The Point At Infinity

29 January 2010 @ 06:21 pm

This is via A_d_medievalist, but is amusingly pertinent to a conversation I've had with Ms_danson recently.

you are yellow
#FFFF00

Your dominant hues are red and green, so you're definately not afraid to get in and stir things up. You have no time for most people's concerns, you'd rather analyze with your head than be held back by some random "gut feeling".

Your saturation level is very high - you are all about getting things done. The world may think you work too hard but you have a lot to show for it, and it keeps you going. You shouldn't be afraid to lead people, because if you're doing it, it'll be done right.

Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

What do you think?

28 January 2010 @ 05:19 pm

Three Minutes Till Joy

There were two parcel-waiting slips for me in my mailbox yesterday when I arrived home - after the post office was closed at 5.

Today I did set off from work at four, but there was snow. High winds, low visibility, so even the bus arrived at 4:50. I grabbed the slips and went running to the post office. Running the long block and a half, jumping over snow-covered stiles --- just in time to see the mail clerk turning the key in the lock.

"You can't be closing!"

"Oh yes, I can, I'm all alone there!" said the young woman.

I slid my wristwatch out of my sleeve. "Three minutes! You have three minutes!"

A man came up behind me, adding to the assertion of the time, and together, I suppose we persuaded her. She let us in. I put down my barcoded slips, she scanned them, and came out with - the Parcels.

The Book Drive Parcels.

Oh, Siderea, your drawings are beautiful.

And the editions are all so much nicer than the mostly battered secondhand ones I used to have.

I spilled them out on my living room floor, my face in that funny expression that is both grinning and weeping at the same time.

thetimesink ,

siderea ,

rootedinsong ,

karelia ,

noxcat ,

ms_danson --- thank you ever, ever so much.

Whoohoo!

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26 January 2010 @ 06:10 pm

There's A Rock On The Plain, From Beneath It Water Flows

There's a rock on the plain, from beneath it water flows,
And written on the rock is a sign:
"Who goes to the right
Will find nothing at all,
Who goes straight ahead
Will get nowhere at all,
And who leftward goes will
Understand
Nothing at all
And is lost and will perish in trying."

Not one horse or sword is there among three who stand and stare
Is it worth it to go, they think.
One was mad at that sight
And he went to the right,
Went alone to the right
And found nothing at all,
Neither village nor wall;
Back he went and returned home to drink.

No path straight ahead there, and you will get nowhere,
But one didn't believe in that spell.
He tucks his shirt in and goes
Straight to follow his nose
He went straight, walking tall,
And came nowhere at all,
And he turned and he came back as well.

Third one was a fool, they say, he knew nothing anyway,
And went merrily left without fear.
Long he walked where he could,
Not a thing he understood,
Not a thing he understood,
Not a thing he understood
So he walked all his life as he would ---
And didn't perish, and lived well and good.
- V. Vysotsky

This song --- rather rough in translation, I did different things with the rhyme scheme this time round than in the original and I doubt it's singable; it's hard to imitate a great many fairy-tale motifs that do not exist in English culture --- has been stuck in my head today.

I believe it to be a parable.

Tags: translations

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17 January 2010 @ 09:32 pm

Obviously I've not read enough Stephen King

Your result for The Improved Book Character-Savvy Test...

Better than better!

You scored 71% Best Seller, 100% Classic and 83% Fantasy/Sci-Fi!

You're on the right track. Try a little bit of everything. Variety is the spice of life, after all. And Best-Sellers are fun! Hollywood can't be that wrong!

Take The Improved Book Character-Savvy Test at OkCupid

What do you think?

13 January 2010 @ 08:14 pm

Tra voi saprò dividere il tempo mio giocondo;

Hmm. When I was seven years old, between Israel and Canada, we stayed for a couple of weeks with my aunt in Sofia, Bulgaria, and, how I do not know, went to see an opera. The first opera that I have ever seen. This would be 1992.

