The Anathēmata: a plague journal
May. 19th, 2015 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanamaOn Tuesday, I went to bed feeling like I was outside of my body and it was way too small but I still felt the sore throat.
On Thursday, I was definitely starting to cough out all the shit in my throat. Emma had a portrait of a T passenger at a gallery somewhere in probably Cambridge but I wasn't going to visit her and make her sick. Her voice is really important to her.
I thought May 16 was important, but it turns out June 16 is Bloomsday. May 16 is Rachel Goswell's birthday, so that's something, I guess.
Thursday, I felt unpleasantly gassy and was letting off these little burps but what I think I needed was a big Barney-style belch.
It was Emma's birthday on Sunday, so I sent her this picture of lemurs eating a cake. I would have updated, but May's a slow month. May's been slow for as long as I've been journaling. Plus I was sick.
I wanted to paint her something, but, again, I was sick. I'm still coughing occasionally. But at least I'm getting sleep.
Today is Pol Pot's birthday, so please enjoy this video.
Shadowdancer Duskstar found the Persistence of Desire via a Google alert, which is weird because I'm pretty sure Google pretends Livejournal doesn't exist, and I once said "I hope Emma doesn't rely on a Google alert for updates because she'll miss every other post," back when I gave her a link to this.
Shadowdancer says it's really difficult, if not impossible, to pretend to be me.
I guess that makes sense.
What doesn't make sense is that the sockpuppet on Entertainment Weekly's Sad Puppies discussion wasn't convincing enough to fool Leanne. What doesn't make sense is that Drow brings up IP spoofing when I said that I can't delete comments. What doesn't make sense is Drow cataloguing the posts I made with the disqus account, which include such transgressions as "recommending Atlas Lab in a Boston alternative bands recommendation article" and "Kearney from The Simpsons might be capable of parthenogenesis, although his clone should have XX chromosomes," and "so, that tortoise they found on train tracks in Munich is an African spur-thighed tortoise." What doesn't make sense is claiming my dislike of After The Blast is born from malignant narcissism and not the writer's ineptitude.
Except I really shouldn't be talking about things making sense. I can barely follow this insane troll logic. I'd say something about ingesting too much cough syrup but there really aren't enough drugs in the world for this to make sense. So back to the wildlife center.
If Emma wants to meet Emma, I recommended Landmarks Orchestra concerts. I don't know why Preview decided to print each concert on one page each nor why it only printed six of seven concerts, but it works. She wants to know if she should play it cool, as if she doesn't know all these things about her, and I say no.
Emma had apples for the goats.
Penelope bit Emma and she bruised immediately. What's weird is I slipped and banged my arm and a bruise didn't show up until a few days later. Then they started headbutting each other. I said it's because when we got Gallop, Penelope was bigger and now that Gallop is bigger, Penelope lashes out at us humans.
It's the little things about cameras that make taking good pictures with other peoples' cameras so difficult. I kept fucking up zoom.
Because Kaa was resting his head on Emma's hand. Since Kaa is rather head-shy, this means a lot to her.
She tried to take a photo of a photo I took of Kaa soaking.
And another snake (a very small red-tailed boa) used Emma to shed. She kept the skin. Unfortunately, she didn't get a spectacle.
Rob told us this story to make us appreciate veterinary medicine. We cuddle squirrels. The reality of human medicine is morbidly obese pimps on PCP, a dissociative anesthetic, which means a whole lot of fun when dealing with them. And by fun, I mean I don't even know.
Gray squirrels are immune to the bad effects of steroids, or at least, they are according to us.
Arianna, not the Arianna of pursuits (whom I know very little about) or minotaur blues (whom I know nothing about and probably haven't interacted with since this Arianna was in diapers*) is thinking of traveling to Nepal or Kenya or Sri Lanka.
*though I did explain class scheduling when I went to middle school. First it was a rotating schedule and the periods moved earlier as the days went on. Then they reversed it, so the periods moved later. I heard inklings of block schedules. I'm not really sure what that meant For various reasons, I didn't go to school there when they implemented block scheduling. If they did. They've probably moved beyond that and are now picking numbers out of a hat.
That's the problem with helping people. If they need help, they aren't going to get the help they need. If you give stuff to the governments, they're going to distribute it to their supporters only, if you go there to help people directly, the governments tell you which people you're allowed to help.
