Sunday

Sunday was a lot quieter than Saturday. Kouryou-chan and Omaha went to a birthday party for one of Kouryou-chan's friends at a local swimming pool. I stayed home and cleaned up the kitchen, and when they got home we set to working on the back yard. I managed to convert my home network to be DHCP-based, which is an interesting experiment. I have to up the laptop by hand, since Gentoo's wireless layout is poorly documented and I haven't had the time to get it organized. (I have it organized by the card I put in, but Gentoo wants to do it by access point, so there's contention there.)

I mowed the lawn and pulled out lots of blackberry bushes.

We went out to dinner because Omaha wanted to take Kouryou-chan to Ratatouille. It's a great flick, and even adults will like it. There's lots of food and wine mentioned, and Peter O'Toole does a fabulous job as the evil food critic.

How bizarre!

I just received the most bizarre email, from some woman claiming that "Aimee' is not yours" and demanded that I should "give credit where credit is due."

For the record, I did write the Aimee' series, both the first and second volumes, and I released them to rec.arts.erotica, starting with Chapter 1, in March of 1994. The copyright on the 1994 release reads:

"Aimee'" is copyright (c) 1994 Elf Mathieu Sternberg. May be freely distributed by electronic media; hardcopies are limited to single printings for personal use.

That would be me.

How do they know these things‽‽‽‽‽

It's all true! ( Meme behind the cut: Why will my LJ be suspended? )

It's the "On usenet" fate that creeps me out!

Rumor Mill!

Gawker media unofficially breaks the news that BradFitz has walked away from Six Apart, apparently experiencing burnout and corporate boredom.

Japanese studies and Kanji confusion

I'm starting to get the hang of my Kanji, but it's a slow thing. My vocabulary is limited to what I want to read, which is mostly lighthearted smutty fare. The other day I was stopped by this construction: "見たい?" My first reaction was that it meant "What day?" but that didn't make any sense: the scene was of a young man and young woman in the bedtime, a sort of novitiate scene, and she's just come out of the shower with a towel around her midriff and a bit of a leering expression on her face. I struggled with several dictionaries before realizing that I had confused 見 with 日. The latter means "day" or "sun", but the first is simply miru, to look. 見たい is then just plain old mitai, and in contexts means "Wanna see?"

It really is just a matter of reading some Kanji every day. Eventually, it sticks with you.

Geek advice

I'm keepin' this: How to talk to a geek conference.

Sightings!

It has been a day for very, very weird sightings. I should whip out my camera, but I keep forgetting it. This morning, while I was on the way to work, I spotted a beaten pickup in the lot across the street from the bus stop. There's a run-down bar and grill over there; I think Omaha and I have eaten in it exactly once, and that was when we first moved in. The truck had a bumper sticker that read, "Thank you George Bush! Kick their ass and take their gas." Yeah, that's the spirit.

On the way home, I have to transfer from a bus that takes me into downtown to one that takes me home. My usual exchange point is in a nice part of belltown: the Casbah cafe, Singles Going Steady (a punk rock specialty record store, with a charming sign in the front that reads "All Hippies Must Use Rear Entrance"), and some of the more popular district restaurants across the streets, like Mama's Mexican (Kouryou-chan loves the place because they have live mariachis) and Coney Island (restaurant and bar set up like an old-school video arcade).

One block away is a place called The Recovery Center, and surrounding it are the waves of individuals who need recovery of some kind. This afternoon, on the way home, I watched a woman crouch down behind one of those ugly orange Element cars and light up her crack pipe right there on the street, and on the robust benches by the bus stop I listened to one man verbally accost a woman of setting up his sister and getting her sent to jail. He didn't seem to deny that his sister needed jail, he just didn't want his family's honor besmirched by having it actually happen. I thought violence might break out at any moment, but he eventually walked away, muttering.

And finally, on the bus itself, there's the all-American woman, this huge rotund woman, and her child, who's now about three, as blobby as mom, and who never, ever fails to have either a bag of cookies or a Starbucks parfait or something similar. The first time I saw her, the kid was still in a stroller and she was shoving ice cream into him as fast as he could tolerate it. At what point does "food is love" become generational abuse?

Foodie? Moi?

"We need to use up stuff in the 'fridge."

A dangerous statement. Y'know what we ended up with? Chicken thighs baked in a Moroccan sauce of lemon juice, garlic, cumin, paprika, thyme, cinnamon, and redpepper, dished over couscous and sprinkled with fresh feta cheese for the protein, and for our vegetable: shredded blanched kale simmered with oatmeal and diced leftover pork, all on a plate with crisp quick-baked thin-sliced zucchini.

Woah. Yum. Recipes:

• Baked chicken thighs in Moroccan sause.
• Kale with oatmeal and bacon

Kouryou-chan didn't like any of it, except the couscous. She didn't buy it even when I tried doing Gusteau's accent.

I've also been enjoying 1554, a delicious beer from the New Belgium beer company, the group that makes Fat Tire. It's heavy flavor paired well with the rich sauces in this recipe. I've really tried to start eating locally, and while New Belgium isn't really local (it's in Colorado) it's better than Stella Artois, which must have ridiculous food miles: it comes from old Belgium.

I am so gonna ruin your childhood.

If you ever, ever enjoyed Lucky Starr (love, love, love that cover art), I am so about to ruin your childhood.

( Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, Chapter 7, Alternative Version, first draft )

Alright, that's enough.

PS: This answers the question, "Why is Caprice Starr a girl?" Why that question is a question is a question that will be answered in due time.