I am absolutely certain that the opera was Nabucco. I remember the costuming as being for Nabucco, the scenery, and the program, written in Bulgarian, from the plot synopsis of which I vainly tried to puzzle out what the heck was going on beyond the fact that Nabucco was a king and Hebrew slaves were somehow involved. Somtow Sucharitkul assures me that even if you understand the libretto and the score, do not expect the plot to make sense, so it wasn't just my Bulgarian skills (I would have liked to have seen the remake that is all about the other soprano).

I remember the lead soprano wore a striking pale blue dress, and the second soprano wore red, beige and a turban, and the male baritone lead had a very Assyrian-looking beard.

I also remember one single piece of music from that opera. One. Later, the senior orchestra would play the Nabucco overture, and I would love it dearly and do to this day.

But that piece of music I knew. I knew how the baritone with the Assyrian beard began its first verse, and then the soprano burst in on the second verse with a blindingly beautiful word beginning with "tra" (I did not know until years later even what language the original opera was in.) And that piece of music I would recognize when film scores, etc, used it.

And today I've finally confirmed that the piece of music is Verdi's "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" - from La Traviata. Absolutely certainly from La Traviata. People more fond of movies than music may recognize it as the music of Michael and Apollonia's wedding in The Godfather.

Still, I am absolutely certain that the first opera I've ever seen was not La Traviata. It was Nabucco. Hebrew slaves were involved.

And yet I can still see that sky-blue-clad Abigaille singing "Tra voi, tra voi sapro dividere il tempo mio giocondo..." (With you all I can share my happiest times...)

This shall remain one of the great mysteries of my life.

What do you think?

06 January 2010 @ 09:13 pm

On The Sixth Was A Bith, At Six Minutes To Six

Here where bullets are questions, I can't pass with replies
Where every step is a half-inch, five smokes measure the time.
The dead city is burying its voices today.
Amid walls lost skies wander, not knowing their way.

It is dark in the cellar as in Christmas rolls.
That dark opposite window has killed how many souls...
I forgot that on Earth something else does exist.
On the sixth was a birth, at six minutes to six.

And the morning brought the snow
After fire for so long
And that silent snow slew me
Brought a short age to an end.
I scooped it in my hand
Spat it into white dirt and dust
Is it fiction, is it past
Meant for stench or everlast?

This city has shattered, but will not be a cross
Fallen city, drank deep of life before fasting's loss
Here a new Bethlehem is burned by war-wounded stars,
Birches for swaddle clothes, though not all will have arms.

Merry Christmas, o iron; bandage-crowned with grace
Nurse like Mother Teresa, with a lovely face.
Yesterday we remembered the days rustling gone
How you'd drawn the curtains, and how we'd been alone.

And the morning brought the snow
After fire for so long
And that silent snow slew me
Brought a short age to an end.
I scooped it in my hand
Spat it into white dirt and dust
Is it fiction, is it past
Meant for stench or everlast?

Here where bullets are questions, I can't pass with replies
Where every step is a half-inch, five smokes measure the time.
The dead city is by me, city dead, empty-eyed
I shot blank with no bullets; last night I was alive.
-- Yuri Shevchuk, Dead City. Christmas

It so happens that I do not know any Julian Christmas songs. Except this one, DDT's dark war memorial. So this one was stuck in my head, all through today. I had taken a stab at translating it a full two years ago, a rushed and hasty translation that I now take the opportunity to polish up some. It is still by no means perfect, but it is closer to working. Maybe that will be a tradition of mine, every January 6th-7th to go and twist and beat English words to somehow convey what Shevchuk is trying to say.

Tags: translations

What do you think?

