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Showing posts from June, 2016
One of my toes hurts. It doesn't look bruised, and palpation suggests it's not broken or dislocated. It's just sort of a stabby-yanking pain, like the high-tension wire-pull feeling you get when you try to stretch a muscle that doesn't want to cooperate, only it happens kind of at random. Moving it doesn't help. Neither does not moving it. Pressing on it, not pressing on it, elevating it, dangling it off the edge of the bed, keeping it warm, keeping it cool, and knocking back more Aleve don't do anything, either. The pain is neuropathic, an adjective formed from the roots neuro- , "nerve", and -pathy , "with which something has gone wrong". A nerve has become angered for mysterious, inscrutable nerve reasons, and now my toe hurts. This happens a fair amount. Normally my brain just sort of edits it out. I pay attention to things that change state with stimuli. A foot that twinges sharply when I put weight on it or head pain that lessens wh

Monday Mystery: Anthonette Cayedito

The 1986 disappearance of 9-year-old Anthonette Cayedito from her home in Gallup, New Mexico, is a sad and in many ways strange story. There is an excellent summary with links here on Reddit , but the gist is that Anthonette Cayedito answered the door to someone claiming to be a relative at 3 in the morning(!) and never came home again. There have been a couple of sightings, one of which was a waitress who claims to have had contact with her and found a secret note begging her to call police. The other interesting point of contact was a phone call that the Gallup Police Department received from someone who claimed to be Anthonette in 1987. The police could not pinpoint where the call originated, because it was "too short to trace". One of the commenters, whom I am guessing is in their twenties at best, complains that this must be either lies or incompetence, because tracing phone calls takes no time at all -- once the call is completed, all the information is right there!

Saturday Serial: The Count of Monte Cristo part 26

English: 101. Locusta 102. Valentine 103. Maximilian 104. Danglars' Signature French: 101. Locuste 102. Valentine 103. Maximilien 104. La signature Danglars Courtesy Librivox.org / Archive.org
Ah, here come the think-pieces about Orlando. I keep writing and re-writing this and deleting a rant about them, uncertain whether I'm "allowed" to have feelings on the topic. The fact that I even have to ask myself, "Am I allowed to have an opinion?" rather than, "Is my opinion informed and at least kind of reasonable?" is one of the biggest problems I have with the practice of identity politics, so fuck it. Here it is. Some lady -- I think it's a lady; everyone is using feminine pronouns -- apparently wrote a thing declaring that cis het white people are not allowed to comment on anything that happened in Orlando. How dare you offer condolences now when you are so silent the rest of the time,  usw.  I expect in a week or two someone else will write one decrying a lack of supportive commentary from the mainstream, oblivious to the flaw in their logic. If no one is allowed to comment unless they've been commenting all along, but they're n

Saturday Serial: The Count of Monte Cristo part 25

English: 97. The Departure For Belgium 98. The Bell & Bottle Tavern 99. The Law 100. The Apparition French: 97. La route de Belgique 98. L'auberge de la cloche et de la bouteille 99. La loi 100. L'apparition Courtesy Librivox.org / Archive.org
I am really tired of being angry at things, so here is something adorable and cheerful. Every so often I remember I follow figure skating, and go check to see what my favorites were up to. Much to my delight, Johnny Weir and Stéphane Lambiel are working together in Fantasy On Ice this year. I adore them both; the technical jumps are impressive and all, but they both do a lot of fancy spinny things and daring layouts that I am sad I can't get up enough speed to do on a dance floor. They are also both rather interesting people. Weir's always had a smart mouth, and surprised a lot of people by being an entertaining commentator for NBC Sports -- admittedly, when you think 'professional athlete' or 'fashionista', the first thing that stereotypically jumps to mind is not 'well-read wit'. Weir's book is a hilarious, if quick, read. He wrote it when he was twenty-five. He'll probably be terrifically embarrassed about it when he's fifty. Most of u
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I don't often comment on current events here, because, to be frank, they're not about me. Most things are not about me, really. The vastness of the cosmos, and so forth. I can have whatever opinion I want, on whatever basis I want, but I am a college-educated white girl who grew up middle class in a place where the Anglo families didn't talk to the Hispanic families because they were terrifyingly  brown , and nobody talked to us because we didn't go to church. I knew fuck-all about the less WASPy parts of the world before we got an internet connection, and in a lot of ways, I still don't. I try to at least think before I begin blathering on and end up with my foot jammed so deeply in my mouth I can taste my own kneecap. The Orlando shooting was not about me. But it was about an awful lot of my  friends . As a rule, I stay out of advocacy. For one reason or another, pretty much every group considers me part of the Privileged Elite. My life experiences are irrelev

Saturday Serial: The Count of Monte Cristo part 24

English: 93. Valentine 94. Maximilian's Avowal 95. Father and Daughter 96. The Contract French: 93. Valentine 94. L'Aveu 95. Le père et la fille 96. Le contrat Courtesy Librivox.org / Archive.org
I went to a stage combat workshop the other night, and while I was pretending to beat up on my roommate, I discovered that I am a mutant (again). I am conventionally right-handed for all of the various fine manipulations you would expect -- I use my right hand to write, draw, mouse, paint my face, open bottles, zip things, etc. But apparently, I am a left-handed fencer, and more or less ambidextrous at punching people out. I could probably have predicted this had I thought about it at all, which I hadn't. I knew about the punching; I play Mary Stone in the Mrs Hawking series of plays, and Mary's job is to hit things fairly frequently, and usually rather hard. Mary doesn't know anything about beating goons in the first play, so all of my fights are with a large brass fireplace poker, which I wield in classic Luke Skywalker style, i.e., grab it by the handle and swing it around like a bat. They made me a prop poker out of wooden dowels and paint, with the idea that it would

Saturday Serial: The Count of Monte Cristo part 23

English: 89. A Nocturnal Visit 90. The Meeting 91. Mother and Son 92. The Suicide French: 89. La nuit 90. La rencontre 91. La mère et le fils 92. Le suicide Courtesy Librivox.org / Archive.org