will take some of these threads and weave stronger stories out of them.

At least we didn't get hit with any crazy snowstorms while trying to shoot.

Of course, everything took longer than hoped for and I just barely made the 9:30 bus, except that I had to go through security first. I don't know why there were metal detectors and security personnel for the bus, but I had to go through the whole routine: keys and change into the bin, metal detector, check my flask to make sure it was empty and remind me that if it wasn't I wouldn't be allowed on.

That all pushed me to the overflow bus with six other people, and then that bus was canceled so I sat in the bus station for 2 hours and got to go through security again. Just lovely.

I'm exhausted from getting home so late, and still scruffy and unshaved from looking like a desperate traveler whose arrival portends dark things for the village.

Today was an errand-running day.

+ Dry cleaning

+ Glasses-salvaging: One frame and lens pair was salvageable. The second resulted in a shattered lens and now will be used as a prop for portraits. The third had a broken arm and the frame is lost. I'd love to put the old lenses (which are fine) into new frames, but the consensus seems to be that this is something that simply CANNOT BE DONE! It seems a waste. What do people do with all the old glass from lenses? Just melt it down and recycle it?

+ Bills sent to the USA

- No fridge magnets

+ Food shopping. (Do I make profiterolles for the Super Bowl?)

- No new computer, as the "make it from parts" guy recommended to me wasn't very helpful. I might have a line on a battery I can borrow for my old laptop though, which may allow me to pull info off the hard drive.

- My bag of watches to bring to the jeweler seems to have vanished at Hilary's house.

- Lots of tabs I should clear in one of those link dump posts I do from time to time.

So, after much travail, I once again have internet access at home. (Hey, it only took 3 weeks.)

I think I will try to take this opportunity to do some clean up and pruning and re-organizing of how I tackle online life. (Has anyone invented a decent social aggregation tool while I wasn't looking? New email client? Must-have browser? Convenient way to track blogs and share links or what have you that doesn't involve me logging into thirty different things? Related: I might go nuts and see what Opera 11 looks like after dropping it somewhere around 7 or 8.)

Anyone who wants to their web-design/building savvy for food/photos/other recompense of choice is welcome to ping me.

Language log takes a peek at the regionally-idiomatic use of the definite article for highways, public transport systems, and neighborhoods. (Triggered by a NoCal/SoCal difference on the matter.)

Thinking quickly, Montreal English throws a definite article in front of all the highways. (Even the Decarie.) New York uses just numbers, and so does Boston. (I don't think I ever heard anyone use a definite article or even an "I" for the interstates.) Indiana uses the I, but not the definite article, although I'm not sure I'm remembering that correctly.

Public transit takes the definite article in Boston, Montreal, and New York, I think. (I will take the T, the Metro, the Subway.)

Anyone have thoughts on local idiosyncrasies they notice?

See title.
Also, I have the Roadrunner theme song in my head for some ungodly reason.

DADT repeal is dead.

I can't believe I missed noting the anniversary of the first recorded performance of a woman actor playing a female part on the British stage. (The afternoon of Saturday, December 8, 1660)

From Ari: If this sign is true, this is quite possibly the saddest place in the world.

Another from mzrowan, describing the still face experiment, which you might want to mention the next time someone tells you they aren't influenced by how others react to them. (We are social creatures.)

For instance, see this two-year old who has clearly absorbed how one is supposed to express devotion in her culture.

And speaking of social connection, From Teresea Nielsen Hayden and Roger Ebert - a bit on loneliness and how the internet interacts with it. Ebert seems not to be disposed to loneliness, and so wants to attribute it to causes. Hayden sums things up pretty well, and unsurprisingly, Ebert seems to be classy about learning from his audience. As someone who is lonely by disposition, this was an interesting read.

Still clearing out old links:

I appreciate an authority figure who can remind someone that women and girls are important too, so when a lawyer asked for special dispensation if his daughter's child was a boy, so he could attend the bris, Judge Kimba Wood said fine, as long as he understood that if the child was a girl, there would be a public celebration of the fact in her courtroom.

And as long as we're talking gender, a three-year old shows us you can handle gender and its many variations with class at any age.

Off to France, where there is a group called La Barbe, who protest the lack of women in positions of authority in France by showing up wearing fake beards. (I know a God of Knowledge who would approve.)

And while not steampunk or Strowler, let me point you to The First English Dictionary of Slang, in case you want to speak like a 17th Century dandyprat.

This idea of pleasure activisim sounds a lot like what I thought Epicurianism to be before I read any Epicurus.

Screw you, 2012! Billboards in Tennessee say the Rapture is May 21, 2011! (Good Christians aren't going to let a falsely interpreted Mayan prophecy steal their eschaton!)

The logic is simple math, according to the people who put up the billboards.

According to Camping's prediction, the Rapture will happen exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He said the flood happened in 4990 B.C., on what would have been May 21 in the modern calendar. God gave Noah one week of warning.

Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture.

Interestingly, this is right after an annular solar eclipse.