31 December 2009 @ 10:53 am

Year In Review Meme

( Read more... )

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26 December 2009 @ 09:36 am

The Word for World Is Very Big CGI Forest

Living in a pretty much movie-theatre-less area for nearly a year now, I decided that the moment I will come back to Ottawa, I will go to the movies at least once. So yesterday, given that movie theatres are among the few things open on Christmas Day, I offered my brothers that we go see a movie. We were at first thinking of seeing Sherlock Holmes, but then decided on Avatar in 3D. I covered the tickets, as a sort-of Christmas present; besides, there had been several times before when my older brother at least paid for me at the movies. So, my younger brother driving, we went to SilverCity (one of the two biggest and most entertainment-focussed multiplexes in Ottawa, in my impression.)

There wasn't a gap of three seats in the central section, despite the fact that Avatar had been running for two weeks already. We picked up the 3D glasses and sat down in the back row of the front section, where I had never sat before, and I was concerned about craning my neck. As the commercials ran, I realized that I was getting disoriented, so with the blessing of my brothers I moved to find a seat farther back. As I continued watching the commercials, I realized that I was not used to scenes changing so fast - in the length of time since I last watched a movie in a theatre (which was pretty rare even when I was living in a city that had them), my eyes and brain had forgotten the skills necessary to follow such rapid cuts on a big screen. I hoped that at least the feature presentation would probably have fewer cuts than 30-second commercials and 90-second trailers, and I was mainly right.

I quite enjoyed the movie, and the 3D did add to the experience, although my brothers and I both agreed its most impressive use was not even in the movie itself but in a 3D commercial where a cow's head pops apparently two metres out of the screen.

Notes on the movie James Cameron's Avatar (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ALTHOUGH IT IS MOSTLY ON WORLD BUILDING RATHER THAN PLOT, AND WHAT IT TELLS OF PLOT CAN BE SEEN IN ANY PUBLIC MOVIE REVIEW!):

( Good heavens, Tourmaline does a movie review )

What do you think?

07 December 2009 @ 10:13 pm

Orchid Children

Working on continuing the saga of the last few days; for now, rejoicing in the regaining of my wallet, last night I picked up a copy of The Atlantic on a whim, and quite enjoyed this article.

Orchid Children - the theory that the same genes that cause depression and antisocial behaviour can, in the right environment, lead to unusual creativity and success.

What do you think?

09 November 2009 @ 10:26 pm

Art for Art's Sake

Ok, I was suddenly inspired at work today what to do with the Traveling Art Book that

ms_danson gave me when I was in Ottawa. It had been sitting on my desk for two weeks; there is some very lovely art in there to live up to, and I did not feel up to trying to emulate it with drawings etc, at this stage. However, I got an idea of what to do that would cater to my strengths, so would be relatively foolproof so far as my skill was concerned, and so I went to Fincher's to acquire some supplies, and spent the afternoon creating my artwork. It turned out interesting; I am pleased with it. It will need a pretty high-rez picture to get the full detail of it, though. Unfortunately, I do not know any visual artists nearby, although I will ask, so very probably, I will send it back to Ms_danson soon so she can send it on to the next artist in line.

4 remarks on this | What do you think?

06 November 2009 @ 05:15 pm

Via Juniperus and Cpolk

This made me very angry:

Bath and Body Works is getting sued for religious discrimination for firing a Wiccan employee who legally took vacation time to observe Samhain

I'm not Pagan, but they won't be getting my business.

What do you think?

03 November 2009 @ 05:02 pm

Via A_D_Medievalist: Hehe

Who is your Harry Potter Mate Your Result: Severus Snape You like your mate with a dry wit and a sharp tongue. You do not mind the emotional baggage that comes with him. You may have to drag him kicking and screaming from the potion lab, but once his love is given, it will never waver.
Remus Lupin
Lord Voldemort
Albus Dumbledore
Harry Potter
Ronald Weasley
Lucius Malfoy
Draco Malfoy
Who is your Harry Potter Mate Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

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29 October 2009 @ 06:46 am

Thoughts and a Curious Question

Really busy at work. Leaving work at 5:30 two days in a row.

1) Isn't it awesome to learn about something purely through debugging someone else's buggy documentation of it? *sarcasm*

2) Dear flist, a speculative question:
Suppose you had a significant other for a period of time, whom you loved and you thought things were good with, and you had sincere hopes this will continue. Then your significant other leaves you for Person X. Through the stages of grief, you are hurt, upset, wondering what went wrong.

