More Than I Can Say

I have a lot I'd like to blog about. I haven't finished the OWS writeup. The presidential primary is turning out to be far more entertaining than I had thought it would be. There's a bunch of political theory bumping around in my head waiting to be turned into words. There's more good stuff for online security and Teh Dumb that surrounds the glorification of hacktivists. But there's just more out there to talk about than I have the energy to cover.

My company has entered its death spiral and the daily up and down from that is consuming most of my mental energy. I come home drained. My off-hours are now filled with preparing for the job hunt. That gets launched in March. Until that gets sorted out, there won't be too much on the blog. I may get bursts of inspiration, but a post or two per month is probably all that's going to happen.

Anglachel

Parsnips, Yum

I love parsnips. I just had a big serving of them for dinner. I roasted them with a red onion in a balsamic vinegar and brown sugar marinade for about an hour, then served them up with a barley and mushroom baked thing. A little dusting of grated Parmesan was the right touch on each.

It was very good.

Anglachel

Note to Self

Do not under any circumstances give in to the temptation, no matter how good it smells, to lick the chipotle chili adobo sauce off your fingers after dropping the chopped up bits into the bean mix.

You know how it will end.

Anglachel

17 Years

It's a grey day here in San Diego, just like it was in Puyallup seventeen years ago when I turned the live-in into the spousal unit.

How will we celebrate? Well, he has to go pick up the laundry and I need to put gas in the car, plus there's a checkbook to balance, a garden to weed, dishes to wash and a floor to be swept. Tonight, it's spaghetti with friends as we admire how big their baby boy is getting.

Yeah, it's good.

Anglachel

What I Did on My Winter Vacation

Yes, I'm back. Not that I ever left, mind you, but I am back to do some blogging.

After the intense blogging of last year, I needed a break. My life was out of balance, so I did a lot of other things, very non-blogging, non-political kinds of things like watch a bunch of movies and TV shows I'd missed the first time around, collect a whole new set of recipies, put in herbs, walk all over the neighborhood, and build a few web sites.

I've also had my raise from last year rescinded in a company wide pay cut and am waiting to see what other measures may be needed to keep the company afloat. We have a good CEO and an excellent senior team who are working their butts off to keep everyone employed with benefits that are more than just window dressing.

I had a round with the flu a few weeks back, maybe even swine flu (I do live in San Diego), but have finally shaken that. The whole famn damily is doing well. Last week, we put geraniums into pots and put them on the front porch. The bright red blooms are neon against the yellow stucco.

So now I'm back to put blogging into the mix once more. Fewer posts, without a doubt. My goal is to keep up the political theorizing I began last year about the shifting cultural and political alignment of the nation, and how the netroots, even with Facebook and iPods thrown in, will not rescue the Republic.

Anglachel

Voting Around Casa Anglachel

I didn't early vote or absentee vote this year because I want to check out the new precinct. My last voting place was an SRO hotel, very grubby, with a great decaying lobby that was always filled on election day with people lounging on the couches and chairs or taking over the hotel counter as impromptu voting booths. The cardboard booths on their rickety metal legs were always full, too. No big machines, no curtains in front of the boxes. San Diego County uses scanned paper ballots but provides touch screens for people who are unable to use a paper ballot. There is a physical trail for our votes.

I once voted there with a Diebold touch screen - what a pain in the ass! Long before we get to the possibility of voting fraud, let's talk about moronic user interfaces. It was the single most confusing moment I've ever had in a polling booth, and I'm in software development and I've voted using punch ballots in a dizzying array of layouts. Touch screens are slow, hard to read, violate standard computer interface conventions and have some of the worst color combinations I've ever seen on a screen.

Anyway, I'm probably going to shift over to permanent mail ballot voting to ensure I never miss a special election, but I like the ceremony of walking into a public polling place and casting my vote. Plus I like getting the little "I Voted!" sticker.

As I said at the end of my Lady Killers post, I have a few new rules for voting. I've never knowingly voted Republican in my life and am not about to start now, but I'm also not voting for Democratic men until they establish their pro-feminist, anti-misogynist credentials by sponsoring and voting for things that directly benefit women, and by publically and strongly fighting against things that do not. Watered down measures don't count.

So who and what am I voting for?

• Hillary for President as a write-in
• Susan Davis for the US House of Representatives
• Christine Kehoe for CA State Senate
• Lori Saldana for CA State Assembly
• Mary Graham for SD Community College Board of Trustees
• Sheila Jackson for SD Unified School District Board of Education

All the other contests are left blank.