Read Burma Chronicles. MSF shuts down because Burma wants them to work in an area that isn't populated by any minorities and should be run by the state health care system. They want to help the Karen and Shan and Burma won't let them.
Or read about the Rohingyas. The worst thing about it is that the government's policy towards Rakhines isn't any nicer and the government is deliberately stoking tensions, so they can keep the Rakhines on their side.
I brought up logging in Madagascar because apparently the Fourth Malagasy Republic thinks that logging companies are preferable to ecotourists, and meanwhile, the habitats are getting destroyed.
Emma added "and they're losing their food sources too."
Perhaps ISIS can expand into ecoterrorism. Something something first good thing they've ever done.
I disagree with that sentiment. For all their many, many problems, ISIS isn't fucking with nascent democracies, nor is it overthrowing democratic governments. It's fighting against secular despotates and quasi-republics that are every bit as dogmatic and repressive are they are, and if ISIS wants to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic, I am ok with that, and the reason Syria has an ISIS problem is because they didn't give in to the democracy activists in the first place. Just need to keep them out of Libya and Tunisia somehow.
Plus I got into Archer because of them.
If there's one thing we learned from Russia and Burma, it's that transitioning to democracy isn't possible.
I also find it unbelievable that Madagascar has a military. Nobody's going to invade Madagascar, aside from Europeans. And unless said European invader is Bulgaria or Estonia, they're fighting a lost cause. I guess they're only around for when they need to make it known that they don't like the results of the election.
Someone brought her blue and yellow macaw, named Luna, along with Sydney, who hates men, and a cockatoo without a name.
Luna screams but not quite as loudly as pigs scream. You want permanent damage to your earballs? Stand near a pig that is being anesthetized.
Sydney said "hey" to me, but when the woman who brought her showed up, all of a sudden, she doesn't want to talk any more.
I found beads and colorful stones in the parking lot near the clothesline. I don't know why they were dumped there but they're mine now.
Emma got the portrait she wanted, in which she's holding Kaa. Zofia, Jacob, Courtney, Jean, Greg, Jack, Yvonne also got portraits. Yvonne is new. She wants to train an army of attack llamas to spit on her enemies. She's traveling to Thailand to work with elephants. There's Zoë, not to be confused with Zofia, which has no diacritics, means Wisdom and not Life, and is not the name of a Sianspheric song. For the record, Sophia is written with an omicron while Zoë is written with an omega. They're the same thing in Modern Greek. There are a few others. It's at this point where I'm not going to remember any of the interns' names, especially when they start on days I'm not around.
There's a place called Sofia in Madagascar and I think they're trying to trick people into thinking they're in Bulgaria.
Zofia said that someone mistook Jacob for a bear. I think I remember hearing about that incident.
Makoto mimed feeding raccoons. I don't know where this is but it's a thing.
***
I think the guys in Atlas Lab are reading this. Look, a while ago, I had a dream in which I was at an Atlas Lab show with Désirée and Go, and there was a duet of cello and violin, and in reality, Atlas Lab had a string session a few days ago with cello and Nora from Scubaphone on violin. It's probably for Something Good, because that's that's the song that sounds the most like they're trying to be Big Monster Fish Hook. Well, I mean, I've only heard Ven A Mi.
Maybe Alex can exchange his drum kit and phylactery containing Masami Akita's anima for some toy pianos and xylophones.
And I hope that's the last comparison anyone will make between Atlas Lab and Big Monster Fish Hook. I'm sorry. I like what I've heard of Big Monster Fish Hook (and Betwixt and Chelsea on Fire and Vision Thing for that matter). I just don't want someone in 2035 hearing Shadow Song or Something Good and lamenting the fact they can't find anything else.
Atlas Lab is too good for that.
***
I forgot these three things from last week: Penelope bared her teeth for the camera and Gallop even posed for Emma. Emma prefers green tea while I prefer black tea. I told her my Karl Marx joke. I told her I fall out of love just as easily as I fall in love and how Jen's a hard core Republican now, not in that fanatically religious way, she just has a fear of all things alien and many unenlightened viewpoints.
Alas, we've all felt the pain of someone we love or admire turning into someone we don't.