However, do you think you would be more hurt if (a) Person X was very dissimilar to you in personality, character, habits or (b) Person X shared a large number of personality traits, features of appearance, or personal preferences with you?

I do not think monogamy or polyamory matters in this question; the point is that a person very important to you makes the statement that they prefer someone else to you, exclusively.

Alastair and I had a discussion of this, stemming from the story of one of his friends, and we found our opinions fall on opposite sides. I am just curious what other people think, and why.

7 remarks on this | What do you think?

03 October 2009 @ 04:56 pm

The Tyranny of Community

Went walking today and picked up the Globe and Mail. There were a couple of interesting articles:

Melting pot or mosaic? Neither, thanks
Among the British ethnic left, multiculturalism isn't celebrated but scorned
Doug Saunders
Last updated on Saturday, Oct. 03, 2009 03:32AM EDT

( Because link may die at a later point, article under cut )

And I would be interested in hearing Ms_danson's and Dracodraconis' thoughts on this article:
PEI's Big Immigration Boom --- Sorry, Anne of Green Gables, but there's a new reason people are coming to PEI

What do you think?

15 September 2009 @ 07:33 am

Madame Atwood Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

Dear Margaret Atwood, before you use a word, check that it means what you think it means:

What [The Year of the Flood] absolutely is not, she insists, is science fiction – a statement she has made repeatedly since the 2003 publication of Oryx and Crake, a novel that shares the same future as Flood and some of the same characters.

Science fiction takes place “somewhere in space, far, far away in a distant galaxy,” she explains. “That's where hell and heaven went after Milton, escaping literarily.”

On Planet X, you can still have voices speaking out of burning bushes and “strange creatures with bat wings and horns on their heads flying through the air – dragons, of which I'm very fond.” But “speculative fiction” of the sort she writes deals strictly with things people can experience on Earth “without being stoned,” she says. “It has to be based on real technology, real science, real possibility.”

Um, there is a whole corpus of language use indicating that it's the other way around, fantasy, as well as science fiction, is speculative fiction. Reading this makes me think that the grande doyenne of Canadian literature hasn't read any hard science fiction or well-defined speculative fiction criticism in her life, and is ignorantly trying to avoid branding.

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22 August 2009 @ 12:26 am

More Tales

From Goth_hobbit, because Ms_danson should not be the exclusive disseminator of eventually-NSFW links in my Universe's Denizens. If you are familiar with Twilight in some fashion, you may need to wash brain after clicking this.

And I've had it on my bookmarks for a week, meaning to share it: Letter from the Elders of Sodom. I don't want to know the entirety of what John C. Wright originally wrote, but I know that Hal Duncan's response is totally awesome.

3 remarks on this | What do you think?

30 July 2009 @ 06:23 pm

More Tales

Question to my friendslist: Does there exist a Flickr-equivalent for audio files? I.e. a site with free accounts on which mp3s to which you own the copyright can be uploaded, given a URL, and shared?

Other than, of course, MySpace, and as a secondary application, YouTube. I can imagine that these two corner the market, since "audio files to which you own the copyright" require a bit more dedication to secure, ironically, than picture or video files of this nature, and it is very tempting to use them to share audio files to which someone else owns the copyright.

4 remarks on this | What do you think?

27 June 2009 @ 11:53 pm

After The Nightfall Come Stormy Skies

Wolf howl, dog's bay in the night
A fist clenched painfully tight
Blood beats in veins like a bird above,
Faith and hope and love

A thousand hands will rise as aye
And our high banner streams along
Sun in a circle and blue sky:
All's in place but something's wrong.

Up above us a star burns bright
No one else would help us set things right
In the dark dark dark dark
Night.

After the nightfall came stormy skies
Weeping rain and a jester wind
Hands in your pockets, down your eyes,
And keep tongue tightly pinned.