State measures:

• YES - 1A - High speed rail.
• YES - 2 - Stopping animal cruelty. This was actually tough. I hate PETA and factory farming about equally, but it came down to the well being of the animals.
• YES - 3 - Children's hospital bond act
• NO - 4 -Parental notification and waiting period for minors seeking an abortion
• YES - 5 - Reducing nonviolent drug offenders sentencing, shifting to more treatment and less prison
• NO - 6 - Police money and power hodgepodge proposition. Too many things stuffed into one bill.
• NO - 7 - Faux "renewable energy" proposition. Does wierd things to power relationships of major state agencies.
• NO - 8 - Anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment
• NO - 9 - Victim rights revenge and hate proposition.
• NO - 10 - The T. Boone Pickens "make everyone buy my natural gas truck fuel"/Enron Energy Price Gouging memorial proposition.
• NO - 11 - Change the terms of how redistricting is done in California to guarantee Republicans have veto power over it even after they've lost electoral majorities. Also known as the preserving white conservative voting enclave proposition. Tell you what, kids, when Texas enacts this, we'll give it another look.
• YES - 12 - Guaranteeing house loans to veterans.

Local measures:

• YES - Prop A - Regional fire protection.
• NO - Prop B - Boondoggle for land developers to seize waterfront property
• YES - Prop C - Uses park revenue for park maintenance and upkeep, not put into the general fund.
• NO - Prop D - Keep alcohol off the public beaches
• YES - Prop S - Funding long term infrastructure support for local schools. WiFi in all schools, asbestos abatement, kitchen uprades, plumbing and wiring, etc.

Vote results will be reported late in San Diego. In San Diego County, votes will not be tallied at the precincts this year, but will be taken to a central location (a warehouse near the Registrar of Voters’ office) where they will have a 150 or so counting machines.

This will result in a very high beginning number for Dems given patterns of early and absentee voting (over 1/3 of voters have voted this way) followed by a downward slide as day-of and last minute voters (who, for various reasons, in this county will skew Republican) get physical ballots delivered and counted. San Diego is a huge county. If ballots from Fallbrook, Jacumba, Julian, Mount Palomar, Borrego Springs, etc., have to be driven in to Kearny Mesa, final tallies will be delayed for hours and late votes (again, because of housing patterns in the county) will favor Republicans.

Looking outside San Diego and California, I suspect this will be a pattern in many counties with an urban center and a large suburban ring with rural hinterlands, with urban (easily accessed) votes tallying for Dems and later (slower access) votes pushing up Republican gains. It will look like vote manipulation (and will provide cover for some manipulation) but in fact simply reflects voting habits. I do anticipate states with Republican administrations to challenge early and absentee ballots on "fraud" charges more than usual.

Anglachel

Hands of the King - Complete

It is not all politics with me. No, really! There's family and friends, the new old house I'm renovating, a very busy job and other odds and ends.

For several years, from late 2002 until early 2007, I was writing a fanfiction novel, Hands of the King. After a hiatus to deal with family concerns and to jettison some very annoying and opportunistic fandfom jerks from my life, I wrapped up final edits and posted it on the HASA web site.

For those not familiar with fanfiction, it is nothing more or less than fans of a certain book, series, TV show and/or movie coming up with their own stories set in the world of the original work. It may be a completely new story, with original characters, plots, and locations. It may be a "gap-filler" which tells a story of something that had to have happened (an adult character's childhood) or to flesh out a scene that must have ocurred given things characters or the author says. Finally, the story may be an "Alternate Universe" (AU) where the writer radically changes something (or a lot of things) to presetn something new. Most fanfiction is atrocious, but that's part of its charm. In the Tolkien fandom, the appeal is that JRRT left so much writing lying about, with massive timelines and histories and stories only alluded to and multiple versions of just about everything, that it's an addictive world to write in.

I've written a number of stories (and, yeah, they are probably reasonably atrocious, judged by professional standards), with HotK being the biggest. It's very long at almost 900,000 words and 85 chapters plus appendices. It's a gap-filler, being an account of the courtship and marriage of Denethor, Steward of Gondor, and Finduilas of Dol Amroth.