Burning Question: have you ever seen someone you don't admire turn into someone you do?
On Thursday, I was definitely starting to cough out all the shit in my throat. Emma had a portrait of a T passenger at a gallery somewhere in probably Cambridge but I wasn't going to visit her and make her sick. Her voice is really important to her.
I thought May 16 was important, but it turns out June 16 is Bloomsday. May 16 is Rachel Goswell's birthday, so that's something, I guess.
Thursday, I felt unpleasantly gassy and was letting off these little burps but what I think I needed was a big Barney-style belch.
It was Emma's birthday on Sunday, so I sent her this picture of lemurs eating a cake. I would have updated, but May's a slow month. May's been slow for as long as I've been journaling. Plus I was sick.
I wanted to paint her something, but, again, I was sick. I'm still coughing occasionally. But at least I'm getting sleep.
Today is Pol Pot's birthday, so please enjoy this video.
Shadowdancer Duskstar found the Persistence of Desire via a Google alert, which is weird because I'm pretty sure Google pretends Livejournal doesn't exist, and I once said "I hope Emma doesn't rely on a Google alert for updates because she'll miss every other post," back when I gave her a link to this.
Shadowdancer says it's really difficult, if not impossible, to pretend to be me.
I guess that makes sense.
What doesn't make sense is that the sockpuppet on Entertainment Weekly's Sad Puppies discussion wasn't convincing enough to fool Leanne. What doesn't make sense is that Drow brings up IP spoofing when I said that I can't delete comments. What doesn't make sense is Drow cataloguing the posts I made with the disqus account, which include such transgressions as "recommending Atlas Lab in a Boston alternative bands recommendation article" and "Kearney from The Simpsons might be capable of parthenogenesis, although his clone should have XX chromosomes," and "so, that tortoise they found on train tracks in Munich is an African spur-thighed tortoise." What doesn't make sense is claiming my dislike of After The Blast is born from malignant narcissism and not the writer's ineptitude.
Except I really shouldn't be talking about things making sense. I can barely follow this insane troll logic. I'd say something about ingesting too much cough syrup but there really aren't enough drugs in the world for this to make sense. So back to the wildlife center.
If Emma wants to meet Emma, I recommended Landmarks Orchestra concerts. I don't know why Preview decided to print each concert on one page each nor why it only printed six of seven concerts, but it works. She wants to know if she should play it cool, as if she doesn't know all these things about her, and I say no.
Emma had apples for the goats.
Penelope bit Emma and she bruised immediately. What's weird is I slipped and banged my arm and a bruise didn't show up until a few days later. Then they started headbutting each other. I said it's because when we got Gallop, Penelope was bigger and now that Gallop is bigger, Penelope lashes out at us humans.
It's the little things about cameras that make taking good pictures with other peoples' cameras so difficult. I kept fucking up zoom.
Because Kaa was resting his head on Emma's hand. Since Kaa is rather head-shy, this means a lot to her.
She tried to take a photo of a photo I took of Kaa soaking.
And another snake (a very small red-tailed boa) used Emma to shed. She kept the skin. Unfortunately, she didn't get a spectacle.
Rob told us this story to make us appreciate veterinary medicine. We cuddle squirrels. The reality of human medicine is morbidly obese pimps on PCP, a dissociative anesthetic, which means a whole lot of fun when dealing with them. And by fun, I mean I don't even know.
Gray squirrels are immune to the bad effects of steroids, or at least, they are according to us.
Arianna, not the Arianna of pursuits (whom I know very little about) or minotaur blues (whom I know nothing about and probably haven't interacted with since this Arianna was in diapers*) is thinking of traveling to Nepal or Kenya or Sri Lanka.
*though I did explain class scheduling when I went to middle school. First it was a rotating schedule and the periods moved earlier as the days went on. Then they reversed it, so the periods moved later. I heard inklings of block schedules. I'm not really sure what that meant For various reasons, I didn't go to school there when they implemented block scheduling. If they did. They've probably moved beyond that and are now picking numbers out of a hat.
That's the problem with helping people. If they need help, they aren't going to get the help they need. If you give stuff to the governments, they're going to distribute it to their supporters only, if you go there to help people directly, the governments tell you which people you're allowed to help.