Oh, my depression gnaws at me,
My lover strong and true.
Drink and be merry, dance and sing free
I am awhile with you.

Up above us a star burns bright
No one else would help us set things right
In the dark dark dark dark
Night.

- Kino, The Black Album

Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!
Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!

In the streets around the snow has ceased to be white,
In the meltwater mirror we see the moon light.
We walk on, we are strong and bright
Frozen fingers snap and break matches
That will set bonfires alight!

Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!
Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!

This is our day; we know it; the aligned stars above we meet,
Know signs in fire and water, the look in gods' eyes...
And now we take a step onto a bridge incomplete,
We had believed the stars
And "I'm ready!" everyone cries.

Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!
Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!

Those who are weak, those who live from beer to beer,
Cry out, "They don't let us sing!"
Cry out, "Try and sing here!"
We walk on, we are strong and bright,
Frozen fingers snap and break matches
That will set bonfires alight!

Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!
Try and sing together with me!
Come and stand by me!

My favourite rendition of this song on Youtube is the rehearsal video that always makes me smile

I translated this a few months before, in a locked entry. This is just for my reference.

Tags: translations

What do you think?

25 June 2009 @ 09:24 pm

Accidentally I'm Living

At Slacktivist, there's a discussion of songs and movie lines that 'get you every time' and that got me thinking of one of Vysotsky's two songs that are guaranteed (many others do sometimes, but those are guaranteed) to get me bawling every time I try to sing them, or hear them. So I stayed up way too late last night working around with this one. I took some liberties with the translation: it isn't always close, but except for the last line it is singable; I will be polishing it some more.

And I was crying at it (I don't cry very often, actually; it's just that you people are the ones who hear of it when I do.) And the next day, still trying to review it in the back of my brain, I got the prickling feeling in the back of my eyes thinking of the original --- in the middle of a software demo.

Song About A Downed Airman

Dedicated to Nikolai Skomorohov, twice awarded Hero of the USSR, and to his fallen friend.

Through the war till the ending I yearned for my home town
And though I was hotheaded, did my duty as called.
While he was too hasty, one time didn't duck down ---
And in war turned around, around --- two war years, and nothing at all.

And his heart isn't beating since that spring, 'forty-three,
While dreams war sent fleeting once again circle me,
And I can't breathe, reminded, and dark clouds dim my sight ---
He was better and kinder, and better, and better, and kinder...
I was lucky that night.

Silver spoons I've not tasted, I ain't one of God's choosing,
I did not seek the rear, and I met fate's attack.
But the women I met with would look silent, accusing,
"If you had stayed forever back there, perhaps mine would've come back."

I am sadly aware of what widows don't say.
I too care that their lives did not turn that way.
And I blurted, "Forgive me, sorry I made it through,
Accidentally I'm living, I'm living, I'm living,
Doing what yours couldn't do."

In his plane he was burning, and I heard his last shout,
"You will live, you will make it!" came through that roaring glow.
We would fly up by heaven, by God's own kingdom cloud,
He stayed there when he flew a bit higher...while I came down below.

And God's airfield dryly met the pilot they called.
He would land on his belly, on it he never crawled...
So he slept without waking, and his song couldn't end.
So I'm back, I did make it, I'm back, I did make it...
It was too late for my friend.

All around and forever I will always be wronging
Those whom if I met now, I'd be honoured to call.
Though we fly home still living, to where our hearts were longing ---
But our memory burns and our conscience torments us, all those who have it at all.

Someone stingy and clear counted hours we mete
In our short stay down here, like airstrip concrete.
On it some crashed and burned, and some flew never to land,
While I, I returned, I returned, I returned and...
That's the trouble, if you understand.

Song begins at 2:48 ; subtitles happen to be included, just in case you want them. (The first song is one I haven't worked on yet, but I'll translate someday, also about air war).

Tags: translations

What do you think?

24 June 2009 @ 04:47 pm

Via aminuteafter3

( Meme )

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