I began it out of revulsion of the usual Denethor stories of the time (2002). In them, he was usually portrayed as violent, stupid, gay, abusive to his wife and children, into torturing people, immoral, short, socially inept, and just about every other negative you can think of. Finduilas was written as a helpless, hysterical, weak, stupid doormat, either killing herself or being murdered by Denethor. The story lines offended me as both a feminist and a political theorist because of the hackneyed gender stereotypes and the inability of the writers to rise to the occasion and write about fully rounded characters in a time of wrenching cultural and political change. I intended to write a short work, novella length, of about 12 chapters, taking a break from my Shire stories series. Hmm, didn't turn out the way I expected.

I ended up in an argument with Tolkien about faith, humanism and fate. What would it mean to be a humanist in a world where immortal, angelic beings walk the earth with you, openly engaging in divine warfare through the ages? What does it mean to value faith above politics, or to place a divine plan ahead of ordinary lives? It was a challenge to write with and against the grain of Tolkien's body of work, being bound by the limits of the world, but having the main characters contest the fundamental terms of being in Middle-earth. Of course, it couldn't just be exposition. It had to be told through the events of their lives and be something a reader would want to stick with.

It's got just about everything in it - battle scenes, love scenes, mysteries to be solved, babies to be cuddled, an obnoxious cat and more than a few kitchen sinks. It helps if you've read Lord of the Rings, and is even better if you've read the Silmarillion and the Hobbit, but it will (I think) stand on its own. The characterizations of Denethor and Finduilas were unique in the fandom when I began the work and have influenced how others now write them.

Just a little entertainment for those who are interested.

Anglachel

Friday Cat Blogging!

Being green is being pet friendly. When we received a shipment of sink faucets, little did we know that we would also get a great cat toy. Instead of those annoying and environmentally hazardous plastic packing peanuts, our shipment was padded with lengths of crumpled brown paper.

The cat took one look at this and said "MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She jumped on it, she bit and clawed it, she tunneled through it, she shoved it all around the living room floor.

This was the best kitty toy evah.

How can you improve on yards and yards of crackling brown paper? Throw in an extra cardboard box. It is three days later and she is still playing with this. The box is her cave, and she merrily romps through the paper every few hours.

Wild Optical Illusion

Which way is the woman turning?

I can see her spin both directions, but I mostly see her turn clockwise (i.e., right-brain), which totally shocks me, given that I think I'm better described by the left-brain function list.

No More HotK

(Edited to be less whiny)

With the most recent chapter, Due, I'm done with public posting of Hands of the King.

I've completed my writing, which is a good feeling. I have put in five years of work on this novel; researching Tolkien, interrogating conventions of fanon, trying to think with and against Tolkien's own meta-narrative of politics, religion, and society, developing plot and characterization, and going over and over the work to catch inconsistencies and errors. I think I've managed to do this and write an engaging tale. What I wanted to get from that endeavor, I have received.

I know I have readers on this story. I get between 600 and 800 page views a week on average. However, aside from my two friends Agape and Fergus, HotK readers have basically stopped providing any substantive responses. Only four people besides Agape and Fergus have posted a comment or sent an author email since January this year, and many of those have been private "You have a typo" in nature. The lack of substantive response aggravates me after having done all of that work. It may not be a reasonable reaction, but it is how I feel.

Maybe the story just isn't as good or engaging as it used to be. Whatever the reason, readers don't want to comment, I can't make readers comment, and I have deal with my frustration over that situation. My way to deal with it is to stop creating the situation in the first place. I have said myself in times past that the author's satisfaction with the work has to be with the work itself, and not done for the sake of squees. I'm happy with the story I have written and I'm not going to blackmail for comments.

Anglachel

Status Quo

I haven't had much to say politically recently, mostly because there isn't much to say.

There is a lot going on, of course, but not much that needs analysis. The Cheney regime is running out of places to hide the bodies, the Democrats are settling in for several years of investigations, and the general population is finally catching on that just maybe this invasion shit isn't such a good idea. The rest is bubbles on the horse piss.

I still support Al Gore for president far more than any other candidate, and I still think that Clinton and Obama will make a great team in the White House. It looks like Clark has removed himself from consideration (Drat!) but this is someone to watch. He will play a role in the next administration.

What the national political scene comes down to is this: Dems have a slim majority in the Congress, not enough to really take on the Cheney regime. The public's opposition to the Iraq Waar is wide spread, but not very strong. Let another incident happen and opinion will invert itself. Given that, the Dems are right to focus on exposing the crimes and setting up the long term prosecutions than in trying for any showy confrontations, no matter how emotionally satisfying.

