Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"[P]erhaps more than anything else, what we need right now in this country (and, yes, on this planet), is a fresh population of deeply sexually attuned and comfortable and nonabusive citizens. Oh what a difference that would make."
[...]
"There exists this very correct theory: Nearly every war and every despot and every uptight sneering power-mad leader and every warmongering culture is a direct result of that culture's or that leader's deep-seated sexual frustration and sexual unfulfillment and sexual angst." -- Mark Morford, in an essay, "Should American teens actually be encouraged to have really good, healthy sex?" (thanks to swy1974).

Sorry about getting so quiet again. Wasn't feeling well Sunday night or all of yesterday; kept getting up to try to get stuff done and feeling dizzy again half an hour later and having to lie down. Wasn't until the nausea-inducing headache finally arrived last night that I realized I should've been taking my migraine drugs. Still feeling pretty wiped out today. More when I feel a bit better. Right now I'm trying to rest up enough to make it to this thing the HCB is going to tonight. (So I'll be missing 3LF rehearsal either way.)

Scary thing is that last night/this morning I went through and deleted spam from my mailbox, leaving recent non-spam messages that I haven't gotten around to answering/filing/dealing with marked as unread. Just now I took another look and realized that those messages go back to 7 June. (And no, that's not counting much older never-got-around-to messages that are still sitting there -- my non-mailing-list mailbox has 2569 messages in it.

• SCA Camping 101 -- a guideline for non-campers headed to their first SCA camping event. I disagree with one or two particular points (mostly regarding tent selection) but it looks like a pretty darned good primer.
• Boundaries of the United States presented as an animated GIF that shows how the boundaries changed on various dates (uh, every date on which boundaries changed). It's pretty cool seeing the Louisiana Purchase pop into place then get divvied up; wait for the formation of West Virginia; watch lines move a little here and there; notice borders marked "disputed boundary" that I hadn't known about; etc.
• The Chemist's English, a summary (with comments) of a book with the same title, is an unexpectedly interesting examination of writing style for technical papers. I was amused by the use of chemical analogies to explain English usage decisions. Includes an explanation of how to be properly nitpicky about hyphens, n-dashes, m-dashes, etc. Much of the advice is germane to technical writing in any field (and in fact, to writing in general). "'Million dollar words' can truly be worth a million dollars, if used sparingly and in the right context. Used out of turn, they sink to the value of one-billion Zaire notes in the waning years of Mobutu."
• I was thinking about letters from Middle English that we no longer use in Modern English, and the inspiration struck me to write a parody of "Oak and Ash and Thorn" about them, which I was going to call "Eth and Ash and Thorn". But in searching for the lyrics to the original, I stumbled across an existing parody with the same idea, done better than I'm likely to have managed, by the lovely Echo's Children: "Yogh and Ash and Thorn". So now I don't have to write it; I just have to memorize theirs. :-)

  "Vowel shift" said somebody miffed "It's more like a hey or a bransle"
  "Letter and sound keep swapping around and 'hands about go all!'"
  Some were stored and some ignored and some were mangled and torn,
  Caught up in the rout as vowels fell out with yogh and ash and thorn.

• Speaking of Middle English, I stumbled across a pretty thorough page about the stages and influences in the development of English, which has more information about the subject in one place than I've found elsewhere so far. An engrossing read, it starts before the arrival of English at all, when folks there spoke various Celtic languages, then traces the waves of invasion and immigration that brought in the beginnings of Old English, the additions and subtractions that Danish influence caused, the Normans and Middle English, the Tudor influence on the language, and Modern English. There's even a bit about prescriptive grammar and "invented rules" that most of us learned in school but are relatively recent. (Well, 250 years is "relatively recent" compared to 1400 years, no?) I learned a bit about history beyond language as a side effect. Fun.
• thespian found some vaguely unsettling [to me] candy
• A Washington Post article about too-loud-car-stereo competitions. But unlike the bozos who blast me out of bed and drown out my television driving up Lombard St., "Any sound that escapes from these cars is sound that doesn't show up on the decibel meter. (In dB parlance, it's lost 'sound pressure.') So these vehicles aren't merely bolted shut during races, they're sealed like vaults, with hydraulic pumps, or metal clamps and steel rods. Which means that when the judge says 'go' and the participants face off and detonate their stereos, there's very little to hear." Sounds like a better approach to me! I was amused by the "irascible gray-haired woman named Alma Gates" who was quoted: "My son grew up," says Alma, nodding approvingly. "I didn't."
• In case anybody still hasn't seen it: Once More With Cursing is a Harry Potter parody of the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer It turns out somebody else had already done the same idea, but I've misplaced that link at the moment. (When I find it, I'll edit this entry.)
• "Cleaning The Fucking Kitchen" is the sarcastic vitriol many people have wished they had the nerve to spout at housemates over time. (I'm not perfect in that regard, but thank goodness I'm not that bad...)
• kathrynt mused about the monkey ownership approach to managing psychodrama, crediting the underlyind idea to imalion: "What it boils down to is, when embroiled in a crisis, stop and ask 'Is this my monkey, or someone else's?' If it's not your monkey, why do you feel responsible for its care and feeding? If it is your monkey, why are you letting it run around and wreck people's things?" That's the important bit, but it's worth reading the rest.