Read Burma Chronicles. MSF shuts down because Burma wants them to work in an area that isn't populated by any minorities and should be run by the state health care system. They want to help the Karen and Shan and Burma won't let them.
Or read about the Rohingyas. The worst thing about it is that the government's policy towards Rakhines isn't any nicer and the government is deliberately stoking tensions, so they can keep the Rakhines on their side.
I brought up logging in Madagascar because apparently the Fourth Malagasy Republic thinks that logging companies are preferable to ecotourists, and meanwhile, the habitats are getting destroyed.
Emma added "and they're losing their food sources too."
Perhaps ISIS can expand into ecoterrorism. Something something first good thing they've ever done.
I disagree with that sentiment. For all their many, many problems, ISIS isn't fucking with nascent democracies, nor is it overthrowing democratic governments. It's fighting against secular despotates and quasi-republics that are every bit as dogmatic and repressive are they are, and if ISIS wants to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic, I am ok with that, and the reason Syria has an ISIS problem is because they didn't give in to the democracy activists in the first place. Just need to keep them out of Libya and Tunisia somehow.
Plus I got into Archer because of them.
If there's one thing we learned from Russia and Burma, it's that transitioning to democracy isn't possible.
I also find it unbelievable that Madagascar has a military. Nobody's going to invade Madagascar, aside from Europeans. And unless said European invader is Bulgaria or Estonia, they're fighting a lost cause. I guess they're only around for when they need to make it known that they don't like the results of the election.
Someone brought her blue and yellow macaw, named Luna, along with Sydney, who hates men, and a cockatoo without a name.
Luna screams but not quite as loudly as pigs scream. You want permanent damage to your earballs? Stand near a pig that is being anesthetized.
Sydney said "hey" to me, but when the woman who brought her showed up, all of a sudden, she doesn't want to talk any more.
I found beads and colorful stones in the parking lot near the clothesline. I don't know why they were dumped there but they're mine now.
Emma got the portrait she wanted, in which she's holding Kaa. Zofia, Jacob, Courtney, Jean, Greg, Jack, Yvonne also got portraits. Yvonne is new. She wants to train an army of attack llamas to spit on her enemies. She's traveling to Thailand to work with elephants. There's Zoë, not to be confused with Zofia, which has no diacritics, means Wisdom and not Life, and is not the name of a Sianspheric song. For the record, Sophia is written with an omicron while Zoë is written with an omega. They're the same thing in Modern Greek. There are a few others. It's at this point where I'm not going to remember any of the interns' names, especially when they start on days I'm not around.
There's a place called Sofia in Madagascar and I think they're trying to trick people into thinking they're in Bulgaria.
Zofia said that someone mistook Jacob for a bear. I think I remember hearing about that incident.
Makoto mimed feeding raccoons. I don't know where this is but it's a thing.
***
I think the guys in Atlas Lab are reading this. Look, a while ago, I had a dream in which I was at an Atlas Lab show with Désirée and Go, and there was a duet of cello and violin, and in reality, Atlas Lab had a string session a few days ago with cello and Nora from Scubaphone on violin. It's probably for Something Good, because that's that's the song that sounds the most like they're trying to be Big Monster Fish Hook. Well, I mean, I've only heard Ven A Mi.
Maybe Alex can exchange his drum kit and phylactery containing Masami Akita's anima for some toy pianos and xylophones.
And I hope that's the last comparison anyone will make between Atlas Lab and Big Monster Fish Hook. I'm sorry. I like what I've heard of Big Monster Fish Hook (and Betwixt and Chelsea on Fire and Vision Thing for that matter). I just don't want someone in 2035 hearing Shadow Song or Something Good and lamenting the fact they can't find anything else.
Atlas Lab is too good for that.
***
I forgot these three things from last week: Penelope bared her teeth for the camera and Gallop even posed for Emma. Emma prefers green tea while I prefer black tea. I told her my Karl Marx joke. I told her I fall out of love just as easily as I fall in love and how Jen's a hard core Republican now, not in that fanatically religious way, she just has a fear of all things alien and many unenlightened viewpoints.
Alas, we've all felt the pain of someone we love or admire turning into someone we don't.
Burning Question: have you ever seen someone you don't admire turn into someone you do?