I read public opinion as "Don't start anything new," more than "Throw the bums out," which is the mistake the self-indulgent "liberal" blogosphere is making. The public is willing to wait for the end of the term, and expect the Congress to keep a short leash on the White House.

I think the most interesting long-term social trend I have read about is the growing divergence of the evangelical movement and the increased strength of more socially liberal congregations. The extremism of the fire-and-brimstone literalists is no longer playing so well, even in Peoria.

The conservative movement is reaching the end of of strength, but it is not clear what might replace it.

Anglachel

Janus House

I have a key in hand. It opens up new possibilities.

We closed escrow on our house yesterday. Our new old house - new to us, almost older than the two of us put together. Finally, life has settled down to the point where it is time to put down deeper roots. To, as Voltaire would have it, cultivate our garden.


So, what about this house? It's old (1924) and large and in need of TLC after a time of neglect. We're the third family to live in it. It has a Mission Revival style exterior, very plain, and a beautiful classic Craftsman interior. This is odd, as the Spanish style exteriors usually go with a plainer interior, thought we're not complaining.

I've set up a website where we're going to write up our renovations efforts, publish pictures, keep a house blog and other things. I did password protect it because I'd really prefer not to give thieves and con men detailed information about the interior of the house and what we are doing. Friends are welcome to email me and ask for a password.

There are a few immediate needs. There is a ficus tree in the back yard that needs to be cut down before it takes over the neighborhood. The kitchen has not been changed or updated since 1924, so it is both quaint and nearly unusable. That will take some major work. The electrical system has been updated from the old knob and tube wiring, but it is woefully inadequate for today's gadget wonderland. And so on.

We expect renovations will take from now until Labor Day or thereabouts.

Anglachel

HotK - Ch. 63 - Abandoned

HotKFor the fanfiction readers, I just posted a chapter for Hands of the King, Ch. 63 - Abandoned. Click on the story title to go to the overview, click on the chapter name to go to the chapter.

1 of 2 Denethor POV. Warnings: Not work safe. Violence, threats of violence, graphic sexual content, several distrubing scenes.

Denethor tries to come to terms with Thorongil's departure.

Anglachel

HotK - Ch. 62: Steal

HotKFor the fanfiction readers, I just posted a chapter for Hands of the King, Ch. 62 - Steal. Click on the story title to go to the overview, click on the chapter name to go to the chapter.

1 of 1 Finduilas POV. No warnings.

Tensions rise as Minas Tirith awaits news of the attack. Maiaberiel makes her first move. Denethor has knowledge of things he cannot speak of. Finduilas takes several matters into her own hands. Sometimes victory is the wost possible outcome.

Major scenes with Denethor, Ecthelion, Borondir, Laanga and Imrahil. Major scenes with other characters that would be spoilers to mention.

Ang

HotK - Ch. 61: Umbar

HotKFor the fanfiction readers, I just posted a chapter for Hands of the King, Ch. 61 - Umbar. Click on the story title to go to the overview, click on the chapter name to go to the chapter.

1 of 1 Denethor POV. Moderate warnings for violence.

Denethor and Thorongil set about securing their greatest desire despite the warnings. One exchange is all that stands between them and Doom. If only...

Scenes with Ecthelion, Finduilas, Thorongil, Brandir and other characters.

Anglachel

Sigh, Have to Upgrade

I've been trying to avoid upgrading to the new Blogger system. Not because I think it's bad but because it's just another damn thing I have to do. Today, they wouldn't let me log in to the old pages and forced an upgrade.

I haven't been blogging much lately because:

• Trying to get the final chapters of HotK written. I'm 3/4 of the way through the last chapter. Then I do my rewrite of the unpublished part and post that sucker. Go me!
  
• Helping an ill parent, who had a bad health scare but is doing better
  
• Big projects at work, all hitting full-speed at once. Just call me the queen of multi-tasking.
• Nasty infected tooth. It was pulled today (I have all the pieces!) and I'm on some serious pain killers.
• Political news hasn't needed much commentary. Instead, it has been popcorn munching time as the Dems begin to use their majority status to methodically expose Rethuglican corruption.
• House buying continues apace. Still looking, have a back-up offer in, the market in San Diego is insane.
  

When the story wraps up, I intend to get back to more regular blogging.

Anglachel